Enemies in the Ranks!

10/01/11

Scripture:

Before I read our scripture for this morning, we are in the New Testament letter of Galatians.  It’s a six-chapter book...it doesn’t take too long to read it...and in case you haven't been here the last two weeks, this is a section of scripture where Paul is very autobiographical.  He’s writing a lot about himself here, about his history.  He is writing about how he was a persecutor of Christians who had Christians arrested, imprisoned, and put to death, and how he became a Christian himself and a leader in the church because of his encounter with the risen Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus.  He is writing here of his receiving a message to carry to the non-Jewish people...we call them Gentiles...a message that they can be included in God's family through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  He’s writing here in this text about how he is engaging the other spiritual leaders of the community to make sure that we’re all on the same page in the teaching of their message to the world about what the gospel of Jesus Christ is about.  What we’re reading, in Galatians 1 last week with what Pastor Mike read and what I'm going to pick up with today in chapter 2, are Paul’s account of his own history as a minister of the gospel.  And you could read in the book of Acts Luke’s version of these stories in Acts chapter 9, Acts chapter 11 and then Acts chapter 15, which is a parallel to the passage that I'm going to read to you today.  The question is why is Paul doing this?  Why is this letter so much a history of Paul’s experience and his reaching out to the church? 

Well, if we look up on the screen, I'm going to pull two verses out of Galatians chapter 1, and this tells us why Paul is writing this letter to the group of churches there in this area called Galatia.  It’s churches that he established, churches that he taught, churches that he preached to and here he says here’s the reason why he’s writing:  I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel - not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ (6-7).  So this whole letter is a response to a group of people who are twisting the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and Paul is writing to correct that because of its influence in the life of churches in Galatia.  And so we look at this text today and we look for the purpose of understanding what Paul is dealing with and how does it relate to you and me today.  So now I want to read to you Galatians chapter 2 verses 1-10.  The text that we’re going to look at today, Paul has been telling his history.  He went to Jerusalem previously and now it’s 14 years later.  He’s going to back to the big city to meet with the leaders of the church.  So let’s look at the text and then we’ll try to understand its meaning for us today.

Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.  ² 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.  ³ But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek.  ⁴ 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 -  ⁵ to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.  ⁶ 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.  ⁷ 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  ⁸ (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles),  ⁹ and when James and Cephas (that’s an Aramaic name for Peter) 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.  ¹⁰ Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. 

This is the word of the Lord for you and for me, and it can be trusted.

Now, I want to begin our examination of this text by asking you a question.  Who is Rezwan Ferdaus?  Does that name ring a bell to you?  If you watched the news this week you may have heard his name mentioned, and perhaps this picture here will spark your memory.  Did you guys see something on the news?  That’s a model airplane.  You guys remember?  Rezwan Ferdaus was a young man who is a U.S. citizen, born and raised in Massachusetts.  His parents are from Bangladesh.  He was arrested this past week for plotting to attack the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol with remote-controlled model aircraft packed with explosives.  He also was charged with supporting Al Qaeda and plotting attacks against U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.  This young man was unmarried.  He has no children.  He graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in physics, and if convicted of his crime, he will face more than 20 years in prison.  His only other crime prior to his arrest was he was arrested in 2005 for possession of marijuana.  This young man, Rezwan, played drums in a band.  He had the nickname ‘Bollywood’ and there are many many people today that knew this man, that worked with him, that sat in classrooms with him, that lived down the street from his family that are scratching their head and amazed that down the street from us was a hidden enemy.  And you know, it’s the hidden enemies that are the most dangerous.  If you know that your enemy wears a different uniform and is from another nation and speaks another language, it’s easy to identify them, it’s easy to respond to them.  But when your enemy is someone who looks like you, who talks like you, who lives among you, who shops where you shop and who wishes your destruction, then it’s more difficult.  Think about that for a moment.  If this young man’s plot would have come to fruition and your kids would have taken a trip with their school to Washington and they would have had a tour of the capitol building, they could have been destroyed by this man simply because they’re citizens of this country. 

Now what does that have to do with you and me?  I think it has some things to teach us about hidden enemies.  That’s the people that Paul was talking about today in the text that I read for you--hidden enemies.  He mentions them in Galatians chapter 2 verse 4:  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.  We’re dealing with false brothers he said.  Think about that imagery there.  A brother is a family member, someone close to you, someone that you have much in common with.  And Paul is saying within the church community there is a group of people who are close to us.  They talk like we do.  They sing like we do.  They share a common faith with us, but yet in reality they are false.   They are not real.  They’re enemies hidden within our ranks.  That’s what Paul is saying his opponents are in this text of scripture and if we think about it we can learn more about who they are, what they do, and why this is significant for you and me.  So let’s go on to what do they do. 

Paul states that these false brothers slipped in.  Now the context here, he’s talking about the meeting in Jerusalem where he and Barnabas and Titus go to meet with the pillars of the church in Jerusalem.  They’re there and these false brothers are there to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery.  Now think about this with me for a moment.  The issue here is freedom and slavery.  Paul is saying that this group of spiritual people, these false brothers, the matter before them is a matter of wanting to take the Christians in the church and put them into bondage, to put them into slavery.  Now that’s not literal slavery that they want to sell them to another nation and get money for them, it’s a mental slavery.  It’s a bondage of ourselves to an untruth. 

So what exactly is it that these false brothers are teaching?  Remember, Paul says it’s a distortion of the gospel.  Paul is in Jerusalem.  He is meeting with Peter and James and John, three of the apostles, trying to establish with them that his message to the Gentiles is in fact the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  They’re there trying to challenge this false teaching that is creeping into the church.  So how is it that these false brothers seek to bring us into slavery?  Paul gives us a glimpse of that in verse 3.  We understand that Paul and Barnabas have gone to Jerusalem to meet with the leaders of the church, and they brought along a man named Titus.  Paul is a Jew who has become a Christian.  Barnabas is a Jew that’s become a Christian, so that means they both are circumcised men.  They both have been raised in the Jewish law.  They both come to accept Jesus as their savior, and here’s this odd man out named Titus.  He is a Greek.  He is a Gentile.  He is uncircumcised.  He has come to faith in Jesus Christ.  He is now a part of Paul’s ministry team.  And notice what he says—while we were there even Titus was not forced to be circumcised.  The issue that was going on in this day was the issue of circumcision, and here’s what we learn from the Book of Acts about this issue.  Some men, some followers of Jesus, came down from Judea to where Paul was living and serving and they were teaching the brothers, "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved,” (Acts 15:1). 

Now let’s think about that for a moment.  Being saved is being rescued from sin, being given eternal life.  And so Paul has been teaching and preaching it’s through faith in Jesus that we are saved from our sin.  It’s through believing in the Lord Jesus Christ that we are forgiven and made right with God, and here comes a group of people saying no, no, no—it’s not simply believing in Jesus, you must be circumcised.  You must follow the laws of Moses or you cannot be saved.  This is the distortion of the gospel that Paul was dealing with.  The folks were saying that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross plus circumcision equals reconciliation with God.  They both agreed that we were estranged from God and that we needed to be made whole with God.  They both believe that Jesus died as the savior of the human race, but this group of people said that is not enough.  There’s something you’ve got to do.  You’ve got to seek to be circumcised.  You’ve got to become a Jew.  You’ve got to start following the commandments of God and then God will rescue you from your sin.  Another way to look at it would be to say it’s faith plus obedience equals peace with God.   Faith plus obedience and the obedience is around the issue of circumcision. 

Now, we are not Jews today, we’re Gentiles, so most of us, though we may be circumcised, don’t understand its importance in the life of the Jewish people.  We don’t understand the context here, so let me explain.  Circumcision is a rite that happens in many cultures.  Sometimes it happens at puberty, sometimes it happens when men are married.  I had a roommate from Kenya who was circumcised when he 18 because that's the way you move from young adulthood to manhood.  But for the Jewish people, circumcision was something that happened to men.  It happened to men that were born into the family as well as the slaves born into the community, and so boys were circumcised on the eighth day as a sign that they were part of God's covenant people.  And so if you’re a student of the Old Testament, you read that circumcision is an important rite for the Jewish people.  It’s a rite that they still practice today.  Well, in the centuries prior to Jesus coming along, the Greeks invaded Israel.  There was one king there, a cruel king, who wanted to make the Jewish people Greek, and so he outlawed circumcision.  He passed a literal law that if a child was found to be circumcised that child was to be murdered and the mother of that child was to be murdered because he did not want the Jewish people being Jewish, he wanted them to be Greek the way the rest of the Greek empire was.  Well, the Jews fought back against this man.  They actually defeated him and so in re-establishing themselves in their victory they really saw circumcision was an important status of who they are, and it was a status of their purity before God.  In fact, by the time Jesus came along there was a popular teaching amongst the Jews of the land that until all of the uncircumcised Gentiles left Israel, the Messiah would not come.  And so this practice of circumcision became for many many Jewish men and women regarded as an indispensible precondition and seal of belonging to God's people.  So a lot of Jews as they became Christians began to say well, you know, circumcision is so important and so big of a deal that to follow Jesus, to please God, even Gentiles have to be circumcised, too.  And it’s against this issue, this false teaching of faith in Jesus plus the obedience of circumcision makes us at peace with God. 

Now, we’re not really worrying about circumcision too much today, at least not at Eden Church.  That’s not an issue that’s before us, but there’s something that we can learn from this text.  That is if we are reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ and someone comes along and tries to impose on us another in addition to, Jesus plus something else, we know that’s a distortion of the truth of the gospel. 

Let me tell you a story, a recent story, of how the other issue was peanut butter.  Peanut butter!  Now peanut butter’s never mentioned in the Bible.  It’s probably something you have in your kitchen cabinets, but it became an issue in the church in a foreign land where missionaries were.  See a group of missionaries were over in another country and these two missionaries that went with their family, they just got in country, and before they left they asked their friends back home to think of them and to send them care packages.  And what they always wanted was peanut butter.  I can relate to that—peanut butter’s pretty good.  But the problem was the other missionaries, they were in the team which began to look down upon them because they were having peanut butter.  It was hard to get peanut butter in the country, and so it had kind of become a common practice in the group of missionaries that we will deny ourselves peanut butter because we really love Jesus.  I'm serious—this is the mindset.  And so this new family shows up and they have their peanut butter, and before long these other Christians began to look down at them because they are not saying no to peanut butter.  They decide okay, these folks are really wrapped up in peanut butter.  We will simply eat peanut butter in the privacy of our own home, and that’s no big deal.  And you know what?  It was a big deal.  They continued to harass this missionary couple that to really be spiritual, to really make God happy, you need to sacrifice.  You need to deny yourself, and what you need to deny is peanut butter.  This family got so disgusted with that attitude that they quit.  Instead of staying there and helping lead people to faith in Christ, they quit because they felt the atmosphere was so polluted by a distortion of the freedom of the gospel.  Do you know what the Bible says about peanut butter?  Nothing—so if you want to eat peanut butter, there’s nothing in the Bible saying you shouldn't.  But they’re a group of people, so-called Christians, that got all wrapped up in that and started pushing that on someone else as if this is something that you have to do. 

The reason I share that story with you is to say today it’s peanut butter, tomorrow it’s movies.  I don’t know what it is, but you and I need to be ready to recognize distortions that say we have to add something else to the faith in Jesus Christ to really make God happy, because that’s the distortion and we must oppose it. 

So how did Paul oppose it?  How did he respond?  How should we respond?  First of all, Paul had recognition.  He saw a problem for what it is.  He saw that these men were trying to undercut the message of Jesus and if they got their way the message of Jesus would lose its power.  Because what you and I need to know is that we’re unconditionally loved by Jesus.  If we think that we have to earn that love by being circumcised or avoiding peanut butter or behaving a certain way, then we will never know that we’re good enough.  And we will also be subject to other people intimidating us because they’re better because it’s been ten years since they’ve let peanut butter touch their mouth.  But to recognize the problem for what it is, that means we’ve got to know the gospel well enough to see when it’s being distorted. 

Secondly, there needs to be a reconnection.  What Paul did is he went and revisited the leadership of the church to make sure what he was teaching to Gentiles, that they didn’t need to be circumcised, was actually in keeping with what Jesus wanted.  And the way that you and I can make sure we avoid these enemies in our ranks is to make sure we are reevaluating our message against Peter’s message and James’ message and John’s message and Jesus’ message.  Is it one and the same? 

And thirdly, by reclamation.  We have to recapture the hearts and the minds of the vulnerable as Paul did in this letter that we’re studying today.  Paul took the time to write a very emotional letter.  It’s so emotional that the grammar in it is horrible.  Scholars say that the grammars that’s in there is horrible, and I imagine Paul is writing it in a rush because he’s so overcome with the need to defend the truth because he didn’t want people led astray.  And that needs to be your heart and my heart as we are concerned for what our kids are learning, what our neighbors are hearing about the gospel.  Are we going to know it well enough to defend it and to claim it publically in all that we say and do?  This is what Paul’s mission was about, and this should be our mission, too.  I want to invite you to come back next week and to continue this study.  We’re going to begin to see, as Paul tells us more of what this gospel is, where the power of it is for our lives so that we can build a life upon it and experience this freedom that God intends for you to have.  Let’s pray together.

Lord, God, I want to thank you for people like Paul that have been faithful throughout the centuries defending the gospel against error.  I thank you for people who have fought hard for the truth that we might experience the freedom of the gospel and not be put into some kind of lie of bondage that’s nowhere found in the Bible.  I pray that you would help us as a church to reclaim for ourselves the one true gospel in our own hearts and our own practices and our own professions and then that you would help us to share that and to impart that with others that we might live out this radical freedom that Jesus has so wonderfully purchased for us through his death on the cross.  As we come to the table today, help us, God, to understand anew the power of the death of Jesus Christ for us.  For we ask this prayer in His name.  Amen.