The Table of the Hypocrites

Simon Peter was Jesus' right hand man.  He is one regarded with super saint status.  Of course, we also know he was a man with one or two flaws.  Like the other disciples, he became more concerned about status instead of serving.  When Jesus needed someone to pray while He went apart to pray, Peter went to sleep.  When Jesus was being tried, Peter was out in the courtyard warming himself in front of a fire and mixing his language with a few expletives to prove he was not one of the disciples of Jesus.   

It might seem to some that Peter had gotten all the kinks worked out on his walk with Jesus on the beach.  On the Day of Pentecost this disciple who had been filled with the blowing wind of the Spirit preached a sermon which converted over three thousand people.  Those who are tempted to think that the baptized in the Spirit Petehad arrived at some super state in his spiritual life only need to read what Paul reported in his letter to the Galatian Christians.  Paul tells a story which tells of a Peter who still struggled with what people thought of him.  "But, when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face...for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But, after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction." (Galatians 2:12). 

Peter ate with the Gentiles until a visiting group of Jewish Christians showed up and then he backed away from the table.  His behavior is, of course, a visual definition of hypocrisy.  Peter, like any hypocrite said he believed one thing, but his actions betrayed him.  He wore two faces, one to please the Gentiles and then another as he tried to please the visitors from Jerusalem.  Whenever we preach one thing and practice another, we end up sitting at the table of the hypocrites with Simon Peter.  It is like sitting on a barb wire fence.  It becomes very uncomfortable.