What an august gathering we would witness, if we were able to transport back in time and go to Jerusalem for this first official council on the doctrines of the faith.
All the big names are there. Paul and Barnabas, who have had much God-given success in ministry among the gentiles, which is the very reason this council is convening, Judas and Silas, who would accompany Paul and Barnabas back to Antioch with the results of this meeting, Simon Peter, James the brother of Jesus, and apparently a large gathering of Pharisees who had become believers.
These days, if some organization gets two or three guys together who have written books and gotten their name known, they’ll charge you hundreds of dollars to come to their city and hear these big names tell you what they know. In actuality, all they know, or think they know, is derived from what these early fathers left behind for them to learn from. In some cases, as we will see later, they deviate from what these great men determined to be true by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and we must be discerning.
I wonder how much folks would be willing to pay to be a fly on the wall at the Jerusalem council?
Now without the universal translators that they use on Star Trek imbedded in our heads we wouldn’t be able to understand a word they’re saying.
But just imagine that you could, or that you could hear the whole meeting in English. Wouldn’t that be amazing? You’d be witnessing possibly the most important meeting of the church there has ever been.
REFRESHER
In recent weeks we’ve been studying the movement of the gospel through Samaria, the blossoming of the church in Antioch, spreading to Cyprus and then North to the various cities of Pisidia, Phrygia, Lycia, Pamphylia, going to the Gentiles as Jesus told His Apostles that it would, and later instructing Paul specifically to take the message to them.
It hasn’t been a joy ride, by any stretch of the imagination. Whenever God’s people determine to do God’s work in God’s way, the enemy will oppose that work. He won’t ultimately win, but he will stir up trouble and do his best to deceive and dissuade and discourage.
Nevertheless the spread of the gospel has been successful in those regions, churches have been started and the gentiles who have heard and responded to the call of God are rejoicing.
OPPOSITION FROM THE CHURCH
So as chapter 14 draws to a close Luke traces the steps of the evangelists back to Antioch. As they go, passing through Pisidia and Pamphylia and preaching in Perga and finally coming to Antioch, Luke says they
‘…began to report all things that God had done with them and how He had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles”.
That’s a tradition that still goes on in the church today, doesn’t it? Occasionally we have missionaries returning and visiting their home churches and maybe other churches that have been giving them support, and they’re given the floor for a worship service or two and they talk about the things the Lord has been doing in the place they serve.
It’s a good tradition. It strengthens and encourages the church. And so often, simply because of the locations in which they minister, these servants of God have undergone great hardship. Or perhaps they have witnessed great hardship and had opportunity to be a champion to people who cannot help themselves. But in great hardship the Holy Spirit works great miracles. It seems that very often God matches His involvement in a person’s life with the degree that they let Him be involved in their life.
I mean, if we go to church on Sunday but spend the rest of our time either chasing worldly goals or vegging on the sofa, we’re not going to see Him doing much in our lives, are we?
But when we’re devoting ourselves to Kingdom work and we’re out there boldly declaring the good news of Christ and telling people that there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, then Satan is going to oppose that, and that gives God opportunity to show His power and glory.
Paul is stoned to death for preaching the gospel, so God raises him back up. Miracle. Was Paul discouraged, or emboldened by the experience? He went back and preached some more. He was in a great position, there outside of Lystra, to stand up, brush the dust off his tunic, look around at his wide-eyed friends, and say, “Let’s just keep heading east and go back to Antioch. I need a rest”.
Listen. Until you have been under the enemy’s attack because you’re doing God’s work God’s way and ol’ Slewfoot doesn’t like that; until you’ve suffered some and then seen God take care of the problem His way, you can never understand why Paul said to the Corinthians, “I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”
(II Cor 12:10)
While we seek comfort and safety and stay busy fighting our own battles and ignoring Kingdom work, we’re never going to know true contentment. Not the kind Paul is talking about here. But determine you’re going to change directions and really live your life for Christ my friend, and you will have stepped out into an adventure! There will be opposition, and that opposition will come in direct proportion to the risks you’re taking and the determination you’re showing to live for Christ and do things His way. In turn, Christ’s rescue missions to see you through will be in direct proportion to the kind of opposition you’re meeting.
Are you bored? Are you confused about what may lie in your future? Maybe a little apprehensive? Do you lack purpose outside of the daily routine?
In “The Hobbit”, the wizard Gandalf comes to the home of Bilbo Baggins and invites him to go on a journey where Bilbo’s specific talents may be needed. Bilbo’s initial response comes in the form of expressing his opinion of adventures, “Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things. Make you late for dinner.” But he goes nonetheless and has great adventure indeed.
Something for you to think about and maybe take before the Lord in prayer.
Anyway, they go back to Antioch and apparently by now word has gotten back to Jerusalem that there is a large and growing number of converts to the gospel from the gentiles. And some men leave Judea and head for Antioch to set things straight.
I believe this is the first we see of the Judaizers. They are converted Jews, or at least, professors of Christ, who cling to the Mosaic law and teach that while Jesus is indeed the Messiah, you must believe in Him and be circumcised in order to be saved.
So in reaction to hearing about the growing gentile church, they set out to make sure everyone is following the rules.
“The teachings of Paul are incomplete” they might have been prepared to say, “you need to believe Paul but also promise us that you’ll obey all the traditions that keep us feeling warm and fuzzy”.
Well what they really did say is recorded for us so there is really no need to speculate further. “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved”.
Note that they do not invoke the Law, but emphasize the ‘custom’. The rite of circumcision had, in their thinking, come to signify a connection with traditional Judaism and rightness with God by virtue of their following Moses and keeping the festivals and holy days.
So they enter into great debate with Paul and Barnabas. By the wording of verse 2 of chapter 15 we can surmise that Paul and Barnabas must have been somewhat successful in their persuasion; at least to the degree of convincing these men from Judea that there needed to be further discussion on the matter.
If the Jews had felt they had made their point and that their argument had overpowered that of Paul, then they would simply have gone back to Jerusalem boasting that they had set Paul on the right track, and there would be no more of this ‘justification by faith alone’ malarkey.
Instead, the brethren of Antioch combine their frequent caravan miles and send an envoy to Jerusalem, headed by Paul and Barnabas, to get this thing settled.
MEN OF TRUTH AND GODLINESS
Let’s read verses 3-5
“Therefore, being sent on their way by the church, they were passing through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and were bringing great joy to all the brethren.”
Stop there for a moment. Note that the news of the conversion of all these Gentiles was bringing great joy to all the brethren. Ok, go on. Verse 4
“And when they arrived at Jerusalem, they were received by the church and the Apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them.
But certain ones of the sect of the Pharisees who had believed, stood up, saying, ‘It is necessary to circumcise them, and to direct them to observe the Law of Moses’.”
Paul and Barnabas come to Jerusalem and tell these men the same stories that had caused rejoicing in all the brethren along the way, but the reaction they get here is devoid of joy; it is one of contention.
That’s the way of legalism. Think of the people in your own experience who have been legalistic in their approach to you and others around them. Have they demonstrated joy, or a desire that others might be joyful?
No. I can assure you they have not. Because they do not know joy, and every situation and circumstance connected with the church to them is an opportunity to put it under the magnifying glass and make sure everyone is staying on the straight and narrow.
Are they really believers? In many cases, yes. Probably in most cases. So are they well-meaning? Yes. They just haven’t discovered grace. They haven’t learned the difference between religion and relationship. Their religion is fleshly and therefore must be lived out by the flesh.
These Pharisees were believers. But they hadn’t yet understood what Christ had accomplished on Calvary in relation to the rites and customs of Judaism.
Now, having said that I want to point out that these were all noble men in this gathering. They were seekers of truth and Godliness.
It seems there is some distinction between the believing Pharisees who were at the council and the Jews who actually went to the Gentile churches and taught that circumcision was necessary.
The reason I say this is because in the interim of time after Paul’s missionary journey and the Jerusalem council, Paul wrote what we know as the letter to the Galatians. In it he has some very strong words about the Judaizers, calling them ‘false brethren’ (Gal 2:4) and accusing them of sneaking around behind Paul’s back in an attempt to bring the Gentile believers into bondage. That would be a reference to bondage to the Law and to the traditions of Judaism.
In contrast, Luke calls the men in Jerusalem ‘Pharisees who had believed’, not ‘false brethren’, and by the end of this account we see that there is general agreement that salvation is by faith apart from the works of the Law.
I’ve never been to the National Southern Baptist conventions. I’ve seen news coverage of those conventions when certain subjects were being considered that the secular news media saw as worth highlighting.
There are topics that come up every once in a while that need to be re-addressed. Or that at least someone thinks need to be re-addressed. Who should be ordained for ministry and who should not, and issues like that.
Now I’m sure there is some debate during those sessions, but in the end issues are prayed over, voted on, settled once more.
These are men and women who differ with one another on non-essential issues. But they are all interested in truth and Godliness. They are concerned with preserving the purity of the doctrines of our church.
So the debates are not bad things. They are good things. They keep us thinking, they keep us on track, and they remind us that we have something very precious to preserve, here in the pages of holy script.
And this debate in Jerusalem was only the beginning of the battle to establish and preserve truth. It is an on-going concern and every Bible-believing Christian is responsible to learn the truth and then help to preserve it.
While doing research for this sermon and looking for something else, I stumbled upon something that illustrates what I’m saying. This is a portion of an article and it is self explanatory.
“LOUISVILLE – The Kentucky Baptist Convention has withdrawn its invitation to pastor and author Brian McLaren to speak at its upcoming Kentucky Evangelism Conference.
McLaren, pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, MD., was to have spoken at the Tuesday Morning session of the conference to be held Feb. 28 – March 1 at Valley View Baptist Church of Louisville.
Dr. Bill Mackey, KBC executive director, and Dan Garland, Church Development and Evangelism Team Leader, said they made the decision after reviewing McLaren’s position on salvation.
‘I respect Dr. McLaren greatly and have appreciated his insights on reaching people in today’s culture’, Mackey said, ‘We try to bring dynamic speakers to the Evangelism Conference who will challenge and inspire their listeners. I felt that in this instance, however, Dr. McLaren’s position diverges too greatly to be appropriate for this conference.”
Garland, who had invited McLaren to speak more than a year ago, agreed, saying that reading McLaren’s most recent book, A Generous Orthodoxy, led him to reconsider.
In the book, McLaren says that while there is no assurance that there is salvation to be found outside of Jesus, Christians should not jump to the conclusion that Jesus is the only way to salvation.
“I must add, though, that I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts”, McLaren says in the book.” (article from Kentucky Baptist Convention website, release date 2/18/05)
Folks, be careful to pay attention to what you’re hearing and reading, and think it through. The false prophets are in some high and public positions.
Well these guys we’re reading about today were the fathers of what we’re continuing to protect and preserve. The decision they came to at this Jerusalem council laid the foundation of basic Christian doctrine, that salvation is by faith alone, and that it is for all. Had they determined that circumcision was necessary, that news would have severely hampered, if not killed, the spread of Christianity to the Gentile world.
JAMES: MAN OF PEACE
I want to talk about James for just a minute before finishing up.
Have you ever thought about what it must have been like to realize that your brother turned out to be God?
Think about that. Your nation has been looking for the coming of this Anointed One, this Messiah, since God first called Abram out of UR, and here you find yourself, one of the first leaders of the church He has founded with His own blood.
We get a small glimpse here of the supernatural work the Holy Spirit has done in the heart of James.
According to verse 7 there was ‘much debate’. Now we don’t know if that means they met for several days and debated, or if they spent a good deal of the morning debating, or if it was just a general melee, with everyone talking at once until they saw Peter stand up so they stopped to listen.
In any case, Peter reminds them of ten years ago, when God sent him to Cornelius and filled him and his household with the Holy Spirit. He says God, ‘…cleansed their hearts by faith”. And then asks the very pertinent question, why put the yolk of the Law on their necks, when we ourselves haven’t been able to bear it successfully? We’re saved by grace, and so are they.
Then Paul and Barnabas chime in and once more recount all the miracles God had done among the Gentiles during their missionary journeys.
Then James, this man of peace, who has apparently become the stay home leader of the Jerusalem church and probably her most respected minister, makes the suggestion that everyone in the room can put their ‘amen’ to.
Proving his point first from their own scriptures he quotes Amos, Deuteronomy, Jeremiah and Isaiah, reminding them that it has been prophesied from of old that God would have a people from the Gentiles, and then, building on the arguments of the Apostles he ties up the package neatly by proposing that they simply encourage the Gentiles to abstain from drinking blood, from eating strangled things, food that was sacrificed to idols, and from fornication.
We could do a brief study of the reason for each of those things but I think they’re relatively obvious to us. The important thing to note is that they were things loathsome to the Jews, and James knew that if the Gentiles would abstain from those things, knowing that their salvation didn’t depend on their abstinence but that these were simply things that could cause dissention between the Gentiles and their Jewish brothers, that they would avoid a future rift that would have divided the body of Christ.
A wise man of peace in a potentially explosive setting. We only have to remember things we’ve read of Peter and Paul to know that there was a man of peace needed in this assembly, and James was it.
REJOICING IN GOD’S GRACE
So they compose this letter we have recorded in verses 23-29, and send it by way of Paul Barnabas, Judas and Silas to Antioch, Syria and Cilicia.
There’s more I could bring out from these final verses of our text up through verse 36. You can read those again yourself and just reacquaint yourself with how they spent their time in Antioch and how each one went out from there.
I just want to spend the last few minutes focusing on verse 31.
“And when they had read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement”
Now Paul’s first missionary journey took place in A.D. 45. The Jerusalem Council was held in A.D. 48. That makes me wonder how long the Judaizers had been going around where Paul had been, telling the Gentiles they had to be circumcised. They had to have followed pretty closely on his heels, as soon as word got back to Judea of wide-spread acceptance of the gospel among them.
So this is what comes to my mind. How many Gentiles, as a result of the Judaizers ‘different gospel’, which is what Paul calls it in Galatians, might have gotten circumcised and only learned later by this letter from the Council that it was unnecessary?
How many Christians still carry the scars, still bear the marks of their early encounters with the legalists who forced them to bear a yoke that Christ never intended them to bear?
We can read these chapters quickly and just get the surface story. Paul and Barnabas went about preaching the Gospel and many Gentiles believed. They underwent some persecution, there was opposition, but churches were established.
Then some troublesome fellows came along and distorted the pure gospel message and Paul had to clear things up with this letter to the Galatians, which, by the way, probably got passed around to a much wider area than just the churches of Galatia, and then this Council convenes in Jerusalem and they settle the issue and publish a newsletter to get the word out and everyone is happy.
But Christians, there were people hurt by this. There were people permanently affected. And whenever God’s Word is twisted by charlatans and self-seekers and legalists who want to be in control, people get hurt; sometimes permanently.
Jesus said, “Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and YOU SHALL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy, and My load is light.” Matthew 11:29, 30
What was it about this letter that caused rejoicing among the Gentile believers in Antioch?
It was that men of truth and Godliness listened to the Holy Spirit and allowed Him through them to establish once and for all that all men everywhere are recipients of God’s grace through faith alone.
They weren’t rejoicing because Paul and Barnabas came back for a visit. They weren’t rejoicing because they were asked to abstain from things that idol worshipers did. They were able to rejoice because they had heard the joyful sound. Jesus saves! Jesus saves!
And Christians that is the message that Christ’s church needs to hear in our day, over and over again, until God’s people start to get it. That they need carry no burden but the light and easy yoke of Christ, who saves them by His grace and keeps them in His righteousness.
If Christians would be set free to rejoice once more, how much more attractive might we be to those looking for answers?
The faith of our fathers really is living still, inspite of all that has come against it through the ages. “…we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus…” (vs 11) that’s all.
And whenever people get it, they start rejoicing.
So keep it simple; keep it pure; keep it light. Rejoice in it. Shine.
