THE NEIGHBORHOOD OR THE NATIONS?
Jan. 19, 2025

THE NEIGHBORHOOD OR THE NATIONS?

Passage: Acts 15:7-12)
Service Type:

THIS SERMON’S RECORDING IS BADLY GARBLED. THESE ARE PASTOR CHRIS’ PREACHING NOTES

 

  • Jerusalem Council AD 48-50
  • settle the question of whether the Gentiles, the people of the nations, are required to align themselves with old covenant Judaism in every respect when they come to the Jewish Messiah Jesus to be saved from their sins and become part of his Kingdom x2
  • remains a crucial question to this day because there are still some people who insist the people must obey the law of Moses if they want to truly be saved
  • it is still very much a live issue

 

where it fits

  • what the false teachers were saying
  • what Paul and Barnabas were saying
  • what Peter was saying
  • what James was saying
  • what the Holy Spirit was saying

 

Acts 15:7-12

  • 4 massive truths Peter was communicating at the Jerusalem Council
  • 4 key questions for us today

 

Peter spoke as the leader of the Apostles

The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. 10 Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? 11 But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

  • NB “apostles and elders” in v 2, v 6, v 22, v 23
  • Apostles are leaving Jerusalem to spread the gospel elsewhere in Africa, Asia, and Europe, leaving the elders to lead the church in Jerusalem
  • remember creation of diaconate in ch 6?
  • there was apparently quite a lot of discussion and debate in Jerusalem, just as there had been at Antioch
  • Peter seems to stand up to speak on behalf of the Apostles
  • authorized to speak in the place of Jesus to set the doctrine…
  • James will stand and speak for the elders
  • we’ll look at it carefully next week

 

TODAY: are we listening to the Apostles for the voice of our Lord? Or are we listening to a church? Or our culture? Or our own hearts? The voice of Jesus our Lord may be heard infallibly in only one place: the Bible. Anything our church or our culture or our own heart tells us that does not align with the teachings of the Apostles preserved for us in God’s written Word is not from Jesus.

Peter claimed that he was the bridge to the nations

And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. 

  • Act 10 the gospel and the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles at Cornelius’ house
  • Peter clearly sees himself as the bridge to the nations
  • Gentiles = nations
  • remember Fall, Flood, Babel event & Abrahamic covenant
  • clearly referring to the events at the house of the Roman centurion Cornelius described in Acts 10
  • the official introduction of the gospel Jesus Christ to the gentile world

 

TODAY: is our heart for reaching the nations or for defending our tribe? SBC, USA, Dundalk?

 

Peter said that Moses’ Law had become a yoke

10 Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? 

  • the Torah (the Law of Moses) is not first and foremost a law code
  • the story of the creativity, power, wisdom, authority, and beauty of the one true God, the God of Israel
  • Genesis: story
  • Exodus, story, until ch 20 (the 10 Commandments)
  • the rest of the Torah more stories, along with lengthy sections given to case law applying one or more of the 10 Commandments
  • crossing the Wilderness
  • entering & settling the Promised land
  • building an ordered society to prepare for the Messiah (Gen 3:15)
  • a tutor to bring us to the Messiah
  • the Pharisees busily finding specific commands in the law of Moses
  • set up a system where some people could study the Law full time
  • find more & more minute ways for their oral law to control every detail
  • severe condemnation for everyone else
  • that’s the situation Jesus was born into

Matthew 23 23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. 24 You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!

  • trying to avoid uncleanness at all costs, wallowing in the worst filth
  • Jesus also saw this as putting the Lord to the test;
  • that’s where Peter got the idea (R Acts 15:10 again)

 

  • Mar 7:1-23, esp v 19

Mark 18 And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, 19 since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 

  • Act 10 vision of the animals à God to Peter: “do not call common that which I have made clean”
  • clear that the Law of Jesus significantly reinterprets and reapplies the Law of Moses, and Peter is central to that move
  • strict food laws à all foods clean
  • circumcision required à circumcision optional
  • Gentile exclusion à Gentile inclusion
  • Christ on earth and the Father in heaven declaring that the approach to the Torah that treated it as a mine in which to tunnel and dig for ever more rules for running people’s lives was a misunderstanding and misuse of the Law
  • codes
  • (Moses) 10 commandments, (Jesus) 2 commandments
  • book
  • in David’s day: the Torah
  • in Jesus’ day, the Tanakh
  • by the end of the Apostolic Age, OT & NT

 

  • Peter thinks 613 commandments is a yoke
  • thinks that because Jesus taught him to

Matthew 11 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

 

TODAY: do we see the Bible as the sourcebook for the law codes by which we must live today, or as the story of God’s creativity, power, wisdom, authority, and beauty, as well as his love, mercy, and faithfulness to save and bless his people and the nations Jesus Christ his Son and our Lord?

 

Peter insisted that salvation is by grace

  • by grace, through faith, by the Holy Spirit

 And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. 10 Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? 11 But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

  • clear, strong repudiation of what the legalists were teaching
  • by grace, through faith, by the Holy Spirit

 

TODAY: am I trusting in anything other than the sinless life, sacrificial death, and spectacular resurrection of Jesus Christ, given to me as an unearned gift delivered by the Holy Spirit, for my acceptance by God and eternal life with him?

 

conclusion

  • the neighborhood AND the nations
  • all the nations under the Lordship of Jesus Christ