In our first installment in our series, we talked about the mission of the church and how God has given to the church its precious message-the good news of Jesus Christ. God was in the world reconciling Himself to men through the cross. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5 (page 1144 of pew Bibles) that He has given to us the church, the ministry of reconciliation. We are ambassadors for Christ, making an appeal to the world to be reconciled to God. The Bible also says theres an enemy. God has an enemy; the church has an enemy who is named Satan, and he desires to thwart that mission. Paul says in the Book of 2 Corinthians 2:11 (page 1143 of pew Bibles), the church is not to be ignorant of his schemes or ignorant of his devices. How does he work? How does he operate? His method of operation has not changed since the beginning. It has not changed since the Garden of Eden. The first thing that Satan will do is he will attack the truth. Paul says of first importance, in 1 Corinthians 15:3 (page 1139), …I delivered unto you of first importance: that Jesus was crucified for our sins according to the Scripture, that He was buried and that He rose again on the third day. That is of first importance to the church. That is our mission: to protect, to defend, to communicate and share with the world that important news of Gods hope-of our hope, of salvation through Christ. So, where does Satan attack first? Satan will attack the truth of the Gospel. Satan will attack the integrity of the Gospel. He will seek to pervert it; to distort it; to dilute it, but he attacks the truth. When he attacks the truth, that leads to a breakdown in unity. We become divided or fragmented as the body of Christ. When that happens, we are not as effective as we could be because we are a divided people. Our energies are not channeled in the same direction. I read an article recently about a man who found a large amount of money hidden inside a wall. When he tore down the wall in the bathroom of a church, there inside the wall were these two medal cases filled with envelopes of money from the Depression Era. We all have fantasies of finding something like that, right? Wouldnt that be fun if you were renovating a house and found almost $200,000 in currency, in cash? Wow! [He said], So, what can I do? I can keep it to myself, which wouldnt be moral, thought the man, or I can share with the owner of the house this good news of the money I found. She was about ready to declare bankruptcy, so she was ecstatic. I saw a picture of them in happier times around their hoard, holding up the money with big smiles on their faces. They had all the dreams of the things they were going to buy and the things they were going to do with all of that money. The relationship soured when he said, I think Im entitled to some of this since I found it. You wouldnt know about it if not for me. She said, Well, I think you can have 10 percent. He was offended by that and wanted much more. She was offended by that, Hes greedy. So their relationship broke down, and it made the newspapers. When it made the newspapers, the heirs of the original homeowner, the man who put the money in the wall, heard about it and hired a lawyer. They sued those two and won. The remodeler and the woman who now owned the house got a pittance. The lawyer for the family said, You know, if they would have just worked out their differences, they would have split these thousands and thousands of dollars; and the family would not have known. When unity broke down, of course, problems began to ensue. When we break down as brothers and sisters in Christ, when Christians are fighting amongst themselves or denominations are fighting amongst ourselves, we lose our effectiveness. Thirdly then, love is damaged. The first thing that Satan does is he distorts the truth. He attacks the Gospel. We see that, the rise of Gnosticism, in movies like the Da Vinci Code-where they are trying to attack the integrity, the purity of the Gospel message. Thats where he attacks first and foremost. If the church does not rise up and defend that, then what happens is unity breaks down. When unity is destroyed, love is displaced. He seeks to get us to love our structures, our denominations, our buildings, our programs, our systems more than we love God, more than we love one another and more than we love the message that has been entrusted to us. He gets us to diminish in our love, and that is to be our witness to the world. They will know you are My Disciples, and that you love one another, said Christ. We saw that in the media this morning. When the truth was distorted, that distortion was adhered to and believed, unity broke down, and love was diminished. We see the same thing happen in relationships, and we can see the same thing happen in the church from time to time. You and I have all heard stories like that. Were going to take a look in the Bible and see what happened when Satan attacked the church. There was a region in which he got a foothold in. There was a region that we read about in which he attacked the truth, and the domino effect took place. Unity was damaged, and love was diminished amongst those believers; and there are lessons we can learn from them. Lets open our Bibles up to the Book of Galatians 1 (page 1151 of pew Bibles). I want to first of all draw your attention to the uniqueness of this book. If you look at Verse 2, [youll see] what Paul says to the churches in Galatia. Youll notice that in the other epistles that he writes, he writes it either to a person as in the Pastoral Epistles, or he writes it to a specific church: the church in Rome, the church in Corinth, or the church in Ephesus. Here he writes to a group of churches in Asia Minor, which is now Turkey, that he visited on his first missionary journey. Among them are Iconia, Lystra and Derbe. All these cities represent this Roman providence called Galatia. He writes to this region because this region had come under a satanic attack. The mission of the church-the all important mission of communicating the Gospel-was under attack. Were going to see that domino effect that I talked about happen, and were going to see how Paul counter-attacks the enemy. Before we begin reading, let me tell you a little bit about whats going on. There are a group of men that history now looks back on and calls Judaisers. The Judaisers were men who were always going around stirring up trouble for Paul. When Paul would preach, they would come around, and they would say, Oh, hes against the law of Moses. Theyd stir the crowd up against Paul. Recall that happening: the riots and troubles that followed Paul because of them? The Judaisers taught that its not just enough to believe in Jesus. You have to believe in Jesus and practice the law. Men, if youre going to convert to Christianity, you Gentiles, you Greeks out here, you need to become circumcised as a sign of the covenant. You need to follow these laws, these principles, of the Mosaic Law. It is Christ plus the law, Christ plus the works of the law, that justify you before God. So, in essence, the Gospel becomes this innocuous thing. Its just added to this list of requirements. Its simply another requirement to add. It is the Jesus plus theology. Paul sees this as an extreme threat to the church. It still is a threat to the church. The essence of that said, that Christs atonement was not enough… When Jesus said on the cross, It is finished, bowed his head and gave up His spirit, the debt was not paid. You have to add to what Christ has already done. You have to add through your righteous works of the law. They shared this with the Galatian churches, and they believed it. Now, Paul is writing, and he is angry at the men who have perpetrated this perversion of the Gospel. He has grieved because he taught them better. When you see your children do something contrary to what you taught them, youre grieved. You might say to them, I taught you better than this. You know better than that. Thats what is happening here. Paul is reprimanding them. They should have known better. Chapter 1:6 (page 1151), he says, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the One who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel… The word different is heteros. Youve all heard of the word hetero. It means of another kind. Youve turned to another gospel… This is not the same Gospel I taught you. When you add Christ to the old covenant, this is not what I taught you. …which is no gospel at all. The word Gospel means good news. It means saying, Listen, if you have to be justified by the works of the law, that is not good news. If nothing has changed but we simply added Christ, and you still have to rely upon your righteous works to be right with God, thats not good news, and its not the Gospel that was delivered to you. I want you to notice how Paul uses the strongest words he can possibly use to communicate with the churches. Thats because so much is at stake. This is not a minor difference of opinion. This is not a peripheral, doctrinal matter. This is the core of the Gospel that is under attack. He is perverting the truth of the Gospel, and Paul says, We must rise to defend that. [Verse 7], …Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion or trying to pervert the Gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from Heaven… Wow! …should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! Anathema-cursed, cut off from God. If an angel comes to you in glowing robes and speaks to you in an angelic, heavenly, majestic voice and tells you a different gospel, let him be cursed. [Verse 9], As I have already said and now say again: if anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! How strong of words could Paul have used here? [There is] nothing stronger than the word he used. They had believed a lie. They had bought in to this perversion of the gospel. As a result, disunity had taken hold in the Church of Christ because thats what happens. When truth is attacked and a lie is believed, disunity is the result. Even good people can be led astray. Thats why its so important in churches, and our elders and our ministerial staff and all of us-all of us from the youngest to the oldest-from those who have been Christians for a short period of time to those who have been Christians their entire lives-guard the truth of the Gospel. In Chapter 2:11 (page 1152), were going to read about a confrontation or a conflict between the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter. Judaisers are going to come into the group that is meeting, and Peter is going to withdraw from the Gentile Christians. Verse 11 says, When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men from James… That means from Jerusalem. Its not at all saying that James believes or aligns himself with the Judaisers; he simply wants us to identify that these men had come from Jerusalem where James was the head of the church. …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 Judaisers. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. A wonderful man of God. 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… I made Peter an example. ‘…You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile… You live under the new covenant. You dont follow the law anymore. …‘and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? Why do you seem not to be aligning yourself with the party of the circumcision? Gentiles are hurt, and that was part of it. Paul is coming to their defense. Imagine youre in junior high, and you are a nerd. Youre a dweeb. A cool kid comes and sits by you in the lunchroom. Youre like, Wow! Ive arrived. A cool kid is eating with me. I matter! Into the lunchroom comes a bigger group of cool kids. Immediately, they realize they are with a nerd, so they stand up and leave you alone and go and sit with the cool kids. Aw, I wasnt really sitting with that guy. He had to help me with my homework. Then youre embarrassed and ashamed. Thats what they feel like. Peter and others immediately withdraw from them and head over and associate with the Judaisers. The Judaisers are bullies. They were intimidators. They had some power and clout. There is peer pressure that is taking place here, and Peter, sadly, lets us down; but a bigger picture is what is at stake. You can see unity begin to break down. Unity was breaking down in the church-churches in this region. Peter is going to stress to them the importance of oneness and unity in Christ. As Satan seeks to destroy unity, the church must display unity-unity in the midst of our diversity. In Chapter 3:26 (page 1153), Paul writes, You are the sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. These divisions have to seize. These barriers have to be brought down. We are one in Christ. We are a body of believers. The same Spirit we are baptized into is in all of us. The same Gospel ties us together and unifies us. The Gospel, the truth of the Gospel, is our unity. Thats why when the Gospel is attacked and that distortion is believed, unity breaks down because it is that unity which ties us together as brothers and sisters in Christ. That unity should be seen by the world. Sometimes its not. Sometimes what the world sees from Christians is our infighting, squabbling and bickering as we parse verbs. Im not talking about the core of the Gospel. Im not talking about the 1 Corinthians 15:3 (page 1139), the Lord Jesus, the deity of Christ, the atonement on the cross, the resurrection. Im not talking about that. Im talking about other matters that divide Christians. Augustine said, In the essentials, unity; in the non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, love. What do we communicate to the world when we squabble and fight and cant get along as Christians? I heard about a man who wanted to end his life. This is an illustration; this is not true. He walked on top of a bridge; he looked at the raging waters below; and he said, All I have to do is jump off, and Ill end my life. A passerby came and saw the man ready to jump. He said, Dont do it! Dont do it! The man said, Why should I live? Thinking quickly, he said, Do you believe in God? Well, yes, I believe in God. Well, see, thats a reason. You believe in God. Now, Im just curious, do you believe in the Christian God, the Muslim god or….where are you coming from here? He said, Oh, Im a Christian. Oh, good. Im a Christian too. Now are you a Protestant or a Catholic? He said, Well, Im a Protestant. Oh, yeah, me too. Im a Protestant too. Now are you Episcopalian or a Baptist, Assembly of God or Presbyterian, Methodist? He tells him what denomination he is and says, I am too. Thats the denomination I am. Thats really cool! So are you like pre-trib or post-trib? Me too! Im pretrib. Now, in our denomination, we revitalized our bylaws. Are you from the 1936 convention or the 1954 revised convention? Oh, Im of the 1954 revised convention. Then he pushed him off the bridge and said, Die heretic! The message Im trying to convey to you: in the Gospel, if we are in agreement on the essentials, you are my brother and my sister, regardless of your denomination. You are my brother and sister in Christ regardless of some of the differences we have in those peripheral matters. One of the things I love about our church is we come from all different backgrounds, all different denominations and theologies, and we love each other. We love each other, and that always has gotten me excited to think about because unity, when it is displayed, is a powerful manifestation of the presence of God in the church. Some of us were moved by the story of genocide in Rwanda in 1994. The civil war there between the Hutus and the Tutsis-and Im not going to get into that; you can look that up. Thats why God made Wikipedia. If you have any questions about that, you can study it for yourself. There were some Tutsi warriors who wanted to kill the Hutus in a region. They went into the church with guns, and they told the pastor, We demand you to tell us who are the Tutsis and who are the Hutus in your congregation. The pastor said, We have no Tutsis and Hutus here, only Christians. He said, I need to know! I must know! You tell me now who the Hutus are in your congregation! He said, We are Christians here. There are no Tutsis. There are no Hutus in this body. We all belong to Jesus Christ. He said, I have orders to kill the Hutus in this church. If you value your life, you will tell me who in your church is a Hutu. The pastor understanding what was on the line stared the man in the face, and he said, There are no Hutus and Tutsis in this church. We are all Christians here. The men with the guns then broke their way into the church and killed every single Christian. We are going to live together, or were going to die together. We are not Hutus or Tutsis. We belong to Christ. Friends, I dont know what your political persuasion is; I dont know what your theological background is; I dont know what union or non-union you belong to, but the highest bond we have is the bond that we have in Jesus Christ. That is our greatest loyalty: the blood of Christ which has taken away our sin. The grace of Christ that has forgiven us our sins is what binds us together as brothers and sisters. When the unity is present, it is a powerful witness to the world that God is among us. We said the third thing that happens is when the truth is distorted; thats how the enemy attacks, distorts and perverts the truth. The church is called to defend the truth, and Paul defended the truth of the Gospel-the churches in Galatia. We said the second thing that happens, the second domino that falls, is unity is destroyed; so Paul encourages the churches to display unity. The third domino that falls is when love is displaced. People start to love the wrong things, to love themselves and their mission or their cause, rather than the cause of Christ or the mission of the church. So Paul is going to encourage the churches of Galatia to demonstrate love. In Galatians 5:5 (page 1154), Paul says hes going to try to put them on the right track here, But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts… How many things count? The only thing that counts-this one thing. …is faith expressing itself through love? You are running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? What kind of persuasion? That kind of persuasion does not come from the One who calls you. ‘A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough. I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion will pay the penalty, whoever he may be. Brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves! If theyre going to go around saying they had to circumcise the Greeks, why dont they just go all the way and castrate themselves? Tell us how you really feel about this issue, Paul. I understand when Paul says, I am serious about defending the purity of the Gospel. When somebody attacks the purity of the Gospel, the church has to be serious about that and in defending that. It says, You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge in the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. How many of you know of churches that have allowed this kind of disunity to happen in the body and ended up devouring each other and causing the church to split? Let me see your hand if you know churches like that? That's sad, isnt it? Isnt that just pitiful sad? That happened in this church. They werent loving each other. They werent demonstrating love. They were fighting amongst themselves. Thats what happens when we depart from the truth-when the truth is not protected. I see its time for me to be quiet, but I want to just share one more illustration with you. In the Holy Land, the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, supposedly the burial place of Christ-on top of that, above that, on the ground there is a monastery, a chapel. Theres a big debate over who owns the rights to that property between the Coptic or the Egyptian Christians and the Ethiopian Christians. They have guards up there. They have a priest up there at the top of the chapel from the Coptic Church and one from the Ethiopian Church. One time, the Ethiopian priest was too hot in the sun, so he moved his chair toward the shade and got too close to the Coptic side. A big fist fight broke out. Christians from either side came up and began to fight. The police were called, and people were hospitalized because of this. There was a ladder that was put up there to repair something that has never been brought down because they cant agree on who has authority to take the ladder down. There was a needed fire exit that Israel wanted to put in the building in case there was a fire, but the Coptics and the Ethiopians cannot decide where the exit should go. More importantly, there are repairs that need to be done. There are people who are afraid that structurally if these repairs are not done, this building could collapse-not only destroying the chapel, but possibly causing damage to the church of the Holy Sepulcher, including the loss of life. Israel says, We will do these repairs for you, but we first have to know who were working with. Who is in charge? They, of course, cannot agree. So this chapel that they claim to love so much, in order to be right-in order for their cause to win-they are willing to let the building collapse under their feet and be destroyed. Its a sad thing when we put our agendas, our structures and our systems over the unity that is in Christ. What does that say to the non-Christians in Jerusalem when these two groups of people who both claim to love the Lord Jesus Christ are fighting like children over territory of a place that is so holy? Its sad! Its sad when it happens there; its sad when it happens in the churches of Galatia; its sad when it happens here. Augustine said, In the essentials, unity; the non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, love. Might we follow that creed today.

11-23-08
Speaker: Pastor Jeff Williams
Series: Ending the Cold War