Good morning. It's cold and gray outside, but it's warm and bright in here as we share the love of Christ together on this Lord's Day. I'm continuing my series, if you call it that, in the book of Galatians, if you would turn there with me. I get the opportunity to preach about once every three months, so I'm assuming we'll finish this book in about six years. But Galatians, we are in chapter two, because I've been preaching on it for about a year now. Galatians chapter two, beginning in verse one. I'll read through verse 10 this morning. 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 sat 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 seemed 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 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." Let's ask the Lord's blessing upon the preaching of his word this morning. Our great God and heavenly Father, we do come before you this Lord's Day, this day that you have set aside for your people to come and to be nourished by you, from you, through your word being proclaimed to us. Father, that is what we are here to do this morning. We ask that you would speak through me and speak to each of our hearts this morning, that we may have a better understanding of your word, but that we might feed upon the beauty and the glory of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Father, nourish us spiritually. Convict us where we need convicting. Encourage us where we need encouraging. Strengthen and bolster our faith as we come to worship you this morning, we pray. In the name of our Lord, our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. In the words of the great theologian John Stott, false teachers were the bane of Paul's life and ministry. All throughout Paul's extensive travels and his missionary journeys, his footsteps were followed seemingly everywhere by false teachers who would come in after him and try to undermine the gospel of God's grace which he preached, which was the good news that we have been saved by the grace of God alone through faith alone in the person and work of Jesus Christ alone. The gospel of Jesus Christ, which Paul preached, included the good news that we have been set free from the bondage of the law by the person and work of Jesus Christ. We've been set free. These false teachers attacked the gospel, which Paul proclaimed, And in Galatia, at least, they also strongly attacked his own personal credibility as a genuine apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, saying he was not a genuine apostle. Which is why Paul wrote this book, to address these false teachers. In our text this morning, we see Paul continuing to provide a very detailed defense, both of his own apostleship and legitimacy, and the good news of our real true and tangible freedom that we have in Christ. Paul was writing specifically here in order to counter false teachers known as the Judaizers, as they're referred to elsewhere, who had evidently gained a rather strong foothold in a number of the various churches in the Roman province of Galatia. This group is called the Judaizers because they taught that one essentially needed to become a convert to Judaism before they could be saved by Christ. They emphasized Jewishness above the free grace that we have in Christ Jesus. The Judaizer motto or the essence of their teaching is recorded for us in Acts 15, verse one, where it says that they taught that unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. This is what they taught. This was a problem that Paul needed to correct. In other words, salvation according to them was not by grace alone, but it was dependent at least in some part upon our own obedience to the law. Paul's refutation of these false teachers is still very relevant for us even today for two primary reasons. First, because virtually this identical false teaching is very much alive and well even today, seeing a resurgence, especially in the past 10 to 20 years. This teaching today is more commonly known as the Messianic Movement or the Hebrew Roots Movement, and there's a few other names that it goes by. And it should not surprise us to hear that some of the teachers in this modern-day version of the Judaizer Movement actually go so far as to teach that the book of Galatians should not be in the Bible. It should not be included in our canon, because in their opinion, this book contains false teaching, because it contradicts what they teach. And therefore, in their mind, it could not have been written by a true apostle, and it certainly could not have been inspired by the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit would never disagree with them. I'm sure that the Judaizers back in the first century made some of the same claims. It's something that we need to be made aware of. The second way in which Paul's defense here is practical for us today is because we see Paul very clearly refuting the idea that once we are saved, that we then need to obey the law in order to improve upon, to maintain, or to not lose our salvation. It's a basic confusion of the law and the gospel that's a very easy pattern of thinking to fall into, confusing the two things. It comes in various forms, but one way that it comes to us even today is when we hear other people say, or we find ourselves thinking, okay, so I believe in the gospel, now what? Now that I have been saved by grace through faith in Christ, what do I need to do in order to not merely be saved, but in order to be a good Christian? That question seems like a legitimate question that one would ask, right? What should you do after you come to believe and have faith in the gospel. I'll tell you, after you hear the gospel and then believe in it, Christians need to hear the gospel and continue to believe in it to maintain our salvation. That's it. We never stop needing to hear the gospel. We never stop needing to hear the gospel. We have to preach the gospel to ourselves day by day. The gospel empowers us and leads us into obedience to the Lord. Our obedience to the Lord does not lead us into the gospel. And we can't flip-flop those two things, or we are essentially destroying the gospel. One of the ways in which the Judaizers were attempting to undermine Paul was to claim that Paul's gospel and the Apostle Peter's gospel were different from one another in some way. They're going into churches planted by Paul, saying things like, we have two different men claiming to be divinely appointed apostles, and they preach two different gospels. On the one hand, we have Paul, who teaches that Christians are no longer under the law of Moses, but on the other hand, we've been to Peter's church in Jerusalem, and he teaches that Christians ought to keep the law of Moses. So which apostle are we supposed to believe? And from there, they would likely go on to state that Paul is a bit of a loner. He wasn't one of the original 12. He does his own thing. He never met Christ in person, while Peter is a pillar of the church in Jerusalem, of all places, and was with Jesus during his earthly ministry, and has the full support of all the other apostles, especially James, the brother of Christ, and John. So who do you believe is telling us the truth? Paul, or all the other apostles together, and along with the whole church in Jerusalem? So this is kind of the argument that they were giving in these churches in Galatia, trying to undermine Paul so that they could undermine the gospel of salvation by grace alone. I'm sure you can see why it was that such arguments could sound somewhat persuasive to the very early Christian converts. Just as I'm sure that you can see why it was that such attacks against his own integrity, Paul had to write this letter to Galatians. It was also this attempt to pit the apostolic authority of Peter against Paul that we see being addressed in our passage this morning. In chapter one, Paul asserted that his gospel was taught to him, not by man, but by a direct revelation given to him from God himself. Now, in chapter 2, Paul argues that the gospel which he was taught by God, that he preaches to the Gentiles, is the very same gospel that is proclaimed by Peter, James, and John in the church in Jerusalem. He is arguing here that there is not division in the ranks of the apostles, but rather that they are all in one accord. Paul is writing out his personal testimony here in Galatians not to bring glory to or even to draw attention to himself in any way, but rather in order to defeat and dismantle the arguments being used by these false teachers in order to lead people away from the truth. He already mentioned his first visit to Jerusalem in chapter 1, which lasted only 15 days, to prove that he had not learned the gospel from any man in Jerusalem or otherwise. Now he mentions another trip, a second trip, which he had taken to Jerusalem, which took place, according to our text, 14 years later. in order to prove that his gospel was identical to the gospel that was preached by his fellow apostles in Jerusalem. And not only that, but to demonstrate that not only does his gospel not contradict Peter's gospel, but Peter's gospel contradicts the Judaizers themselves. So consider the circumstances of Paul's second visit to Jerusalem. He writes, and after 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up because of a revelation, and I set before them the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain." His second visit to Jerusalem was 14 years after his previous visit. The point that Paul's making here is that before he took this second visit that he had already been preaching actively this gospel that he proclaims for over 14 years, for a very long time. He wasn't a novice in the faith. He wasn't a brand new pastor fresh out of seminary who has a few rough edges that he needs to take off. He'd been preaching and teaching this for 14 years after being taught what the gospel is directly from God. Paul includes two aspects of this visit which are crucial to understanding the main point of his argument here. First, he mentions that he brought with him two companions, Barnabas as well as Titus. Barnabas was a Jew, and Titus was an uncircumcised Gentile. And the fact that Titus is an uncircumcised Gentile is important because the Judaizers were strongly opposing that someone could be a legitimate Christian without first becoming circumcised according to the law of Moses, and they were saying that all the apostles in Jerusalem agreed with them on this point. Second, we see that Paul set before them the gospel which he'd been preaching for the last 14 years, basically saying, here's what I've been preaching the last 14 years, what do you guys think about it? Now it's important that we recognize that the reason why Paul went to Jerusalem on his visit, it was not to find out whether or not his version of the gospel was accurate. The reason he went was because of a revelation. It says right here, because of a revelation. He was told to go by God. What exactly this revelation was has not been revealed to us. But while he was there, he gathered together a small number of men who seemed to be influential. No doubt, this included Peter, James, and John, and perhaps a few other men from the church, in order to meet with them and make sure I was not running or had not run in vain. What does that mean? What does Paul mean when he says that? Was Paul having doubts about the authenticity of the gospel that he had been preaching? And he wanted to ask the apostles if they agreed with him. If Paul had any doubts whatsoever about his understanding of the gospel, he could have just asked Jesus in person during one of his many revelations, don't you think? I don't think that that's why he came there. Also, if Paul had doubts about the truth of the gospel that he proclaimed, he wouldn't have waited 14 years to come ask for the advice of the apostles in Jerusalem. He didn't go there seeking their approval. What Paul says that he met with these men to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain, what he means is that he met with them to ensure that the Judaizers would not be able to continue to seek to undermine Paul's church planting efforts all around the Mediterranean. He wanted to make sure that the teachers in Jerusalem were proclaiming the true gospel, and that the Judaizers, who kept claiming that they were from the church in Jerusalem, would not be formally supported by the Jerusalem church anymore. These men were teaching all over the place, claiming they came from Jerusalem, and they were becoming a bigger and bigger problem. So Paul brought the issue up with the apostles in Jerusalem. He goes on and tells us about the outcome of that meeting, and there are several things to note here. First of all, he mentions in verse 3 that even Titus was not forced to be circumcised. He makes a big deal of that point. Even Titus! He was a Gentile believer. who was not circumcised, but he was a man whom Paul was discipling, whom Paul was training to be a minister, who later pastored six or seven different churches on Crete when Paul left him there to set up those churches that they had planted together. Titus had been traveling with Paul in order to help him in the work of evangelism and church planting. And if the leaders of Jerusalem did not require Titus to be circumcised, they would not require any Gentile believer to be circumcised. This act validated the gospel which both Paul and all of the other apostles in Jerusalem believed, that both Jews as well as Gentiles are made acceptable before God on the same terms, through faith alone in Christ alone. If both Jews and Gentiles are made fully acceptable by God, by the gospel, then both groups must also be accepted by the church without any discrimination whatsoever, which means that what the Judaizers were teaching was certainly false. The Christian who had been circumcised and the Christian who has not been circumcised are no different in the eyes of God. Both are saved by grace, by the merits of our Lord and Savior. Paul had won a great victory in garnishing the support of the apostles in Jerusalem, but the battle was not won without a fight. For while he was in Jerusalem, there were some who had put great pressure on him to have Titus become circumcised. They wanted Titus to be circumcised. They made an issue of it. The ESV calls these men false brothers, or more literally from the Greek, it's pseudo-brothers. who had secretly slipped into these meetings in order to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus so that they might bring us into slavery. Those are harsh terms there. Paul goes on and states that they had not yielded to these false brothers even for one moment in order to preserve the freedom given to us in the gospel. Paul saw the issue clearly for what it was. It was not merely a matter of circumcision versus uncircumcision, but it was a fundamental issue of Christian freedom from the law versus being submitted under the law in bondage yet again. And it's important for us to understand that when a Jew or a convert to Judaism is circumcised, what that fundamental act is representing. What is it that that is saying when they undergo that particular rite? They are essentially saying, if I do not keep the entire law of God, may I be cut off from God's people, just as this piece of flesh is being cut off from me. It's an oath of self-malediction and an oath before the Lord to keep the entire law of Moses, upon pain of being cut off from God's people. That's what circumcision is. Paul recognizes this. The Judaizers also recognize this, and that's why it's becoming an issue here. It's not merely about outward circumcision, but about whether or not a Christian was engrafted into national Israel and thereby required to obey the whole law of God given to Israel at Mount Sinai in order to keep God's favor with them. Brothers and sisters, the truth is that we are kept safely in God's favor through perfect obedience to the law. but it's Christ's perfect obedience to the law and not our own upon which we depend. It's Christ's perfect obedience to the law upon which we depend. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God because we depend wholly upon the finished work of Jesus Christ. And anyone who teaches something contrary to this is confusing law and gospel and essentially destroying the gospel altogether. Now, Paul could have asked Titus on that trip to go ahead and receive the outward act of circumcision in order to not offend these false brothers or any other weaker brothers that may have been in that church. Yet, also telling Titus that he's not obliged to obey the whole law because we're saved by Christ's obedience to the whole law. In fact, at a later point in Paul's ministry, this is exactly what Paul did with Timothy. Timothy was uncircumcised, but he asked him to become circumcised so that he would not offend weaker brothers and would open up more doors of ministry for Timothy to go into. But here, Paul refuses to budge because he realizes that the principle needed to first be firmly established, that we are saved by grace apart from the works of the law, because our salvation is dependent upon Christ's obedience to the law, not ours. Paul refused to have Titus circumcised, not because he was being obstinate, not because he didn't care whether or not he offended a weaker brother, Rather, on this trip, as we read at the end of verse five, he was there in order to preserve the gospel of freedom from the law for you, it says, and you being the many Gentile Christians that were living in Galatia at this time who were becoming more and more confused as they kept listening to these false teachers that Paul is addressing here. Paul was perfectly willing to go out of his way not to offend a weaker brother. as we see when he later asked Timothy to be circumcised. But here, offending the weaker brother was worth it to Paul in order to preserve the clear teaching of the gospel. It kind of raises that question, when is it okay for us to offend a weaker brother, and when should we go out of our way not to offend a weaker brother? It's not always a black and white question, and it's not always easy to answer. Sometimes people in churches legitimately wrestle with that. Sometimes Christians don't wrestle with it enough, to be honest, especially when you see how Christians treat one another on social media these days. There's no idea of offending a weaker brother present, it seems. When is it okay to offend a weaker brother and when is it not? I believe if we're to follow the Apostle Paul's example here, we should be willing to offend a weaker brother when an essential element of the gospel is at stake. Not any time that a weaker brother may disagree with us about anything. And even then, we should let the gospel itself be offensive to them rather than us. Right? Let me give you a tangible example. It's a hypothetical one. I tried to pick an issue that I hope people in this church don't have peccadillas on, but we'll see. For example, if my family were to attend a church where all of the ladies in the church wore head coverings, Even though I believe this is not a requirement, it's certainly not sinful to do it, but it's not a requirement to do it, I would encourage my wife to wear a head covering so that we wouldn't offend anyone in the church. I would not want to offend a weaker brother. But if we were attending a church, And I know of a couple of Reformed churches that actually teach this. They teach that if my wife refused to wear a head covering, that she's at risk of losing her salvation. If they were teaching that, I would say, take that head covering off and let's preach the gospel to them and let the gospel offend them all it will. The gospel would be doing the offense. and I would stand up and not budge, just as Paul did, not having Titus get circumcised, when an essential element of the gospel of grace is at stake. Do you see the difference there? Paul, as well as the other apostles in Jerusalem, they were not trying to offend a weaker brother, but they refused to compromise on the gospel, which itself is offensive to the Judaizers. So, the Jerusalem apostles, Peter, James, and John at this time, they did not go so far as to say that circumcision was a requirement, but what of their understanding of the gospel itself, which Paul had laid before them, as he said he did? Well, at the end of verse 6, Paul writes that they added nothing to me. He's making it clear to the churches in Galatia, who had been influenced by these false teachers, I went and talked with Peter, James, and John. They didn't teach me anything that I had not already learned from my direct revelations from God. The gospel that I proclaim to you is not lacking anything. The gospel that's being taught in the church in Jerusalem is the very same gospel that I proclaim to you, through which God saved you, and through which these churches were planted. And he's reiterating to them that his ministry to them was not lacking in any way. Later on in verse 9, he states that they offered to him their right hand of fellowship in the gospel, essentially saying, we fully support you in your gospel ministry to the Gentiles. Some of you may be thinking that all of these details about a particular meeting between Paul and Barnabas-Titus, Peter, James, John, that took place some 2,000 years ago, the question about whether or not Titus was circumcised might all seem a little bit distant to us. Or you may be thinking, okay, great, but those aren't issues that we have to deal with here in the year 2022. But I believe if you're thinking this, you're mistaken. Sure, there may not be people in our church, I hope, saying that all Christians have to undergo circumcision in order to be saved. But there certainly are professing believers in churches all across the globe who say things like, Well, I follow the gospel according to Jesus, not the gospel according to Paul. there's actually a large movement of people saying that all the Pauline epistles should be jettisoned and we should only trust the words of Christ. There are debates even going on today about differences between Paul's gospel and Peter's gospel. Academic debates today going on about these things. As if the gospel messages of Peter, Paul, and John differed. Certainly the different writings in the New Testament differ from one another. We all recognize that. We have four different gospel accounts, not just one, and each of the four emphasize different things for different reasons, but they are yet in perfect harmony with one another. We have different epistles written by Paul, Peter, John, James, and the author of Hebrews. Again, we see differences in style, differences in emphasis, differences in topics, because they're written to different people in different contexts. Yet there is only one gospel, and they are uniform in their truth of the gospel of grace. That one gospel which Paul, Peter, James, and John all agreed on when they met together in Jerusalem is the same gospel which we have preserved for us today in God's word, and we must never stray away from it. And we must be wary of people who try to add anything to it. We also see that it's vitally important that the truth of the gospel needs to be maintained, even if it means we may have to offend a weaker brother to do that. We should never make it our aim to do that, even when they are the ones in the wrong. This is why Paul, when living with the Gentiles, conducted himself as a Gentile. When he was living amongst the Jews, he conducted himself like a Jew. He didn't want to offend anybody. He went out of his way not to, when he was able to. He was free in Christ from having to follow the customs of both groups. Yet, he lived his life striving to not needlessly offend anyone so they would be more likely to hear his message. Yet, Here we see him making a stand. And he was not simply saying, okay, enough is enough. We don't want to offend you, but this just goes too far. Rather, he takes a stand in order to preserve the truth of the gospel for the sake of the Christians in Galatia and to preserve it for us today. The truth that the gospel gives us true spiritual freedom in Christ apart from the works of the law. To again introduce works of the law and make our acceptance before God dependent in any way upon our obedience to rules and regulations is to bring freed men again into bondage. Do you think churches today do this? Lots of churches do this today. And it's very easy for this kind of legalistic teaching to creep into a church. And we need to be aware of that. We need to be on the lookout for that. We need to guard our hearts against that. Let me return to a question I asked earlier. We all know a person is saved by faith alone and the gospel of Christ alone, but what then should we do after we have heard the gospel and believed? We must continue to hear the gospel and to believe in the faithfulness of Christ. It is Christ's faithfulness to the law of God that saves us. And it is Christ's faithfulness toward those of us who have been united to him through faith which keeps us saved. It's his faithfulness through the Spirit to continue to feed and nourish us from his word that helps our faith to grow and strengthens us. Our faith is not a one-time act. We don't say the sinner's prayer and we now have fire insurance and we can live however we please. No one is saying that. But it's Christ's faithfulness to the law, to his work in our hearts, that is our spiritual strength, not our faithfulness in obedience. Will we obey? If we have faith, of course we will. But our faith feeds upon Christ in the gospel, and we must continually feed upon these things, always praying, Lord, I believe. Help me in my unbelief. Am I saying that we do not have to obey the law at all? No. We do not have to obey the law in order to be saved, at least not to remain justified before God. But if we have faith in Christ, we certainly will desire to obey the law of God. Our Lord himself said, if you love me, keep my commandments. Not under threat of losing our salvation, but because we love him, because we're grateful for the salvation we've already been given and fully possess. The truth is, you cannot truly believe the gospel without being overwhelmed with gratitude for what Christ has done for us. And that gratitude, which is a result of your faith, will necessarily lead you into doing good works. We're saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves never comes alone. It's our faith which leads us to good works, not good works, in order to believe. And we do not do them in order to receive anything from God that we have not already received in full, by the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ, our God and Savior. Let's bow in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you again for your word. We thank you for the gospel of pure grace, knowing that we have been saved entirely because of what Christ did and what you have done in our hearts. Not because of anything that we have done, Father, but rather in spite of everything that we have done. Help us, Father, always to cling to the pure gospel of grace that Paul proclaimed, that Peter proclaimed, which you teach in your holy word. Help us to this end, we pray in Christ's name, amen.