Galatians 2, and we'll be looking
at verses 1-10 this evening. Galatians 2, and 1-10. The title of the message
this evening is, No Place Given to False Brethren. No Place Given
to False Brethren. And we'll speak mainly upon that
this evening. Now last week we saw Paul asking
a question concerning the gospel that he had preached. Paul here
is giving a defense of the gospel of Jesus Christ in this book,
a defense of the gospel of God's sovereign grace in Christ, And
his defense is also concerning his apostleship and authority
to preach this one and only gospel. And so Paul, last week we saw
in verse 10, he said, Do I persuade God or men? Do I seek to please
God or men? Paul said, If I please men, then
I am not a servant of Christ. We saw that any gospel that is
centered around man, that is man-centered, flesh-pleasing,
and exalts the will and works of man, we know that this is
another gospel, and those who preach a man-centered gospel
are not servants of God." Paul said, if I please men, I'm not
a servant. I'm not a servant of God. And
so we know that if any man preach a man-centered religion, he is
not a servant of God. And in the remainder of the chapter,
and going on to the one we're going to discuss tonight, Paul
will continue to set the record straight concerning his gospel
and his authority as an apostle to preach it. That it was not
given by men. His authority was not given by
men, nor was this gospel that is being preached given by men.
Verse 11 and 12, he says, I certify. He's saying, I'm swearing. He said, I swear that this message
that I have, this gospel, is not after men, neither I received
it of men, neither was I taught it, but by revelation of Jesus
Christ. Paul said, when it pleased God
to separate me from my mother's womb, He separated me for this
one purpose. This one purpose I have in this
life, and that is to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. I have
no other purpose, Paul said. This is the reason God raised
me up, and this is why God in time came to me on that road
to Damascus, and He saved me by His grace so that I would
preach this one single gospel. It's the only reason. And so,
my authority, Paul says, contrary to what these men are telling
you in the churches of Galatia, he says, my authority and my
gospel came by Jesus Christ Himself. He said, I wasn't taught this
gospel, my men. He said, I went away as soon
as I received my authority, as soon as I received my salvation.
I didn't go to Jerusalem, he said. I didn't go up to the Apostle
Peter or Apostle John and ask them about the Gospel. He said,
no, I went into Arabia and for three years I learned the Gospel
from Christ Himself. He said, I didn't confer with
flesh and blood. I didn't talk to men about this. So when I
preach the gospel that Paul preached, I'm preaching the gospel that
was revealed by revelation by Jesus Christ Himself. The same
gospel by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He didn't receive
it of Peter and James. He said, I only spent 15 days
with them. I only spent 15 days there in
Jerusalem and there's no way I received this gospel Imagine
that, somebody saying he received the gospel from the apostles,
only spending 15 days to get this amount of information that
the apostle pours out in these gospels. It's impossible. He
said, there's no way. And so, here we are in chapter
2, being brought forward now, Paul continues this in chapter
2, his defense. He says, 14 years after I went
up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas and took Titus with me also. He went up 14 years. So after,
let's get this right, he went in three years in Arabia to learn
the gospel from Christ. He came back to Damascus. Then
he went up. to the apostles for 15 days. After that, he started preaching
the gospel. He started going around Judea
preaching the gospel. And now, 14 years later, he comes
back to Jerusalem. After 14 years of preaching this
gospel, he comes back to Jerusalem and he brings Barnabas and Titus
with him. And so from verses 1 to 9, in
this passage, this is referring back to Acts chapter 15. So hold
your place here and flip over to Acts chapter 15. We're just
going to look at a few passages concerning this. This is a parallel
history. A parallel history to this time
that the Apostle is speaking of here from verses 1 to verse
9. There arose a great dissension,
a dispute, by certain men that came from Judea. If you look
in your text, he says, because of false brethren, verse 4, unawares,
brought in who privately spy out our liberty. It's the same
as mentioned in verse 1 of chapter 15 of Acts. Read that, it says,
"...and certain men, which came down from Judea, taught the brethren,
and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye
cannot be saved." Paul says, I've dealt with this before.
This is not something new. This happened in the churches
of Antioch. That's where this was taking
place. Some men of Judea, some of these false brethren, had
come up to Antioch and they started a great heresy. And they said, you must be circumcised
to be saved. This was the same message being
taught in the churches of Galatia as in Antioch. And in Acts we
read, this was no small dissension. This was a great dispute. This
wasn't something that was little. They came in full force teaching
this and it caused a great disturbance in the church of Antioch. Now, it caused so much of a disturbance. that the church didn't know what
to do about it. There was two sides to this and
they were both so hot and so heavy about this that the church
was so confused, they didn't know whether they were coming
or going. And so the church threw up their hands and they said,
well, we just don't know. I'll tell you what, why don't
you settle the matter by going to the apostles in Jerusalem?
And so now Paul explains something here because this can cause great
confusion in the churches of Galatia. He's going to explain
something. He says, yes, I did go up to the apostles. But he's
saying that I did not go up seeking their authority or their approval.
I went up because my Master told me to. He said, I went up, back
in our text in Galatians, he says, I went up by revelation. He says, the only reason I actually
did this was because it was revealed to me to go up. It was told of
me by Jesus Christ to go up by revelation. And so he did. He went up to Jerusalem. because
his master had told him, not because he would learn anything
of the apostles, but he preached the gospel that he preached at
Antioch. He went up to the apostles and
he took them aside privately and he preached that gospel to
them. He says, I took them aside because I didn't want to cause
much controversy. And he said, I took them aside
and preached the gospel that I preached at Antioch. Now, while these false brethren,
while he was doing this, these false brethren, they started
another uprising there in Jerusalem. They wanted to take Titus and
force him to be circumcised. Paul says in our text in Galatians
that they compelled him. That word means tried to force
him to be circumcised. There was a great mob of people
and they were trying to take him to be circumcised. It was a great dissension. And
you can read that in Acts 15, verses 4 and 5, when he says,
And when they were come to Jerusalem, they received of the church and
of the apostles and elders, and they declared all the things
that God had done with them. But there rose up certain of
the sect of the Pharisees which believed. Now, notice they said
they believed. They supposedly believed in Christ. saying that it was needful to
circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses."
This, no doubt, is speaking of what they were doing to Titus.
They constrained Titus by force him to do this. But Paul says
this in our text, he says, I gave them no place. I gave them no
place. When they started an uprising,
I stopped them in their tracks and I gave them no room for this.
We would not allow this, no, not for an hour, Paul says. We
would not permit this kind of heresy to be done to Titus so
as to confuse and stop the gospel from being preached. These men
reminded me of an illustration. I had heard this many years ago
of a church of Christ. A few members of a church of
Christ were visiting a man who was dying of cancer. And they
had this man hooked up to machines and hoses and tubes. They had
all kinds of things running out of this man to keep him alive.
And those men were so zealous that baptism saved that they
ripped off all of the machines of that man and tried to get
him into a bathtub to save him. It's the same thing. These men
were doing the same thing those men would do. They added something
to the gospel. They added something to the gospel.
Those men, those Church of Christ, they believed that salvation,
you must be saved. You got to believe in Jesus,
but they added baptism. They added baptism. You see,
this thing of adding to the gospel is nothing new. It's nothing
new. It's always been this way. Dear
friends, let us then, as Paul did here, Paul, when he saw that
he was going to take Titus, and they were going to force him
to be circumcised, they compelled him to be circumcised, Paul said,
I did not allow it for one minute. Do you think Paul saw this as
an important issue? Do you not think that he saw
this as not a trivial matter? And we think about it. You look
at it and you say, well, it's just circumcision. It's not really
that big a deal. It was a big deal. It was a massive
deal. It made the gospel become heresy. It changed the gospel. To add
anything to the gospel changes it. Dear friends, let us be as
steadfast and as zealous for the gospel as the Apostle Paul. Let us not give place one moment
to those who would pervert the gospel of grace through faith
in Christ alone. Luther said this, let us learn
this kind of stubbornness of the apostle. We will suffer our
goods to be taken away, our name, our life and all we have but
the gospel Our faith in Jesus Christ, we will not suffer, never
suffer to be wrested from us. Wherefore God, assisting me,
my forehead will be harder than all men's foreheads." He said,
anybody who is going to have a hard head, I am. And I'm going
to have a hard head about this matter of the gospel and I'm
not going to budge one inch. He said, I am and ever will be
stout and stern and will not give one inch place to any creature
concerning the gospel. Give no place to those who oppose
total depravity. If anyone says that there is
any goodness in man by nature, Any life in man by nature, oppose
it. Oppose it. Why? Because the gospel
opposes it. We are to stand fast against
anyone who denounces unconditional election. That's the point of
contention actually Paul's dealing with here. That they're talking
about salvation being contingent upon what a man does. and not upon God's grace. We're
not to hold those who believe such things in any light of truth. We're to not give place to them
who do not believe in the limited atonement or irresistible grace
or perseverance or preservation of the saints. Give no place
to them whatsoever. Don't budge an inch. Not for
convenience sake or any sake. Don't give an inch to them. No place to these false brethren
who will creep in unawares. This was interesting. I was reading
in Church History this week, a little Church History. And
when the Romans took over the vast amount of land that they
had, the vast empire they had, they tried to unify these people. You see, they had such diversity
of culture and religion all over the place. And so what they did
is they unified them around one figure, Caesar. They said, we
don't mind what religion you are. We don't mind what you do
in your religion. They knew religion was good because
religion kept some kind of civil place. So Rome encouraged religion. But they said first, before you
do anything for your God, you must go into the temple of Caesar
and take a pinch of incense, just a pinch, just a little bit,
and burn it for Caesar. And just say this one thing,
Caesar is Lord. That's all they had to say. They
didn't even have to mean it. They just had to say it and burn
the little incense in front of the statue of Caesar. Now, you
and I all know that Caesar is not God. We know He's not Lord.
What's the temptation here? To rationalize it, isn't it?
Well, if I just say it, I don't really mean it. If I just burn
it and don't just say it, I'm not really saying He's Lord.
I'm just lying to them. Is that the way the Christian
church acted in the first century? Is that the way they acted? No. These people didn't know what
to do with Christians. They were stubborn. They were
stubborn. There was a man named Pliny, P-L-I-N-Y. He was a governor
of Asia in about 112 A.D. And he wrote to Trajan, the Roman
emperor, and he said, I don't know what to do with Christians.
I don't know what to do with them. He said, what I've been
doing is if they refuse to pay homage to Caesar, if they were
Romans, I'd send them to Rome. If they weren't, I'd just kill
them. But do we really have to wait for them to do something
bad in order to kill them? He was killing them without any
reason other than they were Christians. He said, but I know they must
be doing something bad because they're so stubborn. They won't
give an inch. They won't compromise. Does the
Christian today look anything like that? And I take a mirror and I put
it to myself and say, do I look anything like that? I should. My friend, because they would
not burn that little incense, because they would not say that,
they took these Christians and they sewed them to wild beasts. They tied women to bulls until
they were dragged and gouged to death. They were thrown and
eaten by lions. They were burned at the stake
because they wouldn't burn a pinch of incense and say, Caesar is
Lord. They wouldn't do it. They would
not do it. And my friend, neither should
we give an inch. And I'm not talking about to
this world, I'm talking about to our own flesh. We should not
give an inch to our own flesh. We should not give in and say,
well, it's just. How many times we said that?
I know I've said it. I've said it a million times
and I hate myself for it. It's just this. I'm just this,
just this thing. It's not that big a deal. You
know, I know what's right, but I'm just going to do this over
here. What is that but compromise? What is that but compromise?
We're not to give place to anything but Christ and the gospel of
Christ. In verse 6 in our text, Paul
is speaking of the apostles. Let's look at this in verse 6.
He said, but these who seem to be somewhat. Paul went there
and he wouldn't give place to these men. No, not for a moment.
And he said, but these that seem to be somewhat, whatsoever they
were, it maketh me no matter. God accepted no man's person.
For they who seem to be somewhat in conference added nothing to
me. Now here he's talking about the
apostles and he's not saying anything negative. You know,
I read that first of all, I said that sounds kind of derogatory.
Sounds kind of negative. They that be somewhat. Well,
it's the same phrase in the Greek as mentioned in verse 9 when
he says, they seem to be pillars. He's not assuming that they're
not. It's not assuming that they weren't
important. He's saying, these that were
important. These that seem to be pillars
of the church, the apostles. He said, you know what? They
were important. but they did not add one thing
to me." He says, I went to them as equals. I didn't go to them
asking for advice. I went to them as equals. They
didn't add one thing to me, although they were important. They were
equal to me and their conference added nothing to my apostleship,
nor did it make my gospel more authoritative. You see, Paul
would not have these churches to think of a universal bishop
or a leader. That was a heresy he was avoiding
by saying this. You see, these Judaizers, they
thought Peter was everything. They thought Peter was the high
and lifted up apostle, and that all the other apostles were subject
to him. And they were propagating this
about Paul, that he was just an apostle of subject under Peter. But that wasn't true. He says,
that's not true. These men seem to be important,
and they are important, but they added nothing to my apostleship.
My apostleship still came from Christ, and my truth came from
Christ Jesus, and my authority came from Christ. In verse 7
and 8, let's look at this, verse 7 and 8, Paul says, "...but counterwise,
they didn't add anything to me, but counterwise, when they saw
that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed to me, as the gospel
of circumcision was unto Peter, for he that wrought effectually
in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was
mighty in me toward the Gentiles." Paul says, The only difference
between me and Peter is to whom we were sent. There's no difference
in our gospel. There's no difference in our
authority. The only difference is my gospel was to be preached. I was sent to the Gentiles as
Peter was sent to the circumcision. And we know that Peter had great
success, didn't we? Acts chapter 2, we realize that
3,000 souls the Lord converted under one message. One message! Wow! He preached one message! And it's not but, you know, 5-10
verses long. It wasn't very long. It was one
day the Lord added 3,000 souls. Isn't that something? I'd love
to see that one day. I'd love to see that in our day.
And then another time, he had 5,000. There's no doubt Peter
was used greatly among the circumcision. But Paul says, even as by God's
grace he called Peter to work among the Jews, so by His grace
He called me to work among the Gentiles. And as I thought about
that, I was thinking about how God calls men. Note, it's God that calls men
to this work of preaching. Now, some men are called to foreign
lands. Moose is called to a foreign land. Talk to Cody Groover today,
he's called to a foreign land. God calls men to go out to a
foreign mission field. Some are called cross-country.
I was called from Texas to come to Louisville, and other men
were called from Kentucky to go to Texas. But however God
does it, God moves it. Some men are called locally,
like I talked about Eric earlier. He's called to that one position
at the hospital there to preach the gospel. But regardless of
where we're called, regardless of who we are, we all have these
things in common. We're all called to preach the
gospel. We all have one message in common. Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
If you want to hear what I have to say, if you want to hear what
Moose would have to say, or you want to hear what Don would have
to say, we'll all say this, salvation is through grace, by grace, through
faith in Jesus Christ alone. That's what we'll say. Every
text of Scripture we'll find us preaching, we'll preach this,
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That's our subject, substance
and message. We have that in common. We have
one goal, the glory of God. See, I'm not here to entertain.
I'm here for the glory of God. You see, this ministry is not
man-centered. It's God-centered. God, to God
be the glory. Great things He has done. We have one common desire, the
souls of men. I'm here because I love you.
I love the souls of men. I long for men to come to know
Christ. I do. I long for God's children
to be fed. We have one common love, Christ
and His people. And all these things we have
in common. And God will give people to hear
us. That's one thing we have in common. God always gives the
man He sends people to hear. Now, right? Spurgeon once was
told by a man, he said, Sir, I must preach in your tabernacle
this next Lord day. Why? He said, God told me to.
And he said, well, that's funny. He didn't tell me anything about
it. And so needless to say, he didn't preach there. But everywhere
God sends a man, he sends people to hear. That's always going
to be true. Although we do not have the same
gifts, that is true. We do not all have the same knowledge.
We do not all have the same speaking ability. We do not even all have
the same measure of spirit. But we will love one another
and desire the gospel to be preached wherever it's preached. You know,
if the church down here, two blocks down, if it started to
preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, I would not be any happier. I would be ecstatic. It would
not make me a bit of difference at all. If the gospel was preached
in every church in Louisville, Kentucky, I would be happy. I'm
not in competition. I'm not in competition. You see,
if they were preaching for the glory of God, I'd be happy. We
all are happy for those who preach the gospel. Peter was happy for
Paul. He said he gave credit to Paul
in his gospel, in his epistle, when he recognized that Paul
preached things that were hard to be understood. He says, our
beloved brother Paul, he preaches things hard to be understood.
It's not that Peter didn't understand them, he said, but some men who
are unlearned and unable, they rest those things to their own
destruction. We who preach, as Paul and Peter
preach things that we know. And I've preached things to you
that you already know. But do you know them? Do we really know them? Every time when I tell you of
the nature of God, do you really know the nature of God? Can you
really explain the nature of God? Can we explain the offering
of Christ? Are we ever going to find a bottom
to this knowledge? Paul says in Philippians 3.10,
he says, "...that I may know." Didn't Paul know? Yeah, he knew. But he longed to know. Do you
long to know? Do you long to know? Some people,
they don't long to know. They say, well, I know that,
preacher. If you know that, you really don't know that. If you
know something about God, if any man thinketh he knoweth anything,
he knows nothing as he ought to know. You see, our knowledge
of God is never ending. And the day we think we can stop
growing is the day, it's a sad day in a person's life when they
think they've come to the end of knowledge. You see, unlearned and unable
people rest the Scriptures to their destruction, but God's
people grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. So
Paul says, in the defense of the gospel and his apostleship,
that the apostles gave him the right hand of fellowship, in
verse 9, he says, and James and Cephas and John seemed to be
pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave
me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should
go unto the heathen And they entered the circumcision. In
other words, Paul says, don't believe the lie that I was preaching
something different. He said, they gave me the right
hand of fellowship, and not only that, if you go back to Acts
15, you can read that they even wrote an epistle about it. They
wrote a letter to the church of Antioch to be read to everyone
that salvation is not by the law of Moses. It was by Jesus
Christ, by the grace of God. And lastly, verse 10, he said,
only they would that we should remember the poor. Now this was
not a command, but rather an exhortation. And these were the
poor of Jerusalem. And you've got to understand,
when these Christians in Jerusalem, when they believed on the Lord
Jesus Christ, they lost everything. Most of them, the temple worship
and the temporal sacrifices was how they made their living. It
was how they obtained food. It was how they begged if they
were poor. Think about the man who begged
for alms that was the impotent man. He begged in front of the
temple. But when these people came to
Christ, the Jews cast them out. They got rid of them. And they
had no means by which they can make a living. They were poor. That's why the church in Jerusalem
began to distribute all their goods because they had nothing.
They had nothing. Why is that? because they would not compromise. They would not give an inch to those Judaizers. They would
not give an inch and just outwardly concede that temple worship was
anything. If they just would have pretended
they could have had food, They wouldn't do that. Because
doing that meant they rejected Christ. My friends, we can learn a great
lesson from these poor. Do not compromise. Compromise is the death of the
gospel. Any church that has ever compromised
the gospel, their light has gone out. Everyone, everyone. It is vital, vital that we do
not compromise the truth of the gospel. Give no place to these
false brethren, no, not one inch. The day we give an inch, we might
as well close the doors. It's over. That's how serious this is. It's
very serious. I pray that God, by His Spirit,
would cause all of us, all of us, especially me, to take this
to heart. and give us strength to stand
against the opposition no matter the cost. Let's stand. We'll be dismissed in prayer.