STUDY OF GALATIANS (Part-2)

Study of Galatians (part 2)

Question:
What causes barriers between two people?

Question:
What draws two people together?

Question:
Do we have a tendency to accent the good or bad?
    Question:
    Why?

Question:
What are some problems, difficulties,
or other barriers that come between two Christians?
    – Race?
    – Cultural backgrounds?
    – Personality?

Question:
What are some things that draw Christians together?
    – Love?
    – Personality?
    – Concern for others?
    – Common interest and priorities?

Jewish Christians insisted that non-Jews must become Jews to be saved.
    Question:
    Were they refusing to cross racial barriers with the gospel?

Paul opposed this idea.

He saw salvation as coming through faith in Christ,
regardless of the individual’s background or heritage.

The leaders of the church in Jerusalem gave full
approval to Paul’s sharing the gospel with the Gentiles.

Paul felt the church must be united; to do so meant
Jews and Gentiles should be accepted on equal terms.

GALATIANS 2
VERSE 8.
For God, who was at work in Peter as an apostle to the
circumcised, was also at work in me as an apostle to the Gentiles.

The one who made Peter an apostle to the Jews (called ‘circumcision’),
is the same one who called me to preach to the Gentiles.

Note:
The racial lines were publicly evident and strong;
Paul crossed over one of the great dividing lines of his day.

Question:
Knowing their personalities, why was Peter
sent to the Jews, and Paul to the Gentiles?
    – Peter was sent to the Jews because he was weak and wouldn’t
      be able to cope with the difficulties of crossing religious and
      racial lines, that an apostle to the Gentiles would encounter?
    – Paul was strong enough to handle the controversies of being
      an apostle to the Gentiles?

Question:
If you were living during those days and God called you to be an
apostle, who do you think you would rather have been, Peter or Paul?
    Question:
    Why?

VERSE 9.
James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and
Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the
grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles,
and they to the circumcised.

Leaders of the church supported Paul’s reaching
the Gentiles (considered the ‘heathen’ by the Jews).

Biblical Knowledge Question:
Who was James?
    – The younger half-brother of Jesus;
    – He became the leading figure of the church in Jerusalem.

Question:
“Right hand’”?
    – Does this mean they shook hands in agreement?

Note:
The barriers between the Jews and Gentiles were starting to dissolve.

VERSE 10.
All they asked was that we should continue to remember
the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.

Those who approved and supported Paul and Barnabas
ministering to the Gentiles had an interesting stipulation
that they should “remember the poor”.

Question:
Why did they include this requirement?
Were they telling Paul and Barnabas to be all inclusive,
rather than being apostles just to the elite upper class?
    If this was the reason, it shows they had
    a heart for the less fortunate, doesn’t it?
    Question:
    Do we ever favor the elite and well-known in our society today?
    Are we drawn to the affluent and ignore, or ‘snub’ the poor and
    less known?

Paul says that he never planned on singling out the elite.
    Question:
    Could this be because he knew he was spiritually poor
    when the Lord came to him on the road to Damascus?

VERSE 11.
When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face,
because he stood condemned.

Paul opposed Cephas (Peter) in Antioch 
(because his attitudes and actions were wrong).

Note:
This opposition to Peter was not considered a trivial
issue, and it shows the strength and boldness of Paul.

Note:
Peter was one of the closest companions of Jesus during His
earthly ministry. He had been leader of the church during
its earliest days in Jerusalem.

Question:
Why was Paul upset with Peter?
    Note:
    Let’s look at what was going on in Antioch first.

Antioch:
– The 1st city where the gospel was openly preached to non-Jews.

– There were no distinctions with regard to the background of people.

– As a result of the gospel being shared with
  all people, some of the Gentiles became Christians.

– The activities of the church eventually brought Jewish
  and Gentile Christians together (they even ate together).

– To eat with someone indicated an acceptance of that person.

– The believers in Antioch did not classify as a 2nd class citizen.

– The religious and racial barriers were being broken.

– People were no longer considered as Jew or Gentile;
  when they surrendered their lives to the Lord, they
  were all grouped in a category called Christian.

– Seeing the Jews and Gentiles eating together
  may have been something new to Peter. As a
  result, he may have been impressed with what
  he found, so he joined in the combined fellowship.
  This indicates his approval of the two groups eating
  together.

Now….let’s see why Paul was upset with Peter.

VERSE 12.
For 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.

When men came from Jerusalem claiming
to represent James, Peter stopped eating with the Gentiles.

Question:
Why did he stop eating with them?
    – Because it could hurt his ministry to the Jews?

    – (Acts 11:1-3)
      The apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard that the
      Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when Peter went
      up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him and
      said, “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate
      with them.”
         – Could it be that he did not want a similar situation where he
            was confronted by the Jews and had to explain his actions?

– Political pressure?
      – There was a movement among the Jews seeking rebellion
        against Rome. Their activity had increased and they had
        threatened to kill anyone who left the central beliefs of
        Judaism.

Question:
Are we ever guilty of changing our habits depending
on which group of people we are around at the time?

VERSE 13.
The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy,
so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

Look at the impact this change by Peter was having on others:
    – Others joined Peter in refusing to eat with Gentiles. They
      were becoming hypocrites who approved eating with the
      Gentiles, but when certain Jews were around, they no longer
      considered eating together as something to be embraced.

They were acting like cowards.

Not only was Peter acting as a hypocrite (by choosing to ignore God’s
command to treat everyone as equals), he was also showing a weakness
of yielding to the pressure of others.
    Note:
    He didn’t want to risk losing his position in the church.
    This wasn’t the 1st time Peter yielded to pressure.
        Question:
        When was another time?
            – When Jesus was arrested, three
              different times Peter denied knowing Him.

What do we know about Barnabas?
– He meant a lot to Paul.
– He was the one who convinced the people in Jerusalem
  to accept the ‘new Paul’, who had been transformed by
  by His encounter with the Lord.
– He went to Cicilia and brought Paul back to work in Antioch.
– He was with Paul on the missionary journey
  that took them to Galatia.
– Paul felt he could depend on Barnabas above all others.

As a result of Paul’s friendship with Barnabas, it may have upset
him the most Paul that Peter’s actions were influencing him too.

Note:
When we see how supportive Barnabas was of Paul, it should
be an inspiration for us to be more supportive of those serving
the Lord, including those with bad reputations before the Lord
changed them.

VERSE 14.
When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel,
I said to Cephas 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?

Paul confronted Peter publicly (“in front of them all”).

Question:
Why do you think he did that?
    – Could it be that since Peter’s actions were public,
      Paul felt his error in judgment should also be known publicly?

Paul reminded Peter that in spite of being a Jew,
he (Peter) had abandoned the principles of Judaism
and lived like a Gentile, which helped bringing unity
to the movement of blending Jews and Gentiles into
a group known as Christians.

Now he was beginning to set a new precedent of not eating
together, which was conforming to the principles of Judaism
and was detrimental to the ‘movement’.

In effect, his actions were suggesting to the Gentiles that they
should not be eating together (which is what the Jews believed).

This was confusing and could cause the Gentiles to start
having the same attitude as the Jews, which could be a
huge setback to the efforts of bringing them together.

GALATIANS 3
VERSES 26-28.
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all
of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with
Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor
is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you
belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according
to the promise.

Paul summarizes the gospel, which is:
    – We are all equal in God’s sight.

Note:
We see that there were definitely religious barriers in Paul’s time.

Question:
Do we have similar barriers today?
    Examples?
        – Racial.
        – Cultural.
        – Language.
        – Political.
        – Theological.

Question:
Do we require converts to become ‘like us’
before we accept them in our church?

Question:
Do we accept poor and oppressed people as equals before Christ?
    Question:
    Do we accept them into our churches?

Question:
Do we sometimes get a ‘holier than thou’ attitude?
How would this condescending attitude promote
Christian fellowship?

Question:
Do we look at others, and immediately
see the ways they are different from us?

Question:
How can we come to the point in our spiritual
lives where we no longer see those differences?

Question:
Are barriers and attitudes created by God, or man?

Question:
Who removes these barriers, and changes these attitudes?

Five things we could learn from this lesson:
1. God equips all people who belong to Him with specific tasks.

2. We need to resist any pressure that causes us to create barriers.

3. Fear should not prevent us from breaking
    down barriers that may exist within the church.

4. We are all one in Jesus Christ.

5. We should not allow outside influences to cause us to become like
    hypocrites. Look at the words of Jesus, regarding hypocrites:

    “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!
    You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces.
    You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who
    are trying to.”
    (Matthew 23:13)

    “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!
    You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when
    you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of
    hell as you are.”
    (Matthew 23:15)

    “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!
    You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you
    have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice,
    mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter,
    without neglecting the former.”
    (Matthew 23:23)

    “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!
    You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are
    full of greed and self-indulgence.”
    (Matthew 23:25)

    “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!
    You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the
    outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and
    everything unclean.”
    (Matthew 23:27)

    He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites;
    as it is written: These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts
    are far from me.”
    (Mark 7:6)

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