Witness Pt. 28

I want to ask you to take your Bible if you have a copy with you and turn please to Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

Acts chapter number 15.

Our text for the sermon this morning.

I don't think, I don't think churches hear this from their pastors enough.

And so I want to say this to you.

Mud Creek, I am having a ball doing what I do.

I love my job.

And I, well, that's not.

No, you're supposed to clap for yourself.

Don't clap for me.

I am having more fun than any pastor in the country, I assure you.

But there is one part of my job that I hate.

And I did not misspeak.

I did not say there's one part of my job that I kind of dislike.

Or there's one part of my job that I just sort of tolerate.

There is one part of my job that I hate.

I love preaching.

I'd rather preach than eat.

I love studying to preach.

I've been in hospitals in three different counties this week.

I love being with God's people and trying to encourage them.

There is one part of this I hate.

I hate making announcements.

I hate it.

But I do hate making announcements because they just don't work.

Because to me, they are the embodiment of the communication breakdowns that happen so often in life.

And it doesn't matter if you're a pastor making announcements, it doesn't matter what line of work you're in, it doesn't matter what sort of relationships you have.

All of us know what it's like to see communication fail, don't we?

You try to say it the best way you can and it just doesn't come out right.

Or somehow you send the text message and something is lost in interpersonal communication and you end up getting written up by human resources.

You know, those things happen.

In fact, when I pastored in Alabama years ago, there was a man in our church who evidently in his iPhone, my initials are the same as his wife's initials.

Oh yeah.

And so he would often send me messages that were really designed for her eyes only.

And I just wanted to play along.

And so what I would do is I would just respond and say, listen, your kids, and I always say it that way, your kids have been awful today.

And I'm not cooking.

So take me to Olive Garden, meet me there at six o'clock.

And as far as I know, he's still there waiting on her to show up.

In our passage of scripture this morning in Acts chapter 15, this is a church that's having a communication breakdown.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

It's a church where people are hearing more than one message.

It's a church where there's conflicting information, there's this melting pot of different ideas, all related to this central question that comes in verse number one.

How is a person saved?

How is a person forgiven of their sins?

How is a person made right with God?

How does somebody become a Christian?

What does it actually mean to have our sins forgiven by Jesus?

And in Acts chapter 15, the church comes together to answer that question.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

And then they communicate their answer to the broader church.

And as we gather this morning, knowing that in a few moments we are going to meet around the Lord's table and observe the Lord's Supper together, I think it's a great place to consider this text alongside of the Lord's Supper, because of all the things that happens when a church takes communion, one thing that should be happening is we are clarifying the message of salvation.

We are clarifying the message of the gospel, that Jesus' body was broken for us, that his blood was shed for us.

We celebrate the Lord's Supper because we want to get the gospel right.

And that's what this text is about.

It's about getting the gospel right.

So let's begin reading in verse number six, and we will read through verse number 35.

Acts 15, 6.

Now, the apostles and elders came together to consider this matter.

And when there had been much dispute, Peter rose up and said to them, Men and brethren, you know that a good while ago God chose among us that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.

So God, who knows the heart, acknowledged them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us, and made no distinction between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.

Now therefore, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?

But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved in the same manner as they.

Then all the multitude kept silent, and listened to Barnabas and Paul, declaring how many miracles and wonders God had worked through them among the Gentiles.

And after they had become silent, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, listen to me.

Simon has declared how God at the first visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name.

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

After this I will return and will rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down.

I will rebuild its ruins, and I will set it up, so that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord who does all these things.

Known to God from eternity are all his works.

Therefore, I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God, but that we write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from blood.

For Moses has had throughout many generations those who preach him in every city, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath.

Then it pleased the apostles and elders with the whole church to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, namely Judas, who was also named Bar Sabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brethren.

They wrote this letter by them.

The apostles, the elders, and the brethren, to the brethren who were of the Gentiles, and Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia, greetings.

Since we have heard that some who went out from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your souls, saying, You must be circumcised and keep the law, to whom we gave no such commandment.

It seemed good to us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men 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 will also report the same things by word of mouth.

For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things, that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality.

If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.

Farewell.

So when they were sent off, they came to Antioch.

When they had gathered the multitude together, they delivered the letter.

When they had read it, they rejoiced over its encouragement.

Now Judas and Silas, themselves being prophets also, exhorted and strengthened the brethren with many words.

And after they had stayed there for a time, they were sent back with greetings from the brethren to the apostles.

However, it seemed good to Silas to remain there.

Paul and Barnabas also remained in Antioch, teaching and preaching the word of the Lord with many others also.

The grass withers and the flowers fade.

But the word of the Lord abideth forever.

The church in Acts chapter 15 is confused.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

They're confused because over the years leading up to Acts 15, a number of Gentiles have been believing the message about Jesus, believing that he is the Son of God and the Savior of the world.

That is, they needed to believe in Jesus.

Wonderful.

Great, good, we're happy for you.

But you need Jesus and you need a little bit more.

And so they are confusing the message of salvation.

And the Gentiles are wondering, well, do we really belong if we're not Jewish?

Well, if we're not Jewish, are we really Christians the way the Jewish Christians are Christians?

The Jewish Christians are looking at the Gentiles saying, you know, we may all be equal, but we're just more equal than y'all are.

And there's all this confusion, doubt, insecurity, fear, pride, self-righteousness working in the church.

And so the church decides we need to come together and declare one time for all time how exactly God saves all people.

And so they meet together, pastors and apostles meet together for that purpose back at the first church, the home base, the church in Jerusalem.

And as they have this argument, and as they have this debate and discussion, the Bible says that once things kind of settle down, that Saint Peter speaks of, the apostle Peter.

Peter who was the leader, as it were, of the apostles, Peter who was so outspoken, Peter who always had so much to say.

And Peter recounts how God had used him to preach the gospel to the Gentiles.

And how when he preached Jesus to the Gentiles, and they believed in Jesus, they had received the Holy Spirit, proving in Peter's mind that all people, regardless of their ethnicity or background, are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

And Peter says, we are not going to add another burden on the shoulders of these Gentile Christians that we never could even carry ourselves.

Interestingly, this is the last time that we hear from Simon Peter in the book of Acts.

The last hurrah of St.

Peter.

Then Paul and Barnabas begin to speak.

And Paul and Barnabas, we're not really told specifically what they say, we're just told that they recount their journeys among the Gentiles.

And then after they speak, the Bible says, verse 13, that James takes his turn with the microphone.

This is not James, the brother of John, the sons of Zebedee.

He was executed back in Acts chapter number 12.

He's already in heaven.

This is James, the stepbrother of Jesus.

James who grew up in a home with Jesus.

Imagine the pressure of having Jesus as your older brother.

James, you need to go clean your room.

Why can't you be more like Jesus?

This is James.

James, who we know from the Gospels, along with the rest of his brothers, did not believe that Jesus really was the Messiah until after the resurrection.

But who became so convinced that Jesus was the Son of God and his own personal Lord and Savior that after he became a Christian, he earned this nickname of old camel knees because he prayed so fervently and so passionately that his knees became callous like those of a camel.

When this guy speaks, people are going to listen.

And James rises to speak.

And as James speaks, clarifying the gospel, making sure they get it right, as they send the letter to those Gentile churches at the end of the chapter, as we gather around the Lord's table today, I want to show you, as it were, three echoes of the gospel that we must be reminded of this morning if we get the gospel right.

The first echo is this we must be concerned with hospitality.

We must be concerned with hospitality.

If we get the gospel right, we are a welcoming people.

So what is James going to say?

James, who is himself very Jewish.

James, who is probably the pastor, the leader of the Jerusalem Jewish Church at this point.

What is he going to say?

Well, he's going to quote a very, very obscure passage in an Old Testament minor prophet from Amos chapter 9, verses 11 and 12, to say that God one day would restore the tent or the house, the royal line of David, and that God would, you can read about this here in verse number 16, that God would rebuild the tabernacle of David, and that when that happens, verse 17, the rest of mankind would seek the Lord.

Amos 9:11

Even the Gentiles who are called by the name of God.

In other words, James goes before this Jewish congregation and he says to them, You need to recognize and understand that God has always had one plan to make one people who call upon him in the same way that God has always intended to bless the Gentiles and to bless the nations through the people of Israel.

And James is right.

Now to us, that seems as obvious as John 3.16, right?

For God so loved the world.

Amen.

Thank God he did.

But it wasn't obvious to these people.

And they needed the reminder that reaching all the way back to God's first promises to bless the nations to Abraham, that God's purpose was always to have a people made up of every conceivable nation, every conceivable language, every conceivable background.

And so the church wants to say if we get the gospel right, then we are a family of believers and we are a large and diverse family.

Friends, we need to remember that today as we gather around the Lord's table.

Because it reminds us that as the people of God, this is our family meal.

And everybody in the family doesn't look the same, do they?

Everybody in the family doesn't think the same.

Everybody in the family doesn't speak the same.

Everybody in the family doesn't agree about every issue facing the family.

But the one thing we should remember today is that we are family.

We should remember today that Jesus welcomes people that are radically different from us.

That Jesus makes a seat at the table for people that do not look like me.

That in the family of God there are all sorts of people with all sorts of ideas.

And as we celebrate communion today, we are gathering around the Lord's table as a family, knowing that our God, who made a place for us, makes a place for all people that will come to him by faith.

So we celebrate hospitality today, knowing that Jesus makes people welcome.

Second, the second echo of the gospel in this passage is that we must be committed to holiness.

James says we have no right.

It would be a misrepresentation of Jesus, of the gospel, of his death and resurrection, if we told these Gentiles they had to become circumcised in order to be saved.

But he says this.

We write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled and from blood.

Now that seems pretty random, doesn't it?

Just as you probably have not given one ounce of your mental energy to thinking about circumcision this week.

You've probably not given one single ounce of mental energy to worrying about sexual immorality, I hope.

Idolatry, meat filled with blood, unless you like your steaks rare or medium rare, the way that you should eat them.

That's not what he's talking about in this passage.

Ask me later, I'll explain it to you.

These are random behaviors that are on James' radar.

Until you realize that each of these four things are actually connected to one thing.

And the one thing that they're all connected to is pagan idol worship.

In particular, they were connected to pagan feasts.

Recognize that in the first century world, they didn't celebrate Fourth of July.

They were not proud to be Americans.

Hope you know that.

They didn't celebrate Christmas.

They didn't have these cultural celebrations that are just natural and easy to us.

They had Saturnalia, where they worship the God Saturn.

They had Vulcanalia every August where they worship the God Vulcan.

All these different pagan celebrations, worshiping and celebrating pagan idols.

And the one thing the things that would always happen when they worship these pagan idols, number one, is there'd be sacrifices made.

Then the people would gather together to have a big community feast where they ate the meat that had been sacrificed to idols.

And oftentimes they would engage in sexual immorality, not only as part of those feasts, but often as part of the actual worship itself.

And so what James is saying to these Gentiles is this stop.

Make sense?

Don't do that stuff anymore.

In other words, get in your mind this way.

James says to these Gentiles, you do not need to become Jews before you become Christians.

But if you become Christians, you cannot be the same kind of Gentiles you were anymore either.

Because the gospel that welcomes all people changes all those who come.

The gospel makes people different.

And this is vital for us to focus on this morning, I think, because a lot of times, when the preacher comes in sort of like I did last week, and you come in and you start preaching salvation by grace alone and by faith alone, very heavy, that we're saved by Jesus and not by our works.

There are always people that hear that.

Always people that hear that and think, well, if I'm saved by Jesus, and it doesn't matter what I do, Jesus saves me by grace.

Well then I could just leave here and go rob a bank.

And it wouldn't matter.

Because it doesn't matter how I live, right?

If I believe in Jesus, Jesus will forgive me, my sin's gone, it doesn't really matter how I live.

If your first thought after hearing the gospel is, you know, I should go rob a bank.

Get help, please.

Because once we understand the cost that Jesus has paid for us, we realize we don't want to keep living the life that Jesus saved us from.

Mud Creek, I've told you this before, and I will tell you again because we need to hear it in the world that we live in.

Jesus did not save you to make you a better sinner.

He did not save you so that now you can sin without guilt, or so that now you can sin without fear.

No, Jesus saves you from sin, meaning he rescues you from that and he transforms you.

And today, as we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we should recognize as we take this cup and eat this bread that this symbolizes the dark blood of our Lord that was poured out for our sins.

That this symbolizes a body that was shattered for our sins.

And if our sin cost him that much, then we should behold today how ugly and awful and godless our sin is, but we should also behold the beauty of our Savior who loved us and gave himself for us so that we no longer run to the sin that Jesus died to save us from.

In fact, Scripture says in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 about the Lord's Supper that as we celebrate the Lord's Supper today, we should examine ourselves.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

And we should look at our hearts and our lives.

That if there's any sin in us that remains unconfessed and unrepented of, that we abstain from the Lord's table.

Because we mishandle the body and blood of the Lord.

When we handle these elements with sinful hearts and with sinful hands.

Shows confusion about the gospel.

If we continue to live in the sin that Jesus died to save us from, we must be a people that are committed to holiness.

Finally, this text would show us, I believe, and as we celebrate the Lord's Supper today, I believe the Lord's Supper teaches us that we should be a people continuing in hope.

Continuing in hope.

I'm not meaning to preach at you with a communion cup, but it's happening.

We should be a people continuing in hope.

James says, you know, stop the idol worship, stop the sacrifices, stop the nastiness.

But then he says it in a very peculiar way.

I never had noticed this until I read this again over the past few weeks.

Look at what he says.

Verse 20, we write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, sexual in reality, things drying from blood.

Then verse 21, for, or because Moses has throughout, has had throughout many generations, those who preach him in every city, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath.

In other words, don't engage in the pagan idol worship and everything that goes with it, because Moses is being read in the synagogues every Sabbath.

Here's what James is saying.

James is saying, for you Gentile believers, if you continue to live in the pagan idol worshiping rituals and life that you used to live, if you continue to be the same people you always were, then that is going to discredit your ability to share the gospel with those Jews who need Jesus.

Because they're going to look at you and say, Well, those Christians are no different from any other Gentiles.

And so James says, I want you to realize the power of your testimony that James is saying that because James is Jewish.

He wants to see the Jewish people embrace their Messiah.

Now think about where we have come from and where we are in the book of Acts.

And think about how the most hostile opponents to Christianity have been Jews.

How the people persecuting them, the difficulties.

There doesn't seem to be much hope for the Jewish people, does there?

But James says, as long as the gospel is true, and as long as God's people live with the gospel at the center of their lives, there is hope.

And James actually is kind of giving a precursor to what the apostle Paul would write about in the book of Romans.

He's actually laying the groundwork for what God's plan for the ethnic Jewish people actually is.

That for a time God is working among the Gentiles.

You see it here.

He says, I speak to the Gentiles in Rome.

He said, I'm the apostle of the Gentiles.

He said, If by any means I may provoke my people to jealousy and see some of them saved.

For if they're being cast away is the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?

What Paul's saying here is if God has moved to save and work in the Gentiles, then maybe the Jews, the ancient people of God, would look at that and say, wait a minute, our God is being worshipped by those pagans, and they would be provoked to jealousy so that they would look to their own Messiah.

So that ultimately Jews and Gentiles alike would form one body in Christ.

Paul, James have incredible hope as they look towards the future.

They are optimistic in their hope for the future, that the gospel will go forward and people will respond.

Brothers and sisters, today, as we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we should recognize that not everybody who will gather around the table in the kingdom of God is around this table today.

There are people that Jesus has not saved yet that will be with us there.

But we should also recognize that God is at work in this world and that God is saving, and that the gospel is advancing, and that people from every nation, every tribe, and every tongue are being brought in to the family of God.

And we'll be around the feet of Jesus, worshiping the Lamb that was slain.

And we should recognize today that when we gather, we are doing as the Apostle Paul said as we celebrate the Lord's Supper, that we are portraying his death until he comes.

That we are looking back to events that happened 2,000 years ago outside of Jerusalem.

But we are also looking ahead, oh we're not to a heavenly Jerusalem.

Recognizing that one day the Lord Jesus said that he would gather around the table with us.

And we celebrate in hope today, knowing that as far as we know, this could be the last time that we celebrate the Lord's Supper in this world.

This may be the last time that we celebrate communion together, and then the next time we drink the fruit of the vine, and the next time we celebrate together, we are doing it in glory.

Paul said, You are showing the Lord's death till he comes, reminding yourselves that you are an eschatological people on whom the ends of the earth have come, that God has caused the future to crash land in the past, and we are looking ahead for something far, far better.

And so communion should be many, many things.

It should be somber, but it should also be celebratory.

This is our Thanksgiving meal.

This is our glimpse ahead to the future.

This is our reminder that the Lord has died and has risen again.