Turn to Galatians chapter two and verses eleven to sixteen, and I'm becoming more MacArthur like every week. Smaller and smaller portions. I know why he does it, especially when he's in Pauline epistles. Now he's a joke about that. I'm not going to do that, but I was going to go to the end of the chapter today, starting verse eleven. and by the time I had written a full-length sermon, I was only in about verse fifteen, so I said, I guess I'm going to have to finish the chapter next week. So, let me read verses eleven through sixteen. 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. When I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law, no one will be justified. There's a little word there at the end of verse 13, the word is hypocrisy. We read a lot today with the Pharisees and how Jesus keeps calling them hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities or standards that you don't actually have. That's what hypocrisy is. A pompous deacon was endeavoring to impress upon a class of boys the importance of living the Christian life. He asked, why do people call me a Christian? And after a moment, one youngster said, maybe it's because they don't know you. That's hypocrisy. A recent survey of adults who do not attend church, not even on holidays. Found that 72% thought that the church is full of hypocrites. and seventy-eight percent said they would be willing to listen to somebody who wanted to share their beliefs about Christianity. That is very bizarre, isn't it? Why do you think so many people think the church is full of hypocrites? What would your answer be? Because it is. It is full of hypocrites. In the story of the boy to the deacon, the hypocrisy is set against the backdrop of a certain kind of gospel, which is really not a gospel at all. The gospel of that pompous deacon is, I think, something like this. Live the Christian life. Christians are supposed to be good people. That's his gospel. Live the Christian life. Christians are supposed to be good people. So many people have this as their gospel, it really encapsulates what Americans think, including professing Christians. They think that the central message of the faith is Jesus died as an example of how you should live your life. And you can enlist him as your life coach to help you do it. That's their good news. The problem is, the Bible says that there are no good people. No, not one. I think you should realize something here. Though it is not a good thing, and I said this before, say it more times whenever I get the opportunity. It's not a good thing, but those who teach total depravity of themselves and others by definition cannot be hypocrites. If you teach total depravity and then act totally depraved, you might be a dirty, rotten sinner, but hypocrisy is not one of those sins. If you're not a good person, but you tell everybody that they should be, then you're a hypocrite. No wonder the kid was keen to it and pointed out the man's hypocrisy. This is the gospel of works righteousness. It's the gospel of many of the Jews in the book of Romans. I instantly when I think about this topic, I think about Romans two, where Paul says to the Jews in the congregation, You who brag about your relationship to God. You're proud that you're a guide for the blind. That you're a teacher of infants. The sarcasm is dripping off of his lips when he says this. Because you rely on the law. Because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth. He says, you then who teach others, don't you teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, don't you commit adultery? You who hate idols, do you rob temples? You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? Unbelievers use the same kind of sarcasm today for this kind of hypocrisy in the church. It results in mocking jokes such as this. As a high, as a result of high-level talks many years ago, the Roman Catholics finally decided to eat meat on Fridays. The Jews came back with their own high-level conference and decided that they would finally accept Jesus, the Christ, as Messiah. And Baptists huddled in for several weeks to try and come up with their own appropriate response, and after half a dozen closed-door conferences that reportedly almost ended in fistfights, the Baptists finally emerged with the following statement, henceforth, This particular Baptist conference, fill in the blank, will agree that Baptist will agree to smoke, drink, cuss, dance, play cards, and it start admitting it openly. This is the kind of jokes people tell about us. This hypocrisy comes again from a works oriented gospel. It's so common in our culture, culture. And Paul says that this is the kind of action that causes people to blaspheme God because of us. Today's passage has hypocrisy front and center. And it's from a most unsuspecting source. This particular person taught total depravity, and yet he was still a hypocrite. Now, based on what I just said a minute ago, how can that possibly be the case? It's not because he taught total depravity and then acted totally depraved. Which he did. That was not his hypocrisy. His hypocrisy was a sort of thing that I haven't touched upon yet. His hypocrisy is not about getting saved. It's more about being saved, staying safe. It's not about being accepted by Christ at the first moment. salvation, it's more about staying acceptable to Christ afterwards. It's not really about justification. It's more about sanctification. It's the kind of hypocrisy that many people would never even think is possible. And yet many Christians engage in it. And I hopefully I'm going to remedy this situation for you, at least in your mind, so you can understand what's going on so that you'll be able to see this kind of hypocrisy for what it is. Take it seriously and take seriously the vital importance of not engaging in it. Now, this hypocrisy that was. Taking place by more than one famous person in the Bible here. Something that cannot be committed by an unbeliever in that interest. This in itself is frightening. And thus, this message is relevant only to a group of Christians. This hypocrisy presupposes a correct gospel at the start, a true belief in its teaching and also a true delight and love for it, and especially from the freedom that stems from. Freedom in Christ will become a major theme later in this letter, beginning in chapter five. And this is because freedom in Christ is at the heart of this kind of hypocrisy. This hypocrisy knows Christian liberty for itself, but when peer pressure or temptation comes, it shirks back from freedom and forces other people to live under the bondage of the law. Do you hear what kind of hypocrisy this is, then? The first hypocrisy knows nothing of freedom or even of Christ. The second does the first hypocrisy is about being good from the start, but the second begins with good news, but ends up ending with bad news. Now, this is kind of a difficult concept to understand in order for me to explain it, I want to first show you what the gospel is, where it comes from, how high it is, how magnificent it is and how it leads to Christian freedom. If this hypocrisy presupposes the gospel. Then you have to understand the gospel before you can make sense of the hypocrisy. Makes sense, right? Only after that can you see how serious the sin before us actually is. Before I explain the gospel, I want to remind you of how high the gospel is. Back in chapter one, verses eight through nine, the apostle says that even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach, let him be anathema. He says it again. Now, other than God himself, who is the author and creator of the gospel, there is nothing higher in this universe than the gospel. Nothing. Nothing more important than the good news. The gospel is over everything like the sun is over the day. In these verses, angels are not higher than the gospel. Apostles are not higher than the gospel, and by implication, that means that the church is not higher than the gospel. The pope is not higher than the gospel. Rome is not higher than the gospel. Orthodoxy is not higher than the gospel. Holy tradition is not higher than the gospel. Calvin and Luther are not higher than the gospel. Reformed churches are not higher than the gospel. Technology is not higher than the gospel. Cultures are not higher than the gospel. Missions is not higher than the gospel. Relevancy is not higher than the gospel. There is nothing on Earth that is more important than the gospel of Jesus Christ. Nothing. If it were not for the gospel, these other things would not exist. The gospel creates the church. It's not the other way around. Everything is subordinated to the gospel, and thus it is of the utmost importance that we get the gospel right and that we keep it that way in our actions. So what is this gospel? Well, of course, the good news is an announcement. What is this announcement? It's right there in the middle of our text. It's actually at the end of our text in the middle of this long section of argument. It's in verse 16. We know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ, by works of the law, no one will be justified. Now, in the middle of that verse that says we have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law. So let's look at this. The word justified. Is the gospel. If you do not have justification, you do not have good news, it's as simple as that. Justification is a word that at least one professor in my seminary suggested that we never use when we're in the pulpit, because people can't understand it. It's too big of a word. And I respond with the question, don't people know how to use dictionaries? Paul apparently never got that memo, neither did Jesus. And yes, Jesus talked about justification by faith. Paul got his good news from Jesus. On one occasion, Jesus spoke of a man wishing to justify himself. Remember that? Luke 10. On another, he spoke of a man who went down to his house, justified. Luke 18. Justifications in both those passages. The first man, wishing to justify himself, did so through the law. He told Jesus how he had obeyed the entire law. I've obeyed everything, Jesus. So Jesus gave him one little tiny law that he had forgotten that he had not considered. But the other man who went home justified, Jesus said it was because he cried out, God be merciful to me, a sinner, and therefore he was justified. Isn't that fascinating? That's all he did. God, please be merciful to me. I'm a sinner. He trusted in God to save him, but his friends said, I thank God I'm not like other men. Look at me. I'm not a sinner. I obey everything. So what is justification? Justification is a legal term. It is the verdict from a judge at his bench after he has heard the testimony of the defendant and all of the prosecution's evidence against him. And what is that evidence? Well, as Jesus pointed out time and again to people who wanted to justify themselves. The evidence is plentiful. And it's summarized in the Psalms and summarized in Romans all have sent. That's the evidence against you. Everybody in this room has sinned against God. The first kind of a hypocrite that I talked about this morning may think that his good deeds can outweigh his bad deeds. He does not understand that any evidence is enough to condemn him. Sometimes he will try to argue that he has no evidence against him at all. Other times he might admit it, but he'll try to show the court that he has done many good things. Now, I want you to imagine this is a story. It's like it's going to it's going to be in my mind forever, probably yours, too. But one day people are just going to hear this story. What are you talking about? Imagine O.J. Simpson telling the judge, OK, I murdered Nicole and Ron Goldman, but I want you to know I was a great running back and I give a lot of people joy and I did hurts commercials and everyone knows that car rentals help people and I was an actor and that's an honorable profession. Those three things ought to outweigh this one little indiscretion. Just imagine. It would be totally absurd and yet this is. what people are doing when they're trying to justify themselves before God with their works. So in the Bible, the evidence condemns everyone and the judge should rightly declare everyone guilty as charged and then pronounce the death penalty as punishment. That's what justice demands, but Paul says that we are justified through faith in Christ. And so, the question becomes, how can God declare a person not guilty when he actually is guilty? It's a question that I try to bring up for you time and time again, because so many Christians don't bother to ask this question. They just think God can just forgive. But God can't just forgive. How can a holy God just forgive? It's because the work of Christ in obeying all of the law perfectly as a substitute. That is, God put the punishment of your sin upon him at the cross. He was given the death penalty that all people deserve, but God raised Jesus from the dead and God decided in eternity past that this entire activity of Jesus Christ should be done so that those who are raised from the dead by the gospel and who trust in his work by faith alone might have the righteousness of Christ credited to their account, just as God punished Jesus for their sake. That's been dubbed the great exchange by theologians. Jesus gets your sin and punishment. And you get his perfect status credited to you. And so God has provided a way that your sin can really be punished, and yet you might really be declared not guilty. And this is truly good news, and frankly, it is the only good news that matters. It is justification through faith alone and not by works of the law, because, as it says, by works of the law, no one will be justified. It's just not possible. to justify yourself through your words, because even your best works are filthy rags, let alone your sins are utterly condemnable. This good news will be discussed in a lot of detail in the next couple of chapters in Galatians, because the problem is this church was this close to giving it up. Now, the context of this announcement of justification is freedom. For Paul, it was the freedom that Jews had now that they became Christians. For Gentiles, it's a freedom not to come under the law in order to be saved. He begins to explain this freedom in verses fifteen and sixteen a. He refers to himself and the other apostles in the first person plural, we we means Jews. We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile centers, he says. Now, I take centers to be slightly sarcastic, kind of in the way that he was. He talks about it in Romans two to these Jews. We are Jews by birth and not Gentile centers. He's going to make a point. Paul is saying that even if you could make an argument that the Jews are not Gentile sinners because they have the law, we Jewish Christians believe that we are saved through faith. That's what he says. And so this proves that Jews are sinners, just like Gentiles. If Paul and Peter and Barnabas needed to be saved by faith, and yet they are not Gentile sinners, it proves that they too are sinners. Now, you say, where is the freedom there? It's implicit in the context, the context of hypocrisy in not acting like you are saved by faith alone. And it goes like this, because the gospel comes only through faith. It provides freedom from the tyranny and the rigor of the law, which demands perfection. Anybody trying to have life by works must obey the entire law without exception. But anybody trusting in Christ alone will be justified completely apart from any law keeping or law breaking. That is freedom, if faith alone brings freedom from the law, then what sense does it make that after you're saved, this freedom should give way to law again? It's in this context that we find the hypocrisy of Galatians two, so let's go back to the beginning. of our section today, there was a group of Christians that seem to be following Paul around in verse eleven. Subverting his gospel on purpose. There were also apostles that were subverting the gospel without trying to. So two groups are subverting the gospel. One is doing on purpose. One is not trying to. In fact, one of them is supposedly the first pope. The first group did it through teaching, and the second group did it through example. So let's look first at the text and see who these people are. When Cephas, that is Peter, came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. Peter belongs to the second group of people, those who subvert the gospel through their example. And just let that sink in for a minute here. Peter is subverting the gospel through his example. Peter. Here's what he was doing. We learn in the next verse that Peter at one point in time was eating with Gentiles. I guess that's verse 11. Now, this refers to table fellowship, possibly to the Lord's Supper, but certainly to the more general association of Jews eating together with Gentiles. And this obviously is a significant thing, because Jewish kosher laws demanded that Jews could never eat with Gentiles who regularly ate swine and other unclean animals. Peter did this because he was now free from such binding legal red tape. But suddenly Peter stops, stands up and runs over to the other side of the room. no longer eating with the Gentiles, separating himself and acting hypocritically. And what is his hypocrisy entail? Verse 12, it says certain men came from James and then it refers to them as the circumcision party. The idea is that Peter was giving into this circumcision party forcing the Gentiles to give up their freedom from this law. Now, before you go getting all high and mighty condemning Peter for something that so obviously hypocritical, something that you would never do. I want to try and lay bare the subtlety of the deception that he was under. I want to go back to the date that Paul wrote the letter in order to make a point. Now, you remember, there's an early date and a late date. And the key issue here is the Council of Jerusalem. which is about 50 AD. The early date says that Galatians was written before the council and the later date says it was written after the council. I've taken the later date view that this was written after the Jerusalem Council. Now, upon my view, the episode here with Peter would have taken place after the council at Jerusalem. When Paul and Barnabas went back to Antioch to deliver the news to the councils of the council's decision to the church, or perhaps even later. Now, early daters will say this, there's no way that Peter could have so boldly made the comments that he made in Jerusalem about the law being such a heavy yoke that nobody can bear and then immediately turn around, go to Antioch and succumb to the circumcision party. And they will also add that it seems difficult to believe that James would have sent this circumcision party to Antioch after the council, because that would contradict everything that he just said at the council about circumcision. And therefore, they make the argument that this entire chapter takes place before the Jerusalem Council. Now, I not only think this idea is wrong. I think it destroys the real subtlety of the sin, which is that Christians can commit such gross errors in practice even after coming down so boldly against the principle that they are condemning using a different practice. There's a major problem with the alternative date, the early date, and this is the problem. It implies that prior to the council, Peter and James didn't really understand the gospel, and Paul did. The early date argument presupposes that James sent the circumcision party from Jerusalem, approving of their message, and only later at the council, when Paul convinced him, changed his mind and started believing the true gospel. But that destroys Paul's whole argument in chapter one through two, Which is that he and the apostles, even though they never met, always have the same gospel. And so I think something else is going on here. First thing is this says certain men came from James. James may not even have sent these men in the first place. So how could that be? Well, when we talk about something like this coming from James, it could be interpreted as coming from the church at Jerusalem, of which James was the leader. What you're doing is you're taking this as a metonymy where James and Jerusalem are the same thing. And we say this kind of thing all the time. Piper's church, MacArthur's church, Chantry's church. Take your pick. Bad eggs may come from a mother church without the pastor's knowledge. But the pastors included is sort of guilty by association with the leader of the church. James was the leader of Jerusalem and everybody knows that. Second thing is that even if James did send them, it's important to notice that the issue here is different than Acts 15. That's the subtlety. Acts 15 settles the question of salvation by faith alone, using the particular issue of circumcision to prove it. But notice that circumcision is not the issue here with Peter. The issue is eating with Gentiles. The principle is the same, which is freedom in Christ. But the circumstances changed. James himself in Acts 15 said that we should tell the Gentiles to abstain from foods polluted by idols, food that has been strangled and from eating food with blood in it. He made the declaration about circumcision. He says, but we need to make sure we tell the Gentiles to abstain from these things. It's so important to understand that James says this with respect to Christian freedom, not salvation. He is saying that because there's so many Jews in their own churches in these Gentile cities, that they should be sensitive to their Jewish friends with weaker consciences over matters of indifference. Just read the letter of James, and you can see how serious he was about this kind of thing, as Mason's been preaching through it. Now, in my mind, a group of legalists looking for a loophole could have found just such a thing in James's decision at Jerusalem as legalists. Remember, they're not concerned at all with Christian freedom, but with salvation by merit. They were still stuck back there before you get sick. They saw Gentiles doing the very things the council had told them not to do eating food. They saw Peter eating with them anyway, and when Peter saw them, he became fearful of what they would think and say. The problem is these people are not weaker brothers. They are Pharisees with a different gospel. Their gospel comes from Satan. The weaker brother is the person. Now listen to this carefully. People get this confused all the time. The weaker brother is the one who cannot himself partake in some matter of conscience. The Pharisee is somebody who will not allow anyone else to partake. You see the difference? The hypocrite is the one who acts in league with the Pharisee at one time, but will partake in the very action at another time. Pharisees were, of course, often hypocrites. That's what Jesus points out. That is. The hypocrite uses his freedom for himself, but forces others not to for themselves. Now, if this circumcision party had taught and believed that people are saved through faith alone. would have had their own faith weakened by eating unclean foods with Gentiles, then Peter would have had a leg to stand on in leaving the table. That was, I think, James's point. But these men were teaching that it is by what we do that people are saved and made good Christians. And so Peter's leaving the table sent a contradictory message. On one hand, he told with his mouth the Gentiles that they're saved by faith alone. And in fact, he even ate with them to prove it on the other. As soon as somebody teaching a different gospel comes in, Peter quickly runs to the other side so as not to offend them. What do you think these Gentile Christians would have made of that? They would have thought he says were saved by faith. His actions say that were saved by works. What's going on? Do you see the hypocrisy? Peter may have convinced himself that removing himself from the table was done in the name of keeping unity with James, but he was being hypocrite. He didn't really believe that at all because he knew that these very men were not concerned with Christian liberty. We may think we have a superhero suit on as we listen to this message that we are protected from the sin of hypocrisy. But our culture has its own issues that we justify to replace the gospel, just like they did. Like Peter, we can justify almost anything. With the legalistic law, can't we? Even when we know something's wrong, we can justify it on other grounds. Somebody says, yes, Christians are saved by faith alone, but anybody who drinks alcohol, well, he isn't a good Christian. Sorry, friend. A good Christian is not good because they do or don't drink alcohol. They are good because Christ did all the law and God credits his goodness to them by faith. But then they say, yes, but if you drink alcohol around my grandma who thinks Christians should never drink alcohol, then you're not a good Christian. But that's exactly what Peter was doing. If your grandma believes this. That other people can't drink alcohol, and be good Christians, then chances are she's not a Christian. Notice, Grandma did not think that she could not drink alcohol herself. But that nobody else should. See the difference again? We're constantly being tempted with supplanting Christ with the best of good things. Fill in the blank with any sin that you like, whether it's biblical or non-biblical. dancing or playing cards, murdering or committing adultery. It doesn't matter. We are not good people because we do or don't do a lot of somebody makes up or a lot of God has in the Bible. That's why the gospel is so important that you understand. Notice in verse 13, even Barnabas, who was everywhere else in the Bible, held up as this. Model of virtue. succumbed to the subtlety of the deceit, and he was led astray by the hypocrisy joining with them against the Gentiles. These Gentiles may not have been sinless here. We don't know. We don't know what they were doing. You can easily think of this as a mixed congregation of Jews and Gentiles. Maybe at this moment they weren't obeying James's instructions and his stronger brothers. They were lording their freedom over weaker Jews when James said, don't do that. But we don't know that for sure. At any rate, Paul isn't concerned with that. This is not a weaker brother thing. This is a matter of the gospel itself, getting the gospel right, he's concerned that two of the pillars of the church were acting one way and saying one thing, and then the very next moment acting another way, effectively destroying the gospel by their actions, all because they wanted to please those whom they knew had a different gospel. It's remarkable. But frankly, it happens all the time to us. I'm not immune to it. You're not immune to it. Nobody here is. You say Peter would never act like that knowingly. Peter's unfallible. Peter's not sinless. In fact, if you know anything about Peter, he's actually acting out his character exactly like we see him doing the Gospels. Have you forgotten, this is the man who didn't want people to think that he was associated with Jesus. So he denied him not once, not twice, but three times. And this is similar. Peter seems especially prone to caring too much about what other people think of him, no matter even if they're trying to kill Jesus or the message. Now, what you especially need to understand about Peter, and this makes it all worse. Is that he was a believer who knew the true gospel and Peter loved the gospel. He's not a fundamentalist who thinks that good news is to make that the good news is to make sure that boys don't stand too close to girls of the opposite sex in college. This is what Paul says about the hypocrisy, he says, I saw the conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel. This was a matter of making a mockery of the good news of Jesus Christ. Peter was the guy who used to who was eating with Gentiles because he knew the truth. Peter was a guy who used to walk with Jesus, who would eat regularly with tax collectors and sinners. And that's similar kind of an idea, because for the Pharisees, that's just as bad as eating with Gentiles. Peter's a guy who went with Jesus up to Tyre and Sidon to the Gentile nations, and certainly Jesus wasn't up there for all those days and he never ate anything with anybody. There was even a time in Jesus's ministry when he pronounced all meat clean and later Peter was given a dream. This is also interesting, not once, not twice, but three times. that food is no longer unclean. It's been cleansed by God. Not only that, after he had the dream, and actually, this is before even an early date for Galatians, soon as he had the dream and understood it, he went to Caesarea and preached a sermon that Jews must not call Gentiles or their food unclean. Given all of this and probably the Jerusalem Council to Peter knew the truth, preach the truth, love the truth, love freedom in Christ and still acted like a hypocrite. And all that with the Holy Spirit in dwelling. If Peter could do it, don't you think you're prone to being a hypocrite as well? Anytime you behave in such a manner that by your actions, you force somebody back under the law and make them feel like they are only acceptable to God when they obey him. You make a mockery of the gospel. God is our father, beloved. In a good father's love, good fathers love their children no matter what they do. And then you had a bad father and you don't understand that. But a good father loves their children no matter what they do. We are only acceptable to God because of Christ's works. All of our good works are done because we are accepted not to become acceptable. Have you been burdened in your relationship with your heavenly father by your sins this week or even this hour? Perhaps you're even convicted that you've been guilty of this very hypocrisy. Then trust in Christ and come to know once more the freedom that you have in a loving heavenly father who accepts you with open arms for the sake of his son. Think about what Peter did, his words were a bomb to the Gentiles, but his actions were a knife, he stabbed him in the back. This kind of hypocrisy is just as bad as the more common kind that doesn't even start with the right gospel. This hypocrisy may start with it, but it doesn't finish with it, and therefore the results are the same. It destroys the power of God in a person's life. The power is the good news that sets them free from the tyranny of self-righteous law keeping. That's exactly how the rest of the chapter unfolds. And I'm only going to look at a couple more verses this morning and then next week we'll finish the chapter. Notice, Peter does it. Peter is not condemned to hell by Paul, but he does rebuke him. Paul rebukes Peter in front of everybody. It's not even a private rebuke. It's right there when he did it. For the whole group of people. It is most commendable and in line with what he said in verse ten in chapter one. I'm not trying to please men any longer, and this verse pretty much proves that, unlike most people in our day or his, Paul was not afraid to call sin sin. And that's probably why so many people like him. In our day and back in his day. So he rebuked the first pope. What a mitigated nerve. Here's what he said is a sort of the heart of our passage today in the most applicable part, applicable part as far as learning some kind of duty from it. He says, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force Gentiles to live like Jews? You can paraphrase it this way. Peter, if you, though a man under the impossible yoke of the law, too heavy to bear its burden, have learned that you are saved by grace alone and now have total freedom from earning God's favor. Why do you act in such a way that those who never had this ceremonial yoke of the law in the first place now have to come under the very thing that you want? That's an incredible warning. that we have to take very seriously. If you do not understand the truth of the gospel that I've given to you today, then pray to God to make known the freedom from the law that comes by trusting in Christ alone. Repent of your sins and pray like the man did who went home justified. God have mercy on me, a sinner. It's all it takes. God have mercy on me, a sinner, and you will be justified. If you know the truth about Jesus Christ and that you are only saved by the power of the resurrected Christ to the good news, then watch yourselves very closely, guard your activities so that you never act in a way that is contrary to this. Do not put people back under law to gain God's favor. I didn't say. Don't ever keep law. Well, actually, look at that next week. I said, don't put them under law to earn God's favor. Don't even act in a way towards them that you will make them feel like they are not accepted in Christ unless they perform some good work. To do so is to beat a beaten person or to stir up more rebellion in their heart than they had prior to you ever telling them about Jesus. And here's a second warning. Don't do this to yourself either. Do not think thoughts that cause you to give up your freedom in Christ in your heart. If you do, then you will have destroyed everything comforting about the good news. You will live a life of misery, depression, anger at yourself and other people. People will see the hypocrisy and want nothing to do with your God. Sometimes you're preaching the good news. To others means preaching it to yourself first. Act in such a way that you preserve for all people the comfort and freedom of the good news. Keep that good news truly good by not contradicting it with your actions. Shall we pray together? Father, we thank you for the word today. It's a cutting sharp knife. Divides are. The very soul in half, because the law tells us what we're to do, but father, this particular law comes to those who are believers and who know the good news and love it. I am not speaking to unbelievers today, I'm speaking to the church. We're the only ones in my view of this who can even commit this very same only Christians can do that. And so comfort your people with the good news that if they've done this, even this isn't going to keep your love from them. Pray that you would. In the rebuke, make it a gentle rebuke for us, cause us to know and trust and love the gospel that we've declared here this morning, even more than we did. Help us to act in such a way that people will be drawn towards the freedom that they have in Christ, drawn towards the love and the mercy of God. His great care for his people help us never to do anything that would cause people to turn away from him because of our actions in proclaiming a free message and then making it so that it's not free, really, after all. I ask that you would work in our hearts this morning by your spirit, through your word, for Christ's sake. Amen.