Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr. Andy Woods: Alrighty, let's take our Bibles this evening and open them to the book of Acts chapter 15 and verse 23. Acts chapter 15 verse 23 as we continue our verse-by-verse study through the book of Acts on Wednesday evenings.

It's sort of in that section of the book where Luke groups a chunk of material saying that the disciples will be the witnesses of Jesus to the remotest parts of the earth. So that's chapters 13 through 28, and it began with Paul's first missionary journey, which we've completed in Acts 13 and 14. We're coming up real quick on the second missionary journey, which is going to begin in chapter 15 verse 36.

But sandwiched in between the first missionary journey and the second missionary journey is the Jerusalem Council, which is basically not the first Jerusalem Council. The first one was in Acts 11 trying to figure out if a Gentile could get saved. Answer: yes, because of Peter's testimony concerning the salvation of Cornelius.

The second Jerusalem Council, which is what we're studying here, relates to a church matter. What do we do with all these saved Gentiles that got saved in the first missionary journey? Do they have to become members of the church or do they have to come under the Law of Moses, I should say, in order to become members of the church? So that's what this whole thing is about here in Acts 15.

So it's obviously a big step in the birth and growth of the church. That's why Luke, our author, spends so much time on it. Essentially what happened is Paul and Barnabas had come back from the first missionary journey to a place called Antioch. That's the city, by the way, up north where the three missionary journeys will be launched from.

So Paul goes into Southern Galatia, he comes back to Antioch up north, and there came a group into the church called Pharisees. These people were Pharisees. A Pharisee is always someone who's trying to add the law to something. So they said, "You've got to go under the law to get justified before God. You've got to go under the law of God to be sanctified as a Christian."

Now what they're saying in Acts 15 is you've got to go under the Law of Moses, that's what I mean by the law of God, in order to become members of the church. You've got to become a full-fledged convert to Judaism. So that's what this crowd up in Antioch started teaching.

Paul and Barnabas have to leave Antioch to go up to Jerusalem where the apostles were to get a word from them about this. I mean, is it true that you've got to go under the Law of Moses to join the church as these Pharisees in Antioch were teaching? So that's what this whole deal is about here in Acts 15.

So that's the occasion in verses 1 through 5. Verses 6 through 21 is the declarations. The meeting is convened. Peter speaks up. He says, "Us Jews have done a lousy job keeping the law. Why would we make the Gentiles try to keep something that we couldn't keep?"

Paul and Barnabas speak up there in verse 12 and they say, "We saw unusual favor by the Holy Spirit coming upon Gentiles, and it had nothing to do with the law." That was God's pattern all the way through our first missionary journey.

And then finally, the heavy hitter steps up, a guy named James, the Lord's half-brother, the author of the epistle of James, and the pastor of the church at Jerusalem. He says, "In the Millennial Kingdom," and this is where he quotes Amos chapter 9. He's got to quote the scripture because in a book where there's constant dreams, constant visions, constant words from the Lord, nothing like that happens here.

To get a decision on this matter, they've got to go into the Hebrew Bible, and they can't go into the New Testament because there is no New Testament yet. So that's why James quotes Amos, and he quotes the Millennial Kingdom and he says, "In the Millennial Kingdom, Gentiles are going to be full-fledged citizens in the Millennial Kingdom."

Since that's the case, let's let the Gentiles into the church now without submitting to the Law of Moses. So he kind of reasons from God's purposes in history in the kingdom that's coming and he reasons backward to get the mind of God on this issue.

So those are all the declarations. And then what we started last time is now the actual decision is handed down. Verses 22 through 29, we're going to try to complete that little unit this evening, Lord willing. We have the selection of those who are going to deliver the decision.

Paul and Barnabas are going to deliver it to the various churches along with a couple of other guys. One guy named Judas called Barsabbas, and we know almost nothing about him. And then another guy named Silas. We're going to learn a ton about Silas because Silas is going to accompany Paul on the second missionary journey. So four people are going to deliver this decision from Jerusalem to Antioch. And that kind of fits the pattern of the Lord: let a matter be confirmed by two to three witnesses.

So that's verse 22. And then we pick it up there in verse 23 where the addressees of this decision are mentioned. Notice verse 23. It says, "And they sent this letter by them," that's the four guys that I mentioned. "The apostles and the brethren who are elders," that's who it's coming from, "to the brethren in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia who are from the Gentiles, greetings."

So who are the authors of this decision? It's the only people that could make a decision like this: the apostles and then another group of people called the elders. Who are the elders? The elders are the people that are going to replace the apostles in terms of leaders of the Jerusalem church because the apostles aren't going to live forever.

We first got introduced to the term elders in Acts 11, and elders are not mentioned in the book of Acts up until that point in time. But there's going to come a generational change. The apostles won't be alive forever, and they're going to be replaced by leadership in the church called elders in there in Jerusalem.

And so this decision is coming from them and it's coming to those up north, Antioch, who were being infected by this Pharisaical doctrine that you've got to go under the Law of Moses to join the church, Cilicia and Syria.

So that's one of the things I've always appreciated about the Bible. It's one of the things I especially appreciate about Luke, who's so meticulous about places of geography. I mean, you could look up all these places on a map and they're real places. They're still in existence 2,000 years later.

So as I like to say when I get to places of geography in scripture, that's how the Bible was given to us. It's not just a nice spiritual book. It's an actual history book with spiritual lessons flowing out of it. So this is not VeggieTales or Jack and the Beanstalk. This is like real history with real geography, etc.

And it's going to a group of people that are called the brethren. And the reason these people are called brethren is they're already saved. So this is a dispute that the Pharisees are bringing into Antioch within the believing community. So they're not trying to say you've got to go under the law to be justified before God. That issue has already gotten fixed in Acts 11, the first Jerusalem Council.

They're not saying you've got to go under the Law of Moses to grow as a Christian. That issue got fixed in the book of Galatians, which has already been written at this point as we have taught. They're dealing with Christians coming into the church and a group of people saying, "You guys are Gentiles. You can't come into the church unless you become a full-fledged proselyte to Judaism. You've got to be circumcised. You've got to do this, you've got to do that according to the Law of Moses."

So that's the issue that's being dealt with here, and the decision is being handed down that you Gentiles don't have to do that. So you don't have to go into the Law of Moses for anything. You don't have to go into the Law of Moses to become a Christian. You don't have to go into the Law of Moses to grow as a Christian. You don't have to go into the Law of Moses to join the church.

So this is a debate that's happening amongst the saved, and you can see that just by the use of the word brethren. And then you look at verse 24, and this decision that's handed down by the apostles and the elders is a total top-to-bottom repudiation of the Pharisees or a group of people that are sometimes called the Judaizers.

And you see that in verse 24 where the decision is: "Since we have heard that some of our number to whom we gave no instruction have disturbed you with their words, unsettling your souls." So that's pretty aggressive. It talks about certain ones have come in. Who are those certain ones? All you do is back up to the first two verses to see who these false teachers were in Antioch.

It says there, you might remember: "Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren," these are the Christians. So a Christian can get mixed up in legalism very easily, and that's what this group of Pharisees was doing. "Began teaching the brethren, 'Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.'" Saved there means grow because they're already brethren. Because the word saved is used in the past tense, the present tense, and the future tense. Here it's more of a middle-tense use of the word saved.

"And when Paul and Barnabas had great dissension and debate with them, the brethren," see these are believers, "determined that Paul and Barnabas and some others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders concerning the issue." So when verse 24 says, "Certain men came in and were disturbing you," that's the group that the apostles are referring to.

And you'll notice that this legalism that came in was a disturbance to the believer, verse 24, and it was unsettling to their souls. That's what false doctrine does. That's what false teaching does. Having some issues here with my sweatpants. And so of course that's on camera as this is happening. And it's nothing to panic about because I've got some shorts on underneath, but the audience out there doesn't know that, do they? They think, "Oh my goodness, what's going on at this church?"

Nothing to see here folks, moving right along. And my wife is just about ready to collapse under the basement because she's always saying, "Don't do stuff like that," and here I went up and did stuff like that. So there we go. Let's close in prayer.

So you'll notice that false doctrine, and by the way, I've got to wear two layers of clothes tonight because it's colder. Usually I've got one layer of clothes on, and that's why I'm having issues because I've got two layers underneath there. Anything else I need to get off my chest? There we go.

So how do you recover from something like that? So in essence, one of the things that's happening here is this false doctrine is coming in and it's causing a disturbance to the Christian. So that's what legalism does. There are all kinds of people that will put you under legalism as a Christian, and it will be a disturbance to your soul.

Paul the apostle dealt with legalism in Galatians 1 verses 6 and 7. He says, "I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another. Only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ."

So this is one of the reasons we're always to be on the lookout against legalism, false doctrine, people that want to add things to either justification or sanctification or church membership that the Bible doesn't add. Because once you go under those legalistic type teachings, it actually is a short circuit to your spiritual growth, and it's a disturbance to your soul.

Make no mistake about it, false doctrine is lethal. It's analogized in the New Testament to actually cancer, which is a real scary word today as it should be. Nobody likes to have that name attached to them. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I'm on the up and up now, but it's always a scary thing when that declaration is made about somebody. It's also analogized in the New Testament to gangrene.

And so the Bible is saying just as in the physical world, cancer and gangrene are deleterious to your physical well-being, in the same way legalism, which is always an addition to something you've got to do above and beyond what the scripture says, is deleterious to your spiritual growth.

And so we don't really look at false doctrine that way. We say it's just a spiritual thing. But the Bible says it's as deadly to your spiritual man as is something like cancer or gangrene to your physical man. 2 Timothy 2:18 of false doctrine says, "Men who have gone astray from the truth saying that the resurrection has already taken place and they have upset the faith of some."

And the word "upset the faith of some," or in some translations, "turned over the faith of some," is the same word that's used in John 2 verse 15 concerning Jesus overturning tables in the temple. And you remember John 2 when Jesus does this: "He made a scourge of cords and drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen, and he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables."

So you can imagine Jesus taking a table and just physically overturning it. That's the exact same Greek word that's used in 2 Timothy 2 verse 18 of false doctrine coming in and turning over the faith of people. It's not saying you lose your salvation, but it's a disturbance to your soul in the sense that it short-circuits your growth.

And every moment you spend under false doctrine as a Christian, and you can as a Christian go under false doctrine. A lot of people would say that's impossible, but it's completely possible, and the reason I know it's possible is the New Testament tells the Christian over and over again, "Don't be deceived."

I mean, Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2, I think it's verse 1, verse 2, verse 3 right in there, tells the brethren at Thessalonica to not be deceived by a false letter allegedly coming from him. So if a Christian cannot be deceived, why does the Bible tell the Christian not to be deceived? See that doesn't make any sense.

So a Christian can be deceived by legalism, and every moment they spend under legalism is a moment they can't really develop and grow the way that God has for them. So people watch all kinds of things on Christian television, things where people are telling them they can be rich if they just pray the prayer of faith. Or they're taught there's some kind of little God that you can command God.

Or they get in legalistic environments where they're told they can't come into the church unless they have their hair a certain way, or a woman can't wear earrings. People get weird about she can't wear makeup, you've got to have your head covered. I mean it just goes on and on and on, adding things that the Bible doesn't add.

And every moment you spend under that is a moment you can't develop into the freedom and liberation that God has for you. So that's why the apostles here completely and totally repudiate the teachings of the Judaizers. And what was upsetting to the apostles is this teaching that they were bringing in, we never authorized.

Verse 23: "Since we have heard that some of your number to whom we gave no instruction," see that? I mean, the Pharisees just came in with their own ideas and started to promote them, and the apostles said, "We never gave that instruction." So that's how you can recognize false teaching: it adds to apostolic teaching or subtracts from it.

So after you have a total repudiation of this Pharisaical teaching, now you have the approval of Paul and Barnabas since they're the ones that are going to take this decision from Jerusalem and go back to Antioch. So notice if you will verse 25. It says, "It seemed good to us having become of one mind," so this is something that all the apostles in Jerusalem agreed to.

"It seemed good to us having become of one mind to select men to send you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul." Now normally it's Paul and Barnabas, but here it's Barnabas and Paul. Barnabas's name is mentioned first, probably because Barnabas was more well-known in Jerusalem than Paul.

So Barnabas and Paul are basically commended as the deliverers of this letter and this decision. And then you go down to verse 26, and it mentions others. Well, actually the others are coming in verse 27, but we have further commendation of Paul and Barnabas in verse 26. It says, "Men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Why are we commending here Paul and Barnabas? Because they risked their lives for the cause of the gospel. How did they risk their lives for the cause of the gospel? They went on that first missionary journey that we've studied in Acts 13 and 14, and their lives were in jeopardy in countless places where they went.

You might remember that there were so many rocks thrown at Paul there in the Lystra and Derbe area that he was left for dead. They thought he was dead, and he wasn't dead, he was just unconscious, and he went right back into that city and finished his ministry. So that's why these men are commended because they were people that risked their lives.

So that really is the definition of leadership, isn't it? I mean, who is a spiritual leader? I mean, a spiritual leader is not someone necessarily that has the most intelligence or the best education or the greatest spiritual gifting, but it's someone who has the ability to stand up courageously against evil.

And that's the kind of person that you want to follow as a spiritual leader, and that's why Paul and Barnabas are commended here. And then you go down to verse 27 and two more people, as I mentioned earlier, this is kind of a rehash of verse 22, will also accompany Paul and Barnabas as they deliver this decision. Verse 27 it says, "Therefore we have sent Judas and Silas who themselves will also report the same things by word of mouth."

So we have Judas and then we have Silas. Judas and Silas are going to deliver and confirm the message. Paul and Barnabas are going to verbally deliver the message. So it fits the pattern of God that let a matter be confirmed by two to three witnesses. In this case, four men are being dispatched from Jerusalem to Antioch.

You know, this whole thing about let a matter be confirmed by two to three witnesses is taught all over the Bible. It's in the book of Deuteronomy concerning those accused of a capital crime. It says, "On the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses, the one who is to die shall be put to death. He shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness."

And you read that and you can say, well, that was the whole problem with the trial of Jesus, right? This rule of two to three witnesses was never used by the Jews. They were trying to rush Jesus through the judicial system to get him killed as fast as possible. So they had one witness that maybe heard him say something that wasn't true, destroy this temple and I'll rebuild it again in three days.

And someone said, "I heard him say he wants to destroy the temple," not understanding that he was talking about his body. And that was just one witness, and he was an inaccurate witness. And that's what they used to rush Jesus through the judicial system. They didn't even follow their own rulebook.

Deuteronomy 19 and verse 15 says, "A single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or any sin which he has committed. But on the evidence of two or three witnesses, a matter shall be confirmed." And then you see this principle in the New Testament if you want to accuse an elder of something.

"Hey, I saw elder so-and-so drunk. I saw elder so-and-so in an inappropriate relationship. I saw elder so-and-so looking at something on his phone that he or his iPad or computer that he shouldn't have been looking at." Okay, you can make that kind of accusation, but you'd better have two to three witnesses to back you up because the Bible is clear on that also.

It says, "Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses." So I kind of like that because that protects spiritual leaders from the rumor mill and gossip. Because a lot of people don't like an elder or a pastor for some reason and they just kind of start a gossiping campaign against him based on slander and libel and lies.

So this protects the elder from that, but it also helps us understand that elders can sin and mess up. And so you can remove an elder if you have the two to three witnesses. So there's a nice balance there. Elders and pastors are not vulnerable and invincible and insulated.

But at the same time, there's kind of this understanding that a lot of people come into churches with their own sort of agendas and they just kind of start gossiping. And so elders and pastors and so forth are protected from that angle. So there's a beautiful balance that you'll see as you study out this concept of two to three witnesses.

Now in this case, we have more than three, we have four witnesses. We have Judas and Silas, Paul and Barnabas, and it's going to need that because this is a big decision, and this decision is going to affect the entire church. We're still benefiting from this decision 2,000 years later.

I put this slide up at the very end last time as to who these two are: Judas and Silas. Arnold Fruchtenbaum says, "The whole church made the decision to choose men out of their company, meaning members of the church at Jerusalem to go with Paul and Barnabas to Antioch so that they could witness the validity of the report."

Two men were chosen. The first was Judas or Judah, who was also known as Barsabbas, which means son of the Sabbath. This is the only time he is mentioned in scripture and nothing else is known of him. He may have been the brother of Joseph Barsabbas of Acts 1:23.

Acts 1 verse 23 talks about a guy that they put forward as a potential candidate to replace Judas who had committed suicide as an apostle. It says they put forward two men: Joseph called Barsabbas who was also called Justus and Matthias. And they made the decision to go with Matthias. So this guy here, Judas Barsabbas, could have been the brother of this guy here, Joseph Barsabbas. But other than that, we know next to nothing about this guy. But it really doesn't matter what we know. What matters is the early church believed in him.

The second man was Silas, whom we're going to learn a ton about in the book of Acts, which is his Hebrew name, about whom much more is known. His Roman name was Silvanus. You've got to understand that in this culture, people went by a Greek name, they went by a Hebrew name, they went by an Aramaic name, and sometimes they went by a Latin name.

So Paul, Saul would be an example of that. Peter, whose name is Simon, Hebrew name, Cephas, Aramaic name, Petros, Greek name. So it's the same with this guy Silas, who is sometimes called Silvanus. So you'll see Paul in his writings referring to Silas sometimes as Silvanus. That's just his Roman name.

The second man was Silas, which was his Hebrew name, about whom much more is known. His Roman name is Silvanus. He became Paul's company on his second missionary journey, Paul's companion on his second missionary journey. There's all the verses. He is mentioned in several epistles.

According to Acts 15 verse 32, he had the gift of prophecy. We're going to read about that next week. Judas and Silas were chief among the brethren, they were leaders of the church at Jerusalem. This gave them authoritative standing for what they had to say to the church at Antioch.

And then you go down to verse 28 and you see the Holy Spirit's role in this decision. This is the letter that's being sent from the apostles that they want read in all of the different churches. Verse 28: "For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials."

So look at that language there. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. That is how decisions are to be made in the body of Christ. When churches get about the business of making decisions, the leadership should seek the mind of God on the subject.

And if the mind of God is not readily apparent, they should pray about it. And the way our church works is we try to reach some kind of consensus. If there's disagreement on something, we probably haven't gotten the mind of God on the topic. Usually, if we're confident it's the mind of God, all of the decision-makers in this case, the elders, would be on board with it.

So it's not one of these things where you want to jam your own opinion through through bare-knuckles politics. I mean, that's how the world works. That's how the world makes its decisions. Unfortunately, a lot of churches make decisions that way, trying to solicit opinions and get people on our side or your side or their side and we've got to outvote the other side.

I mean, the world works that way constantly, but that's not how decisions are to be made in the church. The decisions are to be made trying to seek not someone's personal opinion on something, but what is the mind of God on something? And one way to determine that is is there a consensus here? You know, if there's not a consensus, then maybe we should keep praying and maybe we should keep seeking the will of God.

And this is why churches kind of go astray, as leadership very easily loses sight of this and it becomes kind of a personal thing: my way or the highway, and then you get hurt feelings and all of these sorts of things. When it could all be avoided by saying, "Look, we're not here to do my personal will. We're here to do God's will and let's see if we can get his mind on this subject."

And so this decision was made by these apostles because it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. You'll notice the book of Acts, they do this all the time. The early church, for example, in Acts 20:28, Paul speaking to the elders at the church at Ephesus says, "Be on your guard for yourselves and for all the flock." Listen to this: "which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood."

So Paul tells the elders at the church at Ephesus, "The Holy Spirit made you overseers." So you're overseers not because of a board or not because of a vote or not because of congregational mob-ocracy or not because I got my guy in or whatever. You're in that position because the Holy Spirit put you there.

So that's what we try to do here at Sugar Land Bible Church. When we select elders and deacons, we try not to say, "Well, it's so-and-so's turn," or, "They scratched my back three years ago so I'll scratch their back," you know, all these kind of anthropocentric, man-centered ways of thinking. It's: who does the Lord want? Who does the Lord want in that position?

And then what was the decision: "For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials." So that's what legalism does. It puts on people burdens that don't exist. So do you have to come under the Law of Moses to be part of the church? No. That would be putting on people a burden that God never put on people.

And legalists, Pharisees, false teachers do this to people all of the time, putting people under burdens that God never placed them under. And so this is why the fight against legalism is sort of ongoing. People come in with their own private, man-made Mishnah or rules telling people they need to do this or to do that when there's no such thing in the Bible.

Now if you can find it in the Bible, that's one thing. But if you're telling people you have to do things this way and there's no biblical mandate for it in the Epistles primarily, which govern the church, then we need to lay off people and let them grow under God, not under our rulebook.

Jesus said this in Matthew 11:28 through 30. He said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." Legalism will never give you rest. "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

And many times in ministry, I'll be kind of sweating it out, feeling like I've got a ton of I've got a backpack with a bunch of boulders in it. And then the Lord will bring this scripture to my mind here: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." In other words, you've got a bunch of rocks in your backpack, Andy, that I never put there. And so I have to go back to basics. As it says here, I've got to go back to the essentials.

John, who probably had one of the closest relationships to anybody to the Lord when he was on the earth, wrote in 1 John 5 verse 3: "This is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome." Wow. So every time what God orders, he pays for. When he tells you to do something, he'll give you the power to do it.

Now if you're trying to fulfill someone else's rulebook or your own rulebook, then God doesn't empower that because he didn't order that. And so that's many times how you know you're under a false load because you don't have the power to fulfill it, and the reason you don't have the power to fulfill it is God never required you to do that. See that?

And so this is a big thing that's happening here with the church. I mean, the church is really struggling with legalism to be justified, legalism to grow as a Christian, legalism to join the church. And right here out of the gate, the apostles are fighting back against that.

And then you go to verse 29 where the abstentions are reiterated. So notice verse 29: "That you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication." If you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well. Farewell.

Now here's where the Bible looks like it's contradicting itself. I mean, they just got finished saying you're not under the Law of Moses. Then it looks like in the next verse he says you are under the Law of Moses because he gives them four things from the Law of Moses to stay away from.

You're not under the Law of Moses, but you are under the Law of Moses. Don't eat food sacrificed to idols, which is in the law a prohibition in the Law of Moses. Don't drink the blood. Don't eat things strangled. Don't involve yourself in fornications. So this requires an explanation.

To me, the explanation is given by Paul in the book of 1 Corinthians 9 verses 19 through 23 where he says, "For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all so that I may win more. To the Jew, I became as a Jew that I might win the Jews. To those who are under the law, as under the law, though not being under the law myself, so that I might win those who are under the law. To those who are without the law, as without the law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without the law. To the weak, I became weak that I might win the weak. I become all things to all men that by all means I may save some. I do all things for the sake of the gospel so that I may become a fellow partaker of it."

What is he saying here? Paul is saying, and he fought to the death on this issue, you're not justified by the law, you're not sanctified by the law, and you don't have to go under the law to be part of the body of Christ. However, the same guy that said all that and did all that and wrote all that went under the law himself at times.

In Acts 18 as we'll read, he took something called the Nazirite vow, which comes from the book of Numbers chapter 6, I think it is. In Acts 21, he issued an animal sacrifice, something that he said never adds to the finished work of Jesus, animal sacrifices. And yet there it is in Acts 21:26: he's issuing an animal sacrifice.

And then in Acts 16, after telling everybody you don't have to be circumcised to grow as a Christian or to become a Christian or to join the church, he has Timothy circumcised before he takes him on the second missionary journey. That's coming up in the next chapter.

So Paul, which is it? Will the real Paul stand up? Paul, are you against the law or are you under the law? Well, I think the bottom line with Paul is if it removed an offense, because the gospel is offensive enough, isn't it? Paul calls the gospel an offense, Galatians 5 verse 11. If it removed an additional offense, then he would conduct himself in a way where the offense was removed.

So he wanted to reach the Jews, and it's hard to reach the Jews when you have a lifestyle that disrespects their law. So he volitionally put himself under the law to reach the Jews, to take the offense away so he could be a more effective evangelist. I think that's what he's saying to these Gentiles.

You don't have to go under the law. But you know what? If you're around Jewish people that have a weaker understanding of these things than you have, then you might consider putting yourself under the law so you can reach those under the law with a full understanding that you yourself really are not under the law.

So the example I used last week of the suit and tie. You know, there are churches that if you don't have a suit and tie on on Sunday morning, the people are offended, and it's hard to preach to people you're simultaneously offending through your dress code. There are other churches that are very low church, and if you put the suit and tie on, they're offended.

So one group is offended if you don't have it on, another group is offended if you do have it on. Is there a word from the Lord that says, "Thus saith the Lord, the pastor shall have a suit and tie every Sunday morning"? You're going to be hard-pressed to find a scripture on that.

So what do you do in those circumstances? Well, you just accommodate yourself to those with weaker understanding if your accommodation to them is going to give you a platform to preach to them because you can't reach people you're offending. So I'm in those circumstances. If I'm in one of those churches that want a suit and tie on, I'll put the suit and tie on. In other churches that don't like it, don't want it, I won't put it on. I mean, I basically want people to focus on my message and not my apparel. See that?

So, you know, to me, it's a freedom in Christ issue. You're not in sin either way, but at some point you've got to be wise about things, smart about things, and not do things that are intentionally inflammatory if it's going to detract from your ministry, you know, on that given occasion.

And so I think that's what the apostles are saying here. You don't have to do these things to become part of the body of Christ. But if you're around Jewish people, you really ought to stay away from these things or else you're not going to be able to reach them.

So what should you stay away from? You should stay away from food sacrificed to idols, verse 29, because that violates their law. Exodus 34 verse 15. Paul in 1 Corinthians 8, 9, and 10 and Romans 14 goes into a whole discussion about food sacrificed to idols. Should you eat it or not eat it?

Because as a church-age Christian, you're free to partake of it. If you were under the Law of Moses, you wouldn't be free to partake of it. But you're not under the Law of Moses anymore. You're under a different system called the Law of Christ. So what do you do in that circumstance? Well, if you're around someone who's offended because they have a weaker understanding of their liberties than you, then you should just avoid it. Because you don't want to use your freedom in a way that tears someone else down. See that?

And so this is kind of the thing with alcoholic beverages and things of that nature. I mean, should a Christian partake of alcoholic beverages, not partake of alcoholic beverages? You're just going to be hard-pressed to find a "Thus saith the Lord" on that. I could find a lot of "Thus saith the Lords" on drunkenness, but what about just like casual drinking? Should you do that? The Bible, it's a freedom in Christ issue.

Well, what the Bible is saying is use your freedoms responsibly. Why would you do that in the presence of a recovering alcoholic, for example, where merely partaking of it is destroying that person? See that? That would be a circumstance where you would abstain.

Or people that are recovering alcoholics, they come out of that and they have this real rigid rule system for themselves, and they know that if their rules aren't followed, they're going to be back to where they started, you know, in a drunken state. And so they want to follow their rules. So, you know what, you can get into a theological argument with them or you can just respect their rules as a servant because you don't want to use your freedoms in a way that are destructive to somebody. See that's the kind of thing that the apostles are dealing with here.

There's all kinds of people out there that have great respect for the Law of Moses, and you don't have to go under the Law of Moses, but you might want to rethink what you're doing if you're in their presence because it's hard to reach somebody that you're simultaneously offending. So you lay your freedoms aside for the good of somebody else. Kind of like Jesus, right? Who was the eternally existing second member of the Godhead, who lived in total privilege, and yet he laid it aside for a season to become a servant to us. He's our example.

So the issue with Paul, the apostles, James is not "my rights." That's only part of the discussion. Yes, we could talk about our rights and what we can do, but part of that is are we willing to volitionally lay aside those rights if it's a benefit to somebody else?

So stay away from the food sacrificed to idols even though, you know what, that has zero implication on salvation, growth, and joining the church. Stay away from blood. I think that means drinking blood. I don't know why anybody would want to do that anyway. A lot of people root that in the Noahic covenant. You know the covenant that God made with Noah all the way back in Genesis with the rainbow and everything? There's a provision in it that says, "Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I shall give it to you as a green plant; only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is its blood." So that's something to stay away from based on the Noahic covenant anyway.

Things strangled. I mean, what if I eat something that's been strangled to death? Is that a big problem? Well, not for joining the church, not for justification, not for sanctification. But you might be around someone that has a hang-up with that. So if you're trying to reach them, stay away from that. That provision is Leviticus 17 verse 13.

And then stay away from fornication, obviously. That's Leviticus 18 verses 6 through 18, and this has to do with God's sexual standards and there you see incest condemned and all of that kind of stuff. So obviously you'd stay away from that one because that one is forbade not just in the Law of Moses but the Law of Christ, which is our system. There's a lot in the New Testament about sexual immorality and staying away from that. But the Law of Christ really isn't mentioned here because it's yet to be developed in the New Testament, which hasn't been written yet.

So the main point of the apostles is: you're free from the law, but you might want to put yourself under the law to avoid an offense. And that's the only way I know how to handle this inconsistency, apparently, in this apostolic proclamation because he says you're not under the law, but then he turns around and it looks like he's saying you're under the law again. Well, you have to run it through the grid of 1 Corinthians 9, which had not even been written yet, verses 19 through 23: "To the Jews who are under the law, as under the law, though not being myself under the law, so that I might win those who are under the law." So I hope that makes a little bit of sense.

And then the whole thing ends with a farewell. Verse 29, the very end of the verse. From such things you will do well. Farewell. That's common, like the greeting at the beginning of verse 23. End of verse 23, excuse me, it says, "Greetings." And then at the end of a letter, as is common, it says, "Farewell." It means to keep well, to make strong.

So that takes us to the end of that decision. And then next week, we'll look at verses 30 through 35 at least, which is the delivery of the decision from Jerusalem to Antioch. And then we'll hit verse 36 and that takes us all the way into what: missionary journey number two, which is going to go from chapter 15 verse 36 all the way through Acts 18 verse 22. So that's where we're headed in the book of Acts.

Let's pray. Father, we're grateful for your truth, grateful for your word, and grateful for how it speaks to us. Help us to walk these things out this week. We'll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus' name, and God's people said: Amen.