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

As we got back toward the house, I said, “I want you to tell me something you want. You really, really, really want.” And she said, “No, I can’t.” Boy, there was something she wanted. It was obvious. I said, “Tell me what it is you want.” She said, “I can’t. We can’t afford it.” I said, “Tell me what it is.” She said, “I want a piano.” I said, “You’re going to get one.” “Oh, no, no.” She didn’t deserve a piano saint. She didn’t deserve anything. Then I said to her, “Do you consider yourself pretty, kind of average, or kind of homely?” Kind of homely. Well, I said, “Girl, I got news for you. You’re beautiful.” I said, “The next time I see you, I want to see you in a dress. I want to see you fixed up, and I want you to put some earrings on.” You know, oh, who is this madman talking to me this way?

We walked back into the house. I was a good friend of her husband. I got him over in the corner, and I said, “Your wife wants a piano. Go get her one.” I know she wants a piano. Well, go get her one. She wants one. And he went out and bought her one. She went out and bought herself something she had never worn before in her whole life. She bought her two little earrings that clip right here, went out and bought herself a dress, and she kind of felt this way when she got that dress and those earrings. She didn’t know what was going to happen to her. Now, I know this sounds really terrible, saints, but her whole mind for her entire life had been set on sex. Now, that’s a crude way of putting it, but hear me. Can you follow me? Those Pharisees didn’t think of anything but dirt. And that father, and he had pressed it upon his children, that father, who was a preacher, didn’t think of anything but sex. His obsession was not the Lord Jesus Christ; it was morality and immorality. Are you following me? Make room in your heart for the Lord.

I’m going to tell the same story again, only I’m going to put it in a different place at a different time. I’m going to do this one time. I’ve never done this before; I’m not going to do it again. I hope you people forgive me, but I have a point to make. I’m a little irritated. They’re thinking about dirt. She was thinking about immorality. Yeah. Not in the way that people normally think, but that’s where it was. Well, we had Blastinius visit us once, in living color. In fact, the color was gray. We had a conference in Santa Barbara, and we sent out an invitation, and somebody had put a name of someone into that mailing list that we sent out to get all the way to the state of Maine, to the town of Farmington, and these people got that thing, and they were Judaizers. They were moralists, and they got off the plane, and they came to Santa Barbara, California. There were seven of them, as I recall. Is that correct? And they lived in John Bradley’s house. I knew that, John. I was going to bring it up. John, you verify what I’m about to say. Alright.

The women had their clothes down to here and up to here, and their dresses came right down to the floor. All you could see were their hands and their faces. There was nothing else you could tell about those women, but that was all there was. The men wore completely black clothes, with a white shirt buttoned here, no tie, and this is the way they were. They had, I guess, ordered them from the Amish; they had Amish hats, and they walked around just like this all the time. Moralists like you wouldn’t believe moralists. They were sitting over in that corner, you know, this is where they had put their life as Christians.

Now then, John told me this story, and I’ve heard it from others. Here’s what happened. When they would eat together, if one of the single brothers or the married brothers happened to come to the table and sat down in such a way that his seat would be next to one of those women, one of the sisters in this group, the sister would get up and move over to be with another sister. There had to be the oldest man or the oldest woman between…separating them from everybody else. A sister could not sit next to a brother, whether he was unwashed, like we were, or washed like they were. The single sisters, or the married sisters, had to sit next to sisters, and the buffer was the oldest lady, and on the other side, the buffer was this gentleman who was leading them. You couldn’t penetrate that little circle any closer than that.

The women were fearful of men. The men were fearful of women. They lived on the edge constantly. It was a musical chairs turnover. Is that right, John? And by the way, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to us for them to come to us. John Bradley, what was your reaction to those people when you saw them? Brad, what was your reaction? It wasn’t fear, but it sure didn’t seem to fit. Okay. John was scared. Most of the church was terrified. I wish that men were not afraid. I wish men could not be afraid of their own gospel. The church is terrified. I turned the conference over to the man. Did you hear me? I turned the conference over to the man, walked out, and didn’t go to the meetings. He had it in the palm of his hand. He could have taken every one of us, leaving me stranded without a single friend in this world.

At the first meeting he spoke at, the entire gathering was present. At the second meeting that he spoke at, there were three people present who were not his family. And at the third meeting, there was no one there but his own group to hear him. And that was not a put-up job. Their brothers and sisters were terrified, and they learned grace that week. Did you not, Brad? Stand up here and testify to that. When did you, Brad, first learn grace? December 1976. Alright. Great. Good enough. I’m glad you still remember, brother. When they left… be patient with me… this is not typical of me at all. These are not subjects I have any interest in. I am interested in the Lord. But when they left, people were comparing notes. Someone said, “Gene, what did you think?” And my answer was, “I’ll tell you what I think. I think that the only thing those people ever thought about was sex.” And here they were supposed to be the purest, most moral folks in the whole wide world. The brothers and sisters live so much closer to falling into sin than any of us did because they had to live morally perfectly, and if they, with all that strictness and tension on them…if they moved for a moment away from the high standard that they took to move a little bit was to acquiesce to everything wrong. Can you follow me? Do you understand what I’m saying? They had no middle space to move in whatsoever. It was total perfection. Move out of that, and in that moving, they were consenting to anything and everything. They lived in an obsession with a moral code. There was no place for Jesus Christ in their life.

Are you following me? What should saturate our hearts and minds and spirits and thoughts is Christ. And I don’t mean learning things about him, but personal encounters with him. Those people knew nothing of that. And I’m going to end that story. That story’s got an ending, believe it or not. I live less than 30 miles from where they hold out today. It’s 10 years later, and that little community has grown, kept its strictness, and prospered, with more people moving in. And a few weeks ago, the man who was the leader, who stayed in your home, John, who was the father and propagator of that whole thing, got up in a meeting and denounced them all because they were not living strictly enough. They had not lived up to the standard he had set for them. They had utterly failed. He left. He left his wife. He left his family. He walked out the door and said, “I’m going to go and find some people who will obey the gospel that I preach.” Oh boy, he’s going to look all the way from the throne of God to the bowels of hell, and he will never find those people. That’s the end of the story, and we are living by grace, saints. Praise the Lord. Amen. Yeah. Clap, will you? This is God. This is a happy story. I’m really glad to know the final end. That community is collapsing right now. They don’t know what to do. They don’t have any idea because a person who is under this kind of bondage has to have someone to relate to. They need someone to tell them what’s right and wrong.

Well, I’m going to tell one more story. This is all about Blastinius and his crowd. Yes, brother. Oh, listen. I would have paid that guy to come. I would have paid that fellow to come. He gave us all our choice. The timing was perfect. Back many years ago, when I lived in Tyler, Texas, a friend of mine knew the particular pastor who did this. A pastor was very moralistic in his preaching, and he preached against high heels. Shows you how dependent we can get on. He preached on high heels. Well, the sisters in the church, you know, they just about believe anything. Christians will believe anything. And so, they didn’t want to have high heels because that was a sin. They didn’t know what to do because they didn’t know where high heels ended. So, they went to the pastor’s wife and said, “Where, what is, and is not a high heel.” So, the pastor began studying heels, measured them, and explained to his wife, “This is a high heel, and this is not a high heel.” All the sisters got down, and they measured the high heels according to what the pastor’s wife told them. Threw away these kinds, went out and bought some others that weren’t quite that high. Now, that means that this is a sin, right? You got it? About two and a half inches, three inches, that’s sin. And an inch is not a sin. An inch and a half is not a sin, but right there at an inch and 2/3, that’s where sin begins.

Now, I ask you, when those sisters came into the meeting of that church, what were their thoughts on? Their feet? That’s right, right on their heels. That’s where their thoughts were, and they were meriting God’s favor at an inch and a half, and all that was lower. Their thoughts were on that; there was no place for Jesus in that. The gospel ended for the people in gray. The gospel ended for those sisters in their high heels. Now I have said it. I have tried to impress it upon you. What’s in your head, friend? What’s your standard? How do you feel when you miss a day of reading the Bible? How about two days? What will happen to you at the end of three days without reading the Bible? Well, I heard someone say, you know, that if you go for a period of time without reading your Bible, you’re going to begin to fall away from the Lord Jesus Christ. I challenge that because three-fifths of the world cannot read, and that means three-fifths of the world is cut off from a walk with Jesus Christ. I would say that if you do not have some living fellowship with Him on an ongoing basis, you’re wide open to all sorts of problems. But it is Him, and the first purpose of scripture is to lead you to an encounter with Jesus Christ. It is not to gain merit with God. It may have a second purpose and a third and a fourth and a fifth and a sixth, but its first purpose is to lead you to a face-to-face living encounter with your Lord. All things of the gospel move in that direction.

Now, I have to handle Peter here. Let’s talk about Peter for a minute. Simon Peter walks into the room, and why does he go over there? Now, we know what they’re thinking. They’re thinking of dirt. What’s Peter thinking? Yeah, I think it’s more obvious with what Peter’s thinking. He has always been open to peer pressure. It happened right there on the night the Lord was on trial. He didn’t even know those people around him, but they all were a pressure on him, and he capitulated. It was a weakness of Peter throughout his whole life. And it, well, raises its head again. It reaffirms itself here, but I’m going to tell you something else.

When Peter took one step toward those men dressed in black over there, he stepped out of grace utterly and totally, when he walked toward that table…you’ve got to know this…whether Peter was in touch with it or not, Peter was saying, even though, yes, it was peer pressure. It was man, had nothing to do with God. Nonetheless, somewhere down deep in all of this is a principle. Peter declared that by his outward physical conduct, he could gain favor with God. He could gain what he already had: the favor of God. Just like my grandson has got my favor, regardless of what he does. I don’t care what he does; he can’t get out of my favor. Peter was trying again to rebuild the gospel on the basis of a gospel he had already abandoned. He went back to it. A gospel of human effort and merit, and code and ethics. He was in a comfortable place, something that he was familiar with. He wanted out of the mess he was in. Those glares. He was testifying to angels when he walked over there that physical conduct could make God feel better about you. Do you understand that everybody is doing outward things here that have nothing to do with the inward things? The inward thing that’s going on is dirt. The inward thing that’s going on inside Peter is fear and the desire to gain merit with God by sitting with people. I don’t know what’s going on with Barnabas. You and I are never going to understand that.