WWUTT 1093 All In One Accord?

The false teachers were trying to sow division and discord, and they were divided from the brotherhood.

But when the apostles spoke to the Gentiles, they demonstrated that they were all in one accord when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily study in the word of Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of the book of Acts chapter 15.

This is the Jerusalem council we've been studying this week. Picking up where we left off yesterday,

I'll start in verse 22 and read through verse 41. Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them and send them 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 one 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 has seemed 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 to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality.

If you keep yourselves from these, you will 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.

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

And we'll pause right there for a moment. There's still a little bit more in chapter 15 to go, but I'll get to that toward the end of the lesson today.

Let's come back to this letter that the Jerusalem Council agreed upon, and as it was read to those

Galatians in the areas to which Paul and Barnabas and the other couple of men were sent. So, verse 22, then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders with the whole church to choose men from among them and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas.

So keep in mind what has been decided here. The issue at hand, just to kind of review what we've talked about the last couple of days, the issue at hand is that some

Judaizers had gone out to the churches in these Gentile areas, and they had told the

Gentiles that if you want to be saved, you must be circumcised according to the custom of Moses.

And then even among the council, there were those who were among them who were from the party of the

Pharisees, and they rose up at the Jerusalem Council and said it is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.

So this is the false teaching that had gone to the Gentiles and troubled them. Those Gentiles who had turned from sin and idol worship, and now they were followers of Jesus Christ.

They've got these Judaizers saying to them, now you're not doing enough. You say you have faith in Christ.

That's not enough. You have to follow the Mosaic law. You've got to be circumcised. Now that's the law that this saga here in Acts zeroes in on.

But we should understand that it would not have been the only thing because there were food laws, there were

Sabbath laws, there were likely a number of things that the Judaizers were trying to impress upon the

Gentiles. But it begins with circumcision. Why is circumcision the one thing that gets zeroed in on here in this account that we have in Acts 15?

Well, it's because this was the sign of the covenant that distinguished a

Jew from a Gentile, at least in the flesh. All the other laws like the food laws, the

Sabbath laws, those were not things that were carried in the body, whereas circumcision was, you know, once you did it, there you have it.

A person's either circumcised, a man is either circumcised or they're not. So that's why we focus on circumcision in Acts 15, but it would not have been the only thing that the

Jews were attempting to impress on the Gentiles. Keep in mind that even the

Pharisees made up their own laws and would tell people that you have to abide by these laws if you want to be holy.

If you'll recall, there's the exchange in Mark 7 between the Pharisees and Jesus and his disciples about how

Jesus' disciples didn't wash their hands before they ate. Therefore, they ate with unclean hands and they defiled their bodies.

And Jesus rebuked them for that and said, you are abiding by the laws of men and not by the commands of God.

God is not the one who said if you eat with unclean hands, you defile your body. This was something that the

Pharisees had made up and added to the law and impressed upon the people in order to maintain their holiness.

So the Pharisees were well known for making up these laws on top of what the

Mosaic law said. But the one law that seems to be that distinguishing law impressed upon the

Gentiles and being said to them, you have to do this if you want to become a Christian, would be circumcision.

Of course, knowing the Pharisees, it would not have stopped there. It would have been, well, you have also got to keep the food laws.

You've also got to keep the dietary laws. You've also got to keep the Sabbath and the festivals and on and on it goes.

And this is what the Hebrew roots guys will tell you. I mentioned this false religion, this false belief system yesterday.

They will say, well, sure, you can be a Christian by believing in Jesus. But Jesus was a

Jew and he did all these other things. So in order to have the most out of your

Christian experience that you can have, you have to do all the Jewish things. Now they will they will present this as if this is the high life.

This is the higher life. If you're just believing that you're justified by faith alone, well, you're not getting the most out of your

Christian experience. So you have to be doing all these Hebrew things. And incidentally, they do just like the

Pharisees did. They will make up stuff that's not even Hebrew roots, like it doesn't even go back to stuff that the

Jews practice is just made up as part of this Hebrew roots thing. And they will claim that it's

Hebrew or they will say that this is the way it really was back in the first century. And we're attempting to restore the church to its original practices.

And it never ends with with just what you'll see from these Hebrew roots, guys. There's always going to be stuff added to it while you're still not doing enough.

You also have to do this. And it's a burden that we just cannot bear. It will constantly be asking ourselves, am

I doing enough? Am I actually getting the most out of my Christian experience now? Am I doing enough to call myself a

Christian? Am I doing enough to be certain that I'm saved? Is God pleased with me? And all this heaping upon these laws and rules and regulations presents a burden that a person cannot carry and expect that they are going to have assurance of their salvation if they attempt to carry it.

This is the concern that the brothers have at Jerusalem as they are thinking about what do we tell the

Gentiles? How do we instruct them in their Christian walk to to relieve them of any undue burden, but also to also to instruct them in obedience?

I mean, there are going to be things that they need to do out of obedience. But let us not place a burden on them that even we couldn't bear as Peter and James had presented before the brothers.

We weren't saved by the law. We couldn't bear to keep the law. So we're not going to impress this upon the

Gentiles. The law has been fulfilled in Christ who who fulfills all the law and the prophets.

So therefore, what they say to the Gentiles is clarified in this particular letter.

We'll get to the letter in a moment. Again, back in verse 22, they chose men to go with Paul and Barnabas to Antioch.

Now, why did they do that? Why not just send Paul and Barnabas with the letter back to Antioch? Because there would there would have been people who would have doubted that this actually came from the assembly of the apostles and not just from Paul and Barnabas.

How do we know that Paul and Barnabas didn't make this up? And they wrote their own letter and they came to us. How do we know this is not the religion of Paul and Barnabas?

So that's why you've got a couple of other men that go with them, including Silas and Judas, and you have this letter that's being written.

So you've got four men now that come back with this letter and they're able to verify on behalf of all these witnesses of the things that had been decided by by the apostles that had been declared by the apostles, according to the

Holy Spirit of God. Notice that that's mentioned in verse 28, for it has seemed good to the

Holy Spirit and to us to lay on, you know, greater burden than these requirements. So this is verifying that this is coming from God.

This is the command of God as he is giving to the believers, specifically the Gentile believers through the mouths of the apostles.

So you've got these extra witnesses that go with Paul and Barnabas to deliver this letter. And this was the letter starting in verse 23, the brothers, both the apostles and the elders to the brothers who are of the

Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia greetings. So so you have this in the greeting itself.

You have two declarations of brother from the brothers to the brothers.

This is showing a fellowship here. We're Jews. We're apostles in Jerusalem, but we are as much your brothers as you are our brothers.

So that they're just showing a mutual affection for one another in the way that they have crafted this greeting here.

So they say the brothers, both the apostles and the elders to the brothers who are the

Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia greetings. And we see that the receiving of this letter caused the

Gentiles to rejoice. They were encouraged by it. They rejoiced in it. They were probably rejoicing and smiling and overwhelmed with joy, even from this greeting to have heard from the

Jewish apostles, those who had been appointed by Christ himself in Jerusalem to call them brothers.

That would have meant a great deal to these Gentiles who are really struggling in their faith because of what the

Judaizers and the false teachers have been telling them. Verse 24. 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.

Let me read that one more time. And there's another passage I'm going to tie into this. Verse 24. Since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us.

Though they did not say these things from us. So what is what are we to understand here?

Well, the Apostle John uses this exact same language in 1st

John 2, verse 18, where he says, children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many

Antichrist have come. Therefore, we know it is the last hour. Look at verse 19. They went out from us, but they were not of us.

For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might become plain that they all are not of us.

That looks almost exactly like what we have here warning about these false teachers.

We have heard that some persons have gone out from us. These men are not part of the apostolic teaching.

They did not come from the church. They are not a commission by the apostles to go out with this word.

So they went out from the true believers and they are false prophets. That's what's being demonstrated here by this introduction in the letter.

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.

So you can know that they are not of us. If they were of us, they would have continued with us.

But we are saying right now, these men who are saying these things to you and troubling you, they are not of us.

So then verse 26 or sorry, verse 25, it has seemed good to us having come to one accord.

So we are unified in these things. These men who have come to you, they are divided from us and they are causing division.

They are sowing discord. But we who are addressing you, we are of one accord.

So we're unit. We're in unity here. We are unified. They're attempting to divide.

We're unified and we're unified with you. Because remember the greeting again, the brothers addressing the brothers were unity.

We're in unity together. We are in one accord. Surely you've you've heard the old joke.

What kind of car did the apostles drive? They drove a Honda because the Bible says they were in one accord.

Yes. So that's that's the the presentation that they make to these gentile brothers here.

We're unified. They're separated from us. The false teachers are divided and causing division.

But it seemed good to us having come to one 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. These men are even coming back to you, risking their lives on your behalf so that you may hear and know out of the love and affection that we have for you the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Verse 27. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth, for it seemed good to the

Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements.

So you have the apostles saying to these gentile brethren that this is the

Holy Spirit speaking through us. But we're all in agreement on this. So we're in one accord.

We're even in one accord with the Holy Spirit, with God himself, through the spirit who is within us in the name of our

Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 29. Here's the instruction. Here's the requirements now that you abstain what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what has been strangled and from sexual immorality.

If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell. Now, we had read about these instructions yesterday, too, when

James had mentioned them in verses 19 and 20. He says, write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood.

I didn't go through what was unique about those instructions, though, as we have them listed here in the letter now as well.

So abstain from the things polluted by idols, from what has been strangled and from blood.

Those three things have to do with food that is offered to false gods. So oftentimes these temples to false gods were not just places of worship, but they were also butcheries.

That's where you would go to get your meat. The meat market would be there. They would offer the food to the false gods, believing that their foods would be blessed.

Their crops would be blessed. Their their flocks, herds would be blessed because they had first offered it to the false gods.

So the only place to get meat was to go into the temples. And you would have, in addition to this food that had been offered to idols, you would also have blood that would be sold.

And you might even drink the blood as you're buying the meat here. Drink this blood by this meat. You'll be blessed by the gods because it was believed among pagans that the life force of the animal was in the blood.

So they would be absorbing the life of the animal. And so the instructions here all have to do with your former pagan practices.

Don't practice in these these pagan rituals anymore. Stay away from things polluted by idols, from what has been strangled and from blood, all having to do with the food practices that the pagans would practice.

So don't worry about the Jewish dietary laws. You don't have to keep those. But don't do the things that you were doing previously in your pagan ways to these false gods.

But then you also have sexual immorality mentioned, and that one's definitely different from the other three. Well, it's because pagans did not really have a sexual ethic.

There was no call to sexual purity among pagans. You would go into these pagan temples and likely there would be altars where people would have sex on these altars to these false gods.

So that was going on in these temples as well. Don't have sex outside of marriage. That's what

God created sex for. So that's what was being instructed of the Gentiles as this letter was being given to them.

Stay away from your former pagan ways and be sexually pure. Give your bodies unto the

Lord, since your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, which you have from God, as Paul talked about in 1

Corinthians chapter six. So those are those are the instructions. And that's really quite easy to do compared to what the

Jews wanted to impress on them about all these laws that you were going to have to keep. Well, all

I have to do is not be a pagan anymore, which my life has been transformed by Christ anyway.

And I want to live for Christ. I want to live for him. So then hearing this from the apostles at Jerusalem caused the

Gentiles to celebrate when they were sent off. They went down to Antioch and having gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter.

These are the Christians at Antioch who were the first to receive it. Verse 31. And when they had read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement.

And Judas and Silas, who were themselves prophets, encourage and strengthen 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.

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

So that's the conclusion of everything going on there with the Jerusalem Council and the encouragement that had come to the

Gentiles. My friends, we have been freed from the bonds of sin that we were enslaved to before we became

Christians. So do not live in those ways anymore. As Paul said to the Ephesians, to the Corinthians, to the

Colossians, put off the old self and all of its former ways and practices and put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

Specifically, the instruction is given to the Colossians in Colossians chapter three. So do not walk in those sinful ways anymore.

Romans 12 to do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

And then you will see and approve God's will for you, his good and pleasing and perfect will.

And you will delight to do that will. And so let us not be enslaved to our sin.

Let us be slaves instead to righteousness. That's Roman six. So now versus 36 through 41,

I think I can finish this up in our last couple of minutes here. And after some days, Paul said to Barnabas, let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaim the word of the

Lord and see how they are. Now, Barnabas wanted to take with him John called Mark.

This is John Mark. We read about him when Peter was freed from prison and went to the house of John Mark's mother.

So we've read about him in the book of Acts already. And this is the same John Mark who wrote the gospel of Mark verse 38.

But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.

We really don't know what this episode was that's being referred to here. We just know that Paul believed he had a valid reason not to bring

John Mark with him. He didn't think that John Mark was dependable. So then verse 39 and there arose a sharp disagreement so that they separated from each other.

Barnabas took Mark with him because Mark was Barnabas's cousin. And he took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus.

But Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the

Lord. And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. So by the providence of God, this disagreement that Paul and Barnabas have with one another actually results in doubling their efforts.

So they're able to go out to different places. But that's why that's by God's providential hand.

God was taking this and turning it into something that served to encourage the brotherhood and advance the gospel.

I still don't think that Barnabas and Paul were right in their separation. And in fact,

I think Paul would later acknowledge his mistake that he should have agreed with Barnabas to take

John Mark with them. And he says this in Second Timothy when he tells Timothy, bring

John Mark with you, for he is useful to me. We actually see that that Paul and John Mark reconcile and he acknowledges his error that John Mark has actually proved himself and would have been a good servant at the time that Paul and Barnabas had their disagreement because John Mark was a good servant with Barnabas when they went out.

So Paul later acknowledged his error. But this disagreement on Paul and Barnabas is part.

This disagreement shouldn't have happened in the first place. God still used it by his providential hand, by his sovereignty to accomplish what he meant to accomplish.

But Paul and Barnabas should have been more agreeable than they were. I mention this because some people will point to this story as an excuse for why they don't need to agree with one another.

Like two Christians will argue with each other and then they'll blow it off by saying, well, this is really a Paul and a

Barnabas sort of a situation. No, you the two of you probably need to agree with each other.

Yes, God will be glorified through your disagreement. But that's no excuse for you in your quarreling and arguing over whatever it is.

So that's why I mentioned that agree with one another, be in one accord with each other, as was demonstrated among the apostles in this word, in this message that they used to encourage the brotherhood with.

That should be our pursuit. Encouraging one another in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which we cannot work to achieve or it would not be grace.

God has given it to us as a gift through his son, Jesus Christ. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone and not of our works.