Grace Means Change: Cross Cultural Disciples

I'm guessing some of you actually were probably at this event, but on January 8, 2017, Carolina played NC State in the Dean Dome, and it wasn't even really a game. It was just a beatdown. The final score was 106 to 57. I mean, they were just completely annihilated. But the thing I want to call attention to—the thing that makes that game memorable—wasn't what happened during the game. It wasn't any of the players. It wasn't what happened during any of the official time of the game. It's what happened at halftime.

Over halftime, this 11-year-old ball boy named Asher Lucas went to half court, stepped back, and heaved the basketball and nothing but net. It goes right in, and a few people are watching this. Most people are getting up to go to the bathroom or go get another coke for the game, but it goes in nothing but net. Well, the second time he does this and goes back to half court, people begin to take notice. These people are whispering, "Did you see the ball boy?" And he heaves the basketball again—nothing but net.

So this is beginning to go around the Dean Dome that this is happening. The third time, you can watch this on video. He goes back to half court, throws the ball again, swoosh—again, three half court shots in a row. And the Dean Dome just erupts at this point. What's remarkable about that to me is here are these natural enemies—you know this, right? State fans and Carolina fans. This is a big deal for the triangle. This rivalry. And yet everybody's cheering. Everybody's cheering because of this 11-year-old kid who hit three half court shots in a row.

I think about that, and I'm like, man, right now, don't we need something like that? Something that everybody can cheer for. We've been in such a time where everybody seems at each other, and I just long for something where we're all just like that—that's awesome. We can all get behind that.

The Means of Grace and Transformation

This morning we're going to short start a series—we're continuing a series following up on the means of grace. In January, we looked at these means of grace, these ordinary practices God has given the church. Ordinary things that confer to us the benefits of grace in our lives: worship, the reading of Scripture, prayer, the sacraments. These are things that God has given to us as gifts to the church.

But we're kind of pivoting off that. We started this last week and asking, well, if those are the means of grace, what does grace mean? How does the grace of God transform the people of God? This is one of the real deep longings of the leadership of our church—not only that we would be a people who gather, but we're people who are more and more looking like being transformed into the likeness of Jesus, being formed in us in ways that produce fruit in us.

If you read a couple chapters over from the passage we just read, you read about the fruit of the Spirit: love and joy and peace and patience and kindness—all this list of things that on an individual level, we're praying grow up out of your life. We're also identifying in our leadership as a church community some gospel fruits that we want to see grow up out of us as a church.

So we're highlighting these things. And today we're going to look at how the gospel compels us more and more to become cross-cultural disciples. That's one of the fruits we've identified in our vision as a church: How does it help us long and lean in toward becoming a cross-cultural community?

This is so important because you and I, if you're a Christian, know the end of the story. God has given us in Scripture the book of Revelation, and it was written to inspire hope in God's people. To give us a glimpse like, this is not just—there's not a question mark about where this world is headed, where history is headed. God is behind all things and he's bringing things to a glorious conclusion that will be a new beginning.

The book of Revelation was given to give us hope, and one of the things that we see in this is the people of God:

Every tribe and tongue and nation gathered around the throne — Revelation 5 & 7

These are natural enemies—much more so than UNC and State fans—but natural enemies gathered around and celebrating and saying, "Yeah, that about King Jesus, the Lamb." That's what our hope is.

A Passage About Unity

On the surface, the passage we just read seems to be about anything other than unity. It sounds like a confrontation or a conflict between two people, between two leaders of the church: Paul, who wrote this letter, and Cephas—that's his other name, Peter. This conflict between two church leaders where they're kind of working something out. And yet this passage is so much about unity. It's so much about a unity that's around Jesus.

This is the main idea of the sermon this morning.

Only Jesus really unifies us. Only the gospel really truly unites us. I hope by the time we finish our time together this morning, you also are cheering. You also are like that. I want people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation gathered around the throne. I want to see that now.

If you take notes, I have four points this morning, but they all begin with the letter P so you can remember them. You ready? The purity, the priority, the power, and the pathway.

The Purity of the Gospel

The book of Galatians is this little book in the New Testament that packs maybe one of the biggest punches of any of the letters in the New Testament. Paul is really worked up in this book. It's got the most raw emotion, particularly anger, where he is really upset about something going on in the churches. He had been part of helping plant a group of churches in what's now modern Turkey, and very quickly the churches that he helped start began to get off track.

The main point of his whole book is this: the church's greatest treasure is the gospel. The church's greatest treasure is the gospel, but it's easy to lose it.

Now, what is the gospel? Paul gives us little doubt about what the gospel is. You read just the passage we looked at right now:

We know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. — Galatians 2:16

The gospel is the declaration, the message, the communication that you are made right by Jesus alone, by faith alone, and by grace alone. Only Christ can save you. By grace alone—nothing you can do to add or take away from that. And by faith alone—that's how you have access to this.

This is one of the things we say regularly in our church: Salvation is Jesus plus nothing else. This is what makes you a Christian. The gospel is Jesus plus nothing else. That's so important to Paul. That's so important to us.

One of the things we emphasize in our church is the gospel. You may have heard that word used a lot, and it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people, but we say this: the gospel is not just the way into the Christian life. It's all of the Christian life.

Picture a swimming pool. The gospel is not like the diving board that you jump off of to get in, and after that, it's up to you—time to start striving and achieving. No. The gospel is like the entire pool. We swim in this. We never get beyond this. We never graduate from this. We never exhaust the depths of it. We never get to a point where we don't need this. This is what makes us a Christian—justification. This is what conforms us to Jesus—sanctification. This is what we need.

But this passage shows us that there's always a danger in the church. There's always a danger of moving past it, of losing the gospel. Right here, we read this in verse 14:

I saw that they were deviating from the truth of the gospel. — Galatians 2:14

They were somehow moving past it. The occasion of this letter is that these churches are being led astray. But here's the thing—they're being led astray, not by some false teacher out there, but by Peter. This is the same Peter, Simon Peter, Jesus's best fishing buddy, Peter who shows himself to stumble over and over in the New Testament. This guy is somehow causing the church to be led astray.

That's a caution to us. If Peter can miss this, could we?

And here's another layer to this: there's no safety in numbers on this either. What we read here in verse 13 is that even Barnabas was being led astray. Now that may not mean much to you, but Barnabas was the Ted Lasso of the early church. Everybody liked Barnabas. He was easy to get along with. He was generous. He was joyful. He believed the best about other people. They sent Barnabas in with the really hard cases like Paul himself. But even Barnabas is being led astray. Even Barnabas can lose the gospel?

If this is a danger for us, we should always be asking the question. And it's always right to ask an appropriate question in church: Are we in danger of losing the gospel? Are we in danger of moving beyond that, of saying Jesus plus something else?

This is really important. You may have heard this phrase applied to our church—the word that we are a reformed church. You ever heard that before? Some of you are shaking your head. When I started at Westminster Seminary, I didn't know what reformed was or reformed theology.

The word "reformed" means, when applied to a church, a church that's saying we want constantly to be asking: Are we being more and more like Jesus? Is our doctrine being more and more what's in Scripture? It's reformed and always reforming. It's always saying, how can we be more and more conformed to what we see in Scripture?

Here's the question for us: Are we deviating from it? Some people have asked that question even in our emphasis over the last couple of years. We talk about cross-cultural discipleship. Are we adding to the gospel? Are we deviating from the gospel? The answer is no, but it's tricky. I understand why you would ask that question. I understand why you would wrestle with that question. So I want to help us understand exactly how cross-cultural discipleship is central to the gospel and how cross-cultural discipleship is really important to the health of our church.

Let's think about this: How was it that Peter was getting the gospel wrong? What did he do? How can we get the gospel wrong? And here's the answer: it's adding to it. It's adding something to the gospel because anytime you add, it's subtraction. Addition is subtraction.

Now that may sound foggy to you, but let me use this illustration. Every kitchen represented by our church, I think probably has two white granular substances in your cabinets. You put one in a bowl and one in a shaker. One is salt. The other is sugar. It's a mean practical joke you reverse—you put the sugar in the salt shaker and the salt in the sugar bowl. Because if you add salt to your coffee—and I love sugar in my coffee—but you add salt to my coffee, it's undrinkable. Addition is subtraction. You take sugar and you sprinkle that on your fries. Addition is subtraction. In the same way, anything we add to the gospel is actually taking away from the gospel. Anytime we say Jesus plus this, we're actually destroying the power and the purity of the gospel.

So this is the question we have to always be asking: Are we doing that? Are we getting the gospel wrong? Because if Peter can do it, so can we.

The Priority of Gospel Culture

The exchange between Peter and Paul shows us something really important: you can unsay with your actions what you say with your words. A church can unsay with our actions what we affirm with our words. It's possible to unsay the doctrines by the way we treat one another.

Now, in this passage it's called hypocrisy, and yet it's shown to be more than hypocrisy. Of course, hypocrisy is always bad. It's always wrong. Everyone points out hypocrisy in government and leaders everywhere. But what we see in this passage is that it's possible for hypocrisy to actually be heresy—to actually destroy the gospel that we come around and believe and put our hope in. It's a denial of the good news. It can be a refutation of the work of Jesus.

Let me show you how this works. Being Jewish in this passage—it talks about Judaism and being Jewish a lot in this passage. We need to remember that's two things: that's both a religion and an ethnicity, and both of those get kind of interwoven in this.

The early church started out, both in terms of ethnicity and religion, as being Jewish. It was a sect of Judaism. All the 12 disciples were Jewish boys who had grown up going to synagogue, were part of the Jewish community. This was part of what the identity was of the early church. But over time, Christianity began to spread to people who were non-Jewish—Gentiles. In this passage, those who are ethnically Jews and religiously Jews are called, quote, "the circumcision group."

Here's the backstory: Peter had been visiting the church in Antioch, and he was there with all these brand new people who'd come to faith—all these people who are not from Jewish backgrounds, who were Gentiles, had come to faith in Jesus—and he began to have dinner with them. That sounds like no big deal to us. That is mind-blowing for a first-century Jew. It's mind-blowing for a couple of reasons: all the Jewish dietary laws said we don't eat the same things and the Gentiles are unclean. We don't even eat together. But God had given Peter a vision.

In Acts chapter 10, Peter has a vision where a sheet is being lowered down from heaven, and it's filled with all these unclean animals.

I'm picturing pigs, shrimp, lobster—all these unclean animals. And God says, "Peter, kill and eat." He's like, "Surely not, Lord. I'm a good Jew. I keep all the law."

He's like, no, don't call anything unclean what I've called clean. And by this, God meant two things. This is spelled out very explicitly in Acts. One is that bacon wrapped shrimp is okay, right? Like barbecue is on the menu. The Jewish dietary laws are no more. And second, there's no distinction now between Jew and non-Jew, between Jews and Gentiles.

So here's Peter. He shows up in Antioch, he's got the message from God. He's eating presumably bacon wrapped shrimp with the Gentile converts, everything's good. But then something happens. This is very middle school cafeteria. Some other people show up—little peer pressure. These people from James, from the church in Jerusalem (James is the head of the church in Jerusalem)—they are ethnically Jewish, religiously Jewish, love Jesus. And Peter suddenly is like, oh, maybe I should tone it down. He sits at a separate table and goes back to observing the Jewish dietary laws.

We may think, so what? Well, Paul's like, that is a huge deal. Because it's possible to un-say with your behavior what you say with your words. Peter knew Jesus plus nothing—that's salvation. Paul's like, this really matters. By the way you're acting, you're showing a clear message to those Gentiles: Jesus plus dietary laws, being like us.

He opposed him to his face because he's not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, not walking in line with the truth of the gospel. — Galatians 2:11

He's adding to it. This is like salt in your coffee, sugar on your french fries. Adding is subtraction.

Ethnicity and Prejudice in the Early Church

Now, unless you may think this is just an interesting lecture about Jewish customs and religion—this is so much more than that. This is also about ethnicity and prejudice and preference, because there is a deep anti-Gentile bent in the New Testament. I challenge you to go back and read the New Testament—put on your sociologist glasses and read it. Look at all the places that talk about culture, all the places that talk about Greeks and Hebrews, Jew and Gentile. It's fascinating to study.

For example, if you look in the book of Acts, chapter six, all these people had come to faith in Jesus. All these ethnically and religiously Jewish people had come to faith in Jesus. But something begins to happen. In the early church, a little hierarchy begins to build. There's those who are Jew Jews and those who are not so Jewish Jews. And what happened is it became to make a difference by how much food you got at church supper—for real. So the Jew Jews, if you're really, really Jewish, you got more food at the church supper. If you were a Greek Jew, you know, not quite Jewish, your name wasn't Jewish enough—you weren't a Mordecai, right—you got a little less food at the church supper. The early church had to reckon with this.

Jesus poked this in the eye regularly. Think about him in John 4, going to Samaria. It tells us in John's gospel that good Jews would go around Samaria so they wouldn't even have to walk through the territory because those are Gentile sinners, right? That's what the passage says—the language people are using: "the Gentile sinners." So they would go around. But in John 4, Jesus said He had to go through Samaria. He's like, I gotta go there because that's where grace is being poured out on them as well. The disciples couldn't believe it.

You see this too in Jesus telling the story of the Good Samaritan—again, the good Gentile. How dare he tell this story about a good Gentile who's doing God's law better than the Jew Jews are doing God's law. This is a theme.

What was at stake in the early church is the same thing that's at stake in every church all the time. It's asking this: Who's an insider and who's an outsider? Who's first tier and who's second tier? Who's really, really in and who's out? Don't we ask those questions regularly?

The simple question for the early church was: Are Gentile and Jew the same, or do we have first-level Christians and second-level Christians?

You know the difference between the welcome mat that says "welcome home" and the one that says "welcome, guest." I've seen both on people's front doors. The welcome mat that says "welcome home" says your family is here. Come on in. Take your shoes off. You could take your socks off even, right? Mi casa es su casa—my house is your house. You are so welcome here. But I've also been on front porches where they have a mat that says "welcome guests." It's funny how that sends a different message. It's a little bit like, hey, we're so glad you're here, but you're going home later, right? Don't you dare take off your shoes. I don't want to see your sticky feet.

See, there's something that's happening here in Antioch, where Peter had taken the welcome mats and replaced them. He had one that said, "Welcome home, Jews and Gentiles. We're all family because of Jesus. We're all the same." But by his behavior, he began to swap out the mat. And now it says "Welcome guests" to the Gentiles. And this is why Paul's like, "You can't do this."

Now let's time out and give Peter a break. I bet Peter's not this horrible person. Like, what was he thinking? I bet he was thinking something like this: "You know, let's not take this grace thing too far too fast. A gradual approach, that's what's needed here. We need to take our time. Don't push this too fast too hard. Let's slow down, right?" Like, this is what Peter's probably thinking. But Paul is like, "No." Do you understand how behavior separating tables is absolutely at the heart of us communicating to one another? There are no second class citizens in the kingdom of God. Nobody is a second class citizen.

See, Paul believed—and we say this all the time—the blood of Christ is what makes you part of God's family. Right? The blood of Christ is what makes anyone an insider. No one's too sinful. No one's too good. We all come the same way. There's level ground at the foot of the cross. Isn't this what we believe?

So it's always right for us to ask: Does our behavior match that conviction? The litmus test of how much a church gets doctrine is not how learned people are. Now I love doctrine. I am a doctrine person. I love theology. It's right. I hope you're a person who's curious about what you believe. But I also want you to think about how that's being reflected in my relationships with people in this place, in the body of Christ. Does a church simply reflect the hierarchies and the prejudices of the culture, or do we live out in a way that's beautiful—that Jesus plus nothing is what you need to be part of this family?

You know, there's so many churches that have good doctrine. And I hope that we continue to be a church that has good doctrine, but it must be reinforced by gospel culture. And this is why cross cultural discipleship is something we're emphasizing as a church. It's critical for us because it reflects the truth, attests to the truth of the gospel. We've got to guard Jesus plus nothing. We've got to make sure that our fellowship doesn't favor wealthy people or attractive people—or let me be real—or white people. A monocultural church in a place that's multicultural is a danger to the reality of the gospel, particularly a church that's filled with people who are attractive, mostly white and wealthy like us. So we have to be really thoughtful about this. We don't want our fellowship to tell a different story than the gospel message. We want to make sure that's really, really clear.

You know, we want to make sure that what unites us as a congregation is Jesus, and that's it. And everybody else comes into these doors and they see "Welcome home. Welcome home."

The Power for Change

Now, I know some of this feels kind of heavy to y'all. So you need to hear this: the power for change. The power for change. The good news of reading this passage this morning is that we can say the early church nailed it. Right? They got this right. They nailed this. I think Peter—here, case in point—I think Peter must have at some point given Paul permission to tell the story. Like, "You gotta write that one down. You know, I was such an idiot back then, right? I was such an idiot. Please do tell that story because the church needs to know." All of us can be an idiot sometimes.

Case in point for us about how much the church got this right: How many of you are from an ethnically Jewish background? Hands. Wow. Nobody? Nobody here is ethnically Jewish? You know what that says? The early church figured this out. They figured it out in such a way, in fact, so well that the Roman Empire was both challenged and changed by it. Because the Roman Empire read off of their fellowships something radically different from the hierarchies and prejudices and who's in and who's out that characterize Roman life—in a way that's even hard for us to imagine how very caste oriented that was. The early church figured this out and it was hard and it was beautiful, but it was so worth it. God used this in powerful, powerful ways.

You know, here's a vision for the community of the local church from Revelation seven: a fellowship of difference—difference, different types. People from every tribe and tongue and nation gathered around Jesus. You know, this is what the church is, I hope more and more, a preview of now.

So listen, I want you to think about this: leaning in on unchosen ethnic divides as a church—that's not capitulating to the culture. That's not trying to become politically correct. It's not selling out to some agenda for racial equality that anti-Christian or non-Christian groups have.

It's leaning into the vision of where we're headed. We should probably be of all people kind of flattered by what's happening in our culture right now. Non-Christian, anti-Christian groups want some of Revelation 7. They've got a cheap knockoff version of it, but we should be flattered. You're just missing the main point, which is Jesus. You're just missing him. You're almost there. You have a lot of good stuff, but you need Jesus. Jesus is what unites us. We shouldn't be insulted but flattered.

I want to say this though: we might have the same desires as groups who are non-Christian or anti-Christian when it comes to racial equity, we have a very different starting point and a very different ending point. Our starting point is the image of God resident in every person. Every person made in God's image, every person whose soul bears the fingerprints of God on their very being. And our ending point is not just Kumbaya and hold hands. It's people gathered around the throne of Jesus Christ, not gathered around racial equity, not gathered around some other idea. Jesus didn't die for an idea. He died for people gathered around Jesus.

This is what I want to locate our hope in—the power for this isn't us. It's not like us trying harder or trying to do all the right things. It's what we read in this passage. Listen to this:

I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. — Galatians 2:20

That's one of the most powerful statements in the whole Bible about your identity. If you are in Christ, you are not you. God has—by the life of Jesus, the life of Jesus is flowing through you. He is at work in you. And one of the things that's so important for us therefore is to remember who we are.

There's a story about Margaret Thatcher, the late prime minister of England. Toward the end of her time in office, she went to visit a retirement home, and she went specifically to visit some people who were living in a memory care unit. As she was going around and meeting different people, this one woman seemed to light up when she saw Mrs. Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher was like, "Oh, do you know who I am?" And without missing a beat, this woman who's part of the memory care unit goes, "No, dearie, but I'm sure the nurse does. She always seems to."

I love that story because, as I've said over the last couple of weeks, we are like people who forget all the time who we really are. One of the problems of being a Christian is you and I have short-term memory problems. We forget over and over. The life of Christ is in you. You've died and the resurrection life of God is what flows through your life. This isn't about you and what you're going to do. This is about what God is doing through us. His power to change his people.

This is one of the things why I love when we take communion, because when we take communion, we are remembering again who we are. It's like being reminded again: "No, dearie. Ask Jesus. He can tell you who you are." We come to the table, and it's a picture of Revelation 7—all these people gathering around the Lamb, laying hold of our identity in him. That's the power for change.

Here's the pathway forward. If the early church can do this, I have all kinds of confidence that God can work this in our congregation. I really do. Just as much today in America as back then.

The Quiet Exodus

One of the sad stories that has not been told very loudly over the last six years, especially in Presbyterian and Reformed churches, is the quiet exodus of people of color from our churches. That's been a regular thing. Why is that? It's because over and over again, the gospel attestation has not matched our proclamation. We have unsaid with our actions things that we've said with our words. But if the early church can figure those out, I'm confident we can too.

This is how it was for the early church. It's hard. It's beautiful. It's incredibly worth it. But I have to caution you—just like Peter and Paul, it involved a confrontation. And if there's one thing I know about our church, we don't like confrontation. Anybody love conflict out there? Right? Okay, maybe one weirdo. The rest of you are like, no. We hate confrontation. We hate uncomfortable. We hate things that challenge us and push us.

But haven't some of the best things in life come from leaning into something that's uncomfortable? I want you to think about learning to swim. Nobody jumps in a pool and just knows how to swim. Everybody's awkward. Everybody feels like they're drowning the first couple of times. But learning to swim opens up a world to you that's otherwise not available to you.

Or learning to speak a foreign language. I mean, learning to speak a foreign language is never fun. You look like an idiot most of the time for the first long time. But it opens up to you a world of travel. It opens up to you a world of possibility. Think about exercising. Getting into an exercise routine, does anybody love being sore those first months? Those first days of trying a new exercise regimen? No. But if you want to have great abs, not that I have great abs, like if you want to have great abs, right, this is what you do. Uncomfortable often leads to great things.

So my call to us is like cross cultural discipleship: lean in. We've provided all kinds of opportunities to learn in this, but we can't give you motivation. You have to want this for yourself. You have to say, I want to do the work. I want to step into this. And the only way that this is gonna grow up in us is if this grows up in you. If you're also saying, I want the purity of the gospel to be matched in our community life together.

The Danger of Passivity

Here's a conclusion for us. The danger for the American church in this area is passivity. Of course, that's a danger in a lot of things, but this is particularly a danger in this area. You can't be passive.

I want you to picture an escalator like at the mall or at the airport. The only thing you have to do to move on an escalator is stand still. The escalator will do all the work for you. And this is what's happening in the American church right now. The vast way that the American church is headed is more and more monocultural, more and more PLUs, people like us—same, same, everybody thinks the same, looks the same, everything's the same.

You know, in order to reverse the trend of that, you know what you have to do if you're on an escalator? If you want to move a different direction, you have to turn around and walk down the escalator at a faster speed, right? You have to go against the flow.

The call for us, just like for Peter, is to avoid passivity. I mean, did Peter do so wrong in this passage? He was passive. It's not what he did, it's what he didn't do. It's a lack of willingness. And just like Peter, if we take a passive route, we keep following the culture of this—everybody the same, same. We're gonna end up with a gospel that's kind of empty words. It's true. But it's not backed up in the way that people can look at our congregation and say, that's what the kingdom is headed toward. Yeah, I want that. I want some of that in my life.

We have a vision of where we're headed. Not Asher Lucas at a basketball game draining three pointers that unites natural enemies for a couple minutes, but people from every tribe and tongue and nation gathered around the throne celebrating King Jesus. I can't imagine something more compelling.

What I want to hear for someone briefly who could testify the reality this morning—that it's hard, it's beautiful, and it's worth it. So I'm gonna let Stephanie Massey come and give a brief testimony.