This morning we're gonna be looking at a passage in Acts chapter 15 that deals with pretty big disagreement between 2 churches in the first century.

Unfortunately, there's no end to the number of things that people can disagree about together.

After all, we are all human, and without heavy reliance on God's Holy Spirit, Christians are more likely than not to give in to that human nature.

The big idea that I think we'll get out of our passage in Acts chapter 15 today is that the Holy Spirit can teach us to turn our divisions into a public testimony of unity, of love and of care for 1 another.

And I think that this big idea is a very important lesson for us because church history tells us that disagreements and disputes, they just happen all the time in the church.

Very Often these disputes could have been handled with a bit more love and care.

And also very often these disputes resulted in schisms or in divisions which split the Church into multiple denominations.

As I began studying this passage some time ago, I became curious.

I wondered, well, how many Christian denominations are there in the world today?

Well, I found that there is a not-for-profit organization called the Center for the Study of Global Christianity.

How many people do you think, how many denominations, Nick?

Their 2019 report estimates there are approximately 45,000 different denominations worldwide today.

Each denomination represents 1 group finding enough to disagree about, enough to differentiate themselves, to set themselves aside from a different group, that they felt no other choice but to apply a label that's just for them.

Now, this doesn't mean that some of these divisions aren't justified, and it's not my job up here today to judge any of them.

My point is just to observe together that there is a massive historical precedent for divisions in the church.

And so it seems wise to me that we should pay heed to this.

We should be aware that this could happen to us.

Even perfect Rosemount Bible Church, we might have disagreements.

And those disagreements might be severe enough that they could cause divisions in the church.

I think that our passage in Acts 15 teaches us a lot about how to disagree well with 1 another.

I'm going to be reading from Acts chapter 15 starting from verse 1.

The translation you see on the screen is the ESV, the English Standard Version.

The passage starts, "...but some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.

And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and to the elders about this question.

So being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers.

When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them.

But some believers, who belonged to the party of the Pharisees, rose up and said, it is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.

The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter.

And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles would hear the word of the gospel and believe.

And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us.

And he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.

Now therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have ever been able to bear?

But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will." And all the assembly fell silent.

And They listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

After they finished speaking, James replied, Brothers, listen to me.

Simeon, that is Peter, has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for His name.

And with this, the words of the prophets agree, just as it's written.

After this, I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen.

I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord.

All the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old.

Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, But we should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood.

For from ancient generations, Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he's read every Sabbath in the synagogues.

Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders and the whole church to choose men from among them and send them back to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas.

They sent Judas called Barsabbas and Silas, leading men among the brothers, with the following letter.

The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the brothers who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings.

Since We have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds.

Although we gave them no instructions, it has seemed good to us, having come to 1 accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth, for it is good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements, that you abstain from what has been sacrificed idols and from blood and from what has been strangled and from sexual immorality.

If you keep yourselves from these, you'll do well.

Farewell." So when they were sent off, they went down to Antioch, and having gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter.

And when they had read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement.

And Judas and Silas, who were themselves prophets, encouraged and strengthened the brothers with many words.

And after they had spent some time, they were sent off in peace by the brothers to those who had sent them.

And Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, teaching and preaching the word of the Lord with many others also." It's a really big passage, but we'll pass through it 2 times.

What we're dealing with in this passage are 2 distinct church communities.

The church in Jerusalem is led by Jesus' apostles and by the local elders there.

It's composed mostly of Jewish converts to Christianity.

The church in Antioch, well that was started and led by Paul and Barnabas.

It's composed of a mix of Jews, of Hebrews, also of Hellenists, Jews with a Greek background, and of Gentiles, with all kinds of pagan backgrounds.

We learn in the opening verses that there were visitors from the Jerusalem church who arrived in Antioch.

They observed the diverse cultures and practices going on in the Antioch church, and these Jewish visitors began publicly teaching with authority that the Gentile believers in Antioch were getting it wrong.

Luke summarizes their teaching with this 1 sentence in verse 1, it's pretty black and white, unless you are circumcised according to the customs taught by Moses, you can't be saved.

Now That's a statement that would have surely contradicted Paul's teaching in Antioch, and would have also contradicted the first-hand experiences that the Gentiles would have had over there.

If you remember, Acts Chapter 11 tells us that Antioch was 1 of the first regions that the Gospel spread to for non-Jews.

Antioch was the place where the disciples of Jesus were first called Christians.

The gospel message that these Gentiles heard very likely would have resembled what the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans chapter 5, verse 8.

He wrote, God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

People who know me a little bit know that I'm a meticulous planner.

When I get asked to speak, I study for weeks, maybe even months.

I write my whole passage out and I rewrite it and I rewrite it.

And not much changes by the time I get up here.

And the Spirit, while I was praying, moved me to try and let go for a second.

So I'm going to break away from my text and talk about this Gospel message.

It's hard for us in the 21st century to get a sense of just how shocking this teaching would have been to these Gentiles, to be told that they were getting it wrong.

When I think about the Gospel message, what makes it so special or unique or worth sharing, like a brother Balaji was sharing last week.

I don't know what your life experience is like.

Before I knew Jesus, and even sometimes after, I often feel like life can be empty, or if it's not empty, it's painful.

I often feel like I'm sinking in the consequences of my own mistakes, in the consequences of everything that I have done wrong and that all of you have done wrong too and all that everybody before me and around me on this planet has done wrong.

And every now and then in life, I do something that breaks me out, that shakes me out of that feeling.

We went to Niagara Falls this summer, family vacation.

I felt different when I saw Niagara Falls.

I thought, I've seen a waterfall, I have an idea of what it looks like.

It was nothing like what I thought, okay.

It's awesome in that sense of making me feel so small that I forgot about for a second that sinking feeling.

Felt like there's something bigger out there.

Way bigger than everything that I can see and touch.

When my children were born, I had that same feeling.

Life has got to be more than just about my problems, my mistakes, but what is that thing?

The Bible tells us that Jesus died for our sins, died for our mistakes.

At some point in time in church history, the gospel message, a big part of it was that Jesus died so that you can be spared from hell.

I think hell is a great description of where the world is heading today.

And I think there's enough inertia that that is a certain direction.

Jesus dying will spare us from that, but there's so much more than just avoiding a negative.

The Bible says that God is preparing a place for us and a space for us to be with Him in relationship forever so that every day will be a Niagara Falls kind of day.

Every day will be a new life kind of day, a kind of experience that we'll get to share with others who believe in Jesus, and we get to share it with Jesus himself.

And that's the best that I can describe what that salvation will be like, and it will be forever.

And that salvation is not dependent on what you have done or what you have not done in your life.

It's not about the mistakes that you've made or whether you've lived a perfect life.

The gospel is that Jesus has lived a sinless life.

You don't have to be consumed with guilt over what you've done in your life that's bad.

You have to believe that Jesus has lived a perfect life and His death matters in that respect.

Also don't have to worry about how much you know.

You don't need to be a Bible scholar to be saved.

You don't need to know all this law of Moses and the Old Testament.

You don't need to know the Word of God perfectly.

You need to believe, the gospel says, that Jesus is the Word of God, the living Word of God.

It also doesn't matter who you think you are.

We live in a world right now where pretty much everything in life except for public libraries are limited to whether you're rich enough, whether you're famous enough to have access to these things.

The gospel is for everybody who believes.

I don't need to know the right thing or do the right thing or be the right person.

I just need to believe that the Lord Jesus died for me, that God raised him from the dead, and he'll do the same for me and for you if we believe.

I would like to imagine that's the kind of message that the believers in Antioch received from the Apostle Paul.

The gospel message had everything to do with the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, not around the laws and customs of Moses.

This gospel I preached about a little over a year ago in 2022.

I nicknamed the gospel message, Jesus plus nothing, in reference to the book of Galatians chapter 1, because there's nothing that we can do to earn or jeopardize our salvation beyond placing our faith in Jesus' incredible sacrifice on the cross and in his miraculous resurrection.

So for these visitors to come around and start insisting that what you heard about salvation and what you've done, placing your faith in Jesus, that that's not enough, it would have been scandalous.

And of all things to be told that the thing that you do need to do on top of all this is get circumcised, it's just too much.

You know, if I jump to the end of the passage in verse 24, we find that the mindset of the Antioch believers, after hearing this teaching, they were described as confused, as disturbed, as troubled and unsettled.

You know, that's not strong enough language in our English translations.

That's how I feel when I find out supper is going to be 30 minutes late.

So, understandably, Paul and Barnabas, they're pulled into a very public dispute on the matter.

It wasn't just a mutual disagreement, we see things in different perspectives.

No, it was a heated argument and it was 1 that they realized it couldn't possibly be resolved there in Antioch between these 2 visitors and Paul and Barnabas.

They realized that the accusations were coming from these ambassadors from the Jerusalem church, and so to Jerusalem they'd have to go.

They needed to seek consultation with the elders in the church in Jerusalem and the apostles, Jesus' apostles who were there, to get an answer to this question.

And the questions, plural, that they would debate, I have them up on the screen the way that they were reframed by a theologian that I read named Darrell Bock, and they include the following.

First of all, should Gentiles affirming faith in Jesus also observe Jewish law for salvation?

Second question, on what basis can Gentile Christians ignore God's covenant law?

Third question, How can fellowship occur if Jewish Christians keep the law, but Gentile Christians don't?

And similarly, fourth question, how can law observing Jewish Christians, but law ignoring Gentile Christians, how can they coexist in the same church family?

So on that basis, the discussions commence.

Scripture says there was much debate and Luke records in the book of Acts 3 main speakers among the assembly who were gathered for that purpose.

We have the Apostle Peter, We have the Apostle Paul, and we have a Jerusalem church leader named James.

He builds a strong argument for a law-free gospel based on his own miraculous experience that we can read about in Acts chapter 10.

Now in his experience back then, the Bible says that Peter had been praying before mealtime.

And then it says that he entered into a trance.

And in that trance, he saw a vision of all kinds, it's my kind of vision by the way, it's a great tablecloth descending from heaven with all kinds of animals on it.

And a voice he heard said Peter it's okay now you can kill and eat these animals.

But the animals were all animals that he recognized in his Jewish faith as being unclean.

You don't touch, you don't kill, you don't eat.

And he heard that voice say that thing to him 3 times.

And After the vision passed, the Holy Spirit spoke to Peter and told him that he would soon be visited by 3 men.

The Spirit told Peter to accompany these 3 men wherever they brought him without any hesitation at all.

It turns out that these men were sent by the same Holy Spirit to bring Peter to the home of their master, Cornelius.

Now, Cornelius was a devout man who feared God with all his household, the Bible says.

The problem is that Cornelius and his family were Gentiles.

They were a group of people that Peter understood to be not chosen by God, not part of his blessing, and not to be associated with, kind of like the food in the vision.

This book that we've been reading together these past several months is about the acts of the Holy Spirit and on this particular day in Acts chapter 10 the Spirit was doing something absolutely new and unprecedented.

In Acts chapter 10 verse 28 Peter proclaimed, you yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew, like me, to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation.

But God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean." Later on in verse 34 he goes on to say, "...truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him." And finally in verses 44 and 45 of chapter 10, Luke records that while Peter was still saying all these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word.

And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even among the Gentiles.

This transformational experience that Peter had, this miraculous encounter, completely shapes his position now in Acts 15 as he gets up and speaks to the other elders and apostles about the matter.

Peter's position is absolutely clear when it comes to Gospel freedom.

In Acts 15 verses 7 to 11, I repeat that he says, "'Brothers, you know in the early days "'God made a choice among you, that by my mouth, "'the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel "'and believe.

"'And God, God who knows the heart, "'bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us and he made no distinction between us and them having cleansed their hearts by faith.

Next to speak are Paul and Barnabas, and it's worth noting here, Paul and Barnabas are not decision makers in this council.

They're welcome to speak and share their testimony, but they're not going to be making this decision because they're not among the apostles and the elders of this Jerusalem church.

Now if Peter's role was to confirm the Holy Spirit's decision to include Gentiles, then the testimony of Paul and Barnabas would be to confirm the Holy Spirit's approval of that decision.

This approval, he argues, would take place through the signs and wonders that God would have put out on display on the Gentiles.

Now we're not told exactly what kind of signs and wonders Paul shared in this particular council setting, but if I read back through the book of Acts and look at the kinds of signs and wonders that took place in Gentile territories with Paul and Barnabas, I would see things like this.

The Apostle Paul, who I described, used to be the Jewish Pharisee Saul, a persecutor of Christians, a conspirator to murder, and a murderer.

This is the person that God would have chosen and revealed himself on the road to Damascus.

Paul was struck blind and heard a voice, the voice of Jesus saying, Paul, why are you persecuting me?

That same voice told him that you, Saul, will be my chosen instrument to carry the name of Jesus before the Gentiles.

In Acts chapter 10, a crowd of Gentiles had heard and received the word of God through the apostle Peter, and they received the Holy Spirit.

They spoke in tongues and were baptized in the name of Jesus.

In Acts 13, almost the whole entire city of Antioch and Pisidia showed up to hear the gospel preached to both Jews and Gentiles.

Luke writes that many believed, many were appointed to eternal life, and the disciples were filled with joy in the Holy Spirit.

And just last week in Acts chapter 14 we heard that many signs and wonders accompanied Paul's ministry in Iconium over a long period of time, and a miraculous healing was recorded in the town of Lystra.

Barrett observes that the occurrence of signs and wonders shows God's approval of the inclusion of the Gentiles who believe on the name of Jesus.

The final word in this matter is attributed to James, A leader so widely recognized that Luke, in writing the book of Acts, doesn't even bother clarifying which James it is.

He just says James, with no introduction.

Now, Acts chapter 12 describes the death of the Apostle James, so we know it isn't him.

He's singled out by Paul as 1 who stands out among the Judean brothers.

In the book of Galatians, Paul also refers to James, the half-brother of Jesus, as someone connected with this very same dispute that we're having here.

It also happened in Galatia on the matter of Gentile circumcision and adherence to the Law of Moses.

So Peter testifies to the words of the Holy Spirit, Paul and Barnabas testify to the signs and wonders of the Holy Spirit, James testifies, James the Jewish leader of the Jewish church, he testifies from the word of God itself.

And his testimony, rather than contradicting the experiences that the brothers brought, it actually confirms it.

James reads from the prophet Amos in the Old Testament, chapter 9, verses 11 and 12, which read, In that day I will restore David's fallen shelter.

I'll repair its broken walls, I'll restore its ruins, and I'll rebuild it as it used to be, so that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name, declares the Lord, who will do these things.

That's the text taken straight out of the book of Amos.

When James quotes it, he says that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who are called by my name.

Theologian Daryl Bach writes that James' reading of Amos shows that the teaching of the prophets in the Old Testament agrees with the inclusion of the Gentiles.

He says, Bach says, that James' point isn't just about this 1 passage in Amos, but that all the prophets taught this in general.

For example, I could turn to the book of Isaiah, chapter 45, We return to me and be saved to all the ends of the earth, For I am God and there is no other.

By myself I have sworn, From my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return.

To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.

The prophet Hosea writes in chapter 2, I will have mercy on no mercy.

I will say to not my people, you are my people, and he shall say you are my God." Zechariah chapter 2 says, many nations shall join themselves to the Lord in that day and shall be my people.

Bruce wrote in his commentary that in the Old Testament, the nations or the Gentiles are always held in contrast to God's chosen people, Israel.

But in these Old Testament prophecies, God is not taking a people in contrast to the Gentiles, he's taking a people that includes the Gentiles.

The Gentile mission is not only the actual work of God that's playing itself out right here in the Book of Acts, but it's something that the Holy Spirit has fulfilled.

It's something that the words of the prophets are in full agreement with, that they even predicted.

So James' judgment, therefore, will not require Gentile believers to be circumcised as a prerequisite for salvation.

Nor will they be required to follow the law of Moses as a prerequisite for salvation.

As for the question of how Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians can enjoy fellowship together, particularly table fellowship, a fellowship that requires physically sitting together and eating together and being together, James recommends 4 practices.

That the Gentile believers abstain from food sacrifice to idols.

That they abstain from the consumption of blood.

That they abstain from eating animals that have been strangled to death.

By the way, who strangles animals to slaughter them for food?

And that they finally abstain from sexual immorality.

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