The Secularity of Jesusland

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. So we're going to be in Galatians chapter 2. And today, we're focusing on how, I believe, the secular has affected the church, of all things. And that what's going on in the United States and in our culture is much more churchianity than Christianity. Churchianity is kind of like an escalator that you get on, and you keep trying to get towards the top. But it's probably running backwards, and you have to sprint to get up the escalator. Have you ever done that before, that you've tried to get up an escalator that's going down? I'm sure you have, Hunter. And did you knock a bunch of people out of the way when you did it? Relatively unpopular. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Well, it might be fun to do, but it can be exhausting. So we've been looking at how other things in our culture have turned from the sacred to the secular, and how the secular has become sacred. And like I've talked about romance, we could have done it on technology. We could have done it on the leisure world that we have gotten into, on food, on you name it. It's anything to try to fill us with what you might say is enoughness. Trying to feel like I'm enough, that I matter, I'm valued. Do I have enough? Have I had enough? And you can see people in our society on pilgrimages and quests to be enough and to have enough, and even to say they are enough. And sometimes we just try to convince us that we're enough. And if I talk to myself enough about being enough, maybe I'll believe it for the first time. And the only way you're going to ever have it is when God is your enough, and God speaks over you that word that says you are enough, you are mine. That is enough. That's what we're getting at today. So we're going to look at Galatians chapter 2, verses 11 through 21. You can follow along in the You version of the Bible, and the notes are online. You got them, Kathy? Absolutely. And if you want to know how to do that, you can talk to Kathy. She gets it. Let's read this right now. But when Cephas came to Antioch. Now Cephas is another name for Peter, by the way. So he's one of the 12. I opposed him to his face because he had stood condemned. 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. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. 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. But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners. Is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not. For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law, I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. So today, this is our last secularist piece. The secularist nature of the church. And we're going to look at these three different aspects of this passage. And that is first differentiating Christianity from churchianity. That was happening all the way back in Galatia as well, and in Antioch with Peter. Secondly, the heartbeat of what Christianity is. And then finally, the implications of Christianity. So differentiating Christianity from churchianity. Now, I love this culture that we have in the United States. It's very freeing. It's very expressive. We have many opportunities. And we have a smorgasbord of religious options before us. And everything about here, the Christian church, is voluntary. Right? You didn't have to get up this morning to come here. And a lot of people aren't. And so what churches are doing, because it's such a voluntary association, is they're trying to attract a crowd in order to get them at a church. And to do that, you have to market to the consumer needs of individuals. And you know what happens? The church becomes often a knockoff, a one-off, a facsimile of what Jesus intended it to be. So church is our focus, a lot of them on self-improvement. Now, that sounds good, doesn't it? Or personal transformation, that also sounds good. Or societal or community trans...