May 17, 2008...5:49 am
Saturday, May 17th - Acts 15
Agreeing. Sometimes it’s hard to do as friends. It can be extraordinarily difficult as a congregation. The Word tells us to be united in our thinking, but how do you do that when the issues are really tough? In today’s text, we have a couple of disagreements, worked out in two different ways. What can we learn?
INSIGHTS
The big church-wide issue that was circulating among the new followers was the necessity of circumcision for new converts to Christianity…which was the headliner of a wider issue: How much of the Old Testament law should Gentile Christians practice?
“The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them.” These kinds of decisions take serious wrestling amongst church leaders. It truly tests the mettle not only of our theology, but of our love for one another.
“Why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.” Peter gives a definitive “no”.
“It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.” James, rather than an outright “no”, offers a compromise solution - a bit of the law, some basics that, if not obeyed, will truly confuse and confound new hearers of the gospel (because of the blanket familiarity with the Torah).
“It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us”…an interesting phrase! Often, this is where our decision-making takes us. It’s not black and white, but it “seems good to us”, we have a spiritual sense of God’s favor, and is not contradictory to the Spirit-inspired scriptures.
“Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him…they had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company.” Here, after the entire church could come together on a weighty theological issue, two colleagues/friends can’t even agree on a church-planting staffing issue. Paul would not recommend Mark for the task (though Mark ultimately proved to do excellent work over the years). Was one right and the other wrong? Were these just opinions? Should one of them have yielded? At any rate, this is the last we hear of Barnabas in the book of Acts.
CHALLENGES
1. An interpretive challenge today: Is everything that happened in Acts 15 what was supposed to have happened? Did the council make the right decision? Was Paul and Barnabas’ argument legitimate? Or “should” Acts 15 have happened in another way?
2. Does false doctrine bother you? We’re surrounded by it here in the valley (Mormonism, prosperity gospels, specifics of Catholicism, etc.). In the early church, they felt something had to be done about it. What needs to be done about it today?
3. Barnabas, a keynote speaker at the Jerusalem council, now finds himself at odds with Paul, the “chief spokesman” of the missions movement. Paul and Silas were “commended by the brothers” as they set out - it doesn’t say this about Barnabas and Mark. It seems Barnabas had a vision of working with Mark, and was going to do it even if Paul and the Antioch church were not behind him. Was this the right thing for Barnabas to do?
I’d love to hear from you on any or all of these challenges! Tomorrow, we meet Timothy, Lydia, and the Macedonians! Great stuff…see you then!
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Bill Hartley
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