ATTN: When Kate Middleton became the Duchess of England, she could no longer do what she used to do as a commoner, such as go to the local Y and dip in the hottub, I’m sure. But she gets to go to places and do things that we would never get to do such as live in the palace or invite David Beckham and his Spice girl wife over for dinner. However, in the meantime, she will have to learn to carry herself as a princess. Her mannerism, her words, her interactions with people, she no longer lives for herself but she represents the country. And that is what we have become as Christians. We belong to the king of kings and therefore, our lives must match our position. That is what is meant by the big words like, “sanctification” or becoming holy. All it means is that we are becoming the people that we already are in position. Become who you already are! You are made a prince or princess of the king, but you grew up in not so nice part of Tacoma and all the habits that are associated with that place. So, the rest of your life, you are striving through various trials and temptations to become the person God gave you in position.

Another way of saying that is, as Christians, we are to live the life that is in step with the truth of the gospel. We strive to live holy and clean life not in order to become God’s children, but because we are made His children. Not in order to, but because of! This is really important because elsewhere the Bible says that if we do not strive to live as God’s children, it simply goes to show that we were never God’s children to begin with. The very fact that we are striving to live holy and godly life is proof that we are children of God.

If a woman says her name is Kate Middleton and is the duchess of England but does not live in the palace, nor has any mannerisms that is fitting for the princess, you can reasonably conclude that she is an imposter. If we say we are children of God but we do not strive to live righteously nor strive to love His other children, the church, then you can reasonably conclude that you are an imposter! “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” Romans 8:13.

So, it is vital that we walk in step with the truth of the gospel because that will demonstrate whether our salvation is genuine. And also it is important in that it gives us a guideline on how to conduct ourselves in things that are not mentioned in the Bible. For example, Jesus didn’t say anything about online gaming. Nor did He say anything about online dating. What about clubbing for young people? What about dating for the sake of dating? What about moving from company to company for a higher paying position or church to church for a bigger crowd if you are a pastor? All these are relevant to the question, “Are we walking in step with the truth of the gospel?” “Does that align with the truth of the gospel?” Think about what that means: The gospel establishes our identity, security and value. The gospel that says that Jesus died in our place and all those who received Him are not condemned but are received into God’s kingdom. Therefore, our value, security, identity lies in Him and not in the world – namely, in our connection, in our popularity, in our monetary value or marketability. If we have truly believed this, then how might that affect what we do in every part of our lives? What would your life look like if we truly understood and accepted and were saturated with the truth of the gospel? What kind of decisions would you make in your job, in your school, in your dating relationship, etc?

Today, we will look at examples of what it looks like to deviate from the truth of the gospel, not to walk in steps. And learn from it as not to make that same mistake. And who is our bad example? Peter. (We should really thank him later for making all the mistakes for us!)

1. Fearing people

Fearing people, or caring about what people think more than what God thinks is out of step with the truth of the gospel. This is the sin that Peter commits. V. 11 “[11] But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. [12] For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.”

Peter was visiting Paul in a city called Antioch where so many non-Jews became Christians. So, Paul was taking care of a multi-ethnic church and Peter was visiting it. At first, Peter was mixing well with the crowd, eating both with the Jews and non-Jews. But some officials who were Judaizers who believed that you still had to obey the Old Testament laws to be saved came down to Antioch. And when Peter saw these officials, from that point on, he only ate with the Jews because according to the Old Testament law, it would be wrong for a Jew such as Peter to eat with Non-Jews which he was doing. So, even though Peter’s belief was that it is not wrong for Jews and Gentiles to eat together any more, because some Jewish officials were in the room, he didn’t want to offend them and ate only with the Jews to be safe.

Paul sees this and is incensed! And he calls Peter out in public and lets him know that he’s being hypocritical and out of step with the truth of the gospel. Fearing men, caring about what people think more than what God thinks, so that it changes our behaviours is wrong. It is unbecoming of those who are God’s children.

APP: How does it manifest itself today? (fearing men)

1. We do not ever speak against the ills of society. We don’t ever speak against homosexuality, abortion, racism, immigration because they are hot topic issues and can get some people upset and not like you anymore. That would be fearing people and not in step with the truth of the gospel. John the baptist lost his head because he spoke against King Herod’s immorality involving another man’s wife. Jesus was killed because he made enemies of religious leaders. Now, we want to do this from a loving heart, of course…
2. We do not blow the whistle when there is obvious wrong-doing because of the status of the man  and you fear for your job. – (Joe Paterno, the coach of Penn State, for a modern example)  david & Nathan.
3. Young people not saying anything when a friend is in a compromising position, involving an opposite sex, for example, or drugs or harmful habits, for the sake of keeping the friendship.
4. we do not witness! For fear of what they might think of us!

In the end, it doesn’t matter what others think of us. They will all die and so will we. So, it doesn’t matter what we think of others. It doesn’t even matter what we think of God. it only matters what God thinks of us. Let the gospel come in, stirred inside of you and melt and and you become saturated with it so that your identity and your value comes from who you are in Christ more than who people say you are.

2. Segregating/division along the racial, age, socio-economic lines.

What Peter’s fearing of men caused him to do is to segregate himself and cause division in the church along the racial line.  12 “… but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.^a 13And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.”

This causing of division, too, is living out of step with the truth of the gospel. Peter’s sin of insecurity and not resting in his new identity afforded by the gospel causes segregation in the church! Sin always separates. But God unites! At the tower of Babel, people gathered together to rebel against God, and God confused their language and separated them. But at Pentecost, God gave them the miracle of tongues so that they could understand one another. That was the sign that now God has fixed what men have broken – putting together these people who were separated by their sins. So, walking in step with the truth of the gospel is striving to unite and be one with those who are so different from one another.

The good news of the gospel is such that it has the power to unite people who were formerly enemies – whether blacks and whites, japanese and koreans, 1st gen immigrants and 2nd gen immigrants, etc b/c their common enemy – sin – has been defeated, and the common Lord is worshiped in Jesus Christ. And thus we all are on the same team – the team of God.

APP: One measure of spiritual maturity is how well we get along with people who are vastly different from us. Do I have biblical basis for this? Yes. Eph 4:11-14 [11] And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, [12] to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, [13] until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, [14] so that we may no longer be children…”
The more mature we are, the more variety of people we enjoy being with – notice that I didn’t say the more mature you are, the more variety of people you associate with, because you might be forced to do so in your job, or your school, but how many different groups of people do you enjoy being with? Think about Jesus. What kind of people did Jesus love being around? Little children, older man like Nicodemus, young women like Mary & Martha, young guys like his disciples, the poor who came to him for bread, and the rich such as Zacchaeus, gentile sinner like the woman at the well, a religious leader like a leader of a synagague whose daughther was sick… Jesus kept unity with and enjoyed being around all these people who were so different from Him. The more mature we are, the more diverse people we can become one with. And the opposite is also true. One of the ways that our immaturity shows is that we insist on associating only with people who are exactly like us. Look at little children and who they play with. Other little children who are in the same grade and same gender and usually the same ethnicity except at our church, they have no choice but to play with children who are of different ethnicity!

C.S. lewis – “Lovers are face to face interested in each other, friends are side by side, facing the same goal.” What if our goal, our interest was in the kingdom of God and His righteousness? Wouldn’t we be friends with all those who goal is the same although on the outside we may seem different? Eph. 2:4, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Our church is a training ground for this. Stick around and strive to be one with others out of your comfort zone.

3. Legalism

Another element that is out of step with the truth of the gospel is legalism. As a matter of fact, legalism directly opposes the gospel. Legalism is trying to earn salvation by keeping the rules and laws and as you can see, is exactly what the gospel is not. Paul makes it so crystal clear: Ga 2:15[15] We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; [16] yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
The gospel says God earned it for us and gave it to us. But legalism says we have to earn it by our good works. Now, the legalists are usually the best kind of people on the outside. They don’t drink, they don’t chew, they don’t cuss, they give generously – you would love to have them as your neighbors, like Mormons. But what they really do is underestimate just how depraved and sinful they are. And overestimate their own effort to overcome their sin and flaws. It’s like a cancer patient in his last days saying, “Oh, I just need to start eating healthy and exercise regularly and I will be all right!” No. You need a new body if you are going to live at this point. That is what God does for us. He knew how grave our sin was. It was terminal. It was going to all lead us to eternal death. The only way we were going to be healed is if He takes on that ugly cancer cell called sin and die in our place. We make light of what God has done when we think, “I can save myself by being good and doing good through legalism.”

This mentality of earning is ingrained in our American mindset. Don’t you hear it in so many of the athletes today in interviews who they attribute their good success? Their own hard work and dedication and the teammates help… so, in the end, who gets the credit? Themselves. And we see this in churches too. How often we create our own measuring stick and measure people by our own standard? Such as how they are dressed. How they talk. Where they work. How many degrees they have from where…. Estimating their value based on what they have done rather than what God has done for them!

Let me ask you, As 1: What justifies you? What really makes you think you are acceptable before God? What make you alright? What makes you a good person? Tim Keller says that we need to repent of “good” things we have done that we think will justify us. That’s legalism. If the good things you have done somehow will contribute to your being accepted by God, that’s salvation by good works and we need to repent. I’ve always said, “Hell will be full of good people who tried to make themselves good.” Heaven on the other hand will be full of bad people whom Christ made good.

It is so easy to fall back into legalism as we read Peter, Jewish believers, and even Barnabas falling into it. Legalism makes us judge and value people according to their external attributes such as their race, their status, their family background,

APP:   How does the gospel frees us from legalism, Segregation, and the fear of men? By changing our hearts. Changing our hearts so that we can rest in God and be happy in Him. I struggle daily with this – to fight to rest in God and walking in step with the truth of the gospel. Last Friday was the first day I had off in almost two months. There was no school because of in-service for teachers and I talked to the administrator at my school so that I could have that day off. The reason why I took that day off is because first, I needed a day off and second, I realize that I’m bordering on becoming a workaholic. Even though I knew I needed a day off, I had to fight hard the urge to open my computer and work on the sermon or go to the Friday Youth and Young adult meeting at night because my legalistic self was saying, “But you are the pastor. Everything rides on you and you need to be there for everyone at all times. Don’t you want people to think good about you?” But I reminded myself of the gospel, “No. My main concern is to rest in God and delight in Him. Jesus is the head of our church and it will go on fine without me in the middle of it all.” And so I picked up a book, sat on the couch, drank coffee and read all afternoon which is how relax. And you know what I found the book talked about? Exactly the stuff that I already wrote down at that point for this sermon. It was almost as if God was saying to me that I was doing good by taking that time off and simply delighting myself in Him. Some of us here need to take a day off and take time to delight in God. Some of us, on the other hand, need to get up and give ourselves to others more. But do so while resting in God, finding our delight in God.

World values a hard working, workaholic type of pastor and I gave into that and became restless. But that is not in line with the truth of the gospel. Yes, we do need to work hard but also we do need the rest…