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The Continuing Acts of Jesus: Liberation Theology Acts 15:1-35 October 15, 2017 Dan Hoffman

I don’t know about you, but a weird thing happened to me about 18 years ago. And that was that I got baptized before I really met Jesus.

Now it wasn’t that I didn’t know who Jesus was. I did. I’ve said lots of times that I was born on Easter Sunday 1980, and that was pretty much the only Sunday I haven’t been in church. That’s not quite true, but it’s almost true.

So I did years of Sunday school. I worked out at camp. I went to youth group and then volunteered at youth group, and then led a youth group. I went to Christian school from Kindergarten to grade 12. I knew everything about following Jesus. So when my best friend, Trevor Meier, told me in the summer of 1998 that he was getting baptized I decided I was going to do it too.

But it was the next year that my faith changed from being my parents that I had grown up under to being my own. That year I met some people who challenged me to start praying, doing devotions and really making my faith personal. But then, if I’m honest, it was about five years after that when I was sitting under the preaching of Pastor Barton Priebe in Vancouver – this was after having gone through a year of discipleship training, four years of undergrad at Trinity Western University, and the first year of my Master of Divinity, that the gospel of Jesus really connected with my soul. … I remember going up to Pastor Barton after the service one Sunday and saying “I get it now. I thought I understood what God wanted from me all this time, but I’ve been wrong. What Jesus wants from me is not that I don’t drink, don’t go to parties, don’t watch R-rated movies, don’t listen to that bad music. And instead attend church, tithe, do my devotions, volunteer, and be a good member of society.

Up to this point the message I had taken away from church amounted to a bunch of good morals. I thought God wanted me to be good. And this is still being taught. The other day I was asked to speak at a Christian event for kids and the topic they wanted me to talk about was kindness. They wanted me to tell these kids to be kind to each other. Don’t bully. Be respectful of people who are different from you. God wants you to be kind. Now all of this is good, but it isn’t the main message of the Bible. So I turned them down – I don’t want to talk about kindness, or honesty or faithfulness or friendship or any number of great things. Not because they aren’t good things, but because they aren’t what the Bible teaches.

Now I’m not saying there aren’t mentions to good morals in scripture – there are lots of them – but these good morals are not the point of the scriptures. And when people make them the point that is where they become a problem.

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So I often bump into people who have left the church and they tell me “I’ve tried Jesus, and He doesn’t work.” And as I am talking to them I realize they haven’t tried Jesus, all they’ve tried to do is be good. And they think that is what Jesus is about. But the one thing I see over and over again in scripture is that people aren’t good at being good.

And so two kinds of people pop out of this kind of a message. Some people are defeated because they try to be good and fail. And then they try again, and fail again. And if they are persistent then they try harder and harder and harder until finally they give up and say “I tried this whole Jesus thing, and it doesn’t work. I could never win.” And so they stop attending church, and usually become the biggest antagonists of Christianity – after all they really believe they tried it, and it was all a lie. … The second type of person who encounters a truncated gospel like this is becomes a Pharisee. So they get really good at appearing good on the outside. Deep inside they are aware of their own short-fallings, but they don’t talk about these. And so they become a self-righteous regular church attender who always puts something in the plate and attends all the Bible studies. And they end up looking down their nose at everyone around who isn’t quite doing it right. They aren’t wearing the right clothes. They aren’t doing the right things. They aren’t following the rules. And traditionally church is full of these kinds of people. And this is the category of person I was. And my personality and upbringing and education meant I was at the top of the pile as far as the good people at church go.

But neither of these kinds of people have really met Jesus or understood the gospel. And without getting the gospel nothing else you might learn at church matters. … Turn with me to Acts chapter 15.1 Use your device or grab the pew Bible in front of you and open up to page 783. If you haven’t been with us, over the last several months we’ve been walking through the book of Acts, which we’ve said is a book that contains the beginning of the story of what Jesus kept doing through the lives of women and men who pledged themselves to Him, after He ascended to heaven.

So it is a book about the miraculous. It’s full of healings and spiritual gifts, and exorcisms and the dramatic growth of the church. But it is also mundane. It is full of very normal people living out their lives. But there is one theme that runs through all of this, and that is that Jesus is the one who is advancing His kingdom. And this is just as true today as it was in the early church. … Now last week we dealt with the first intentional mission trip in Christian history. Before this God had overseen the day to day strategic advancement of His gospel. So He empowered His people to speak in tongues in order for travelers from all over Rome to encounter His message, and He allowed persecution to scatter the church, and He sent angels to bring together the Jews and the Gentiles.

1 Outline adapted from Matt Chandler, https://www.tvcresources.net/resource-library/sermons/the-nature- of-the-gospel (Accessed October 13, 2017) 3

But then in chapter 13 His strategy changed as He handed over the advancement of His kingdom to the strategic plans of His people.

So in chapter 13 we read: While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off. (Acts 13:2-3)

And Paul and Barnabas made a systematic plan and set out on a circuit ministry of Asia which took them roughly a year.

And it’s after their return to Antioch that our text picks up today. Look with me at Acts 15 starting in verse 1.

[Read Acts 15:1-5]

So Antioch is a predominantly Gentile church. Last week we touched on how diverse their leadership team was – a black guy, an African guy, some guy who grew up with Herod, and Paul and Barnabas. So it was as intercultural and interracial as was possible in the first century. The only kind of person they didn’t have was some white guy. The church in Jerusalem, on the other hand, was a predominantly Jewish church.

And it is out of the difference between these two places that the conflict arises here. Some people from Jerusalem – Christian Pharisees – headed down to Antioch to make sure the rules were being followed correctly.

Now very briefly, here is why this was a big deal. The Jews had always been God’s special people. God chose them way back with Abraham and then Moses saying: I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. (Exodus 6:7)

So the Jews knew they had been chosen to be God’s own possession from their inception, and then He had established the Law for them to follow to show the world they were His people. So while the Jews were God’s nation there was an open door for anyone else who wanted to come and worship with them. And there are lots of stories about this happening.

So Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law was a Midianite, Caleb, one of the two faithful spies, was a Canaanite, Rahab who is in Jesus’ lineage, was a Canaanite prostitute. Ruth was a Moabite. Bathsheba’s first husband Uriah was a Hittite. Gentiles are all over the place in the Old Testament.

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But when a Gentile decide to become a YHWH worshipper they had to go through the process of becoming a Jew. So first they had to get circumcised – you would think twice about this. And then they had start following the moral and ritual laws of Moses.

Now the moral law was the Ten Commandments, and the ritual law was all about purity. So it stipulated that you had to wash in a certain way before you ate or worshipped. And there were lots of laws about what kinds of foods were clean and which ones were unclean. And you had to abstain from all meat that had blood in it. And every Gentile who wanted to worship YHWH would have to begin living their lives by all the rules that the Jews lived theirs by.

And this is the basis of the controversy that is springing up here in Acts 15. So the Jewish Christians from Jerusalem were telling the Gentile Christians from Antioch that they weren’t saved because they weren’t living as Jews. After all, this was the way things worked in the Old Testament.

But Paul wasn’t having any of this. Verse 2 says there was a sharp dispute between Paul and Barnabas and these teachers from Jerusalem. But they were at an impasse. They couldn’t settle it. And so they all headed up to Jerusalem to get the answer. Actually there were two questions they needed answered: First, Is there anything we must do for salvation on top of receiving God’s grace by faith? Or, in other words, do people have to do certain good behaviours – Jewish behaviours – to be saved?

And second, if the Gentiles don’t have to follow the Law in order to be saved, how is everyone supposed to fellowship with each other. This was important because the Jewish laws separated the Jews from the Gentiles, so if some Christians were following them and others weren’t then they weren’t going to be able to eat together – and in Middle Eastern culture that is a big deal. If you don’t eat together, you aren’t friends.

Now this second question doesn’t get asked up front, but it is part of the answer that the Apostles come up with, so we will get to that in verse 19. But let’s keep going with verse 6 to see how this plays out.

[Read Acts 15:6-11]

So Peter starts off answering the first question: Is there something more than receiving grace by faith necessary for salvation?” And he answers this by bringing up Cornelius.

This is the commander of the Italian cohort living in Caesarea that God sent and angel to and said: “Go get Peter, he is going to tell you how to get saved.” And when Peter went and preached the Spirit fell on Cornelius and his family and they all got saved.

And so Peter says “Cornelius didn’t do anything ritualistic when the Spirit fell on him. Nobody got circumcised. Nobody traded in their medium rare fillet mignon for an over done chunk of leather. Peter says “I just preached and God poured out His Spirit when they believed.” That’s Peter’s first argument. 5

But then he changes tactics for his second argument and says “Let’s not ask the Gentiles to do something that we’ve never been able to do ourselves. We couldn’t bear the law, let’s not try to make the Gentiles bear it either.”

Now this marks a massive development in Christian theology. No self-respecting Jew would admit the law was totally bamboozling them. This would be a great way to get looked down on by everyone respectable. But here Peter is saying the way we’ve viewed the Law is broken. What the Law actually des is show us what holiness looks like, and how far we all fall short of it. … So put your hand up if you’ve ever told a lie? So some of you are bad, and others of you are lying right now. All of us are guilty of this. I’ve told lots of lies, and not just when I was 5, and ten I got over it. So what do you call someone who tells lies? A liar. You are a liar. “No, not me, I’m not a liar, I just tell lies.” It doesn’t work like that.

Or have you ever wished you had what someone else had instead of them? “I deserve that job promotion more than they do.” “It’s not fair that our family is struggling with finances or cancer or whatever, while everything good seems to be happening to them.” That’s coveting. But it is also coveting when you see something bad happen to someone who deserves it – and you like it. “Serves them right!” That’s coveting too.

Or what about murder. Now I’m not talking about actually running someone through, but I’m talking about wishing you could run someone through. There is a great section of text at the end of the book of Nehemiah where he gets so frustrated at a bunch of his brothers who weren’t living holy lives that so he starts calling down curses on them and pulling out their hair and beating them with sticks. Isn’t that awesome?

Secretly, haven’t you ever thought there might be room for a ministry like that today? Wouldn’t it be easy to recruit people to serve on that committee? We’d call them the scream team and whenever someone didn’t do what they were supposed to we would mount up and lay a beating on them. Wouldn’t that be great? If you’ve got a list of people who deserve our visit just put the names in my mailbox after the service. … Or what about adultery? Most of us have never actually committed adultery, but I wonder if your eyes have ever wandered. Mine have. And this too wasn’t a problem I had when I was 15 and then I got over it. This is something I have to watch today. And Jesus says this is adultery.

So is anyone here as guilty of breaking the law? Leave your hands down if it is just lying that is a problem for you. This is what the law does, it shows you what the standard of perfection is, and it shows you how pathetically miserable you are at following it.

The only thing the law doesn’t do is justify anyone. Nobody gets saved by following the rules. And that’s because nobody can do it. It’s too strict. The only person who ever 6 followed it was Jesus and so the only chance anyone has of being justified when they stand before the law is if they are clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

So Peter’s first argument was God saved Cornelius without him ever doing anything the law required, and second, let’s not tell the Gentiles to attempt something none of us could do when the point of the gospel is that God took care of the rules on our behalf. Jesus conquered the Law and offers us the righteousness He earned. And so the way everyone gets saved now – Jew and Gentile – is by receiving Jesus’ grace by faith.

So friends, is this the salvation you are counting on? Or do you deserve something from God because you are a pretty good person who follows more of the rules than most people do? … At this point Barnabas and Saul jump in, but they don’t have much to add. Verse 12:

[Read Acts 15:12]

So they are basically agreeing with Peter’s first point. God has been on the move among people who don’t know they aren’t supposed to wear hats in church, and don’t know they are supposed to be quiet before the service, and don’t know they aren’t supposed to make change in the offering plate let alone smoke in the parking lot. And Paul says “we can’t go back and tell these people who God has poured His Spirit out on, that they aren’t saved because they aren’t following the rules. … And finally James weighs in. Now this is Jesus’ little brother James – he was Joseph and Mary’s kid. We know this because the other James – Peter, James and John – had a run in with Herod in chapter 12 – so he’s dead. But meanwhile Jesus’ little brother, who only started believing in Him after His resurrection, has become the senior pastor in Jerusalem. He grew up with Jesus, knew Him from day one and didn’t like Him. But then he changed his mind and said “My brother was God with skin on” – that’s awesome. And James brings a different argument to the table. Verse 13.

[Read Acts 15:13-19]

So James gets the final say on this one. And he says, actually this whole Gentiles being saved thing, was in the works from day one. The prophets have always foretold this. God has always been planning to bring together people from every tribe and tongue and nation and recreate them into a new people not defined by ethnicity, but justified by the blood of Jesus. So we aren’t going to make these people become Jews because the gospel isn’t about becoming Jews. It is about being receiving, by faith, God’s grace purchased for us by the blood of Jesus. And James is judge and jury on this one, so the first question is set to rest. … But the conversation isn’t over because the answer to this question has just created another problem for half the Christians walking around. And that’s the second question 7 of if Gentile Christians don’t have to follow the law, but Jews can’t conceive of living without it, how do we get along? How do we table together?

Now tabling in the first century was fellowship. But it wasn’t grabbing a cup of coffee and a cookie on the way out the door after church, it was deep relationship. To table with someone was to live your life with them. And eating was central to this practice. Eating together is the lubricant that Middle Eastern relationship is built on.

Now we don’t understand this here because our culture is built up around efficiency. So we eat burgers from drive throughs on our way to events we are five minutes late for. But this wasn’t the way things worked in the first century. We’ve talked about this before, but one of the tithes that the Jews had to give involved saving up 10% of their income to feast together in God’s honour. So if you make $50,000 a year that means $5000 worth of partying to the glory of God. And that meant great food and rich drink both consumed over hours of time shared with like-minded God worshippers. This was central to being Jewish.

But this couldn’t happen if the Gentiles were eating rare bacon wrapped steak and calamari. Jews couldn’t just not eat like this, they would be scandalized to sit next to someone eating like this.

It’s like if you love sipping on a full-bodied glass of Okanogan Shiraz. You just love opening the bottle up and letting it breathe. You’ve got one of the decanters and it just brings you joy. Scripturally you are well within your right to enjoy that. There’s nothing sinful about that glass.

But what if your brother or sister doesn’t enjoy that freedom? What if you’ve got dinner plans with a friend who has really struggled with alcohol. For them a glass or two turns into four or five and they wake up in a different province with a tattoo. Do you still put that bottle out? See that’s the problem of tabling that the second question revolves around here.

And so James moves on to answer this one too. Look again at verse 19:

[Read Acts 15:19-21]

What?! If you don’t understand what James is doing here this is a total mind-bender. James just said we aren’t going to put any of the Jewish rules on them except for these few. And then he lists pretty much everything except for circumcision. And interestingly in the next chapter Paul is actually going to make sure Timothy gets circumcised before going to minister to the Jews. So what happened to getting rid of the Law? Nothing. It’s still gone, but now James’ concern is what happens to you after you get grace.

So James establishes that the Gentiles don’t have to follow the Jewish laws to be saved. That’s not what salvation is about. But then he turns around and says, now if you understand the gospel then lay down your rights for the good of your brothers. It’s 8 not sin to eat rare meat or drink alcohol, but don’t go flaunting your liberty. Lay your liberty down to love your friends. This is what the gospel does in a person. When you meet Jesus you starting looking like Him.

And so the apostles write a letter to the church in Antioch telling them that this is their decision, and then we find out what happened down in verse 30.

[Read Acts 15:30-35]

When the sisters and brothers in Antioch get Jerusalem’s response they are overjoyed. Why? Because they got the gospel. We aren’t saved because we try hard to do good things, we are saved because Jesus was good for us. And it is only because sinners like us have been saved that we are able to live out Christ’s love among each other. … Now here is a conviction I hold very close to my heart. From the first moment you come to faith to your dying breath you are going to need to be re-gospeled over and over again. We simply don’t grow out of the gospel. We never learn this, and then move on to deeper things. The gospel is the deepest truth in the Christian tradition.

Jesus thought this was true, and that’s why He gave us communion. He said as often as you table together remember Me and what I’ve done for you. Don’t leave this behind. Don’t get over this. Remember Me. Everything comes back to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus on our behalf.

And so you may have noticed that this is all I preach about. It’s the same message every week. So while there are references to morals like kindness and friendship and honesty, the message that none of us are good, and all of us need a Saviour lies behind every text of the Bible. And so it is only in the context of our need for a transforming Saviour that we can talk about kindness or friendship or marriage or money. But without the foundation of salvation by grace through faith in Christ we have nothing to say on any of these topics.

So brothers and sisters, the call of this text is to find yourself again at a place where you need Jesus. If in practicality you’ve moved past this then you need to repent. If you’ve fallen into convincing yourself and the people around you that you are pretty good at following the rules then you need to repent. Jesus says the only people who get His kingdom, which was everything He was excited about and invites us into, are those who know they aren’t good enough for God. These are the people Jesus saves. And then the people He saves turn the grace He has given them over to those He has placed them beside.

So friends, if you’ve met Jesus; if you’ve tasted and seen that His mercy and grace are good for you an undeserving sinner, then look out at your brothers and sisters here and look out at your neighbours, and seek with all your might to image Jesus to them. It’s when we are doing this that we are the body of Christ.