Peter, the Hypocrite

10/08/11

Scripture:

Good morning.  I'm glad to see you this morning.  What a wonderful privilege that we have to be in a church where Jesus Christ is Lord and where He is lifted up on a regular basis.  You know, I was sitting and thinking this morning about our Sunday school classes and about those who are in Sunday school now, the children and the adults, and I just would like to have a special prayer for them:  Father, I just want to lift up our Christian education of our church and all of the teachers and helpers, all those working with children and adults to bring the Word of Christ to them in our Sunday school studies this morning.  In Jesus’ name, amen.

This morning we are continuing the Getting Our Gospel Right sermon series with a sermon entitled “Peter, the Hypocrite.”  Before we begin, I want to know--have you heard any bad news this week?  Now I'm not talking about Cardinals fans; I know it’s all good news for the Cardinals, but any bad news this week?  Have you heard any bad news about the economy, about jobs, just about the world, about wars in various places, about politics?  Have you heard any personal bad news this week?  Well if you have, I'm truly glad that you are here this morning because we have some really, really good news to share with you.  You know, another way of saying “getting our gospel right”—that’s the name of this series of sermons from Galatians—getting our gospel right is to say “getting our good news right”.  For the word ‘gospel’ literally means good news, and Jesus Christ absolutely is the best news ever.  Jesus is the best news that can ever come to our ears or come into our lives. 

Our text this morning we’ll be reading in a moment is from Paul’s letter to the Galatians.  We’ll be reading chapter 2 and verses 11-21, and I’ll be reading from the New Living Translation of the Bible.  And in this text Paul writes about his confrontation with Peter, the apostle.  Paul called Peter to task for hypocrisy, for Peter was acting one way around Gentile Christians and another way around the Jewish Christians.  Peter was living by a double standard and that was resulting in confusion in the church regarding the Christian faith.  And then Paul gives a powerful witness to living by faith in Christ Jesus.  We are made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law.  Paul talks not about theology but about an ongoing relationship with God, not about precepts but about the living presence of Christ in our lives.  The core verse of this passage is, “My old self has been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me.  So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.” 

Let me back up a little bit here.  I'm going to ask you to consider some questions, to think about some questions as we go to the text this morning.  First of all, if you would, ask yourself, Are there ways in which I behave that are hypocritical?  Do I live by double standards?  And if I am, is that living by double standards affecting my witness for Jesus Christ?  Am I willing, along with Paul, to consider myself dead to the world’s standards? And, Has my old self been crucified with Christ?  Can I honestly say, It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me?  Do I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God who loves me and gave himself for me? 

And so we turn to the text, Galatians chapter 2 verses 11-21:

¹¹ But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong.  ¹² When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile Christians, who were not circumcised.  But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn't eat with the Gentiles anymore.  He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision.  ¹³ As a result, other Jewish Christians followed Peter's hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.  ¹⁴ When I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, "Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions?  ¹⁵ You and I are Jews by birth, not (so-called) 'sinners' like the Gentiles.  ¹⁶ Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law.  And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law.  For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law." ¹⁷ But suppose we seek to be made right with God through faith in Christ and then we are found guilty because we have abandoned the law.  Would that mean Christ has led us into sin?  Absolutely not!  ¹⁸ Rather, I am a sinner if I rebuild the old system of law I already tore down.  ¹⁹ For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me.  So I died to the law--I stopped trying to meet all of its requirements--so that I might live for God.   ²⁰ My old self has been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  ²¹ I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die. 

This ends the reading of God's word, and I'm going to leave these verses up on the screen.  May the Lord bless us as we listen with spiritual ears, as we hear His word in our hearts this morning and as we seek to apply it to our lives. 

So I want us to begin by thinking of the context in which Paul is writing this--what has been taking place.  First, Paul is back in Jerusalem after not having been there for 14 years—14 years of not seeing Peter and the other church leaders.  Paul has been on his missionary journey.  He has been proclaiming the gospel to the Gentiles.  He has been planting churches, and now at the end of 14 years he makes the decision to go to Jerusalem to consult with the church leaders there.  He took with him two of the companions who had been with him on his journeys, Barnabas who is a Jewish Christian and thus circumcised, and Titus, a Gentile Christian who is uncircumcised. 

Now some people might wish that the next part was left out of the Bible entirely.  Who wants the world to know that the Apostle Peter, the rock of the church, was a hypocrite?  You know, we kind of prefer for our leaders to be exemplary, don’t we?  We want our leaders to live by the highest standards and the highest ideals, and we don’t want to see that our leaders are human.  The fact is that all of us are, and even Peter was doing some things that were rather hypocritical.  Privately, Paul had laid before the Jewish church leaders, including Peter, the gospel that he was preaching to the Gentiles, and those leaders including Peter, James and John, had offered Paul and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, and that means acceptance of Paul’s teaching.

In the scripture that we read today, Peter now came up from Jerusalem to the city of Antioch and Paul observed how he was acting.  Apparently there was a period of time, and when Peter first arrived...well, he was associating with the Gentile Christians.  He was eating with them, he was fellowshipping with them, and, you know, in the Jewish tradition if you sit down at a table to eat with someone, in effect you’re accepting them as family.  But then, when other Jewish Christian leaders arrived from Jerusalem, Peter withdrew from the Gentiles.  He stopped fellowshipping with them.  He stopped eating with them and even Barnabas got caught up in that hypocrisy, and this may have been what really upset Paul because Barnabas was one of those who traveled with him, who taught with him, and he certainly didn’t want Barnabas to be caught up in this same hypocrisy.  And so Paul confronted Peter in front of all the others for this hypocritical behavior.  Paul said Peter was trying to be righteous by keeping the law rather than living by faith in Jesus Christ.  That’s a very important point and I want us to really think about that.

Here was Peter trying to look good, trying to impress others by keeping the law, the rules and regulations, the traditions of the faith.  But he was not at that point focusing upon living by faith in Jesus Christ.  Paul describes how he stopped living by the law by saying this, “I died to the law--I stopped trying to meet all its requirements--so that I might live for God.”  Do you hear that distinction?  If we’re living for rules and regulations, they become our focus.  They become the standard by which we measure ourselves.  If we say, you know, I've got to look good--I've got to at least put on this appearance of living right, of living righteously, of living ethically, of living morally, so, man, I'm really going to focus on those rules and regulations and make sure I follow them all.  And if they become our focus, then we’re really missing the point.  The point is that we focus upon God, that we focus upon the Lord, that we know Him and that we live for Him.  Paul then says that living for God means to live by faith.  He said, “My old self has been crucified with Christ.  It is not longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.  So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”  If we’re going to trust in Jesus Christ, we need to be fully convinced and constantly aware of His love for us.  And we need to trust and believe that he gave himself, that he died on the cross, and that that is how our sins are dealt with, not through our good works.  So how does this apply to our lives today?

In light of the text, I want us to go back to the beginning questions, and so we’re going to go back here on the screen and look at the some of the questions here.  Just ask ourselves, Are there ways in which I behave that are hypocritical?  In other words, do I live and act by double standards?  Am I a Christian just on Sundays?  Is Sunday the day that I pray but not during the rest of the week?  That’s being somewhat hypocritical.  Is Sunday the only day that I hear scripture, or do I study God's word and seek God through his word throughout the week?  You see, if we’re living one way--if we’re segmenting our religion, if we’re segmenting our faith to just Sunday morning and not living that throughout the week--then that is hypocritical.  And if we are doing so, if we’re living by double standards, then that will affect our witness for Jesus Christ.   If someone looks at you and says, “You know if he or she is an example of being a Christian, then I don’t want to be one.”, then we’re living by double standards.  And I've heard that said.  People out in the world are watching us.  They’re watching our behavior and they’re going to see if we are authentic, if the things that we say we believe really have anything to do with the way that we live. 

Next--am I willing, along with Paul, to consider myself dead to trying to meet all the requirements of the law?  Another way of answering this is am I being good just to impress other people?  If that’s our focus, if our being good is just so that we can appear to be good just so that others think that we’re good, then we’re really missing the point.  You know being dead to trying to meet all the requirements of the law really almost sounds like a turnabout to what we should do, but the fact is being good to impress others is hypocritical. 

Has my old self been crucified with Christ?  You know, this is a way of thinking and a way of dealing with the old self that’s always a part of us.  You know, we are always going to be subject to temptation.  There’s always going to be a part of us--scripture teaches us this--that has a bent toward sinning, a bent toward selfishness, a bent toward self-satisfaction.  If we ask that question--do I consider myself dead to those things?--that’s a way of evaluating.  And then, has my old self been crucified with Christ?  We need to die, to really have the attitude that we are dead to temptation, that we are dead to sin.  Can I honestly say it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me?  Do people see Jesus Christ in you through your faith, through your humility, through your acts of kindness and of generosity?

And finally, do I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God who loves me and gave himself for me?  You know, if we are going to trust in the Lord, then we’ve got to be fully convinced and fully aware that His love was so great that He gave himself as a self sacrifice for us.  It’s that sacrificial love, that sacrificial gift of Jesus Christ that enables us to really realize the depth of his love for us, and if we realize that, if we accept that, then that can become a basis for us really to trust Him. 

Living authentically then--that is without hypocrisy--is entirely dependent upon our ongoing relationship with Jesus Christ.  Paul said, “I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.”  The good news of the gospel is that Jesus Christ loved us enough to give himself for us, to die for us.  I challenge you this morning to choose to put your trust in Christ that he might live His life in and through you.  Would you bow with me as we pray?

Oh God, I'm asking of you, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give each of us spiritual wisdom and understanding so that we might grow in our knowledge of God.  I pray that our hearts will be flooded with light so that we can understand the wonderful future that He has promised to each of us He has called.  Help us, God, to realize what a rich and glorious inheritance you have given to your people, and help us to begin to understand the incredible greatness of your power for us who believe in Christ.  I offer this prayer in the name of Jesus Christ and for His sake.  Amen.