Solving a Crisis

SERMON: 2014-06-29--ac14135--solving-a-crisis-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:44:17.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with a review of Acts chapter 15 (Scripture reading/Exposition) and concludes with a theological summary of the gospel's power (Pastoral Application). Both are integral parts of the sermon. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- And last week in looking at Acts chapter 15, we saw that the chapter introduces us to the first general council of the early church, commonly known as the Jerusalem Council. It was convened at the request of Paul and Barnabas to answer the question, "Should Gentile believers be required to observe the law of Moses, particularly should they have to undergo the right of circumcision to be saved?" Some people from the Jerusalem church, an influential portion of them actually, were of that opinion and they took it upon themselves, as we saw, to travel to Antioch, which was a church largely made up of Gentiles, and they preached that message there. They said, "Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved." That brought them into serious conflict with the Apostle Paul and Barnabas, who were two of the leaders of the congregation at Antioch, because from their perspective, it not only compromised the integrity of the gospel, but it made ministry to Gentiles virtually impossible. And so because the problem arose in the Jerusalem church, and because the Jerusalem church was the mother church of the Antioch church, and because the Apostles and elders were headquartered there, they made their way to Jerusalem and this Jerusalem council was convened. And that is where we pick up the story again this morning. And so as this council gathers, the first thing that happens is that the circumcision party, as they're sometimes called, they're also called Judaizers, they're also called the party of the Pharisees, these were Pharisees who had become Christians, they are the first to be given the floor. And so here is what they say in verse 15, "Some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, 'The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses.'" Notice now it's not only a question of circumcision, that could be argued goes back all the way to Abraham and therefore precedes the covenant made at Mount Sinai, but now it includes all the law of Moses and that would include not only the moral law, don't steal, don't murder, don't commit adultery, but also the ceremonial law, the sacrifices and the dietary laws and all the other elements that were part of that. So they lay out the issue before the assembly and the Bible goes on to say that there was a great deal of discussion. Verse 6 says, "The apostles and elders met to consider this question." And then verse 7, "After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them." Now remember, Peter was the one used of God to introduce the gospel to the Gentiles. He was the one called by the Lord to go to the house of Cornelius back in Acts chapter 10 and it was through his preaching and his ministry that the Holy Spirit was given to Cornelius and his household. So that is the story Peter now picks up and continues to relate. Verse 7, "Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God who knows the heart showed that he accepted them by giving them the Holy Spirit, by giving the Holy Spirit to them just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No, we believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved just as they are." What is he saying? He is saying that when he preached the gospel to the house of Cornelius, God poured out the Holy Spirit upon them to indicate that God had accepted them into his family and that it was without them having to keep the law of Moses. That's a huge argument that as we'll see gets repeated time and time again in Acts chapter 15. Why do you try to put a yoke on them, he says, that we ourselves could not bear? Remember, a yoke in biblical thought is a body of teaching that a rabbi puts on his disciples. In this case, the yoke of Moses is the law of Moses both in its moral attributes and also in its ceremonial nature. He says, "Look, you know, we've been trying to live this way for all these many years. We haven't been able to do it. Why in the world are you asking the Gentiles to do something that we ourselves have not been able to do?" So that's Peter's speech. All to address the question, must the Gentiles observe the law of Moses particularly? Must they be circumcised? Now as the story goes on and you can follow through, then it is Paul and Barnabas's turn to speak and Acts chapter 15 verse 12 puts it this way, the whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling them miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. So Paul and Barnabas get up and they tell their story. This is now the third or fourth time the Bible records that they do this. The first time was after they completed their missionary journey, they got to the church in Antioch and they told the story of how as they preached the good news, God poured out his Holy Spirit, the Gentiles became Christians and it was all without the law of Moses. Then as they traveled from Antioch back up to Jerusalem, every place they stopped they told the same story, they were so excited about God's ability to reach the Gentiles and bring them into the kingdom all without having to keep the law of Moses. Then they tell the church in Jerusalem that when they first arrived and now when this whole council is taking place, they repeat the story once again and as I said, each time the emphasis lies on the fact that God accepts the Gentiles by faith through grace, it has nothing to do with keeping the law. As a matter of fact, later on, depending on when Galatians was written, the Apostle Paul when he deals with the same issue with even a greater intensity, he says to them, "I would like to learn just one thing from you. Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law or by believing what you heard?" These Judaizers had made it to the churches that he had established in Galatia, those are the churches that we've talked about, the church at Antioch, the city at Antioch up there in Galatia, Iconium and Derbe, they had come to faith, these Judaizers had come, they had drawn them back into keeping the law, Paul is fired to a T about it and he says, "Look back on your life. Did you receive the Holy Spirit because you did it all right and God blessed you because you were good or did God give you the Holy Spirit because you came to faith in Jesus, you repented of your sin and the Holy Spirit was given as a free gift?" That is constantly the issue that we are facing, not only in Acts chapter 15 but throughout the course of the New Testament. How do you become part of the family of God? How do you get God's approval? Do you get God's approval by doing it right or do you get God's approval by believing in the sacrificial death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ? We are going to see what practical implications that has even for the church today because truth be known, that issue continues to plague a lot of the church. So Paul and Barnabas speak and now James, this would be James the brother of Jesus, James who wrote the book of James, one of the three pillars of the church together with John and Peter and he gets up and he quotes then from the book of Amos to indicate that already in Old Testament times God was talking about including the Gentiles, we'll talk a little bit more about that later on but then he draws the argument to a close and he comes up with a proposal and here is how that proposal reads. "It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Don't make them buy a suit when they've never had a suit in their lives. Don't make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them telling them to abstain from," now notice these four categories, "food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath." That settles the issue. Everybody votes in favor, this is a good compromise. So they put it in a letter and they take two of their own people, Silas, the name would indicate that he was Greek and a fellow by the name of Judas which would indicate that he was a Hebrew and those two join Paul and Barnabas on the way back to Antioch with this letter. They read this letter and not only to the church in Antioch but to all the other Gentile churches that Paul has established and for our practical intents and purposes then, the episode comes to a conclusion in verse 31 where the scripture says the people read it and were glad for its encouraging message. If you were a Gentile and a Gentile man and they told you you didn't have to be circumcised, you would have good reason to be happy too because that of course weighed heavily upon them. So question is then, what do we learn today from this particular episode? In the time that remains this morning, I want to try to talk with you about two things that I think we need to learn from it and then Lord willing next week we'll come back to it one more time and we'll look at a third lesson that we draw from here particularly why these four specific categories that they decide they're going to lay before the Gentiles because there are some intriguing questions associated with that that I'll try to share with you next week. In the meantime, two lessons that we want to consider from this morning and the first one is this, finding the will of God can involve many different elements. Finding the will of God can involve many different elements particularly if the will of God is at odds with your will and particularly if the will of God is at odds with your cultural values. I've said this before but it bears repeating it is impossible for us to overestimate today the difference between Jew and Gentile in the first century of the present era. I've likened it to you and I living next door to a known sexual offender and inviting him into your house and getting to know your children. That is an horrific idea that most of us would shrink away from I would hope but it's precisely how the Jews felt about the Gentiles. These were the bad people. These were the people who lived without a law. These were the people whose lives were steeped in sexual immorality. These were people who worshiped other gods. These were people who were unclean. These were people they thought God hated. And they had spent generations now trying to keep the law and show God how good they were and how intent they were on obeying the law of God. And now God comes along and he says I want you to take those people and invite them into your life in fact I'm going to make them as much a part of my people as I have made you. Intellectually sometimes they could grasp it but time and time again they defaulted back to a position that said you don't belong. In fact if you read the book of Galatians and there's a lot of controversy as to whether that was written at the same time as this council happened, whether it was written before this council happened or whether it was written much later but in the book of Galatians even Peter and Barnabas who were on the forefront of being used by God to bring Gentiles into Christian community were so blown away by the argument of the Judaizers that they acted hypocritically and refused to associate with unclean people who had come to faith in Christ. Do you get the drift of how deeply rooted this was in the Jewish psyche? And so God had to resort repeatedly to multiple ways to show them the reality of what his will was in that regard. So let's take just a moment and walk through four elements that God had to use to help them come to the conclusion that Gentile believers were the will of God. There was first of all the scriptures. The teaching of scripture is what James quotes here when he says that the remnant of men may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who bear my name all through the Old Testament going back all the way to Abraham. God makes it very clear that God blesses Abraham with a view to doing what? Blessing the nations of the world. I love the verse in Isaiah I believe it's 49 that says it's too light a thing. This is the servant of the Lord that you should bring back the house of Jacob to me but I will make you a light to the nation. Somehow the believing Jews when they read the Old Testament scriptures it didn't quite compute or it didn't quite fit into their theological framework. So there's scripture which is always the first basis for our decision making. Next there was supernatural divine intervention. Come back with me for a moment to Acts chapter 10 the story where Peter gets sent to Cornelius' house. Look at how many divine aspects the Lord had to enter into to make that happen. First of all there is Cornelius in prayer in worship. What happens? An angel of God shows up and he says I want you to get hold of Peter. Then there is Peter. He's hanging around in Simon the Tanner's house waiting for lunch. Sitting up on the roof falls into a trance. What happens when he falls into a trance? He has this vision a vision of a sheet coming down from heaven filled with clean and unclean animals and a voice from heaven that says to him repeatedly Peter get up and eat. You remember Peter's response. Peter says no I've never eaten an unclean thing in my life. Remember the dietary laws under the ceremonial law of Moses in the Old Testament was meant as a teaching tool to show Israel that they were God's holy people and they were not allowed to mix as equals with unbelievers. That's why every time when they had to choose what they were going to eat they were not allowed to eat unclean animals only clean ones. A lot of people think today it was only for health reasons it was much more than health reasons. Every time they decided what they were going to slaughter God was saying to them in symbolic form you're my holy people do not equate yourselves with unbelievers. So Peter was rather proud of that and God says don't call unclean what I have called clean and that was God's way of saying that only the ceremonial law is done but I am about to bring into the church a whole group of what you think are very bad people. So get ready. So Peter is pondering the vision. People knock on the door the servants the soldiers from Cornelius' house have found where he is with the invitation Cornelius needs you and what happens now. This time it's not a vision this time it's not an angel this time it's the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit says Peter you go and he goes and as we know the rest is history. So you get all of these elements where God uses the scriptures God uses special revelation by dreams visions angelic visitation in this particular story and then the third element that enters into this picture is divine confirmation. That is to say God shows by what he does that his word is true and that he wants Gentiles included in the family of God and you may remember that when Peter got back to Jerusalem and everybody had heard the story of how he had gone to Cornelius' house and they all criticized him because what was he a Jew doing among the Gentiles what was Peter's response. He says concerning the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the house of Cornelius he says who was I that I should argue with God and Paul and Barnabas are doing the same thing as they relate their story of visiting the Gentiles who were we that we should argue with God. So there you have this third way of discerning what God is doing. God pours out the Holy Spirit with signs and wonders and by studying the signs and the wonders you get some sense of what is God saying to the church and then the fourth one here of course and this is very interesting is the collective wisdom of the community. They prayerfully came to a conclusion as to what it was that God wanted with regard to the Gentiles. They remembered from scripture that God wanted to include the Gentiles. They took note of how God set the stage for the Gentiles to be reached. They took note of the fact that God confirmed his word with signs and wonders and as they entered into discussion about this they came to the conclusion you know maybe just maybe God wants the Gentiles as part of the church and maybe just maybe they don't need to be circumcised they don't need to keep the ceremonial law of Moses because God has decided they don't need to and so it's really interesting in my opinion anyway that as they draft this letter to the church at Antioch and then up in Asia Minor they word it this way in verse 28 it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements and then they list the four things that need to be done but notice the wording of that it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us and there you have a powerful image of decision-making in the body of Christ the Holy Spirit gives wisdom to the community and the community collectively discerns what the Holy Spirit is saying so much so that they can say with confidence it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us that's fascinating and there's a principle there that I'm anxious for us to really grab hold of and that principle is this God speaks to his people in many different ways and our job is to try to discern what it is that he is saying our job is to try to discern what God is saying he speaks in many different ways so the question first of all is always what are the scriptures say the second question is what is the Holy Spirit saying the second the third question is how is God confirming his word and then the fourth question is collectively how do we come to a decision that says it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and it seemed good to us practical example just for fun have you noticed on the property next door in this little corner here that there's a for sale sign on it have you noticed the for sale sign it's gone back out now some of you that have been around long enough will know that when we started building here we put in a bid for that piece of property some of you will remember that because a number of us felt that the Lord really wanted us to have that property at the time because part of the initial vision is a life center where practical things can happen to to advance the gospel of Christ through the various ministries that the Lord is entrusted to us as a congregation and the irony was and this is really quite odd there hadn't been a bid on that property for Lord knows how long the moment we put in our bed somebody else trumped our bid and the land was sold out from underneath us some of you will remember how that went it was really quite odd and looked like somebody was trying to flip the property well that property has been flipped a couple of times and last fall already we were informed by City Hall that whoever had bought the property had applied for zoning changes to put two buildings up on that property in fact there was a sign on the property for some time that said rental units will be available at the end of 2013 I don't know how many of you remember that sign it was on the far end and it was up for quite some time well clearly that appears to be on hold and the property is back up on the market now I'm not saying anything by that other than to say how do you discern what the Lord is saying in a situation like this and is it something that you and I at least ought to be praying about in terms of the future of that piece of land is it the Lord's intent for us to own that is that just a pipe dream do we even care I don't know but I find it interesting that discovering the will of God is a complex communal process wouldn't you agree so that's the thing to add to our prayer list Lord what are you saying by the development of these circumstances are you saying anything at all all right want to move on there's a second lesson that I want us to learn here and that is this the integrity of the gospel must be preserved at all costs I touched on this lightly last week want to talk about it just a bit more today the integrity of the gospel must be preserved at all costs if I were to ask you and I won't but if I were to ask you to turn to your neighbor this morning and in you know as few words as you could think of summarize the gospel what would you say think about that for just a sec if I asked you as an unbeliever tell me what the gospel message is what's the fewest words that you can do it in forgiveness reconciliation I love Ephesians 2 8 and 9 many of you know that of course it is by grace you have been saved through faith this is not from yourselves it is the gift of God not by works so that no one can boast the gospel message is that we're alienated from God by sin God in Christ punishes our sin grants us not only forgiveness but also righteousness so that when by faith in Christ we stand before God we stand before God as totally righteous by justification Christ then comes to live in us by his Holy Spirit and he changes our lives from the inside out but that does not determine whether or not we are Christians we are Christians because we are joined by faith to Jesus that is the gospel that is the battle here in Acts chapter 15 the issue is are we saved by grace through faith in the finished work of Christ or are we saved by something we must do to make ourselves better before God does God like you better when you've been good than when you've been bad that's a very profound question to ponder and the whole controversy here with the Judaizers is that it isn't enough to believe in Jesus alone you've got to also keep the law Paul calls it another gospel here's how he puts it again in Galatians when he is in the heat of this argument even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preach to you let him be eternally condemned eternally condemned is the Greek word anathema it means literally let him go to hell that's how strong Paul's feels about the message of the gospel are we saved by grace through faith or are we saved by something that we add to the pool huh why is this so important because by works of the law no man can be justified you put yourself under the curse he says it's never good enough and you're always fighting for a place to belong the only one who measured up he says was Jesus and when you're joined to Jesus you're right up there you're as good from God's perspective as you're ever going to be and it releases the power of God and produces internal transformation out of gratitude remember the summary that we talked about last week under the law you say I belong because I obey under grace you say I obey because I belong now please understand the devil hates the gospel why does he hate the gospel because it is the only power in the universe that can actually set people free transform sinners and make them saints and that is why throughout the history of the book of Acts that we've been looking at there is all this persecution because whenever the gospel goes forth those who haven't experienced grace who are trying so hard to be good and they see God's approval on those who aren't good by nature they get terribly upset because they've worked at it so hard God doesn't want them and these people who are bad people God just thinks they're okay not fair grace is never fair let's get our heads around it but not only does the devil get at us through persecution from the outside throughout the New Testament and especially in the ministry of Paul you find this ongoing internal conflict where there are people from within the community who are trying to take the church away from its place of grace by reintroducing wrong belief systems Paul later on in Acts chapter 20 verse 30 when when he is visiting with the Ephesian elders he's now on his way to Jerusalem to be imprisoned and eventually to go to Rome and he is having this last sit down session with the elders of the Ephesus church and he warns them he says even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them even from your own midst and so throughout the history of the Christian church there are two extremes that Satan pushes people into in order to wean them away from the gospel of grace and just very quickly one of those is legalism which is what we're contending with here in Acts chapter 15 legalism is a return to law typically it tries to add law to grace it is not enough just to believe in Christ but I must also do something and that's what the circumcision party is trying to do and that's what Paul talks about in Galatians 3 3 when he says are you so foolish after beginning with the spirit are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort are you trying to attain your goal by human effort are you trying you see when you put yourself under law it isn't just a matter of well should I do this versus should I not do that now it's a matter of how do I get accepted before God and the moment you start adding your own contribution to acceptance before God you've moved from grace to law you must now keep the whole law and you're under condemnation you will never ever measure up and it's extremely subtle because under grace we still have to live right but living right now comes from the inside it doesn't change my status before God because whether I'm good bad or indifferent God has already accepted me in Christ believe you me this is huge and you can test this in your own life do you feel that God loves you less when you've been bad versus when you've been good depending on how deep that goes you are in subtle ways appealing to law rather than grace in Christ you are accepted and out of that acceptance flows a life of service that comes from the inside out that's one extreme and people of religious background people have grown up with moral values are extremely prone to sliding back into a system of law imposing standards on each other that identify what a good Christian is and that can be a form of dress that can be a form of how you conduct yourself it can be part and parcel of a whole value system that in subtle ways makes you look down your noses at other people who aren't quite as good as you are now the other extreme and we really need to move on here but the other extreme is that of license or moral relativism and the the proper word for that is anti-nomianism that's a Greek word nomas is law anti is against anti-nomianism is license or moral relativism it's at the other end of the spectrum if law says you better be good for going to love you then moral relativism says well you know we're accepted by grace through faith God loves me because of Christ so it doesn't matter how I live does it because my sins are already forgiven and I'm a good Christian regardless of how I live and that was a problem that already plagued the early church Jude towards the end of the New Testament puts it this way he says dear friends I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that it was once for all entrusted to the saints for certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you they are godless men who change the grace of our God into license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only sovereign in Lord and if religious people tend to want to swing back under the law then people who come out of a worldly background easily gravitate towards license or moral relativism and you see the manifestation of that in our day and age when people talk about the fact that God loves everybody and that that it doesn't matter how you live you are forgiven and accepted by God now you know that today is world pride day right and you know that at one o'clock the biggest pride parade this country has ever seen is going to be happening in Toronto what you probably don't know is that right now starting at 11 o'clock there is a church service being sponsored by the Metropolitan Community Church that celebrates the pride of gayness and the wonderful acceptance that God has for people regardless of their lifestyle now hear me well I have great compassion for people who struggle with sexual identity I have no use for homophobia I think as God's people we need to reach out in every way that we can and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ where my difficulty lies is when you take what the Bible calls sin or what the Bible calls brokenness and you normalize it as something that is good and wonderful and what I really have trouble with is when you put God's blessing on activity that scripture says is not good activity you understand what I'm saying because it isn't just the question of do you accept me but do you celebrate me and isn't it ironic that the pride parade this afternoon is being led by the Reverend Brent Hawks who is the founding pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church which is the largest gay church in this country he has been elected to lead the parade and everybody's quite proud of it because years back he was the one who fought for gay marriages and performed the first gay marriage in this country and so there's a lot of talk about how far have we come so this is where we need discernment you see what does it mean to love our neighbor but at what point does the gospel say here is the line this is what it means to be forgiven by Jesus but this is what it means to live this out and if the church historically has moved towards legalism on the one hand the danger is to move towards moral relativism on the other hand and both are simply wrong because Ephesians 2 8 to 9 goes on to say in verse 10 we have been created in Christ Jesus for good works that he has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them and biblical Christianity lives out of the gratitude of forgiveness and righteousness and says how can I live in a way that honors God Jesus says I have not come to abolish the law I've come to fulfill it and the demonstration of the genuineness of our faith bears fruit in how we repent when we fall short of the standards of God and how we strive by God's grace to become men and women who love God above all and who love their neighbor as they love themselves amen that is the truth of the gospel that's where lies the balance and [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:44:11.240; remove through 00:44:17.000] that's why the gospel is the power of God that transforms us from the inside out. 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