Paul’s Letter to the Gauls (Galatians) Chapter 1

Paul gets called out of town for a few days. I made this up. He has to go with some of the Christians who’ve come into the city to hear Peter, and he has to go back to their town. Paul decides to go with them, with some young Christians, and the young Christians are going to baptize some people out there in some town. Paul’s gone about a week now. By the way, this is very reasonable because when you get to Antioch, you’ll need someone waiting to pick you up if you’ve never been there, since there are no street signs and no addresses. You have to be met and brought in, and shown how to get to a certain place because the town’s big and there are no markers. It’s very difficult if it’s the first time there. So, Paul is taking them back home. In this case, they’re taking him to their town and to where they meet. So, he comes back about a week later and walks into a room. It’s a banquet given in Peter’s honor. He’s about to go home. In the meantime, during this week, Blastinius and his friends in the great prevailing church in Antioch are preaching a gospel of merit toward God.

Paul walks into the room, and there’s great joy and exuberance, right? No. How would you feel, Gentile? If you had been in that room, Peter had come up and hugged you, you had hugged him, and you and he and everybody else were getting along fabulously. But since those people had started preaching circumcision for the last week and saying that you could not really be in God’s favor unless you were circumcised, and that the Bible clearly taught that you were not supposed to eat a meal with someone uncircumcised, and here are two, three, four thousand uncircumcised people. You walk into this room, maybe 500 to 1000 people present, and these preachers of this new gospel come in. I’m sure they’re dressed in black. There are about 15 or 20 of them. They’re all sober-faced. Then they look around, and they go over to a table alone, and they do their little prayer, and they do their little whatever it is they do, and all these Gentiles have never heard of any of this, and they’re from the mother church.

Suddenly, my self-esteem is falling through the floor, and so is yours. You don’t know what’s right. You’re confused. Simon Peter walks in as the guest of honor. He looks around, and every one of those guys eyes him, and all these other Christians are looking at him out of the corner of their eyes. Peter waivers, and he goes down and sits down with those men in black, and Barnabas is standing there with him, and Barnabas is just lost. That man led him to the Lord. Now he has led all these people to the Lord, but he is confused and doesn’t know what to do but follow Peter over there. Saints, we’ve got a classical mess on our hands here.

Well, Paul of Tarsus has just come back into town. He doesn’t know everything that’s going on. He walks into the room, and he stands there. I have so many things I want to say at this point. I think Paul has gotten stuck with the image of being a natural rebel. He’s going to go against the crowd because he’s one of these guys who are going to be free no matter what it costs. I’m afraid of those kinds of people, frankly. I really am. If that’s what Paul is, I’d rather have him be that than what Peter and Barnabas are right now, because I need somebody. My life hangs in the balance right now. I’m one of those Christians out there, one of those heathen Gentiles who is uncircumcised. I am really confused. I don’t know if Paul did this out of a naturally bombastic nature, or if we need more men who have visited other realms. To go into the other dimension where there is no dimension. To walk through that door into other realms, to leave this planet and go where all things are real and all things are true, and discover what really is. Yes, we need more men like that. A man who has been caught through the other door and has seen that Christ is everything. To have faced your God in other realms. I’m certain that’s what we need. A man who has seen Jesus Christ in all his glory. That’s all we need, and I think that’s what we got that day when Paul walked through that door and walked into that room and saw what had happened. He was really clear that this was not a man to be crossed, and he was a man to be respected, loved, and, in almost any conceivable situation except the supremacy and centrality of Jesus Christ alone as it comes to salvation and to living the Christian life.

Well, I hope that’s what I’m saying here. I believe it is, but now I’m going to shift the scenery. I want to talk to you about something. I want to talk to you about Peter and those guys over there at that table. What’s going on over there? Let’s talk about Blastinius and his friends at that table. What is going through the mind of Blastinius? Now help me. They’re sitting over there at that table, eating all alone because they’re not supposed to eat a meal with the uncircumcised. Now, what’s going on in their minds? Pleasing God. Okay, we got some. Alright, that’s excellent. Do you have any other contributions to make here? Alright, we’ll be glad when you Gentiles finally get your act together. Teaching by example. Well, now what’s he going to do? What’s Peter going to do? What’s Paul going to do? They’ve really got Paul in a corner. They really do. They’re winning. They know it. When Peter sits down, they’ve as good as won. But even before Peter walked into the room, I’m going to tell you what they’re thinking about. You’re not going to believe what these guys are thinking about. Let me tell you what they’re thinking about, and this may help you a great deal. I hope it will. I hope you can get this. They were thinking about dirt. They were thinking…yes…they were thinking about dirt. You don’t understand. I take that literally. They were literally thinking about dirt. That’s right. Their obsession was with being clean. They wanted to be uncircumcised Gentiles. Cool.

Was this washed before it was served to me? Did a Gentile drink out of this after it was washed, or has it been cleaned? They’re thinking very cleanly. They are thinking of dirt. It’s the only thing that obsessed them, dirt. I cannot get dirty. I cannot get physically unclean. I’m standing here in the middle of thousands of people, any one of whom might touch me, and I will become unclean. The only thing that is on these guys’ minds is dirt. I see a lot of puzzled looks. Man, listen, what I’m telling you right now is absolutely necessary for you to understand, if you’re ever going to understand what the law will do to you, dear sister, dear brother.

Are they over there thinking about the glories of Jesus Christ, praising the Lord? Are they even thinking about the law? No, they are thinking about dirt. They don’t want dirt, and they are obsessed with “not dirtying me.” They have to go over and sit down. They have washed their hands to make sure they’re clean. They are looking at the vessels, and they’re wondering. They’ve got a little prayer they’re going to pray; they hope the prayer will take it away, in case a gentile has touched that thing, since it was served to them. Dirt, dirt, dirt is all they can see, all they can think about—their concentration on dirt. I don’t know if you understand. There is no place in their minds or hearts for the gospel. There’s no place for the worship of a magnificent Lord here. There’s no personal encounter here. There’s no law here. There is an absolute total obsession with dirt, and they don’t know that. In fact, I’m the first person ever to catch them at it. I needed to be there and say, “Hey, all you guys think about is dirt.” That’s all they’re thinking about: dirt. Paul’s not in the room yet. Well, we’re going to come to Peter in just a minute. Peter had this old flaw. We’ll get to Peter’s old flaw here in a minute.

Now I want you to understand something. There have been a lot of wonderful things happening in Antioch, but they are all coming to a screeching halt right now. The blessing is gone. Those people are thinking about dirt, and these people over here are confused. Some of them have lost their self-image and self-respect. Some of them are just confused. The whole thing has come to a screeching halt because something other than the Lord – an ethical code – has taken its place. These men, they don’t have room in their minds for their Lord because all they ever think about is dirt. I want you to get clear. These people think about dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt. From morning to evening, they’re obsessed with dirt.

Now, I’m going to tell a couple of stories, and I’m going to be really risky because I’m going to bring up a subject that is just not in my vocabulary. I don’t talk about it, but I want to get this over with: I want it on tape. I’m going to say it once. I’m going to tell you two stories. They’re true. They both happened to me. I was in Quebec with several friends, and we were having a meeting at my home. Let’s say we were having a party, that sounds good. I don’t remember, but I met a couple, and I had really been disturbed by looking at this particular sister. She always looked unhappy, and she wore grubby clothes. Everything about her said unhappy, unworthy, and ugly, and it grew in me. That night, I was standing in the entrance way, and everybody came in, and there was a lot of happy hugging and so on, and she stayed over on one side. Nobody could touch her. Nobody could come up and hug her, and she was over there with that death mask on her face, and I did what I did spontaneously.

By the way, it was about 40 degrees below zero. I’m not exaggerating. 30, 40, maybe 20; down there, it doesn’t matter. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Quebec City, but we were in a house that bordered the Plains of Abraham. I just said to her, “Sister, come on. We’re going to go for a walk.” Just spontaneously. No plan, nothing, and we walked outside. We walked over to the Plains of Abraham, where they’d cleared some paths. We were walking along in the snow, and it was cold. I said, “Tell me a story. I want to hear it. Tell me about yourself.” And her story couldn’t have been worse. She had the worst thing in the world that could possibly happen to a human being. Her father was a minister, but brothers and sisters, not an ordinary minister; this guy was with the Plymouth Brethren, and that’s really bad. This man had lived under moral conduct with himself and with his children, and from the day they were little bitty kids, he had pounded it into their heads. Dress modestly. Do this. Do that. Do this. Don’t do that. Do this. She was terrified of doing something wrong. She told me this story.

Now, I’m Latin, saints, and I naturally reach out and touch people. I just do. I hug folks. I just don’t have this problem of walking up to people. This gal was standing about three feet from me, and if we turned a curve, those three feet stayed that way, you know, no matter what happened, that was those three feet away. I kept listening to her tell her story, and she knew that I was trying to help her. I finally turned to her and said something that set her on the road to recovery, and she’s doing really well here now. I keep up with her because we’re all friends, and every once in a while, I inquire about her. Something happened that night that began changing her life. In fact, someone told me that more happened to her that night than had ever happened before from all the counselors, sermons, and everything else. Let me tell you what it said. I don’t apologize for it, but I don’t do things like this very often.

I just turned to her, and I said, “Sister, you know what your problem is? All you do is think about sex.” She was horrified. I had used the word, for one thing. Are you following me at all? I am telling you the truth. That’s all that girl ever thought about. She was afraid to do anything that might prove to be morally wrong. She lived in utter fear of evil and sin, and she shouldn’t touch, and she should keep herself dressed poorly. She saw herself as a very ugly person. I talked to her about that just the way I’m talking to you, and I said, “Your obsession with an ethic that has been put on you by your dad.” I said, “Now, sister, get right over here.” I stopped cold. I said, “Stand right there. I’m sure that’s the closest she’d ever been to anybody but her husband.” I said, “Now, don’t break into pieces. I’m going to put my arm around you.” I said, “After all, it’s cold out here.” I put my arm around her, and we walked back to the house, and I talked to her about her freedom in the Lord Jesus Christ.