Introduction

We're in a longer section of scripture today, but in order to get through this in eight weeks, we are going to have to cover some longer sections. This is all one cohesive thought. This is leading us one place in this passage. What we're going to see in this is one gospel, defended by faith and unified in Christ.

There's a familiar story in scripture that parallels what we're talking about here. It might not seem like it at the beginning, but it's a story of Pilate. When Pilate washes his hands, it's this innocuous moment in the crucifixion narrative. Pilate knows that Jesus has not done anything wrong, and yet he fears the people. The people have become dangerous, and so he tries to compromise. He tries to keep his job. He tries to keep the peace and try to keep his conscience clean at the same time. So he calls for a bowl, dips his hands in it as if to say, This isn't This isn't my fault. This isn't my responsibility. I'm innocent of this, but there's the tragedy in it. He's trying to perform and to become clean without actually being clean.

This isn't just a pilot problem. This isn't just a Roman governor's issue. This is an issue for all of us. This is a human heart problem. We feel dirty. We feel dirty when shame comes up. And yet we don't run to God. We often run to something that we can do ourselves.

What makes you feel clean?

I'm not talking about a shower. I'm talking about the things we do to make ourselves inside feel clean. Most of us have ways to feel clean. Sometimes it's out loud, but oftentimes it's quiet. It's in our head. For some of us, it's having a good week, doing the things that we said we were going to do and not doing the things that we know we're not supposed to do. For some of us, it's being needed or being right. For others, it's comparison or religious effort. And you can tell what it is by what you do when you fail. Do you run to God? Or do you wait to feel respectable again? Do you wait until, Well, I better get my life back together. I better try to clean myself before I go back to God.

When you pray, do you feel like you need to bring receipts to God? When someone exposes you, does it crush you? Not because it hurts or they were wrong or you were wrong, but because you feel dirty again. Galatians isn't mainly a warning about open rebellion. It is a warning about religious drift, about Jesus plus something. In the moment your conscience needs something besides Jesus alone to feel clean, that's the sign that we've accepted a counterfeit gospel, one that isn't truly the gospel we find in scripture. So the question is, what makes you feel clean?

And Fortunately, the Bible has answers for us, so keep your Bibles open to Galatians 1 and 2. We're going to see these three movements in this this letter, in this section of this letter.

1. Divine origins of Paul's gospel

2. Gospel unity without gospel addition

3. Gospel truth confronted publicly

What we see in this passage is Paul saying, If you want a clean conscience, you need a gospel with a clean source, one that comes from God and not from man.

Divine origins of Paul's gospel

Why does Paul go through the trouble of explaining who he is and essentially trying to tell the Galatian church, Hey, I'm an apostle.

Why is he putting so much effort into this? It seems like a weird... I remember reading this for the first time as a kid and going, This feels like a boring section of this letter. Usually Paul's are filled with good information, and who cares that he's an apostle, right? Well, it's really important here. Paul says this for one reason. If the gospel comes from God, then churches in Galatia, you can't edit it. This is from God. It's not from you. If it's from man, you can pick and choose what you want. But if it's from God, you have to take the whole thing and you have to believe it. There were teachers pressuring the Gentile believer, these Gentile believers at this church, appealing to Jerusalem, to some authority coming from Jerusalem. Later on, we'll see that these were men coming from Jerusalem who said that they were coming from James. And you have to think how persuasive that must have been, right? These men in the Galatian churches going, Man, these are men coming from the brother of our savior, Jesus. These people must know what they're talking about. They were telling the Galatian churches that they needed to add on actions, adding on rituals on top of the gospel.

Specifically, in order for a non-Jewish man to become a Christian, he must be circumcised. And this is why Paul is saying all of this. Paul is saying, I saw Jesus. I saw the truth. He revealed to me the gospel. Anyone who comes and tells you something different is telling you a lie. These men have distorted something. Paul says, I'm not here to say something that's going to make you happy. Look at Galatians 1:10 with me. Galatians 1:10 says this, For am I now seeking the approval of man or God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Paul is saying, I'm not here to make friends. I'm here to be a servant of Christ. I'm here to serve the church. I'm here not to make friends, but to make brothers and sisters.

Paul is making it clear not only what the gospel is, but Galatians 1:11-12, For I would have you know brothers or brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel, for I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

Paul stacks three be claims on top of each other. This is not man's gospel, not received by man, and not taught by man. This is not a preference issue. This is a source issue. Paul then says, If you're wondering whether I made this up, if you're wondering whether or not this is true, look at my previous life. I used to be called Saul. That's who I was. I wasn't spiritually curious. I was violently oppressive of the church. I wasn't on some spiritual journey. I was on a mission to destroy the church, to persecute the church. I wasn't drifting from any tradition. I was exhaling in it.

I was the best Galatians 1:13-14 say that he was persecuting the church. He was advancing in Judaism beyond his peers, more zealous for the traditions of his fathers than anyone else around him. In other words, if Christianity were just another version of the law, Paul would have loved this. But it's not. It's not law with gospel sprinkled on top of it. This is grace that radically transformed, and it radically transformed Saul into Paul. Paul wants to tell the churches in Galatia that he didn't make this up, that he didn't hear it from somebody else, that he's not a disciple of the Apostles.

He's not like the men that came from James or said that they came from James. He's not someone who is discipled. He was not someone who was taught what to believe. He says, I heard this from Jesus himself. Jesus taught me this. What I know comes from God and God alone. And that's why he goes to great lengths saying, I didn't go to another person. I went to Arabia. I went to all these places. I spent 14 years before talking to anyone. No one taught me this. I was preaching this And what I was preaching, I heard directly from God.

This is why Paul was so adamant in what we saw last week, that if anyone else comes to you to preach to you another gospel, whether it's an angel, or if I come back later and I teach you something that's contrary to what this is, let them be cursed, let them be anathema or condemned the gospel. It doesn't matter if they're from James or not. If they're preaching something contrary to what is true, they're preaching a different gospel. Paul's argument is simple. You cannot edit the gospel that you did not author.

This message didn't come from a committee, didn't come from a tradition. It came from Jesus Christ. That's what makes us different from Catholic churches. Catholic churches hold scripture up the same with tradition. They believe that they're the ones who put the Bible together rather than what we would say is men recognize scripture. They recognize God's word, and we collected it, we bound it together. We didn't invent it. We cannot add scripture. We hold God's word to be the most authoritative thing here on Earth because it is God's word. This message isn't put together by man. The gospel wasn't authored by a committee or a smart group of people. It came from Christ alone. And the proof is Paul himself. The gospel didn't fit his old life. It demolished it. It radically transformed it. I mean, he had an incredible encounter with Christ on the Damascus Road in Acts 9:18. Here in Galatians 1:15, he says, But when he who had set me apart before I was born, in order that I might preach, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles.

Notice what Paul doesn't say. He doesn't say, Well, I was in a really spiritually dark place, and I found God. I went out and found him. No, he says, God set me apart. God called me. God revealed his son to me. And that's not Paul trying to brag about some spiritual achievement. That's God bringing a dead Dead man, bed, pulse of life. That's what Paul is talking about. The point isn't one, how important I am. I'm really special. Paul is saying God is the way. Jeremiah, he did it, initiates salvation. He's the one who initiates calling He always has. He always will. He did it with me. And what he says here, he'll do it with you.

In fact, his call and what he says here is so similar to what we see in Jeremiah 1:5. It says this,

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I consecrated you. Before I appointed you. And he knew profit to the nations.

Paul's not waiting for a confirmation. This was that he was called. He was set apart Before his birth, he knew that he made him for, he was supposed to do. Looking back on his life, this is what God had meant. He went and... He didn't go and get confirmation from other people. He went and preached the gospel that Jesus had given him, and that this had been the plan from the beginning, that the gospel would go to the Gentiles, that the gospel would go to the nations.

From Genesis 12, the covenant with Abraham was all about being a blessing to the nations. Paul's preaching then led to people glorifying God. That's what we see in Galatians 1:24, and they After he's talking about his former life, he said, You glorify God because of me. When you response that you get, share your testimony, when you talk about God, is that the response that you get, that people glorify God because of what you said. This is what our words about Jesus should do to other people. And this is why, as a pastor, it sometimes drives me crazy when I'll ask people to maybe share a testimony or to do some form of public speaking, and they say, I can't do it. I would be terrible at it. Well, in verse Galatians 1:24, the passage shows us something really important.

It doesn't say here that they thought that Paul was so eloquent or that he had a neat story. Or Paul, they didn't marvel at cool in some way. They glorified God because of him. They didn't compliment Paul. They didn't marvel at how smart or how well-spoken he was. They glorified God because of the gospel he complained, because of what he was saying about God. When the gospel is real, it doesn't end in applause for the person speaking it. It ends in worship for the savior.

That's what sermons are about. That's what makes a sermon different than a TED talk or a motivational speech. A motivational speech leaves a TED talk, might think to... With a set of to-do lists, maybe a worshiping. Feel inspired. A sermon leaves you worrying to you, inspiring to worship the God who's revealed this message to you. The question isn't whether you've had an experience and whether you've had a cool enough story to tell people. The question is, did communicate that gospel to people? People will want to worship that God.

Gospel Unity Without Gospel Addition

Paul goes to Jerusalem to defend the gospel and to guard unity. He's not checking his notes. He's not trying to compare what's What's going on here. He's confronting a threat. Let's look at verse one and two in chapter two. He said, 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. He then talks about he went on for 14 years.

Paul wasn't looking for permission. He was protecting the church. He's not going to Jerusalem to see the Apostles, to see if he was right. He was going to ask, Will we be unified?

I firmly believe that Paul, if he would have got there, and even the Apostles had been preaching something different, he would have confronted them saying, No, I got a revelation. This is what the gospel says. Fortunately, that wasn't the case. But Paul puts his gospel, the gospel that he has been preaching on the table, he says, It's Christ alone. The good news of the gospel is believing in Jesus, is that Christ came to be your substitute, that he died in your place.

Not so that way you could add things onto the gospel, not so that you could have a pleasant life, not that you could be healthy, wealthy, and prosperous. He didn't do this so that way you wouldn't have to go to hell and that you could get into heaven. That's not the gospel. The gospel is that we get God. The gospel is that we get to have the savior. It is Christ alone. So that way we could be declared clean in his presence, not by our effort, but by his finished work. John Piper has this to say, The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven. It is a way to get people to God. The gospel is about getting God. Salvation is the cherry on top. God is the Sunday. It is the thing that we strive for. That is the price of belief of our salvation. Paul wanted to meet with the leaders to make sure that they were believing the truth, because even if the leaders added one thing on top of the gospel. The mission to the nations would have been collapsed. It would have collapsed into confusion. The problem that was happening in the churches was one of ethnicity.

It was about Jews and Gentiles. The good news of the gospel that Paul is proclaiming is that it is for all kinds of people. There's nothing more that you have to do. You do not have to become a Jew in order to be a Christian. The good news is for all kinds of people, Greeks, Romans, people from Africa, people from China, Democrats, Republicans, Michigan State fans, and those God-forsaken Michigan fans. Yeah, thank you. Paul is preaching. This is for all kinds of people. You don't have to be a Jew to be saved. So Paul brings a living test with him. He brings Titus. This is what we see in verses three through five, that Titus is a Greek. He's uncircumstised, and yet he's a real believer. What will happen? That's the question that Paul is bringing. He's bringing Titus along to answer. What will happen? Is Jesus good enough for him? So let's look at this, verses three through five, or three through four, and then we'll get to five in just a second. But even Titus, who is 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. Notice the strategy here. They don't deny Jesus. They're trying to add to him. Christostom says this about this passage, Their object was not to teach good doctrine, but to subjugate and enslave them, enslave Paul and Timothy.

They call it a deeper devotion. They call it more steps of obedience. Paul calls it something simple. He calls it slavery. That's what it is. This also paints one One of the strangest word pictures that we see in, I think, all of scripture, that Titus, in order to find out who he was, that he wasn't a Jew, somebody had to, they say, they spied on him, and I can only imagine what that took to do that. But I think that's just a crazy word picture that is going on here. Any gospel that needs your contribution is not a deeper gospel. It is a different gospel entirely.

The Belgian Confession says something really clear about this, and I wanted to put this up here.

"To say that Christ is not enough is a most enormous blasphemy, for it then would follow that Jesus Christ is only half a savior."

We do not believe in half a savior. Christ Alone is what we proclaim.

Christ alone is what Paul wants the Galatian churches and us to know. We are saved by grace alone through Christ alone. We were brought to him by faith alone. Galatians 1:5 says this, To them we did not yield in submission, even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. Titus was not a Jew. He was Greek, and yet he is a Christian. Christians don't have extras that they have to add on top of the gospel in order to receive grace. This is why the Apostles accept Paul as an apostle, because Paul refuses not even for a moment. He refuses to waver on this gospel because one moment sets a precedent, and precedents become prisons. They enslave us. The gospel is good news that cannot be wavered on. Even in a situation where Paul could have tried to appeal, tried to seem more influential to seemingly a group of people who had some influence. Paul doesn't try to cut a compromise. He stands firm on the gospel. Paul is defending the faith, preserving the truth, and preserving correct doctrine. I think sometimes we talk about correct doctrine, and we feel like it's cold, it's stuffy, or it's boring altogether.

But it isn't. Doctrine is what we're talking about here. Having correct doctrine is so important to our faith. Our faith is like a map, or I guess today it's really more like a GPS. I don't know how to read a map anymore. I think it's just a generation It's a professional thing. Anytime I go into a city, about every two years, I go to a conference down in Indianapolis. When I'm down there, I lose all sense of direction. I'm usually pretty directionally aware. I'm facing north right now. I feel like I am a walking compass sometimes. But when I get into Indianapolis, I am lost. I have no idea where I'm going. I absolutely live by my GPS. If I don't have my GPS in front of me, I could be going from the same hotel to the same Convention Center, and I'm lost. If I don't have that, I'm gone. I need it. A GPS or a map helps you get to where you're going. That's the point of it. But it would be silly for me to take my GPS out and put it on the ground or take a map and say, Okay, I'm back at the hotel now.

It doesn't make any sense. The GPS is not the destination. The map isn't the destination. It helps us get to where we're going. It's a lot like doctrine. I think oftentimes we want a faith that is emotion-based. It is spirituality without doctrine. But good doctrine, it's like the phone. It isn't enough, right? I I can't stand on this and say, I'm there. I can't only believe in good doctrine and have a good faith. Doctrine points us. It gives us the directions to go to get to where we're supposed to be. It gives us the direction to get to an authentic faith. And yet, if we don't have good doctrine, if we don't have good directions, we will never arrive there. We will never arrive there without having good doctrine. Doctrine isn't a cage. It's a map that gets us to God. Augustine says this, The law was given in order that grace might be sought. Grace was given in order that the law might be fulfilled. Good doctrine shows us how we pursue grace. Truth without spirituality is just... Or Without truth, spirituality is just motion. It's no direction. It's just wandering aimlessly. We won't get to our destination.

Bad doctrine doesn't just lead to bad worship. You'd think that that's what it would be. If we had bad doctrine, we'd get bad worship. Bad doctrine leads to a different God. It gives us directions to a different God altogether. Satan tries to use this against us. Satan tries to make us believe. That doctrine's boring, that it's cold and stuffy, and sometimes maybe that's on us for making it seem that way. Doctrine is not boring at all. Doctrine is what gets us to see the deepest glories of the The Creator of the universe, the God who saved us. Doctrine is not boring at all. It is more than information. It is a reality that allows us to see the infinite God of the universe, the infinite God of the Bible. It is beautiful. Bad doctrine leads to a different gospel all together. A different gospel that says either everyone's saved, that sin really isn't important and you can do whatever you want, or it leads a gospel that says, yeah, you need to be saved, but it's really based on what you do. It's really based on how you earn it. If the gospel includes your performance, then you will never know if you've done enough.

But if the gospel is Christ alone, you'll finally be able to breathe. It'll give you rest. I think that's something that we need, something that we don't realize that the gospel can give us rest. And yet, no one is immune to drifting from the gospel, not even Peter.

Gospel truth confronted publicly

Paul could stand up to Peter, the man who walked on water with Jesus, the man who walked for three years following Jesus around, the man who saw our savior die, the man who saw the resurrected Christ. And he can confront him because Paul says he stood condemned in Galatians 2:11. This is pretty serious. Peter or as Paul calls him Cephas, because I think he was acting more like Cephas than Peter, he was distorting the gospel. And yet he wasn't demanding that people become Jewish in order to become Christians. All Peter was doing was saying there were certain Christians that couldn't sit with them. It seems like a middle school drama that you can't sit with me at lunch, and you can, but it's more than that. He's distorting the gospel because Peter drew back when he feared the circumcision party.

He feared man. And that fear of man can even make someone like an apostle. Gospel, acts like Christ isn't good enough. Peter didn't verbally speak and preach a new gospel. He wasn't adding anything verbally to the gospel. He was practicing a new gospel. He didn't say that Gentiles aren't saved, he acted like they weren't clean. The problem was in eating, the reason that this is such a big problem is that Jews believed that Gentiles were unclean and that they couldn't eat together. And if they ate together, that they would make all the food unclean, they would make those Jewish people unclean. But if we're saved by Christ alone, if we are truly saved, This shouldn't be an issue. This is why this is such a critical issue. This is why Peter is not just making a bad choice. He stood condemned. He acted like they weren't clean enough to get close. This is Antioch, where Gentiles and Jews would eat together, one family united in Christ. And yet then pressure comes from these men, the circumcision party, which just branding-wise is a horrible name, but just doesn't seem like a party at all to me.

These people weren't denying Jesus. Instead, they were just insisting that Gentiles needed an upgrade. Instead of standing up for the gospel, Peter blinks. In that culture, meals communicated belonging. Who was in, who was out, who was clean, who was unclean. The table drew the line. Peter, in doing this, had denied the gospel, essentially setting up two different kinds of churches. There's those who are really in, the Jews, and those who are just barely in, the Gentiles. Yeah, they're both saved, but we know who really God loves. In essence, Peter is saying, God is good, Christ is good, but not quite good enough to make you truly clean enough to eat with us. Peter's withdrawing wasn't just hurting people's feelings. It was rewriting the basis for belonging. It said that Christ, yeah, he can forgive you, but you must do other things in order to qualify for his love. Paul Paul says that there were more people that joined in in this hypocrisy. Even Barnabas got carried away. When leaders of the church falter, when they move away from sound teaching, whole churches crumble, whole churches move with them. So when Peter withdraw, he wasn't just avoiding tension.

He was preaching a new gospel, but with his feet. That's what Galatians 2:14 says, But when I saw their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel. Essentially, that The word that says in step here was ortho padeo. Ortho means ortho, meaning straight, and padeo, like podiatrist, like a foot doctor. It means feet. Paul is saying these people were not just doing something. Their walk was wrong. In Greek culture, your walk, how you walked, it wasn't just a physical action. It was how you lived your life. It was living your life straight, living your life right. Paul says the conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel. Their conduct, meaning being not in step with the gospel, literally meant that they weren't walking straight. Their behavior made the gospel look crooked. And so Paul confronts him publicly because what he was doing was public. Peter was such an important figure. He an apostle. People looked to him to do the right thing. Paul says that he opposed Peter in front of all of them because the whole church was watching the gospel being played out. When something happens and it's private, we absolutely should confront people privately.

But if I come up here and start preaching a different gospel, if someone falls publicly, doing something public, public in making the gospel vain, in adding to the gospel, in making it a different gospel, it needs to be confronted publicly. Everyone needs to hear the truth that what was said wasn't true. When you add anything to Christ, you don't just burden consciences, you break fellowship. And that was what was happening in this church. When you do this, you rebuild the wall that Jesus died to tear down. So in denying this, Peter has stood condemned. So Paul defends the gospel because he was defending the church.

Main Idea:

One gospel, received from God and defended without compromise

The gospel is worth defending because it's not a minor doctrine. It's how dead people get transformed from death to life. It's how people go from guilty sinners into being declared righteous. It's how outsiders become full members of the family. The danger in Galatians is not that they stopped talking about Jesus, it's that they started adding to him. Jesus plus circumcision, grace plus law, faith plus proof.

The moment you add anything to Christ on the basis of your standing right with God is the moment you don't add an upgrade to Christianity, you replace it, you take away from it. Paul doesn't call it a replacement that leads to injury or unhealth. This isn't something minor. Paul says that this leads to slavery. It takes you captive.

Martin Luther, in commenting on this passage, says that we should respect Paul. We should follow Paul in his teaching. We should honor our parents, honor our rulers, even our pastors. But if any authority asks you to do anything, to bend the gospel, Paul is telling us here, we absolutely will not obey them. We obey Christ. We have a higher authority because the gospel outranks every voice, including our own.

This isn't just a controversy for theologians. This isn't just some niche theological passage that's interesting to Bible nerds like me. This is a daily temptation salvation for Christians because our hearts love a plus religion. It makes us feel like we're in control, that we can take control and we can say, God, aren't you so glad that I did the right thing this week? Aren't you happy with me?

It feels good to be able to say that. Yet if that was the basis for our salvation, we would never be able to be saved. Anything that we lean on to feel secure before God becomes a counterfeit. And so before we talk about false Gospels, we need to ask what plus religion is sneaking into our own heart, and that leads us into our application.

Application

1.Refusing respectable slavery

The danger in the Galatian church isn't that people stop using Jesus-centered language. It's that they started using something besides Jesus to feel clean, to feel safe, to feel accepted. So we need to watch the plus that tends to feel normal for us, especially in a place like this. It's not usually loud. It's not rebellion. It's not overtly a denial of the Trinity or a denial of Christ's Deity, but it's respectable substitutes. Things like competence, saying, I'm good. I've got life handled. Finding confidence in our reliability. I do my part. I don't rock the boat. Or maybe we use theology like armor. I believe the right thing. I'm informed. I can spot theological error. Maybe it's our busyness.

I'm okay because I'm involved. I'm serving, I'm helping, I'm producing. Or maybe it's being the strong one. I'm okay because I don't need help. I'm not messy like anyone else. Or maybe it's comparison. I'm okay because I'm not like those other people that I see. None of these things are automatically bad. But when they become our confidence, when they start functioning like our own righteousness, that's when they become deadly. So here's the test. When you fail this week, when you blow it this week, what will you do? Will you run to Christ like he's enough? Or Will you pull back? Will you pull back trying to be clean yourself? And then when you feel clean enough, then you can go to God. Respectable slavery sounds spiritual, but it's hiding. It's hiding like Adam and Eve did in the garden. Well, I'll pray when I'm doing better. I'll go to God once I've calmed down. I'll feel close again when I've proven that I'm not that person. That's Jesus plus. That's Jesus plus a cleaner week, plus control, plus proof. And yet the gospel says something opposite. You come to Christ to be cleansed, not because you already are.

Jesus has cleansed you. You cannot clean yourself enough to go before him. He's the one who has to clean us. So we must refuse respectable slavery when we see it in our life. Repent quickly. Stop performing for God. Receive mercy as a verdict. And make it right when you can. Apologize. Ask for forgiveness and take the next steps of obedience not as a way to pay back God, but because it's in devotion to him. A church is protected not by pretending we're clean, but by being the people who know where our cleanliness comes from. That leads us into our next point.

2.Practice table fellowship on purpose

Practice hospitality. Now, what happens in the heart eventually shows up in our life. It shows up in our relationships, in the life of the church. In Galatians, Peter didn't preach a different gospel. He practiced one. He didn't make a doctrinal statement. He made a relational decision. He pulled back from the table and distanced himself. That was the preaching. It said, You're not quite clean enough. You're not quite one of us. And That's why table fellowship matters. It's because the table is where the gospel becomes visible.

The question isn't only what do we confess, it's what do we practice. What does our life altogether communicate? What does the life of our church altogether communicate? There's a repeating danger in churches like ours. We can say everyone's welcome. We can put it on our website. We can put it in our bulletin, we can say it all the time. We can say everyone's welcome. But if we don't live that out, it doesn't really matter what we say. The patterns of our life communicate something something strong without maybe even intending to mean that. The issue is so subtle. The hidden social barriers, the relational things that make people feel like outsiders even before they get a chance to sit in the room with us. Belonging can quietly start feeling like you have to already know how things work here. You have to already know the right people. You have to know the names and the stories and the rhythms. You have to keep conversations light and pleasant. You can't bring your complicated, your messiness into a place like this. That's what it can feel like. No one writes up these rules, but When you're from the outside, you can feel it.

You can feel it. It feels like maybe Christ welcomes me, but maybe I'm not sure as people do. There are people in our church, people in our community that desperately need to hear the gospel. There is something beautiful about this church. It's one of the reasons that we're here. There is a sense of family here that That is unlike any church that I've been a part of. And yet the danger is that we start to love the people so much here that we forget about the people out there. There are going to be people who visit our church. Being people who are radically transformed by the gospel makes it so that way we invite them in, that we don't make them feel like second-class Christians when they walk in. It means that we choose closeness over comfort, that we walk towards people that we might walk past normally, that we interrupt our default cycle. It doesn't mean that we can't talk to people that we love, that we've grown up with, that we've known forever, but we intentionally take a break from that sometimes to talk to people we've never seen before. I think that we should be a church that if you walk in here, that you've never been here before, that it's impossible to leave here without meeting people here.

That it would be impossible to sit in here and walk out without knowing somebody. That we ask real questions more than, How are you doing? But how can I pray for you? And really waiting to hear truthful answers to that. If we're going to be a church that welcomes people, we have to live with messy. We can't pretend that we have it all together. None of our lives are together. People have messiness. That's part of church. That's part of the beauty of the church. We're a bunch of broken people that got redeemed by Christ, and we could live that faith out together. We don't have to pretend that we have it all together. We don't have to require that people come in already clean. Let the table preach what our mouths confess, that Christ is enough, enough to cleanse sinners, enough to unite strangers, enough to bring us together. We are a family here, united in one faith, united in Christ, not united in that we grew up here or whatever it is, that we were from the right family. We are united in one thing. This is one church made up of one family, not one church made up of multiple families, made up of multiple different groups of people.

I want to push us on this because we have something so beautiful that ties us together. When the church practices that fellowship, it'll be impossible for us to not preach the truth of the gospel. Our actions will communicate it. When we preach the gospel verbally, it will be an exclamation point on how we've treated people. That's what I want for us. This brings us back to the question underlying everything. How do unclean people become clean? Because if we miss that, table fellowship just becomes being friendly. But if we get it, table fellowship is a living sermon, not only clean people, but cleansed people together.

Landing

The Bible gives us two pictures. The one we talked about before at the beginning was of Pilate, of trying to become clean yourself. Pilate washed his hands, trying to make him clean in the story of the crucifixion. But there's another story that we see in the Gospels of Being Clean. It's a little story that you could almost miss in all three of the synoptic Gospels, but it's in Matthew 9. It's so small. It's a story within a story. Jesus is going to to resurrect a little dead girl.

And on the way in the middle of a crowd, a woman reaches out and touches his clothes. In Jewish culture, in Jewish law, a woman like that, touching anyone, touching anything would have instantly made it unclean, except with Christ. Instead of Jesus becoming unclean, he cleansed her. Do you see it? Jesus, when he makes us clean, he cleanses us so deeply that there is nothing we can do to dirty ourselves again. This is the good news of the gospel that we are cleansed wholly and totally, not by what we do, but what Christ has done for us. Christ takes our impurity. He took it to the cross. He became defiled for us. He became dirt. He became nothing for us on the cross so that way we could be cleansed, so that we could become exaltet. The gospel doesn't say, Come or become clean, and then you can come in. It says, Come to Jesus. He is your purity. He is your cleanliness. And that's exactly why the Book of Galatians matters. The moment that we add anything to Jesus on the basis of our cleanliness, whether it's circumcision, performance, respectability, we're not protecting wholeness anymore.

We're denying the cleansing power of Christ. Prosper Church, we believe one gospel received from God, defended without compromise. Would you stand with me and pray as we prepare our hearts to respond in worship?

Let's pray.

Father God, we you and praise you for who you are, that you are a good God who has given us good things. You have cleansed us. You became dirty in our place so that we could be cleansed forever. That we don't have to come to church every Sunday questioning whether we've done enough good this week or whether or not we've done enough bad this week. We can come confessing, God, we haven't. We haven't lived to your standard, and yet we can still be accepted in. We can still be one with you. We can still have unity, not just with you, but with each other because of what you've done for us, because we were crucified with you and we've been resurrected with you. Let us sing your praises here and now as people cleansed, as people redeemed in your blood. It's your name we pray. Amen.