Introduction
We are in
Acts 15 and this is called by many the most crucial chapter in Acts. It’s right
in the center of the book (as far as chapters) and it is also at the center of
the book theologically. This is one the scariest times in the history of
Christianity. If they went one direction, only God knows what would have
happened to the early Christian church. God saw this coming and he put the
right leaders in the right places for this. The real issues at stake here are
about what was required to become a Christian, this is what the early church
leaders are going to have to decide as more and more non-Jews become
Christians. Remember, Christianity was just an extension of Old Testament
Judaism. The Jewish Messiah had come, all the original apostles were Jews, it started
in the city of Jerusalem, and yet now, non-Jews were becoming Christians. What
do we do with these people? What do they have to do? Is simply the grace of God
enough, simply putting your trust in Christ? That seems pretty easy. Is there
more stuff that they have to do? As humans we want to create religion, we want
to add more to the finished work of Christ. Do non-Jews have to become Jews?
That’s a real question that they had. Do they have to follow the Old Testament
law? Do they have to take on the practice of adult male circumcision? That’s a
pretty important issue. Will Jews and Gentiles come together as one? Or will
they exist as two separate ethnic groups divided along the line of race? There
were all kinds of dietary laws, there were all kinds of festivals in the Old
Testament. Do new believers have to observe those? These are the issues that
are getting sorted out tonight.
In Acts
14, we saw Paul and Barnabas, they have already been serving for several years
at this church in Antioch. This was the third largest city in the Roman empire
a large and influential city. It was in this city that non-Jews started to come
to Christ in very large numbers. You had Jews and non-Jews and they were having
fellowship with one another, you had racial reconciliation, people experiencing
the love of God together, a very exciting movement of God here. At a certain
point the church at Antioch sent Paul and Barnabas west out to Cyprus and they
went into southern Turkey, the province of southern Galatia which included
these other cities. They traveled from city to city, telling people about
Jesus, going first to the Jews and then a bunch of Gentiles started responding.
They had a bunch of churches up there that were mixed, both Jews and non-Jews.
It was very exciting. They spent anywhere from 8 months to a year and half
travelling through these different villages and then going back to Antioch. And
we read after this in Acts 14,
They
called the church together and reported everything God had done through them
and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles, too.
This would
have been very exciting to Antioch because there were so many non-Jews there.
They were excited to see other Gentiles come to faith. But when Paul got back
to Antioch, as time passed, he started to come face to face with problems on
two different fronts.
Problems
in Galatia
First of all, as reports tricked
back along this road, you can see this major road stitching together Antioch,
Iconium, Derbe, curving around to Antioch, where Paul was. Travelers coming
back started telling him about problems. There were false teachers coming in
after Paul had left there and they began to teach a very different doctrine
that Paul had taught. The strategy of these false teachers was two-fold. You
can imagine, you’re a new Gentile convert, in the city of Lystra, for example,
and you show up for home church one week, and you see a Pharisee coming in with
a two-pronged attack. Remember how much Jesus detested these guys, how angry he
got about their hypocrisy. This was the most elite holy club in Jesus’s day.
These guys were so scrupulous, they kept every single law, and they looked down
on everyone else for not being as holy as they were. Jesus was infuriated by these
guys because they thought they were good enough to be accepted by God and they
were leading other people astray as to what God wanted. Some of these Pharisees
came to Christ and it was hard for them to leave behind their old legalistic
ways. This is our tendency. We tend to move from grace back onto rules.
These guys
came in with two points. First, they would question Paul’s authority as an
apostle and as a teacher. They would start teaching their thing, people would
be like, ‘Wait, that’s not what Paul taught,’ and they would be like, ‘Oooh,
Paul, well, Paul was not one of the original twelve apostles and he was never
personally discipled by Jesus, he has hardly ever been to Jerusalem and that’s
why he gets confused sometimes.’
Secondly,
they would then add the law back in. They were like, ‘That’s so wonderful that
you are a Christian now, that you’ve accepted this Jewish Messiah, now we have
come here to complete your discipleship. The Old Testament law says you must be
circumcised. You don’t look like, you’ve been circumcised.’ You’re 25 years
old, you just converted from the worship of Diana and the emperor to Christ and
you’ve got all this peace and joy and these guys come along and you’re like, ‘I
love Jesus, but I don’t know if I can go through that.’ In a time before
anesthesia and antibiotics. There were all kinds of risks going along with
this. You had some people walking away from Christ because they didn’t want to
get circumcised. You had other people who had fallen into their old life of sin,
which happens to Christians, especially new Christians. They were feeling
guilty and felt like they needed to do something about it and thought that this
was the answer. They started to do these really intense works, like get
circumcised, like following dietary rules. They wanted to do something, they
added the law back in. Trusting in Christ just seems way to easy and then we
try and come to God with our works, trying to make up for the bad things that
we have done, instead of simply coming to Him and receiving and trusting that
what he says about us is the way we really are and trusting in radical grace
and drawing close. You had some that were getting circumcised, following the
law, maybe feeling self-righteous about it.
You also
had the dietary laws being added back in, which meant that the Jewish
Christians and the Gentile Christians couldn’t even eat together because the
Jews didn’t want to be defiled. In fact, they had this whole teaching, not just
the dietary law but they had washing you were supposed to do in case you got
contaminated by sin, Jews didn’t even eat with unclean Gentiles. Remember how
scandalous it was for Peter to eat with those Gentiles in the house of
Cornelius?
Paul
starts hearing these reports coming in from these churches and he is furious
that they are taking these brand-new Christians believers and take the whole
yoke of the law and slam it on top of them and crush their faith. Paul writes
his first New Testament book, the letter to the Galatians. You can see how
these background issues play right into his approach in his letter. He starts
in the very first verse,
This
letter is from Paul, an apostle. I was not appointed by any group of people or
any human authority, but by Jesus Christ himself… (Galatians 1:1)
A lot of times, Paul starts his
letters with something about all the good things about them, how thankful he is
for them, not this one! Look at verse 6,
I am
shocked that you are turning away so soon from God… following a different way
that pretends to be the Good News but is not the Good News at all. You are
being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ. Let
God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who
preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you.
(Galatians 1: 6-8)
He says,
“God damn anyone who comes along with a different gospel!” Paul is angry, look
at chapter 3,
Oh, foolish
Galatians! Who has cast an evil spell on you? …How foolish can you be? After
starting your new lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect
by your own human effort? (Galatians 3:1, 3)
Why are
you going back under law? Back under slavery? These dietary laws, these
different laws you are following he says,
There
is no longer Jew or Gentile… For you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)
Grace is
the basis of our unity. He says,
So
Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get
tied up again in slavery to the law… If you are trying to find favor with God
by being circumcised, you must obey every regulation in the whole law of Moses.
(Galatians 5:1-3)
You can’t
just take grace and mix in a little bit of works; you can’t take Christ and mix
in a little bit of law. It’s either Christ fulfilled the law for me, and I
receive grace, or I am going to do it myself. The two are incompatible.
Religion vs relationship. That is the heart of Christianity, and that is the
heart of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. He is angry,
I just
wish that those troublemakers who want to mutilate you by circumcision would
mutilate themselves. (Galatians 5:12)
You guys
have got the knives out, you want to cut something off? I got an idea! He is
furious. He is worried. He is so concerned. There is a real tone of concern. I
can imagine him staying up nights wondering, ‘Is all that we did there in
vain?’ It’s in that context that he runs into his other problem. It’s not just
false teachers in Galatia, it’s false teachers right there at Antioch, at this
great church that sent them out. This great church, this model multicultural
church, they’ve got problems. These same guys from Jerusalem,
While
Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch of Syria, some men from Judea arrived and
began to teach the believers: “Unless you are circumcised as required by the
law of Moses, you cannot be saved.”
Paul
Confronts Peter
This was
bad. These guys were very influential. In fact, they were so influential, the
apostle Peter was up visiting this church, had been spending some time to them.
Peter would travel around and teach and encourage the brethren. He was the one
that went in the house of Cornelius. He had fit right in with the Gentiles, was
fully accepting them, until these guys from Jerusalem showed up. Paul tells
about this in the same letter he writes to the Galatian churches,
But
when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did
was very wrong. When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers, who
were not circumcised.
But
afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the
Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on
the necessity of circumcision. (Galatians 2:11-12)
You can
imagine, Peter is there, they would have these feasts, they called them love
feasts. They would have these big dinners before their home church. Peter shows
up, he walks over to the table with the Gentiles, he looks up, and he sees the
Pharisees. They are like, ‘Oh Peter, you’re not going to eat with them, are
you? Those men aren’t even circumcised! And Peter? Is that bacon?’ He’s like,
‘Uhhhh, yeah, I was just… um… forgot my keys here…to my camel…sorry guys,’ And
he heads over to the special table, the ceremonially clean table, where he is
sitting with these legalists. You can imagine then; Paul shows up to that same
table and asks where Peter is and they point out that he is over at the
‘special table.’ Paul has been getting these reports about all of his churches
crumbling in southern Galatia that he has just planted and then he hears this,
and he is angry, and wonders where Barnabas is needing to do something about
this. Turns out that Barnabas was with those guys too.
As a
result, other Jewish believers followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas
was led astray by their hypocrisy.
Barnabas?
The son of encouragement? The man renowned for his generosity n the early
church? The man who believed in Paul as a Christian before anyone else did, who
introduced him to the other brothers? Who went and got Paul and brought him to
Antioch and travelled all over southern Galatia planting church after church of
Jews and Gentiles with Paul? Barnabas? WHY GOD WHY? He is on the right side of
everything and even he is on the wrong side of this. You can see how contagious
legalism and hypocrisy are. It’s no wonder Jesus compared this to yeast
silently working its way through a lump of dough, inflating itself to make it
look bigger than it really is. We need to beware the danger of slipping away
from radical grace and down into works-based religion. So, what does Paul do
about it?
When I
saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to
Peter in front of all the others,
He walks
right up to the Pharisee table, in front of all the other guys and says,
‘Before these guys got here, you were eating with those guys, and now that
these guys are here you are acting like you don’t. You were eating all the food
they were; did you tell them your nickname? Captain porkchop?’ He says,
“Since
you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a
Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish
traditions? “You and I are Jews by birth, not ‘sinners’ like the Gentiles. Yet
we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by
obeying the law..
The great
secret of Christianity. People ask about Christianity, thinking it’s about a
bunch of rules you follow and maybe God will accept you. He says,
And we
have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because
of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law
He says it
like four different ways because,
For no
one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.” (Galatians 2:13-16)
Are you
taking notes on that? Because you will never be made right with God by the Law.
Well,
Paul
and Barnabas disagreed with them, arguing vehemently.
Apparently
by this time, Barnabas had come back over to the right side on this debate.
Finally,
the church decided to send Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem [~250 miles],
accompanied by some local believers, to talk to the apostles and elders about
this question.
The
Jerusalem Council
It’s a
pretty big deal. They can’t work it out, so they walk 250 miles to Jerusalem to
settle things once and for all. Have you ever had a debate that you are in and
decide to walk to Detroit and then walk another 50 miles into Canada and settle
it once and for all? Paul is like, “I’ll walk. Sounds good to me.” They had to
settle this. This was too big of a deal. It was affecting every church. So,
they walk the long journey from Antioch down to Jerusalem.
The
church sent the delegates to Jerusalem, and they stopped along the way in
Phoenicia and Samaria to visit the believers.
They stop
and talk to Christian churches all along the way, catching up and updating then
on what was happening.
They
told them—much to everyone’s joy—that the Gentiles, too, were being converted.
They are
so excited, other people meeting Christ.
When
they arrived in Jerusalem, Barnabas and Paul were welcomed by the whole church,
including the apostles and elders.
It’s a
mixed group, some subset of the original apostles and they had raised up new
leaders by this time.
They
reported everything God had done through them.
This must
have gone on for some time. They gathered the church together for this
discussion and there is one group, that is not very excited about this. They
look over and once again they see these guys…
But
then some of the believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up
and insisted, “The Gentile converts must be circumcised and required to follow
the law of Moses.” So the apostles and elders met together to resolve this
issue.
Luke
doesn’t give us much of this conversation. There was probably a lengthy debate.
There was lengthy discussion. There were people citing Old Testament scriptures,
the teachings of Jesus, experiences they had, things they had seen.
Peter
Speaks
At the
meeting, after a long discussion, Peter stood
We haven’t
heard from him since Paul called him out in front of everyone at Antioch. If
spiritual leadership worked like leadership in the world, this would be Peter’s
chance to take Paul down a notch. Paul was a nobody compared to Peter. This was
Peter’s homecourt. He could say anything he wanted here, take Paul down, and
even the series 1-1. Let’s see what he says,
and
addressed them as follows: “Brothers, you all know that God chose me from among
you some time ago to preach to the Gentiles so that they could hear the Good
News and believe.
Peter
says, ‘Have you read Acts 10? If anyone knows something about preaching to the
Gentiles, it would be this guy right here. Simon aka Peter aka the Rock aka the
guy with the keys to the Kingdom. I was there when we unlocked the expansion of
the gospel at Pentecost to the Jews. At Samaria, I was there. At Cornelius’s
house, I was there when the gospel went to the Gentiles. That was me. Remember
that?’ And then he says
God
knows people’s hearts, and he confirmed that he accepts Gentiles by giving them
the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and
them, for he cleansed their hearts through faith.
Peter
says, long before they even had a chance to get circumcised, God wasn’t
focusing on that. He wasn’t looking at whether they were circumcised or whether
they were obeying the dietary laws, he looked at their hearts to see if they
were putting their trust in Jesus or not and he sent the Holy Spirit to dwell inside
them. If you are going to blame anyone for this, blame God. He is the one who
keeps cleansing Gentiles and giving them the Holy Spirit. He says that if there
is anything that he has learned at Cornelius’s house, if God calls something
clean, we dare not call it unclean. That is a truth that we would do well to
remember in our Christian lives. When God calls you clean, you do not call it
unclean. You view yourself the way he views you, and if you are not doing that,
that is the biggest problem in your spiritual life. It isn’t all the sin you
are into, your addictions, your habits, the way you messed up last night or
today. It’s your refusal to view yourself the way God does and to thank him for
it and to come to God based on the finished work of Christ.
So why
are you now challenging God by burdening the Gentile believers with a yoke that
neither we nor our ancestors were able to bear?
The yoke
is the big heavy thing they put on the ox to pull the thing that they pull. He
says, ‘who even kept the law anyways? You are telling them to keep the law, you
are acting like you keep the law, have you read the law? “You shall love the
Lord your God with all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.” Have
you ever kept that for a single hour? Have you heard Jesus teach? Has anybody told
you that he said, ‘You have heard it said don’t commit adultery, but I say,
even if you lust in your heart you are guilty.’ Just because you don’t have the
courage to follow through, you are doing it in your mind. ‘You get angry
unrighteously in any way, you are guilty enough to go to hell.’ We have never
kept the law, wake up! Jesus came with a different yoke. He said, ‘I am coming
to all who are weary and heavy laden.’ He says, ‘Take my yoke upon you, for my
yoke is easy and my burden is light. And you shall find rest for your souls.’
You want rest for your soul? That is what he offers, a rest you could never
find under the law because there is always something else you need to do, some
other way you are failing, and it is going to turn you into a legalistic
hypocrite. And then I imagine him looking over at Paul as he delivers his
concluding argument here,
We
believe that we are all saved the same way, by the undeserved grace of the Lord
Jesus.”
Which is a
pretty good summary of what Paul yelled at him across the table an Antioch in
Galatians 2:16. That’s the only way to be saved. This is the last time we hear
from Peter in the whole book of Acts. It’s almost as though he takes the keys
to the Kingdom, unlocks the last lock, and then rides into the sunset. His
final, as far as Luke is concerned, his final contribution to the story he is
writing is this right here. Peter really comes through here. He is not worldly;
he is not a leader in the world who is political and bitter and can’t see past
his ego being pricked to admit that he was wrong. He lays down his pride, he
lays down whatever bitterness he might have had, and he says, ‘No, these guys
are right, and we cannot add the law to the Gentiles. It must not be.’ This
appear to have been the turning point in this debate. It really silenced the
critics.
Everyone
listened quietly as Barnabas and Paul told about the miraculous signs and
wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.
They tell
story after story of God’s grace. I imagine there were tears as they heard
about those meeting Christ for the first time, turning from their old ways to
the love of God. There is one more voice after they had finished.
James
Speaks
When
they had finished, James stood
This is
not James the apostle that we read about in the gospels, that is James son of
Zebedee. He got killed back in Acts 12. There was a James who was the brother
of Jesus. Jesus had 4 brothers at least, named in the gospel and multiple
sisters. During his ministry they thought he was crazy. You can imagine how you
would feel if your brother started walking around saying he was the Messiah.
James was Jesus’s brother. We learn that after Jesus died and rose from the
dead, he made sure to make a stop at James’s place and he comes waltzing right
in. James believes. He became an influential leader. In fact, as Peter goes out
on the road, James seems to rise to a position of prominence in the Jerusalem
church. By this time, he must have already written his epistle. We have the
letter of James in the New Testament, that was this guy right here. This is the
James, Jesus’s brother. Not the son of Zebedee or of Alpheus (there were two
disciples named James). They had a lot of James’ back then. They had a lot of
Judas’ too. There were two disciples named Judas, and Jesus had a brother named
Jude who wrote the Jude of the New Testament. Anyways. We know about James from
secular history. Josephus wrote about James, he called him James the Just. It
said they called him camel knees because he was on his knees praying so much,
he had these thick callouses. He was, unfortunately, killed, stoned in 62 AD.
It was sudden and tragic. He served the Lord for a good 30 years here. He
stands up at the end to summarize and put in his opinion on what they should
do.
and
said, “Brothers, listen to me.
Peter
has told you about the time God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a
people for himself.
He read
Acts 10, he remembers that well.
And
this conversion of Gentiles is exactly what the prophets predicted.
He points
to the scriptures. They shouldn’t be surprised this is happening.
As it
is written: [Amos 9:11-12]
‘Afterward
I will return and restore the fallen house of David. I will rebuild its ruins
and restore it, so that the rest of humanity might seek the LORD, including the
Gentiles—
He is
going to regather the Jews from their exile in Babylon and the purpose is not
just for the sake of the Jews, but he wants all of the non-Jews to seek God as
well.
all
those I have called to be mine.
He says
that the Gentiles are also God’s people now, not just the Jews anymore. The
Gentiles, through the church, can become God’s people. We belong to him
forever, joined to Christ, adopted as his son or daughter. That is a bond that
will never be broken.
The
LORD has spoken—he who made these things known so long ago.’
God knew
all this was happening, it was his plan all along to work through the Jewish
nation to raise up the scriptures and the Messiah and then to go out to all the
nations. And so, James says,
And so
my judgment is that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are
turning to God. Instead, we should write and tell them to abstain from eating
food offered to idols, from sexual immorality, from eating the meat of
strangled animals, and from consuming blood.
The
Recommendation
This is a
strange conclusion. What’s the point? The first thing we need to note is what
is not on this list, and that is circumcision. They don’t need to be
circumcised. It’s not a matter of salvation, but a matter of the mission at
stake. These were Gentile, pagan practices and as he goes on to say, look,
For
these laws of Moses have been preached in Jewish synagogues in every city on
every Sabbath for many generations.”
All
throughout the Roman empire you have communities of Jews that are totally
familiar with the Old Testament laws and observe these dietary laws and all
these other laws. They want to reach them too, not just Gentiles. If we have
these Gentiles in front of these Jews strangling animals and eating it as part
of their pagan practices, they are going to be like, ‘So this is the new, full
extension of the Old Testament? No thank you.’ They are calling for some
sensitivity to the Jews they are trying to reach as well. They would offer food
up in these temples as part of the sacrifices and then sometimes they would go
right down to the temple to eat there and end up falling into sin. This list
was all associated with pagan temple worship. Jews had certain ways they had to
kill an animal. They would slit the throat and hang it up and all the blood
would come out. If you strangle and animal what is not going to come out is the
blood. Obviously, you should stay away from sexual immorality, that was such a
problem in these cities. He calls them to stay away from the temple scene, not
as a matter of salvation, but for other reasons, so they can reach Jews. They
were also worried about the temptation of going to the temple.
Then
the apostles and elders together with the whole church in Jerusalem chose
delegates,
and
they sent them to Antioch of Syria with Paul and Barnabas to report on this
decision.
The men
chosen were two of the church leaders—Judas (also called Barsabbas) and
Silas.
They send
two of their own guys, two of the church leaders. Silas is actually Greek. He
was a leader there in Jerusalem from a Greek background. Judas was apparently
Judas. Silas was not even circumcised by the way. They send Paul, Barnabas,
Judas, and Silas. They don’t just have the letter, but some guys from Jerusalem
who could vouch for the authenticity. Two or more witnesses was an Old
Testament principle. Here is the letter, Luke just copies the letter right in.
This is
the letter they took with them: “This letter is from the apostles and elders,
your brothers in Jerusalem. It is written to the Gentile believers in Antioch,
Syria, and Cilicia.
Not just
to Paul’s group, but Syria (the area north of Antioch) and Cilicia (southern
Turkey where all these churches were). Paul asked them to put in the other
places as well, he wants to wipe out this legalism that is infecting the groups
that he has planted.
Greetings!
“We understand that some men from here have troubled you and upset you with
their teaching, but we did not send them!
The men
that claimed to be from James, were not actually sent from James, liars.
So we
decided, having come to complete agreement, to send you official
representatives, along with our beloved Barnabas and Paul,
They love
and support Barnabas and Paul.
who
have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
These guys
were awesome on the first missionary journey.
We are
sending Judas and Silas to confirm what we have decided concerning your
question. “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay no greater
burden on you than these few requirements: You must abstain from eating food
offered to idols, from consuming blood or the meat of strangled animals, and
from sexual immorality. If you do this, you will do well. Farewell.” The messengers
went at once to Antioch, where they called a general meeting of the believers
and delivered the letter. And there was great joy throughout the church
that day as they read this encouraging message.
I imagine
the guy in the back of the circumcision line was very grateful. How would you
like to be the guy who had gotten it done yesterday?
Then
Judas and Silas, both being prophets, spoke at length to the believers,
encouraging and strengthening their faith.
Conclusions
What a
great story. I just see the hand of God all over this thing. God knows our
tendency. He knows of our drift toward law, toward hypocrisy. We can’t be
content with just plain old grace, raw grace, radical grace. We have to add
something to it, we have to do something. I see Christ using Paul to turn the
early church back from the edge of disaster as they were skidding toward the
edge of the cliff of grace and about to fall into the chasm of legalism. There
was one man standing there, saying no. A former Pharisee, the only Pharisee on
the right side of this in this story was Paul, to declare the it is grace
alone, not grace plus works, that equals works. Not Christ plus law, that
equals law and negates what Christ has done and obligates you to keep the whole
law. No, it’s simple grace, Paul says. Christ says, “It is finished.” And he
meant it and there is nothing we add to that. The truth won out here.
Let’s not
forget how God used Peter. Peter was a guy who was in touch enough with this
grace to once again admit when he made a big mistake in front of a lot of
people. To cling to grace, like we have to do if we are going to walk with God,
to admit he was wrong and to take a stand for the truth, for the God who gives
us a basis for us to actually work through our conflicts and disagreements, the
basis for grace.