Projectionist start with BibleConnection_HighDef.mp4
We are so glad you are here this morning, whether in the auditorium or on line! Thanks for joining with us. We are on the front end of a new series that I think you will find challenging, helpful and hopefully freeing.
To get started, how many of you are like me when it comes to getting ready for a trip? I tend to over-pack; I always seem to think I need more than I do. I had to buy a small luggage scale to weigh my luggage if I am flying. I generally squeak in at 47-48 pounds. The bad part of that is that pretty much on every trip I come home with clothes items I’ve never used! Can anyone relate to that?
Then of course, if you load up on the front end, on the back end there is a problem—particularly if you purchase souvenirs. On our last vacation we kept cautioning Colin who seemed to be picking up something every time we stopped somewhere, warning him that he was going to run out of room in his luggage if he was not careful. When we were at the airport getting ready to head home when Colin’s bag weighed over the allotted limit. I wasn’t too worried about it until I found out the overweight fee was not just an extra $35 but $250 for like three extra pounds! We hit scramble mode and took some of his stuff and put it in Myra’s bag and were able to squeeze in at just under the limit with the shared load!
It is one thing to struggle with excess baggage physically. If not struggling with excess transportation fees, struggling with juggling all the extra baggage, right? Often you don’t realize how much extra baggage you have until you try to pack it in the car or move it from the car to the hotel room.
As inconvenient excess baggage is on a trip, in the spiritual realm excess baggage can not only prove inconvenient, at times it can be down-right deadly.
In the book of Acts, Dr. Luke, a Gentile Physician chronicles for us the first thirty years of the development of Christianity. About 20 years in—20 years after the resurrection of Christ—a problem develops. We read about the problem and the solution the early church came up with in Acts 15. The problem is, even though the solution has been there for us to see for over 2,000 years, we in the church still have the propensity to carry the excess baggage that so often makes the Christian life unnecessarily difficult for those of us in the church and unnecessarily resistible to those outside of the church.
Here's what happened. The earliest church was thoroughly Jewish in its make-up. Jesus, after all ,was the Jewish Messiah. All His earliest followers were Jews and after His resurrection those who made up the church were either Jewish by birth or Jewish by conversion. So the earliest church had a definite Jewish core.
Twelve years after the resurrection that began to change. Peter was called to a Roman Centurion’s house by the name of Cornelius. Cornelius was worshipping his own gods when an angel of God appears to him and tells him to send for a man named Peter who will be able to tell him about the one true God. At the same time, God is preparing Peter for this unusual encounter as well. You can read the whole account in Acts 10. That is the background for what Peter is going to say in the meeting Dr. Luke records for us in Acts 15. Peter cracks the door of the early church to non-Jewish people in Acts 10—twelve years after the resurrection of Jesus. He, by the way is criticized for that in the church and has to account for it in Acts 11.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Jerusalem, a persecution of Jesus followers erupts in Jerusalem and some of the early believers, called people of the way, flee about 300 miles north to a place called Antioch. Some of these believers continued to talk about Jesus but only to Jewish people; but others began to talk about Jesus and the resurrection to non-Jewish people, Gentiles, and a lot of them put their faith in Jesus. The growing number of non-Jewish followers of Jesus presented a problem. These people came from paganism and didn’t follow the Jewish Scriptures. Barnabas was sent to check things out, and when he saw what was happening, we went looking for Saul of Tarsus who had been converted to the faith while he was in the act of persecuting people of the faith ten years earlier. When Saul arrives, they preach for a year and a whole lot of Gentiles place their faith in Jesus and join the church. Now, if you don’t know, Saul and Paul are one in the same men. Saul is his Jewish name; Paul his Roman name. When Saul started to preach to the Gentiles, he began to use his Roman name to make it easier to relate to his Gentile (non-Jewish) audience. Saul of Tarsus, the once persecutor of the Christian faith became Paul the apostle, the great proclaimer of the Christian faith. Now, this is important: there is no way to explain the conversion of Saul to faith in Christ apart from the resurrection of Christ. He didn’t come to faith because he was reading the Jewish Scriptures (the Old Testament), he didn’t come to faith because he was listening to Christian messages (he thought the message of Christ was wrong), and no one in the early church came to faith because “the Bible says;” they didn’t have a Bible yet. The book we call the Bible did not come into existence until the 4th or 5th Century. In 397 AD at the Council of Carthage recognized the current 27 books we have in our modern New Testament as authoritative. St. Jerome, who translated the 39 books of the Hebrew Old Testament and the 27 books of New Testaments was the first to combine the Old and New Testaments into the first Bible--the Vulgate in about 400 AD. The early church’s message was not about a book but about an event that took place that was verified to by eyewitnesses.
With the increasing numbers of Gentiles coming to faith in Christ trouble begins. That gets us to our text. “While Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch of Syria, some men (not believers; not followers of Jesus) from Judea arrived and began to teach the believers: ‘Unless you are circumcised as required by the law of Moses, you cannot be saved…’” (Acts 15:1, NLT). These men from Judea are not a part of the church. They were not sent to Antioch by the church leaders. These men are not even Christians. In fact, Paul describes them for us in Galatians 2:4, “(The) question came up only because of some so-called believers there—false ones, really—who were secretly brought in. They sneaked in to spy on us and take away the freedom we have in Christ Jesus. They wanted to enslave us and force us to follow their Jewish regulations.” (Galatians 2:4, NLT). These men were called Judaizers and they followed Paul wherever he went. Their message was simple, “In order to be a Christian you first had to convert to and submit to the rules and regulations of the Old Testament.” You had to become a Jew before you could become a Christian. For them the act of circumcision, the outward sign of the Jewish law, was necessary for salvation. Today, anyone who argues for a ceremonial law of any sort as being necessary for salvation are false followers giving a false message.
“Paul and Barnabas disagreed with them, arguing vehemently. Finally, the church decided to send Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem, accompanied by some local believers, to talk to the apostles and elders about this question.” (Acts 15:2, NLT). The discussion created a problem in this primarily Gentile church. Instead of trying to answer it on their own, they decide to appeal to the leaders in Jerusalem, where the 12 Apostles and others including Jesus’ brother James, led the church. Why did they send to the church in Jerusalem looking for an answer? Because they didn’t have any of the literature we call the New Testament today to guide them.
“When they arrived in Jerusalem, Barnabas and Paul were welcomed by the whole church, including the apostles and elders. They reported everything God had done through them. 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.”” (Acts 15:4–5, NLT). This is where it gets interesting and this is where it gets difficult. Please try to stay with me and hear what I have to say, because the tendency now is going to be the same issue this early church faced. And, even though they came to the right conclusion and did the right thing, the problem they addressed still prevails in the church today. It is a problem of excess and unnecessary baggage.
These men in verse 5 are not the same group as the men in verse 1. The men in verse 1 are false believers who claim that before a person can be saved, they have to submit to the law of Moses. Luke tells us the men in verse 5 are in fact “believers” who happen to belong to the sect of the Pharisees.
Wait a minute! Pharisees? Weren’t these the guys that opposed Jesus? Aren’t they the ones following Him around and trying to trap him every chance they got? Weren’t they the guys who played an integral part in having Jesus crucified? Yes. So how are these guys now followers of the One they once vehemently opposed? It wasn’t because of His teaching. It wasn’t because “the Bible says,” It wasn’t because of something they heard or read. It was because of something they experienced. Jesus was dead, now He was alive. The tomb was empty, the body missing and they had been wrong! Now they got it!
But, having gotten it did not release them from the baggage they still carried. The Pharisees were meticulous law keepers. In fact, the party of the Pharisees developed during the time of the Babylonian Captivity as the Jewish rabbis tried desperately to get following God right! The Pharisees at heart were bad guys, they were really religious guys trying their hardest to please God! Their view was not that you needed to follow the Mosaic Law before you could be saved like the Judiazers taught, their view was you got saved then you followed the Mosaic Law to be obedient. They were the mix and match Christians. A little bit of Jesus, a little bit of Moses.
Now, even though the leaders of the church are going to deal with this issue, the truth of the matter is we still have a lot of believers today who are of the sect of the Pharisees. That is, they still think that there are portions of the Old Testament that apply to us today. Here’s how that works. For those of us who grew up in the church, when we were old enough, someone gave us our first Bible—I still have my first Bible. The problem is, they never taught us how to use it. When we got our Bible, it had two major sections: The Old Testament and the New Testament. We were taught it was all God’s Word and therefore we assume that it is all equally valid and that we have to obey it all. Now, in our text, the New Testament didn’t exist. In fact, when Acts 15 is written, none of the Gospels and none of Paul’s letters were even written. These early Pharisees are trying to pull the church back into a law that doesn’t even apply to us!
Here’s what the text says, “So the apostles and elders met together to resolve this issue. At the meeting, after a long discussion, Peter stood 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. ‘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. 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? We believe that we are all saved the same way, by the undeserved grace of the Lord Jesus.’” (Acts 15:6–11, NLT). Peter is saying in effect, “We need to move in the direction of non-believers instead of expecting them to move in our direction.
After that James, the brother of Jesus stands us and tells the group that from their own Scriptures they are told from their Scriptures—what we call the Old Testament—that the reason they existed was to build a foundation for something New. Here’s what you need to know: our Old Testament is foundational and important, but it is not incumbent on us. The law and the prophets were for Israel, not for you or for me. That includes the Ten Commandments. They were for Israel, they are not for us today. The idea, that I even wrongly taught for a while that “we are free from the ceremonial law but responsible for the moral law” is a view of the sect of the Pharisees and not a view of the New Covenant. In the Old Testament we see how God works within the kingdoms of this world to establish for us His New Kingdom. I know some of you are struggling with that. Please try to stay with me. We will briefly address it this morning and fortify it in future messages. Please don’t stop where you disagree and rip me out of context the way we tend to do with the Scripture themselves.
James says, “And so my judgment is that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.” (Acts 15:19, NLT). That should be the verse that guides all of us who claim to be Christian. We need to stop trying to get people to act a certain way before they believe a certain way. Vance Havner, a country preacher known for his quick wit put it this way, “We need to stop trying to get people starched and ironed before they’ve been washed!”
James continues, “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.” (Acts 15:20, NLT). Now, that almost sounds like James is cherry picking from the Law of Moses doesn’t it? You don’t have to follow this one, but here’s one you do. Listen carefully, that is not what he is doing. If he was doing that, there are a lot better laws he could have chosen. He could have said, “Thou shalt not steal.” That’s a good one. How about, “Thou shalt not murder?” or “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” James is not picking and choosing here. In fact, he is not telling these Gentile believers to follow these Jewish laws at all; instead he is saying here’s some things you need to consider to keep the peace in the church.
That is what he means when he gives the reason for these strange commands. “For these laws of Moses have been preached in Jewish synagogues in every city on every Sabbath for many generations.”” (Acts 15:21, NLT). In other words, he is saying, look, there are Jewish believers in the church who are still carrying their baggage from centuries of rule keeping. Don’t live in a way that is insensitive. This has nothing to do with following the Law or even some of the Laws of Moses, it has everything to do with Christian unity. Even his statement on sexual immorality is not an excerpt from the Law but in keeping with what Paul has been teaching them. The pagan gods did not have a moral code. They used people for their own pleasure. There were civil rules, but in the Roman and Greek religion there were no moral rules. Christianity changed that. The reason we abstain from sexual immorality is not because of one of the Ten Commandments, but because our bodies are a Temple of God’s Holy Spirit—God’s own presence. So is hers and so is his. Paul had been teaching that in Antioch for over a year.
James is talking about unity in the church, not conformity to certain Old Testament laws. There is to be one church, not two. One body of believers; not a Gentile body and a Jewish body.
So, if you left the faith or are considering leaving the faith because of some in the church who are just rule keepers. Like these “sect of Pharisees” they live like they have to obey all the Old Laws and they want to impose that on all who claim the Name of Christ, realize that you may have left or are considering leaving or are struggling with faith for the wrong reasons.
If you are a Jesus follower, maybe it is time we stepped back and got this right. Maybe it’s time we started following the advice of James that “We should not make it difficult for those who are turning to God.” (Acts 15:19 NIV). That instead of expecting them to move in our direction, we started to move in theirs.
And for those of you who probably are fuming right now, thinking that I have somehow jettisoned the faith by claiming that the Old Covenant doesn’t have any claim on us, let me just refer you to the author of Hebrews who wrote, “The former way of doing things, a system of commandments that never worked out the way it was supposed to, was set aside; the law brought nothing to maturity. Another way—Jesus!—a way that does work, that brings us right into the presence of God, is put in its place.” (Hebrews 7:18–19, The Message).
Every promise in the book is not yours. Neither is every command. The Old Covenant found in the Old Testament was for the Nation of Israel. It is not incumbent upon modern believers in spite of the arguments of the sect of Pharisees. That argument was settled by Peter, James and Paul in or around 50 A.D. and recorded for us by Dr. Luke in the Book of Acts. Let’s accept and live in the freedom Christ provides. A freedom we will look at more next week.
Let me pray for us.
