Solving a Crisis

SERMON: 2014-07-06--ac14136--solving-a-crisis-part-3 SOURCE DURATION: 00:40:35.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with an introduction setting the context for a study (Sermon) and ends with a detailed theological application regarding Christian freedom (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 --- Just to set the context for those of you that are with us perhaps for the first time this morning or that have missed the last two weeks, I want to wind up more or less a study that we've been doing on Acts chapter 15 entitled "Solving a Crisis, Part 3." Acts chapter 15 deals with the first general council of the Christian church, commonly known as the Council of Jerusalem, and it was convened to discuss a very important question for the early church. And the question was this, "Should Gentiles, non-Jewish people who had come to faith in Christ be required to observe the law of Moses, particularly did they need to be circumcised?" The council decided they didn't need to, but in the course of making that decision they said there were four acts of behavior that the Gentiles ought to practice, and let me just read that scripture as they word it in the chapter, in the verses, let's put that verse up. This is part of the letter that they choose to send to the Gentiles, Acts 15, 28 and 29. "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements, you are to abstain from food sacrifice to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell." I want to talk about those four things this morning in just a moment, and the reasons for it. Before we do that, please pray with me. The more things change, the more they stay the same. And just as years and years ago there was a question of what is the relationship between law and grace, and what is the relationship between new believers and old time believers, so today too we need to know what freedom in Christ looks like and why. So as we tackle this topic, which is a tad technical, I pray not only that you give me the words to speak it clearly, but the Lord each of us here may have hearts to receive it, understand it, and most of all seek to put it into practice as we try to live out our life in Christ before a watching world. So bless these moments together, we pray it in Jesus' name, amen. So as I said, for two weeks now I have left you with the question, why does the Jerusalem Council, apparently with the blessing of the Holy Spirit, impose four restrictions on Gentile converts to Christ, restrictions that sound suspiciously like the law of Moses, when they have just decided that the Gentiles in fact do not have to observe the law of Moses. Listen again now to how James, who comes up with this idea, puts it originally in his address to the assembly, Acts 15 verses 19 and 20, James speaking, one of the pillars of the church you will recall, he says, "It is my judgment therefore that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead, we should write to them telling them to, number one, abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood." Each of these four sounds suspiciously like the law of Moses. If not the ceremonial law, then certainly the moral law. So the question is, why particularly these four? And the time that we have this morning, I want to talk to you about the fact that there are two schools of thought as to why the church adopts this particular resolution. The first school of thought holds that these are a reference to the precepts of Noah, also known as the Noahide precepts. Don't know about you, I had never heard of these before. Anybody here ever hear of the precepts of Noah? The precepts of Noah, seven in number, go back according to Jewish religious tradition to the seven commandments that God gave to Noah after the flood that all his offspring, that is to say all of humanity, was to practice in perpetuity. Six of the seven are said to go all the way back to commandments that God gave to Adam in the garden, and the seventh was added at the time of Noah. Now when you read these seven precepts of Noah, they sound suspiciously like the Ten Commandments. Let me just run them by you quick a minute. There is idolatry, you shall have no other gods before me. There is sexual immorality, you shall not commit adultery. There is murder, you shall not kill. There is blasphemy, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. There is theft, you shall not steal anything that is your neighbors. And then the next one, the sixth, is the one that is added in the days of Noah. And that is, you shall not eat the flesh of a living animal. You shall not eat the flesh of a living animal. We'll come back to that later because that has some interesting implications. And then the seventh is the only one that is positive. And the positive one is, you shall establish courts of law to make sure that justice and the social order is enforced so that the six previous laws, people can be held accountable to them. Those are the seven precepts of Noah, revered and understood in the Jewish community to this very day. In fact, in the year 19-- let me find it here a moment. In the year 1991, the United States Congress in the preamble to a 1991 bill establishing Education Day refers to the principles or the precepts of Noah. Here's how it reads. Whereas Congress recognizes the historical tradition of ethical values and principles which are the basis of civilized society and upon which a great nation was founded, whereas these ethical values and principles have been the bedrock of society from the dawn of civilization when they were known as the seven Noahide laws. Isn't that interesting? None of us have ever heard of them before. Now here's the thing we need to understand about the seven Noahide laws. The argument in the Jewish community was that these were God's principles to be observed by the Gentiles. The Jews themselves were held accountable to the 613 known laws of the Torah. And they understood that most Gentiles would never be able to do that, so they made this alternate provision that a Gentile only had to keep these seven precepts of Noah. And if he did or she did, they could be declared a righteous Gentile and they would be eligible for life in the world to come. Isn't that interesting? The Jews were expected to observe 613 of them, which is why you can understand why Peter says neither we nor our fathers could bear that particular load, but the Gentiles, they only had to observe these seven. And so it's a fascinating concept that ties into the Jewish notion of proselytes. And here's another thing that I never knew before. There were in Jewish thought two kinds of proselytes. Now a proselyte is a person who joins the Jewish community and who shares in the blessings of the Jewish covenant. The one category was the righteous Gentile or the righteous proselyte. A righteous proselyte was a person who chose to become Jewish by circumcision and by the keeping of the Torah. And the God-fearing Gentiles that we have encountered in the book of Acts all fell into that category. They were Gentiles who saw the presence of God among the people of Israel and they chose to join the people of Israel by becoming Jewish in their behavior and by observing not only the moral but also the ceremonial law of Israel. That was never an issue. So they had a second category of proselytes and these were called proselytes of the gate. It's a reference to the Old Testament about meeting aliens at the gate of the city. And to qualify as a proselyte of the gate, all you had to do was to commit yourself to the seven precepts of Noah. So you didn't have to become fully Jewish but you had to abide by those moral principles and that was good enough for you to be sort of an adherent to the Jewish community and to share in the blessings of God and the blessings of eternal life. It's rather fascinating. And so this particular school of thought, and this is how the Jewish encyclopedia understands what is happening here in Acts 15 interestingly enough, this school of thought holds to the fact that James understanding this concept brings it forward because the circumcision party would have been used to this concept of proselytes of the gate and therefore would agree to this provision. And so that school of thought views it as a political move to bring unity among the diverse views the Gentiles could have their cake and eat it too without having to submit to circumcision. So that's one school of thought. So now the question is, is that a legitimate interpretation of this particular passage? And I would argue both yes and no, talk about political, yes because these precepts are a curious mixture of ceremonial law and moral law. Ceremonial law was instituted by Moses to point its way to Christ, ceremonial law after Christ was discontinued, the moral law goes back all the way to Adam and continues in force in fact has been fulfilled in the person of Christ. So you could argue, yes even Gentiles are held accountable to keep the moral law of God. Paul talks about that as a matter of fact in Romans chapter 2 where he says that even the Gentiles who have never been taught the law of God know that there is right and wrong, it's implanted in their heart and come the day of judgment they're going to be held accountable for what they know according to their conscience. Nobody's going to stand before God and say well oh I didn't know that this is what you wanted of me because everybody knows the difference at some degree between right and wrong unless according to the book of Romans you push away the truth, God gives you over to the lie and now black becomes white and white becomes black and you celebrate what you ought to judge and you condemn what you ought to approve, that's the end of Romans chapter 1 they not only do those things but they approve those who do those things. Interesting commentary in terms of today's society as to what it is that we value and what it is that we do not value. So yes there is merit in saying the community here is saying to the Gentiles you need to observe the moral law of God as God requires this of everybody that lives, it's the basis for society getting along with each other. But the other side of this is this, why in the world would this particular counsel of Jerusalem return people to an emphasis on law keeping when they have just made it so clear that the law of Moses does not need to be observed? Because remember I said these four precepts are a curious mixture of moral law but also ceremonial law, all this blood business that's all ceremonial law. So why would they impose this on the Gentiles and reconstitute the law as a basis of salvation when the whole critical issue here is you're not saved by keeping the law, you're saved by grace through faith. Remember again how Peter puts it earlier in verse 11, we believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved just as they are. The whole emphasis here is you're not saved by law keeping, you're saved by grace through faith in the finished work of Jesus, don't fall back into that old system of trying to justify yourself by good works. So if not this school of thought, if it's not fully the precepts of Noah that are being imposed on Gentile believers out of a political process of keeping everybody together then what else? Well there is a second school of thought and this is shared universally pretty much across the board by most commentators and that is the fact that this is an accommodation to Jewish sensitivities, it's an accommodation to Jewish sensitivities. Let me explain what I mean by that, as I've said many times now it's impossible to overestimate the gap between Jewish practices and Gentile practices. They were miles and miles apart and if they were miles and miles apart in general they were surely miles and miles apart particularly on these four issues. Let me walk you through it just very quickly to show you how big that gap really was. The first one that they mention is food polluted by idols, don't eat food polluted by idols. Now you have to understand that in the ancient world, in the Greek and Roman world, idolatry was rampant and most food that you could buy particularly meat in the meat market had been used in the worship of idols. So animals would be brought to the temple for sacrifice, they'd be slaughtered, some of the meat would be offered to the gods that they were worshipping in order to win their blessing and their approval and then the rest of the slaughtered animal would go into the market and that's what you would buy and that's what you would take home. So the big question in the early church was if I go to the market and buy meat that has been slaughtered in connection with idol worshippers, does that make me an idol worshipper? And that would run at odds with the commandment you shall have no other gods before me. That was a huge issue for the Jewish community and so committed and religious Jews would stand aghast that any Gentile who would profess to believe in the God of Israel could even remotely think of being involved in idol worship by eating food that was sacrificed to idols. Which was a huge social issue because everywhere you went, every party you attended, every house that you visited, the meat most likely came from idol worship. So this was a huge issue and a great controversy between these two parties. Well the second one is sexual immorality. We should write them telling them to abstain not only from food polluted by idols but from sexual immorality and there again the gap between Jew and Gentile was huge. Because you don't have to read the Old Testament for very long before you discover that biblical principles of sexual behavior were extremely narrowly defined. Sexual relations was to be limited between a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage outside of that. It was viewed as sin in varying degrees depending on what it is that you did and there was an appropriate punishment attached to each of those areas. The Bible is very particular in terms of sexual behavior and sexual sin. Sex and adultery particularly out of this world. Well if you know anything at all about Greek and Roman culture, all you have to do is look at these naked statues that you see everywhere in Greek culture and you get to see that the human body was admired in its raw sexuality. And I found a very interesting quote by Demosthenes, you may have heard of him way back in school. He was a statesman and an orator in ancient Athens, he lived in the 4th century BC. He was a noted orator, had a speech defect. I remember from high school days that it was said that he practiced preaching with a mouth full of pebbles so that he would learn how to strengthen his voice. Here's an interesting quote from him that gives you the flavor of life in Greek culture. He says, "We keep prostitutes for pleasure, we keep mistresses for the day to day needs of the body, and we keep wives for the begetting of children and the faithful guardianship of our homes." That's sort of a broad view of sexuality would you not agree? Little bit like what we find in our culture today said to say. So huge gap and big problem between you and gentile. The next one is trickier, it's meat from strangled animals. Tell them to abstain from the meat of strangled animals. Now the key issue here is how the animal has been slaughtered, particularly has it been properly bled. A few minutes we'll look at blood and we'll see the role that blood played in the sacrificial system of the ancient world and what the significance of that was. But gentiles had no compunction about eating meat that had died of itself, but meat that had died of itself or that hadn't been properly slaughtered, hence the Jewish kosher laws by the way to this day, meat that hadn't been properly slaughtered would have congealed blood in it. And that made it unfit for the consumption of God's people. That's a prohibition that goes back all the way to Noah because God tells Noah in Genesis 3, 9, 3 and 4, everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, now I give you everything. Let me pause there for a moment and remind you that up until this time in human history animals were off-limit as food for people. Only herbs and plants were part of the original diet. So when you hear people, vegetarian, coming forward and saying we were designed to eat vegetables and not meat, there's truth to what they're saying. That's how the original creation was planned. After the flood, however, God goes a step further and he says now I'm going to allow you to eat meat. Don't know why that is, other than the fact that before that they lived much longer than we live today. So, you know, maybe God wanted us to clog our arteries or whatever so we wouldn't get lit. Anyway, you can ponder about that one. But in verse 4, you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. So there again, the difference between Jew and Gentile was huge on a very, very practical day-to-day level. So then the next one is you are to abstain from blood. As I mentioned, blood plays a huge role in the Old Testament sacrificial system because life was said to be in the blood and blood belonged to God. And while aliens under the Old Covenant were allowed to eat meat that had died of itself, as I recollect, neither alien nor Jew was ever allowed to drink blood. Listen to how Leviticus puts it, and this is one of many passages that teach the same thing. "Any Israelite or any alien, Gentile, living among them who eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from his people. For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves in the altar. It is the blood that makes atonement for one's life. Therefore I say to the Israelites, 'None of you may eat blood, nor may an alien living among you eat blood.'" Very, very clear prohibition under the Old Covenant holiness laws. Now again, very different in the Gentile world. A little later on, history tells us in the Roman Empire, the story started to circulate that you could get extra strength and life by drinking the blood of fallen gladiators. And so some enterprising peddler made that a business. They would bleed the gladiators after they had been slaughtered in the arena, and they would sell you that blood warm as a recipe for enabling you to get extra strength. Well, eventually when the games were banned, they ran out of gladiators and then they applied it to criminals who were being executed. So they would bleed them and you could buy the blood. And you can imagine how abhorrent that would be. But even in much of the Western world, the consumption of blood varies from culture to culture. How many of you here have ever heard of blood pudding? If you're of Irish or British origin, blood pudding is a blood sausage made of pig blood and other ingredients that are considered a delicacy in certain circles. So Jew and Gentile had very different views on the consumption of blood, and you can imagine pig blood particularly, what that would do for a good dedicated Jew. So here you have these vast differences between Jew and Gentile. And it's not at all inconceivable that a new Jewish convert to the Christian faith would practice many of these abhorrent practices in the eyes of Jewish believers. I've said, Jewish believers, I've pointed out already, any place you went for dinner, the meat that you would eat had likely been sacrificed to an idol. And if you know Paul's writings later on about that in Corinthians and in Romans, he talks a lot about how you should behave in that particular setting, was it idolatry or not, and he develops some very interesting thoughts about that that perhaps we'll look at it a later day. Likewise, you can imagine having grown up in sort of a sexually loose atmosphere of Greek or Rome, and if you know anything at all about sanctification in your own life, you can well imagine that the average new Gentile believer probably took along with him some practices and behaviors that were less than godly, wouldn't you agree? I think you can agree because we know ourselves, don't we? I mean that stuff is powerful and putting that aside is very difficult. And the same thing with the blood and the same thing with strangled animals. So the point here is this, what James is trying to point out is that if you continue to participate in those sins, you are going to scandalize not only true Jews, but you're also going to scandalize Jews of the circumcision party who have come to faith and who cannot possibly imagine that you can be a true Christian and still continue in those kinds of behaviors. Doesn't that make sense? I mean, how many of us here haven't looked at somebody at one point or another and said to ourselves, "Well, I can't believe that he's really a Christian because he still does this or he still participates in that particular kind of behavior. How can you be a Christian?" And you know, it used to be how can you be a Christian and go to a theater, right? Or how can you be a Christian and wear a bikini and go to the beach? How can you be a Christian in some circles and smoke? How can you be a Christian and chew tobacco or any of those kinds of things? We establish our own set of moral priorities that we think we can adhere to and then what other people fail to measure up to our standards and we look down our noses at them. And we say, "Well, you know, I don't know how you can be a Christian," or we go a step further and we say, "You offend me, and because you offend me, I don't want to hang around with you." True? So Paul's or James's argument and the argument of the Council of Jerusalem here is understand that your Christian liberty could cause somebody else to stumble. And rather than causing them to stumble, and we'll talk more about what that means because that doesn't mean that they're simply offended, it means are they falling away from the faith because of your liberty? If you love your Jewish brethren or if you love the Jewish Christians who are still so stuck on the law of Moses, then watch out particularly in these four areas because those are the critical places where the rubber hits the road. That make sense? I'll give you three reasons as we wind this up why I believe that's the correct interpretation of what happens in this passage. Number one, it fits the context of Acts chapter 15. What's the controversy in Acts chapter 15 again? Are we saved by grace through faith in the finished work of Christ, or are we saved by keeping the law? As I said earlier, it's inconceivable that the Council of Jerusalem puts in place a system of law that would drive people back into keeping the ceremonial law of Moses, inconceivable because that's the very thing they have ruled against and are trying to come away. That does not put any extra burden on the Gentiles except these things. These things are not intended to drive me back under law. Second reason, it explains the last verse of James' speech, verse 21. Jesus' passage ends with this word, "For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and has read in the synagogue on every Sabbath." Let me read you the previous verse so that you understand the context. He says in verse 20, "We should write to them telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood." Then verse 21, "For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and has read in the synagogues on every Sabbath." What does he mean? Here's what he means, I believe. He says, "Everywhere you people are coming to faith, the Jews are already there. They have built synagogues as part of the Jewish community and they, from the earliest times, have been steeped in the law of Moses. Everywhere you go, there are people who appeal to ancient traditions to say, 'This is how we ought to live. We are to abstain from animals that have been strangled, we are to abstain from blood, we are to abstain from sexual immorality, and we must avoid idol worship like the plague.'" And so James is saying this, "Whenever you come to faith in Christ and you begin to experience the freedom of the Christian faith, and you know the difference between the ceremonial and the moral and how God and Christ forgives you and all of this sort of stuff, you need to remember that all these Jews who, from ancient times, have been steeped in their understanding of what is right and wrong, are going to be looking at you and they're going to say, 'As long as you keep doing that, I don't believe that you are a follower of the Lord God.'" And so it becomes a huge obstacle to Jews who have not yet come to faith, but it also becomes a huge obstacle to Jewish believers who have come to faith but who are still steeped in the background of how you ought to live. And if you want to understand the practicality of that a little bit, think of yourself as and some of you can identify with this, some of us have been raised with strict notions of the Sabbath. How offended are you or were you when you see people working on Sunday or doing things that you don't believe a Christian ought to do and you begin to understand how deeply this runs? And the council of Jerusalem says, "Don't cause somebody to stumble by the experience of your Christian freedom." And I'll give you a third reason and then we'll be done. And that is this, this is how Paul understood the decision of the Jerusalem council. Why do I say that? I say that because if you read what he says in Romans 14 and 15, and we don't have time to look at it extensively now, you'll see that's precisely what he comes down on. "Don't use your Christian freedom to cause a weaker believer to stumble." Listen to how he puts it. This is Romans 14, the verses 19, 20, and 21. He says, "Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food." Remember that was a huge issue, clean food and unclean food. All food is clean, liberty in Christ. You eat pork today in a way that the Jews would still be scandalized by. But it's wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall. Paul understood these four things to be worked out in the context of relationships in such a way that other believers would not be needlessly hindered in their walk with God. And that raises huge questions, doesn't it, for what that looks like today? Should a Christian today eat blood pudding? Should a Christian today worry about what kind of meat he eats or not? What kind of clothes he wears or what do you do with the fact that some people just don't like whatever it is that you do? Because they oppose or try to impose on you a set of values. You know, I remember a day when it was wrong for Christians to play cards. I've told you this story before, my father's day particularly was wrong to play cards and was really wrong to play cards for money, but playing dominoes for money was okay. You know, consistency, though, are the rare virtue. But working these things out practically in the life of Christian community is huge because how do you exercise your freedom in Christ? What does that look like without at the same time creating a stumbling block that makes [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:40:31.200; remove through 00:40:35.000] somebody else lose faith? [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:40:35.000; resume after this marked segment]