How the Persecutor Turned Into a Preacher [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. A theme that we'll see over and over through Galatians, they were essentially saying that yes, you're a Christian because you accept Jesus, but it's also important that you keep the Old Covenant ritual of circumcision to be fully accepted by God. To be fully accepted, you must add something to the Gospel.

You must add something to what Jesus has done, and that's the issue that is at stake. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series Galatians as presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina.

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Here is Alan Wright. This is understandable to us in this world of tension that we live in. If there were Al Qaeda operatives, spies, that were in the midst of our Pentagon, we would want to know it, wouldn't we? People who are acting like they are on your side, but they're not. And what Paul's saying is this urgency for the Galatian churches and urgency for the early church to recognize the false brothers. He's speaking of a spiritual dynamic that is taking place. And what these false brothers were essentially saying was a theme that we'll see over and over through Galatians. They were essentially saying that you're a Christian because you accept Jesus, but it's also important that you keep the old covenant ritual of circumcision to be fully accepted by God. To be fully accepted, you must add something to the gospel.

You must add something to what Jesus has done. And that's the issue that is at stake here. And so this is what Paul has gone to address.

Now he's very, very forthright about these spies. And you must realize that Paul is under an enormous pressure. Most of the persecution at this point in his ministry could have lifted if he would have just compromised on this point.

And after all, as we'll talk about a little later, how big a point could it be? Is circumcision really a sin? What's the big deal? If he would have just agreed to add to his gospel proclamation to the Gentiles, you should also be circumcised as a sign of your inclusion like they were in the old covenant.

If you just add that in, all of this persecution against him would have lifted. Can you imagine the pressure? Do you know what that feels like?

When somebody's just hammering you all the time, people around you just coming at you, just pecking away at you just over and over and over. Why don't you do this? Why don't you do this? If you just do this, we'd be happy.

If you just do this, we'd be happy. There's just enormous pressure. And I want you to see how important this was to Paul. He would just absolutely refuse to cave into this pressure. He was resolute about this. And he called them what they were.

He said, these are spies in our ranks. Now I say this to paint a picture for you of a spiritual battle that is going on. It's going on every day, Christians.

It's going on. A battle for your thinking. A battle that is intended to dilute the gospel of its power. A battle that is meant to bring division in the body of Christ.

And such must be identified. I'll tell you one of the things that I really admire about the leadership of this church. When I first came into this church years ago, and I'd come from a place in which, the denomination I was in before this, there was so much emphasis on love, but there was never any emphasis on discipline.

You know, love disciplines. And here's one of the things that's really important about grace. If we believe that grace is important, like Paul, Paul's willing to fight for grace.

He's willing to stand up and call it what it is when there's an enemy of grace. I always liked the fact this church would discipline people. You know, it's like parenting. I think church disciplines like this too. You know, we almost never have disciplinary matters coming before the session.

It's pretty rare. But you know, it's like once there's a family and it's well ordered and there's peace and there's tranquility, you don't have to discipline all the time. It's like parenting well. You know, if you're having to discipline your children all the time, all the time, all the time, something's not right.

Instead, there's an ordering authority that takes place in a healthy family. And we don't have to do this very often, but I remember years ago, there was a man who came in this church and nobody knew. I'm going to keep some of the details sort of vague, but he purported to have some physical ailments.

He purported himself to be in financial need and he also purported himself to have a certain standing in society. I met him because it was a Sunday night and I was praying for people at the end of a Sunday night service. I was just praying for people.

It was a line of people. And this man came up to receive prayer and I realized pretty quickly as I asked how I could pray for him that he wanted something much more than me to pray for him. And he began instead to talk and engage in a conversation. And what he wanted was for me to come over to his house that week and meet with him. And I just, I don't know, I just had a moment of discernment, I think, that I wasn't supposed to go meet at this man's house. Plus, this wasn't the time to be setting up appointments with me. I was praying with people. And also, for once in my people-pleasing life where it's hard to ever admit that I can't do something this week, I realized I had a really full schedule and I just said to him as plain as I could, I said, I said, well, I want to pray with you tonight. I said, I don't know if I can come and visit you this week.

I said, but it might be one of our associates could come and make a visit with you. And when I said that to him, he cussed me. He cussed me in the prayer line.

Now, you don't have to have the spiritual gift of discernment to realize something's wrong when you're praying for people and the man's cussing you in the prayer line. Well, I knew I wouldn't have anything to do with that man, but you know what he did? He spent the next weeks coming in and amazingly, cleverly aligning himself with people in our church.

I couldn't believe it. There were people in our church that started giving him money. There were people in our church that started saying, we ought to do more for this man. And there were people in our church that started coming in and saying, is it true what he's been saying about the leaders?

He was going around telling lies about the leaders. A man didn't even know our church, not even part of our church cussed the senior pastor in the prayer line and people are falling for it. We went to the man and we tried to correct the man and the man wouldn't be corrected. You know what we did with that man? We sent some elders to speak to him and say, you know what? You can't come to this church.

He mumbled something about threatening some kind of lawsuit or whatever. Listen, one thing about your elders, they ain't afraid of anybody. I love that. You know what? The unity of the church and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is that important, isn't it? And so partly, what Paul's doing is he's saying, you be sure and recognize the spies. Now I want to add to this, as soon as I tell that story, somebody's going to go out and think everybody's a spy. Not everybody's a spy.

Most people aren't spies. I was reading Mark Driscoll's message that he, I don't know when he preached on this text on Galatians 2. Mark Driscoll is a pastor at Morris Hill and a very well known and very fast growing multi-site church. He's a flame with the gospel and he's very open and honest. I like the fact that he preaches one hour and has one of the fastest growing multi-site churches.

Make a mental note of that, everybody. But here's what he told this story at his sermon on Galatians 2. I thought you'd get a kick out of it too because this is what can happen if you think everybody's a spy. He said, I had a guy come in this week, again, don't know what year he's preaching this, but he said he's a pastor from out of state. Good pastor, good guy. I'm reading from his sermon transcript right now. He's got a church of 4,000, this pastor that came to visit Mark Driscoll. He's got a church of 4,000 people. I learned some things just visiting with him.

He was very helpful. He loves the Lord. And we were sitting there talking and he asked me, he says, what is your position on smoking? I said, Driscoll said, I said, do you want my personal opinion or do you want the Bible?

And the pastor said, well, what's your personal opinion? And Mark Driscoll said, well, I'm asthmatic. I don't like cigarettes or cats. He went on and said, I don't like to smoke cats and I don't like cats who smoke. I don't like cigarettes or cats in any combination or form.

I don't. He said, well, okay, if that's your opinion, what's in the Bible? Driscoll answered, cats aren't in the Bible and neither are cigarettes, so I can't outlaw either of them, though I would like to. He continued, I'd like to get rid of cigarettes, cats, and country western music. If I had three wishes, that's what I'd do. No more cats, no more cigarettes, no more country western music, okay?

That's what I would ask for. But you know what? It's not in the Bible.

So do I have the right to make rules about things that aren't in the Bible? I don't. Now I'd like to. I'd like to be God and set myself on a throne and make judgments about everyone else, especially country western chain smoking cat owners.

That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Imagine for 99 days in a row someone tells you, I love you, I'll never forsake you. Wouldn't you feel cherished? But what would happen if on the 100th day that same person said, I'm not sure you're good enough for me. If you don't measure up, I don't think I'll love you anymore.

Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days? Wouldn't one percent of conditional love poison the other 99 percent? Well, just one percent of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear. What if I don't measure up?

When might I be rejected? When the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church, the apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Alan Wright's 12-message audio series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians and that's the gospel.

Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. But he said, the goal of my name isn't Jesus. I can't do that. I don't have that kind of authority or right. So I said, well, here's the deal. It's not a sin. It's an issue of conscience. He said, well, what about people who say that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and you've got to take good care of the temple? And I said, well, that's a good argument.

But usually those people also drink a lot of caffeine, eat Twinkies, and half their food comes out of a clown that comes through the window of their car. He said, so there are other issues with the temple of the Holy Spirit. So they're going to have to.

If they're going to be consistent, they've got to take the whole thing. And I finally drizzled and said, why do you ask? And the man said, well, cause I want to have a cigarette.

Is that okay? You need to know who the spies are, but not everybody's a spy. Why was this issue of circumcision so important? I want you to see this is how our enemy's clever.

And this is how this can emerge. This was the sign of the old covenant. It was given to Abraham. It was a sign of inclusion in the covenant. So circumcision was something that God had at one point commanded his people to do.

Normally, the tempter will seek to snare you by referencing something God has said but twisting it in a wrong direction. And what had happened in the intertestamental period, in this period of the second century before Christ, there had been an elevation amongst the Jews of the importance of circumcision because of the persecution against them. In the Hellenistic Roman period, circumcision became more prominent because the Jewish people were in a political environment that was very hostile. And according to Maccabean literature, the reign of terror that was unleashed by Antiochus IV in 175 to 163 BC, according to the Maccabean literature, included a prohibition of circumcision and a policy by which babies who had been circumcised were put to death along with the mothers who had submitted them to the sign of the covenant. And so in reaction to such a brutal assault on their Jewish identity, if anything, the sign of circumcision was elevated to even higher stature to say essentially, we've been terrorized about this and so we must absolutely hold firm that we will not fail to keep the sign of the covenant. So you can imagine that by the time that Paul is preaching this gospel amongst Jewish people who have memories in recent centuries of babies being even put to death because they've been circumcised, how it would seem to them, God had once commanded this, it must be important how quickly they could develop a thinking that this must still be a central issue for us as Christians. And Paul is addressing this right at that point.

This is how tricky it really is. In other words, Paul is not saying that it is circumcision per se that matters. It's not a sin to be circumcised. It's not a sin to not be circumcised. What he's saying instead is that the pressure that is being exerted by these spies to add something to the gospel, that he says, we must not give in to not one inch. There's so much at stake. When the purity of the gospel is at stake, Paul will stake his life right there.

Right there. It's interesting that Paul has taken Titus on this journey and what he says in our text today is that we emerge from this meeting and not even Titus was compelled to be circumcised, that the other brothers, they all said, no, he doesn't have to have the old covenant ritual circumcision. He doesn't have that. No, the gospel stands as the gospel. And so Titus, though he's Greek and Gentile and uncircumcised, he does not need to be circumcised. And so he claims it as a victory that Titus was not circumcised. But what's interesting is that Paul had another young man that he mentored and loved very dearly named Timothy. And Timothy in Acts chapter 16 verse 1, we won't turn there, but let me read these couple of verses to you.

Paul came also to Derbe and Lystra. A disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer. So Timothy's this devout disciple of Jesus and his Jewish mother was also a follower of Christ.

But his father was a Greek, so he had a Jewish mother and a Gentile father. He was well spoken of, Timothy was, by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.

You might look at it and go, well, wait a minute. With Titus, he fought tooth and nail, wouldn't budge an inch. No, you can't compel Titus to be circumcised because he's a Greek. But here come Timothy, who he is mentoring in the faith and becomes his dear friend and his traveling companion, preaching the gospel alongside of him.

And he says, yeah, Timothy, I think you ought to be circumcised. Because the difference was Timothy was going to be going with Paul and mixing in with Jewish circles of people. And those Jewish circles and in the synagogue, he wouldn't even be allowed to mix with them if he was considered a Gentile because of his Greek father.

Then he wouldn't be allowed to interact with those Jews. And so Paul's just saying, it's expedient. It makes sense that in order for you to help me preach the gospel to these Jews, you might as well be circumcised. Because it doesn't really matter, circumcision or no circumcision.

He said, this is just a cultural matter now for you to be able to mix in with them. You know, it makes me think, when I go and I travel and speak in somebody else's pulpit, and because I've been a pastor for 25 years, and when we go and we do a conference somewhere or I preach there, I'm going there not for a platform, but to strengthen that local church. Because you know, when you're a pastor, you just love pastors and you love churches. And you wouldn't ever want to do anything that would undermine what the work of the Lord is that's there. And so I always wanted to let them know, I'm here to come alongside of you and help you in this ministry.

So one of the things that I always wanted to ask is just a little thing that I like to ask. I'll ask the pastor, or ask a leader there, what's the pastor wear when he preaches on Sunday morning? Because if he wears a coat and a tie, and it's kind of formal, then I want to come in in a coat and tie. I don't want to come in in a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops when it's his custom to preach in a coat and a tie. But if I say, well he preaches in a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops, then I'll probably go in in a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops.

Why? Because do I need to have on a coat and a tie in order to preach the gospel? Absolutely not. Do I need to have a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops on in order to preach the gospel? Absolutely not. But you know what would happen?

This is the way people are. If I went in in a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops into a church where a pastor normally wore a coat and a tie, and I preached in that Hawaiian shirt and those flip flops, and the Holy Spirit fell on that church and people's lives were blessed, somebody would be saying afterwards, pastor why don't you wear a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops like that guest preacher did? Then the Holy Spirit would really move.

You see he's kind of silly thinking like that. And so I'm not going to ever want to undermine. I want to be able to come in and relate. As Paul says, I want to be all things to all people so that by all means I could win some to the Lord. But if somebody told me, you can come and you can preach in our pulpit, but here's what we believe. We believe that the gospel is that Jesus has saved us through the cross, plus you must wear a coat and tie. Because the Holy Spirit will only move if you wear a coat and tie.

If somebody told me that, I'd probably show up in a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops. Later in Galatians Paul just puts it point blank and he just says, circumcision or uncircumcision, chapter six verse fifteen. Circumcision, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything.

What counts is a new creation. But in the case of Titus, they were saying, he's not fully Christian. And Paul's saying, he is Christian.

I like what Driscoll said about this. He said, if you got a book of the Bible named for you, you're probably a pretty good Christian. Timothy also was a good Christian. He had a book of the Bible named for him too. So we got an uncircumcised guy and a circumcised guy and both of them got New Testament books named for them.

It's not circumcision or uncircumcision. It is the power of the gospel that is at stake. Imagine, for ninety-nine days in a row, someone tells you, I love you, I'll never forsake you. Wouldn't you feel cherished? But what would happen if on the hundredth day that same person said, I'm not sure you're good enough for me. If you don't measure up, I don't think I'll love you anymore.

Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other ninety-nine days? Wouldn't one percent of conditional love poison the other ninety-nine percent? Well just one percent of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear. What if I don't measure up?

When might I be rejected? When the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church, the Apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Allen Wright's twelve message audio series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians and that's the gospel. Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. When you make your gift to Allen Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership.

Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website pastorallen.org. Allen, I see hope here and I see freedom in Galatians and especially with today's teaching. You normally think of change as something that you decide to do, but what you see in Paul's life is that real change, God's types of change, it's not something that so much you decide on as something that happens to you by God's grace and you respond to it. And the other thing we're going to see, Daniel, is that there are so much discontinuity, so much change in Paul from being a persecutor to being a preacher, but there are also many continuities, many things that stay the same. He's still a man of great zeal. After he's a Christian, all that he'd learned of the scripture, it would still be in him, but now in a new light. And so it's almost amazing that this man who was so strong became so weak and yet in that weakness, he was made strong. So he's just full of these ironies and that's the way God is. He can do anything for anyone and do amazing things through their lives.