Simon Peter No.15 When Christians Disagree

Our reading this evening is taken from the book of Galatians, Galatians chapter 2, verses 8 to the end. Galatians chapter 2, verses 8 to the end. For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles.

James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognised the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the Jews. All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.

When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.

The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy and even Barnabas was led astray. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, you are a Jew yet live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it then that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? We who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners know that a man is not justified by observing the law but by faith in Jesus Christ.

So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law. Because by observing the law, no one will be justified. If we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we are ourselves sinners.

Does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not. If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker. For through the law, I died to the law so that I might live for God.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing.

Amen. We pray that God will speak to us through his word later on in the service. Please sit down.

And would you have your Bible open at Galatians in chapter 2, where in the 11th and 12th verses we read, When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles, because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.

The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it then that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? Now we're drawing to the end of this series of addresses which we followed consecutively on a Sunday night with only breaks for baptisms and the like on the life of Simon Peter.

We've called it the Peter file and most of the material has been based in the Acts of the Apostles because that's where you read the unfurling story of this remarkable and lovable leader of the early church. But we're dipping into Galatians this evening, and we're doing so because, well, it would not be right for us to placard Peter in front of you as a man who always got things right. In fact, there were severe tests which he went through as we discovered when we were dealing with his life in the gospel narratives.

And here, although he's in the full flush of maturity as a leader, we nonetheless find him resembling something of the old Peter, some of the previous problems manifesting themselves. You know, when you become a Christian, it would be wonderful to say that every semblance of the old nature is utterly snuffed out, that you win every war, that you are successful against every temptation, and you never get anything wrong at all. I would like those exceptional Christians who come in that category just to stand.

And then I would like, if you're married, to talk to your wife or to your husband, or if you're not, we'll just have a few moments with the people with whom you live. What do you do when Christians disagree? Because we're running head-on into that problem here in Galatians. Have you thought that the Bible is a book of relationships? The Bible, to quote Oliver Cromwell, paints the picture what and all.

That's how Cromwell wanted his portrait taken. He didn't want to be reproduced as better looking than he actually was. The Bible is nothing if it isn't an honest book.

And at the beginning, there's a quarrel. Adam and Eve quarrel with God and with one another. Jacob quarrels with Esau.

Joseph, well, he's the subject of a quarrel with his brothers. Aaron and Miriam join forces and they quarrel with Moses. Saul falls out with David.

David's son Absalom goes through a period when he can't stand his father and leads a coup d'etat against King David. Ahab, well, he can't tolerate Elijah. And the feeling actually seems to be mutual.

And so you move on into the rest of the Old Testament and discover that actually there's a quarrel that God has with Israel. A quarrel because, well, the Hebrew people are not being true to the covenantal promises that they've made with the Lord. You move on into the New Testament and what do you discover? Well, you remember that lady to whom I made reference last week who comes to the Lord Jesus and asks, my two lads, let one of them have the position on the right hand and the other on the left hand when you come into your kingdom.

And the disciples were incensed not because of the preposterous notion of this lady, but simply because she got in first and they quarreled with one another. And 70 hours, less than that, hours before our Lord Jesus arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, you discover that his disciples are having a row amongst themselves. That's the reason why he takes water and washes their feet, because in the upper room not one of them is prepared to play the part of the slave.

And Jesus can only quell the spirit of anger by himself, giving an excellent example of humility. And when you move on into the New Testament, you discover that, well, within the church of Corinth they're quarreling amongst themselves and with their founder. You go on into the pastoral epistles and you find there's a man called Diotrephes who's a bit of a chomped up fellow and he's quarreling with the rest of the church.

And when you get to the book of Revelation, you find that the Holy Spirit has got something to say against the Ephesian church, because, well, she's not completely what she should be. When Christian people fall out, what do you do? Let's invert the question. Should Christian people fall out? Let's put another question.

What is the consequence when Christian people fall out? Now Psalm 133 will tell you how blessed it is that brothers dwell together in unity, for there the Lord commands the blessing. He is our Savior and he's praying. It's his last lengthy prayer on his way to the Garden of Gethsemane and he thinks of you, he thinks of me, he thinks of the whole church, not just as it was then, but as it will be down the centuries.

And he offers this prayer to his Father. He says, Father, that they may be one as you're one with me and I am one with you, so there may be a unity amongst those that you have given me. There the Lord commands the blessing.

I've got a problem with George Curie. I thought I was going to like this guy, but especially as he went to my college, I remember his enthronement at Canterbury. He didn't actually send me an invitation.

I just was one of the millions of people who watched, at least I guess it was numbered in millions, who watched his enthronement. And what impressed me about Dr. Curie was the way during his inaugural sermon he stood up with representatives of the world faiths present and said that he reserved the right for Christian people to communicate in a sensitive fashion what they believed to be truth to those who were not Christian. He couldn't have put it clearer.

He couldn't have put it more delicately. And I think he was speaking prophetically at that point. In other words, he was interpreting the Word of God to the Anglican Church.

And now I'm saddened by the fact that the Church Mission Society to the Jews, that the Archbishop of Canterbury has always been president of, he has turned down the invitation on the basis that in this year of evangelism, or this decade of evangelism, the Anglican Church has now reshaped its objectives. It's no longer to go to those who in their entirety do not know about Jesus. It is rather to reactivate nominal Anglicans.

Now, I am all for reactivating nominal Anglicans and Baptists and FIECists and any other group, even redundant OMAs who've lost their cutting edge. God renew, revitalize people from the tab ourselves. But I have a problem.

I have a quarrel with Dr. Carey. I say this quite humbly and sincerely. If I had the opportunity of talking to him, I would offer my criticism.

In fact, one of my colleagues at college who knows him personally has communicated this to him on behalf of many of us who feel this way. You cannot, as the Archbishop of Canterbury, taper, hem in, trim down the global commission which the Lord Jesus gave to a bunch of disciples on the Mount of Ascension before he was taken into his Father's immediate presence. Our Lord says, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every ethnic group, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the name of the Son, and the name of the Holy Ghost.

He didn't say, just go to those who are nominal Christians. He said, go to the world. So, I have a problem with Dr. Carey.

I think there are three people that we ought to be praying for particularly, maybe four, in our country at the national stage. One is our Queen. God knows what she must be going through at the moment.

The second is the Princess of Wales. Probably the whole of the British monarchy pivots on the maturity or otherwise of this lady in the future. Pray for her and for Charles.

Pray also for the new Prime Minister, whoever he will be, and pray for Dr. Carey and the difficult position that he has as the Archbishop of Canterbury. But I do have a quarrel with him, and so have many other people. Now, let's biblicize this.

Let's hook it into scripture. In fact, let's not hook it into scripture. The basis of what I'm saying is scriptural.

Here is Paul, here is Peter, and they have a difficulty that has cropped up between them. Let's set the context for you as quickly as I can. Paul has established the church in Galatia.

Galatia is not a place, at least it's not just one location. It's like a county and there are a number of churches there. Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles, the non-Jews.

Peter is the apostle to the Jews. In other words, largely speaking, this is the territory in which these two men worked. Now, they both come from the Jewish stock.

And Peter was one of the first people, in fact the first apostle, ever to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. He went to the household of a man called Cornelius. Cornelius was a Roman soldier.

You heard Tim give an address on this some weeks ago so I can compress my remarks. Now, Peter had to have a vision from God to stimulate him to go to Cornelius' household. That vision was really unnecessary.

I was reading Martin Luther just this afternoon. I do recommend you to read Martin Luther in an afternoon. This book is 500 years old.

I'm open for offers. And Martin Luther reminded us or reminded his readers that because Jesus had actually given a global commission in the hearing of Peter, he should have known that when people from Cornelius' household came and knocked on the door at Joppa, the home where he was staying, he shouldn't have needed a vision. He should have been off showing a clean pair of heels to take the gospel.

But it's not easy when you've been born in a certain religious tradition to spring out of it. I know people who have found it so difficult to come into the tab. It's very difficult for folk who are JWs or Mormons, X, or thinking about leaving to come into a church like this.

What they believe goes on here is just mind-blowing. If you don't accept that, you are scary and somehow working amongst these people. It's difficult.

I speak with sensitivity. For some folk who've come from a different Christian tradition where women can never express themselves publicly in prayer, suddenly to find themselves in the tab where there is freedom for men and for women. So we understand Peter's difficulty in degree.

He was brought up in a society where Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans and where they considered Gentiles to be dogs. So to get an invitation to a Roman centurion's household created problems for him. So he has a vision.

God in his grace stimulates Peter. He sees this blanket and filling the blanket, you read this in Acts chapter 10, are unclean animals. And Peter is told to go and eat what is unclean.

He says, Lord, I can't do that. It's against my culture. God says, what I call clean, you are not to call unclean.

The vision is interpreted. The following day comes this request and he realizes that the uncleanness is actually the Gentiles and Peter has a commission. So he goes and he preaches the gospel.

He won't touch them. So the Holy Spirit comes down without the laying on of hands. And he discovers that Cornelius and his household are baptized in the Spirit.

Therefore they are regenerated. Peter can't argue with this. It happened to them just as it happened to us at the beginning.

He goes back to Jerusalem where he's in trouble with the Jewish Christians who can't understand why it is that he, a Jew, is having dealings with Cornelius' household. So he tells them, churches are good at forming committees. Christendom must have more committees if you add them all up in its history than any other institution in the world.

I'm told that the best committee is a committee of two when one is absent and then you get something done because it's a unanimous decision. Well, in Acts chapter 15, the church comes together in Jerusalem, representatives including Paul and Peter, and they discuss this problem. What do we do, we Jews, when we hear of the gospel going to Gentiles? Should not the Gentiles then, having accepted the gospel, also accept the law of Moses? Which meant what? Well, it meant many things, but amongst them.

If you went down to the local Sainsbury's, for example, and you discovered that food had been offered to idols, you did not buy that meat. There were also other things. The Jewish male would have circumcision on his sexual organ and that would indicate that he is part of the redeemed community.

Is not this, basic to Judaism, also to be imposed upon the Gentiles? And you have no idea the problem that that caused the Christian church. Now, in Jerusalem there is a chairman, James, not James the Apostle. You remember he's dead.

We talked about him last week. James, one of the brothers of Jesus, known as James the Just, the surname or the nickname indicating the wisdom that God had given to him. And James listens to Peter.

I said that Peter did not come into the Acts of the Apostles after the eleventh chapter last week. That was a slight mistake. He does not come in in terms of the description of any further evangelistic work.

He listens to Peter give a report. He listens to Paul give a report. The whole church comes together and they thank God that Gentile Christians, Gentile believers, are coming in their droves into the family of God.

And they say, we will impose no other sanction on you, apart from believing the gospel, with the exception that you do not eat meat offered to idols and you do not drink blood. And that the Gentiles would never have thought of doing as Christians in any case. So, it looked as though the problem was resolved.

But when you get into Galatians, that is the epistle to the Galatians, Paul's down there ministering amongst the churches. He's so glad that his friend Peter has come along too. And Peter has been enjoying fellowship.

And then a party of Jewish Christians come in from Jerusalem. And the table is spread. And Jews have no dealings with Gentiles.

And the Jewish Christians went and sat at their own table. And Peter, one of the most influential of the leaders, joined them. And Paul stood up and said, Peter, you're wrong.

I've got a quarrel. If what you are doing is right, it means you are adding to the gospel. You're saying that a man is not saved only by believing that Jesus Christ is Lord, but he has to submit to the Jewish practices that came from Moses, which have been a yoke around our neck.

We were not able to live up to them. And you're asking these people to do the same. Peter, you're adding to the gospel.

And though I, you, or an angel from heaven ever tinkered with the gospel of Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. Let him be damned. The gospel, the unpolluted Word of God, that is to be transmitted to every intelligent being on this planet, and in no way must it be neutralized, in no way must it be diluted.

It has got to be the gospel that we have simply agreed to as the basis of our salvation in the conference in Jerusalem, and also as the Holy Spirit authenticated it in your ministry in Acts chapter 10. So, Paul takes Peter on board. There is a quarrel.

Now, I congratulate Paul for confronting Peter. I tell you quite sincerely, one of the hardest things that falls my lot at times as a pastor is to be a confrontationalist. I'm not good at it, and very often I've ducked it.

It is not easy to stand eyeball to eyeball with someone and to say you're wrong. It's much easier to put your arm around them and congratulate them even though you've got a slight hesitation about certain aspects of their belief or behavior patterns. But here is Paul, and he is prepared to take on Peter despite the caliber of person that Peter was.

And what is more, what Paul has to say about Peter, he will say to his face. And what Paul has to say about Peter is dead accurate. And if you want authority, so to speak, if you want a biblical justification to have a quarrel with, if you want to work out the difference between an invalid and a valid argument, it is simply this.

Is there a real issue that should cause you to be a confrontationalist? Are you representing the person's view accurately, and are you prepared to tell them straight yourself and not in the company of other people? You see, the issues were of every proportion. If Peter was allowed to slip into this error, then the whole church could be, of course. There's a man by the name of Athanasius.

He must be the sort of church historian pin-up of Eric Harmer. I'll justify that in a moment. I wasn't, well, I was being humorous in degree, but you'll understand that there is some seriousness behind my remark.

He was a small man, bushy eyebrows, eyes like those of John the Baptist. You've heard of the Jehovah's Witnesses. They're nothing new.

They are a revival of a group that there was in the third century who were likewise questioning the deity of our beloved Lord, and they were saying that Christ actually was created. He did not exist eternally. He's a great man, but he is less than God.

It looked as though the whole church would be swept into that heresy. This man, Athanasius, came to the center of a great council, and he addressed all the august theologians, and they said, Athanasius, you've got the whole world against you. And Athanasius said, then let it be Athanasius' contra-mundum.

Let me take on the world, because if what you are going to do with this council, if your conclusions are accepted as the doctrine of the church, then the gospel no longer exists. And that was exactly the same, you see, as far as Paul is concerned with Peter. Unless he's corrected, then you're adding to the gospel.

Salvation comes not through believing in the saving death of our Lord Jesus, but also in the keeping of the rules of Moses, these things which were as a yoke to the Jews. The Jews were not saved that way. Are they going to impose that procedure upon Gentiles as well? So, you see, there are times when you have to make criticism of someone, but you should never do it without tears in your heart.

What I said about George Carey, I say publicly, I say regretfully, but I say it because it's true. I also say it because incipient in his comments there is a danger that the great Anglican church, with its evangelical tradition still deeply rooted, could possibly in this last decade settle for less than the gospel. Of course we must use sensitivity.

Of course there must be delicacy when you're approaching the Hindu, when you're approaching the Muslim. You must try and find the grounds of common denominator. You must try and win the respect of people in order that you can communicate the gospel.

But you are to communicate that gospel because that's what the blessed Lord says. And if you have to take issue with those who say this is wrong, then you take issue because you cannot bend what scripture says, you see. So there are these larger issues in which Christian people will sometimes have to take stock and take issue with those who claim to be of the faith, and yet in some way they have deviated.

But you see that's going for the large change, isn't it? There's much smaller change in your pocket. You know what I'm talking about. There are lesser things that sometimes cause problems and difficulties that come into Christian families like ours.

Do you remember when our beloved Lord met the disciples before they were the disciples? I refer to Peter and John and James. They're on the seashore of Galilee. What were they doing then? Well, they were mending their nets.

Jesus came along and he said, hey, fellas, don't waste your time not just being fishermen. Come and be fishers of men. It's very interesting that that word, mending their nets, is only used, as far as my recall of the original is concerned, if it's accurate, it's only used again in one other place, and it's by the apostle Paul.

And he's speaking to the church in Corinth, which has got an argument with him and amongst themselves. They're scrapping. He says, I appeal to you, brothers.

This is chapter one of the first epistle and the tenth verse. I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought, perfectly united with your nets repaired, your relationships intact. Work for the maintenance or for the renewal of relationships in our local church.

We have been a blessed company of people here at the Tab. I can think of very little unpleasant that has ever surfaced in this church for years. I cannot think of a nasty elders or deacons meeting.

We have almost had, forgive the word, a charmed life, but we need to work at these relationships. We need to work at our unity. Why? Because when men and women gather together in unity, there the Lord commands the blessing, and that's what we want, the blessings of salvation, the blessings of maturity, the blessings of the advancing of the kingdom of God from our fellowship here, hitting, worthing, and affecting the uttermost parts of the world.

So, when the issues are not as traumatic as those that confronted Paul as he addressed Peter, then, my brothers and sisters, let's hear the slop of the water and see the towel around the waist of our beloved Lord, and let's do what He did and help to repair relationships which have not broken per chance of getting frayed. Let's not just have engaged in some sentimental song, bind us together, Lord, with cords that cannot be broken. We were singing that as though we were singing it to the Lord.

Actually, we were singing it to one another. Then, let's work for the strengthening of those cords, for the loving intercourse of hearts and minds made one through Jesus Christ, and together, whether elders or deacons, pathfinder leaders, women's meeting leader, ordinary person, there aren't any ordinary people, you're all extraordinary in some measure, coming together, knitting part of the body, united, prepared to take worthing in this country for Jesus Christ. Quarrels sometimes come.

Some are legitimate as this one. Illustrated in Galatians, the majority are utterly unnecessary. Unnecessary.

Let's dispense with the latter. Let's ensure that the gospel we preach is the truth in all its pristine glory, and let's go on to tell men and women that the Christ of the cross, the blood that He shed, is the only way whereby they, like us, can be assured of eternal salvation. Everything should be secondary in our lives in favor of getting out that message in the most powerful way we can, and to do that demands unity.

Let us pray. Father, we didn't look into the end of this story, but there is every indication in your word, and especially from Peter's epistles, that he took on the chin the correction of Paul. He worked it through, and then as an old man was advising other younger readers of his letters to be humble enough to take correction themselves, and to get their lives right with you and with one another.

Help us, beloved God, to show the maturity of Peter in the receiving of correction, and to duplicate the integrity of Paul in holding fast to the truth of the gospel. Bless Dr. Carey. We thank you for him.

We believe that he's a man who knows you and trusts you and your word, yet he's got one of the most unenviable tasks in Christendom. Grant him wisdom. Grant him courage.

Be with our beloved Queen and her consort and her family. We pray, Lord, for John Major and Neil Kinnock. We ask your blessings upon these men.

We pray, too, for the leader of the Liberal Party, and we ask, Lord, for those subsidiary parties, too. We ask that you'll lift the level of this election campaign, deliver it from a slanging match, and we ask that the issues of our country might be dealt with honestly. The issues of people on the street who should be in mental hospitals being looked after, the issues of the underfunding of schools, the issues of great sums of money being gambled on the stock exchange, the issues of the legalizing of abortion.

Lord, we pray, strike your word and your desires into the hearts of these men, and those who do not know you, open the eyes of their understanding and lead them to the truths of your word. And this we humbly ask, pleading your blessing upon our land, in the name of the Savior. Amen.

Now we're going to sing 461. That's in Songs of Fellowship. Coming up on the overhead projector.

It's a lovely modern hymn which makes great sense, though it goes with quite a beat. Don't let the beat eclipse the meaning in your thinking as you're singing this out, but let's do what it says. Let's rejoice because Christ is in us and because now is the time for us to march upon the land.

461, Songs of Fellowship. Let's stand. 461, Songs of Fellowship.

462, Songs of Fellowship. 463, Songs of Fellowship. Father, send us out with your blessing.

We thank you for the emotion that comes with song, but Lord, there's work to be done. We ask that we might transmute or translate, rather, some of what we have been singing in terms of dedication into real action during this week. Help us, Lord, to ensure that our relationships, one with another, are right.

May we take this gospel and share it with someone else and have the joy of entrusting them in the greatest manifesto the world has ever known. Hear us and send us on our way, knowing the blessing of Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and always. And the people of God said, Amen.