Galatians | Week 2 | Bill Bush | Full Service

But yeah, no, I just had some time off, it was cool. Part of our vacation, went back to where we had used to live in Dana Point, California, and sitting on the beach, watching people surf, it kinda reminded me of back when I had

I I end up living at Dana Point because I went there to be a youth pastor originally a million years ago. And I knew I was gonna have to operate in a different way in youth ministry because I grew up in Arizona, have been an inland Calvary. I I would go to the beach, but I wasn't a go out in the ocean type person.

And I knew something changed because when I I showed up the first day of being youth pastor, the youth group had rallied and money and bought me a surfboard. In other words, what they're saying is if you're one of us, if you wanna minister with us, if you wanna be our friend, this is what you're gonna do now. And

I wasn't really excited about that. I didn't mind the ocean, I liked looking at it, I liked the weather, but the problem is I had grown up inland and I had grown up in an era where they started making movies about sharks that wanna kill you. And so I had a very strong belief that this ocean was packed full of sharks

and all they wanted to do was eat you if they could find you.

And and I was a little bit paranoid, and I asked just don't like dark murky water, I don't like cold water, but I went, but it would freak me out. I was very bothered by it. I had that belief in my head, and you know, you'd get out in the water, I'd get so freaked out, I'd be shaking like a chihuahua,

and the people in the ER, why are you shaking? And I'd be like, it's just cold, it's just cold.

A panicky, nervous, weird behavior. And I and I think I mixed my ideas of how animals work and predators work because I thought I don't ever wanna be alone or onto myself

because, you know, I thought maybe that's lions, but I thought sharks, you know, pick off the weak one that's not with the rest. So I'd stay really glad. I'd be out there with one of my high school students and I'd be right next to them the whole time. He's like, dude, what are you doing? I'm trying to catch a wave. I'm like, sorry.

So one day I went out, I just decided, I go, you know, they told me about it. They they informed me that my belief was not accurate. And believed them. I said, you know, you're right.

So I gotta work on this. I gotta get this new belief. It's not that way. I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna just get over this. So I started trying to go on my own and surf. And one day I was out surfing

and and and then I realized no one else was out there because the waves were really small and bad. I didn't mind. I wasn't that good. So but I realized everyone had left and I'm floating out there by myself. And I'm telling myself, I'm fine. I'm fine. And then that soundtrack kept getting louder and louder,

and the water is and then like and then I'm sitting there and then things start going to your head. You sense something below you, you're just like, you just, you just feel it, it's there, it's waiting. I'm floating and it's that coming up like on the poster, any moment

I'm gonna get it. And so I finally just lost it, and I just started swimming in. I go, I'm out of here. And and as I swam in, I felt like this is bad. Then I started to feel, darn it, darn darn And then I go, this is crazy. So I sped up and I go, this is bad. I look like a really fat slow seal and I'm like, you

know, as I'm trying to get in. And finally, as I'm still a little ways from the shore, something hit my surfboard, just bam. And it didn't get me, but it got my surfboard. And right when that hit that, I knew what it was, a shark had attacked and it got my surfboard.

So I screamed and I did not scream in a very manly way at all. I got to an octave I didn't know was possible. And as I did that, I flipped off the board thinking if it hit the board, it got the board. At least maybe while it's distracted by that, I could get away. So I'm like, ah,

and I flipped myself in the water. It's like, and as I sit there, I realized I'm sitting there and the water's only to hear on me.

I was in water only this deep. It's just the way the tide was, there was no way, it was like still far from shore but it stayed real shallow there. And what had happened was the little fin on the bottom of my board hit a rock. And I thought this is it, this is it Martha. I'm done.

And then I realized there's people on the beach.

And I'm like, did any of them see? Didn't seem like it, I wasn't sure, so then I just picked up my board and I tried to walk as cool as I could. Was like, righteous waves, bruh.

And you know what, I realized in that moment thinking back and all of that terror and stupidity is kind of what we're gonna talk about in Galatians chapter two today. It's this big idea is that this is what you believe determines how you behave.

What you believe determines whether what you believe is true or not. So I behaved in a way that was ridiculous in the light of truth, but I believed it. And so that really controls, so you gotta look at how you're wired, you gotta look at what you believe because what you believe ultimately will determine how you behave.

The problem with that is is when you find out what you believe isn't true and you embrace a new belief, the behaviors, the thoughts don't immediately change.

It's kind of a process. It takes a little while, doesn't it? You know something's true now, but you keep falling back into the old belief pattern. You keep falling back. It's hard to get past it. It takes a while to build up that new, that trust in doing it. As a matter of fact, they've discovered this. They had some

researchers who I call sadists, because sometimes they come up with the dumbest research, but they wanted to figure out how the brain works and people learning skills and stuff, is they designed a bicycle that does the exact opposite. So if you go like this with the handlebars, it goes that way.

Could you imagine trying to ride that? And and

they and they had a person, he's trying to ride it, and they they crashed immediately. And he says, I'm gonna master this. They go, okay. Take the bike. And they wanted to see how long it'd take. It took them almost six months. But it took them months, believe it or not. And he mastered riding it. Everything was opposite, and he got completely proficient at it. So he comes back like, wow, he totally can ride this bike. Then they go, try this normal bike.

And he got on a regular bike, bam, crashed. But then he kept trying and it took maybe thirty minutes, an hour, and he was back to riding the normal bike again. See, because he could get back. It was you could fall back to the old belief easier even as you transition.

The reason I share that is because that's kinda what's happening

in Galatians two and the whole story of Galatians is the church start up, Jesus comes preached the gospel and when it came to the law he says, hey, didn't come to abolish it but to fulfill it, but what did that mean? Because the church started with Jews, and the Jews originally

thought when the Messiah showed up, they thought he's only for us. And then Peter in Acts chapter 10 gets this vision, and he's the first one to go to a Gentile's, And all of sudden, wow, all these people that aren't Jewish just became

Christians. They put their faith in Christ, and then they go, wow, I guess God had a bigger plan than we thought. That was the mystery. The gospel was for all, and the gospel was Jesus. The mystery of the gospel is God was gonna save us. This great mystery is not a mystery to us. It was Jesus.

And so they had to have you know, they had a conference. They started talking about, you know, what does that mean? What does it mean if the Gentiles? And really, they had to decide how Jewish do you need to be to be a Christian?

How much of the Jewish traditions and the rituals they did in following God are you supposed to be? And and and and and and and in chapter two, Paul talks about he starts off where he even went to a conference for that because all these Gentiles

are becoming Christians and now they don't know because they're mad, and so they had to have this conference to say, so does that mean if you're a Gentile and you become a Christian, you have to get circumcised? Because that'll really drive the numbers of membership down.

And and they walked through all this stuff and they decided, no, you don't have to become Jewish in a sense to be a Christian.

Well, what happened was a lot of people have a hard time with new belief and and and finding out their other belief was wrong. And so as Paul went out and spread the gospel, these false teachers were following him. They're called the Judaizers. And they were teaching that, yeah. Yeah. It's Jesus. You need Jesus,

but you also better be circumcised. You better you better only eat the dietary restrictions that we were required to do, you have to do these festivals on these days like we always did, it was about diet days and circumcision and all that kind of stuff,

and they had already decided you don't have to do that anymore, and that's why he's writing Galatians. As we opened up last week, Daniel did a moderately adequate job last week of opening it. I'm just kidding, he crushed it.

But the whole idea was was when they're looking at it and they're talking about it, they're following and they're saying Paul is, you're teaching a false gospel. You're teaching an easy believism. You're teaching, you're not teaching people to really do what they're supposed to do.

And so that's why Galatians is actually very personal, because Paul's defending stance of what he does, but also trying to show what the gospel isn't. And in chapter two he kinda turns that corner and says hey, and what he really is trying to talk about is what's the difference between law versus the real gospel?

What does it mean? So what does law even mean? Before I read the passage, the part of the passage I'm gonna read, we gotta lay out this foundation. So when they say the law, what the real false teaching was rituals make me right. Rituals make me right. See, and that's where this legalism came in.

It's the behavior is is is the ritual parts of the law, and it was this idea that you have to do this or you're not right before God.

And see, that was a a a mistake the Jews made when they had God given them the law, and along with the law, there wasn't just and we're not talking about the moral laws. We're not talking about the 10 commandments. We're not talking about how God designed us to live and designed life to work. Those have never changed. God doesn't change. What it's talking about is in the Old Testament, when people try to fight against, well, we're under grace, not law, you don't even know what that means, because there was three types of laws.

There's the moral law, which Jesus repeated all of them. You go read the Sermon on the Mount. And and then there was the the the civil law, which was the laws in the old testament had to deal with Israel as a country. We're not Israel. We're not we're not a theocracy. So those obviously don't matter anymore.

And then there was the ceremonial laws, the circumcision, the purification

rituals that you had to do before you went to the temple because, well, you're a sinner and you gotta get yourself purified before you go. And then all the things they did at the temple, of the sacrificial system, all the things they did and a lot of the the feasts and all that was geared towards that and and all that had to do. Well, the problem is if Jesus was the lamb of God when he said I came to fulfill the law, he was that sacrifice.

So why would you continue to do the rituals that are looking forward to an actual sacrifice that actually took care of it? It's been taken care of. You don't have to keep doing these things. It'd be like if you had a picture of

a loved one because they're gone and they're not around, they've been traveling or they've been you haven't seen them in years and there you see this picture and then they show up. Would you start actually looking at them early? Like, you know, I'm good. I gotta keep looking at the picture for an hour a day.

You don't need that. But the real heart of the problem wasn't even the rituals, wasn't even that, wasn't even what Daisy do, the heart was what was being taught.

That's why they said Paul taught an easy believism because oh, it's all just the grace of Christ, was because they believed that the rituals made you right before God. Believe that anymore, you're canceled.

And yet it acts like the gospel where God says, this is what a male is, this is what a female is. The guy says, this is what marriage is, this is how I designed a family to be, This is Abortion's murder. Things that killing another

human being is murder. Somehow the world says, is it really that easy? Is it that complicated? That's not right. You're so closed minded. So now if I say, well that's what God says, you cancel.

But I thought you accepted everybody. It didn't really matter. I didn't think you had the authority. You're not acting like, who gave you that?

And a lot of that has slipped into the church. You know why? Because the world says it's legalistic, so you gotta look like you care about everything. Because we know we do not have the energy or the ability to care about everything that the world keeps throwing at you.

A lot of it is because we have a day and age that the world is smaller now. We know what's going on everywhere.

Just a generation or two ago, you didn't know about anything beyond your own town. So yeah, you poured your energy into what you need to do there, but now we're supposed to care about everything. Human beings are not designed for that bandwidth. God can handle that, we can't. We're supposed to bloom where we're planted,

not just bomb everywhere else.

And God gives us specific callings. We have specific wiring. Some of us care about one issue more than another, but always we should be bringing the gospel. That's the issue we should all embrace. But the world says no, care about this, care about it. You know, it's so bad, like why does

why does a company that makes beans and a company that makes kids cartoons have to give out a public statement on everything? Why does companies need to do that? Because of the world's gospel. The world's gospel is if you don't say it, then you're bad. You gotta and so the problem is if you are commenting on everything,

how many things are you actually changing? Have you ever got up and said, I'm gonna do everything today?

Anybody ever get that done? If you get up every day with a list that's everything you wanna do with your whole life, you're not gonna do anything. You're gonna curl up in a ball on the couch and say, dear God, make me a bird so I can fly far far away. I can't handle this stress anymore.

A bean company has to make a comment like like like just to show that they care about the world, they don't care about the world, they make beans.

And that slipped into the church. Here's why this matters.

The last five years I've had the most pressure from people coming to me and saying, why didn't you preach about that? Why didn't you preach about this? Why didn't you say that? Why didn't you comment on this thing? Did you hear what happened here? Did you hear what happened there? Did you hear what happened? Come

on people, put your brain in on mode 52 weekends a year. If I stopped each week to specifically just address something that happened, first of all, which thing that happened? There's more than one a week. Secondly,

when would we ever go just on the path that God's called us to go? When would I be able to shepherd us where we need to go?

My job is not to act like a spiritualized version of a newscaster. That's not my job. It's not your job either.

We need a bloomer we're planted, embrace the love of Christ and he said my burden is light, my yoke is easy. What he meant was you, me,

relate to me every day. Learn from me every day. Embrace my word every day and as you walk out your door, just be me to the people around you and engage right where you're at and what's right in front of you. That's what we're called to do.

It's a distraction from the enemy. It's the same lie that he got Adam and Eve to believe. That if we mix these philosophies, and that's why Daniel quoted how there are so many people in church that say they're Christians, but they don't believe the bible's the word of God. You know why?

Because if they believe the bible's the word of God, they can't just say Jesus loves me and then ignore what Jesus says. I need to be able to do what I wanna do. So I wanna believe in Jesus, but I don't want to do relationships the way he says to. Therefore, Jesus didn't say that. There's no proof of that.

If you really wanna know if the Bible is the word of God, go actually study it. Go actually study all the proof and all the stuff out there. You're just believing someone had told you from an Uncle Fudd said this about that, that I've heard that this happened and there's this contradiction here, so it's

a smokescreen. You just wanna live the way you wanna live and you don't want to accept that, but you somehow you still wanna love Jesus or know his love. That's not a healthy relationship, that's an abusive relationship.

And that's what Paul is really talking about here. It still matters today because it's still happening today, and it's an attack. And the reason this is important and a big deal for us is because it can happen to any of us. It can happen to any of us. Let me finish this this passage here. Go back to verse 11.

It happened to Peter. Peter, like the Gopher, and this isn't Peter like ten seconds after he denied Christ, lops some ears off. This is like twenty five years later, Peter. He is the mature leader of leaders. And Paul uses this as an example to say why this is important to listen to because it's easy to fall for.

He says this, but when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face for what he did was very wrong. When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers who were not circumcised. Remember one of rituals, if you're not circumcised, you're not good, I can't be around you.

But he was no had no problem with it because he knew that wasn't native anymore.

So at first he was doing that, but afterwards when some friends of James came, they were coming from Jerusalem, they were more of the law, the legalistic ones, Peter wouldn't eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of the criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision.

And here's what's worse, as he did it, as a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter's hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. Even Barnabas, he's called the son of encouragement. Think about what that looked like.

He was eating with these Gentile believers. He's Peter. He walked with Jesus. He walked on water, and he's all chummy with them. Then this group of guys, oh, that that I'm not I'm done with you. It kinda reminds you, did any of you have summer friends growing up?

You know, back before your parents were taxi Uber drivers and would just take you anywhere? You basically were were confined to how far your bike could get?

And so you would like usually sign a peace treater and make a union with that kid up the street that's more popular than you, but you became good friends for the summer, or maybe you were the popular one, you're like, I guess I'll slum it with this guy because there's no one else around. And you ended up being really good friends for the summer, what happened first day of school?

Later, popular guy, girl that went back to their crowd and it was over with. You realize that's the whole plot for the movie Grease?

Summer loving.

Peter Danny Zuccoed.

Those sandy gentiles. So when he saw him again with his greaser buddies, he's like, Sandy? I'm too cool. How

do you think those Gentile believers felt? He had fear, judgmentalism, hypocrisy, he led others astray. That's gotta be exhausting and frustrating. He says, when I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others,

since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish law and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions? See, that's what we do. If you're a legalist, you'll point out things that other people do wrong that you don't,

but you'll ignore the things that you're doing.

He goes, you and I are Jews by birth, not sinners like the Gentiles. Wow, that's harsh. No, but what he meant was they didn't have the law. They didn't know better. We had an advantage. He goes, yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Christ,

not by obeying the law, and we have believed in Christ Jesus so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right by God by obeying the law.

Paul wasn't trying to convince Peter in this moment. He was just trying to convict him. A lot of you in this room, do not have to convince. You know this is the way it is, but you're like Peter. You get easily sucked back into that old behavior.

And maybe it's because you grew up in a legalistic setting. Maybe you just think of the church that way. I mean, you're just wired that way.

But when we act that way,

we don't really share the Gospel.

And when we mix the philosophies the other way, the wrong view of what the gospel is, love. There's

we end up in a situation where there's just no grace.

How much grace is in the world's gospel?

Zero.

What the gospel really means is you should, as you know his love, you wanna live like him, And when you blow it, when that selfish, when that shadow, when you have these Peter moments, when you fall back, grace means you don't have to hide it, you don't have to argue about it, you don't have to you will run back to him

because you know he loves you.

Where are you at on that? What do you really believe about the Gospel?

Because in this church, what I prayed about when we started this church and to lead it, don't wanna be like I Peter, I wanna lead people down a road of hypocrisy by being legalistic.

I want us to have that love of Christ, and I want us to know Jesus so much that we wanna live our lives pointing other people to Jesus by loving them the same. And, yeah, behavior has to change. If you're a Christian, your behavior changes.

So my point is if you're sitting here going, I do believe in Jeologis, but I'm ignoring him on all these things he says on how I should be living, don't force yourself at first. What you should ask yourself is get alone and say, why do I not want to?

What is why do I not want to trust him in this? Why do I not want because there's a lie you are believing. And the bible says you can take every thought captive. You need to take that lie captive and wrestle it to the ground with the power of the holy spirit.

And step out in faith. Because only the real gospels were the hope, the love, the faith, the joy. Where are you at? Because I know what we want as a church. We want to be a place where we find the real gospel and we show people the real gospel.

I came back from vacation. I ran in. I came in here on the coffee shop one morning and one of our security guys, because I want to give you an example of how the gospel works from our safety and security team. If you think of a ministry in a church that would probably lean towards law,

and and and also you think, how do those guys minister? Yeah. They they they physically try to keep us safe and secure, but they see that even doing that is a gospel act. And when they are in the act of dealing with potential issues, they don't just say you're a threat, you're in need.

And they try to look for a way to help.

And so I I I ran into Jason on our staff of security, and he was talking to a guy, the guy goes, hey. I want you to see the gym. Jim's like, yeah. So glad I got to meet. I've been coming for a couple months. This is the greatest thing, and he was just talking about how his life has changed, there's so much hope, and he was hopeless, and and and he now knows Jesus, and and it was a powerful thing, and he goes, now Jason's been meeting with me. So the security guy's been stepping out and meeting with him. And I thought, this is amazing. This is us, our church being our church. We help someone that didn't know Jesus find Jesus. Awesome. I leave, see Jason later. He goes, hey. You didn't know his whole story.

What I go, how I ended up meeting with him. I don't know. He goes, couple months back, we got a call, safety and security, there's a man in his car threatening to kill himself. That was him.

And they went out, talked him out of the car, got him into the prayer room, the prayer room, they talked to him and prayed over him, then in the he kept coming back. Somewhere there, someone maybe in a sermon or whatever, he came to know put his faith in the gospel of who Jesus is and his grace.

And he goes, but here's the weird thing. He wasn't about to kill himself because he never knew Jesus and was hopeless to that. He grew up in church.

He knew the whole gospel story. He would tell you he believed in Jesus. He knew the bible inside and out. He lived and had always gone to church. The problem is it was almost a cultic, super legalistic church that was all about everything we said law was. It was like, you do this or else. You do this or else. You believe in Jesus or else. You do this or else. It was all about the or else. And that did not lead him to faith, hope, and love. That led him to frustration,

to fear, to condemnation, to judgmentalism, and it led him down the road that when life just wouldn't work and wouldn't work, he's like, what's the deal, God? I did all the deals. Why aren't you giving me what I want? And he ended up in our parking lot in his car saying, I'm gonna end it right now.

And now his life is different than it's ever been, and it only changed in one moment. Simple moment changed everything. He saw Jesus correctly, and he genuinely put his faith in that love and grace. Amen?

That's what Paul is talking about. Where are you at? Father God, I just thank you, Lord. I thank you that your word is just as relevant today as it ever was. And so Lord, I just I just pray for myself, everyone in this room, anyone watching online,

anyone that's rewatching this later in the week, give you a little pre prayer.

That God, we heard you speak. And Lord, what we believe is the real gospel. What we believe is your grace and your love. And what we believe is that because you saved us from such wretched sin and hopelessness and you love us first, that you've now freed us to follow you.

So I pray for anyone struggling with trusting you even though they know you died for him, let them look at the love

to have that faith to trust what else you have for us.

I pray with anyone wrestling with us, anyone struggling with us, anyone battling because they've been sucked into the Gospel of the world and they're trying to sprinkle Jesus into it, Lord, they would just embrace your love fully and lean into the life that you have for them completely.

I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Hey. I love you guys. It's good to be back.

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