Acts 15:13-21
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
[READING- Acts 15:1-12]
1 Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” 2 And when Paul and Barnabas had great dissension and debate with them, the brethren determined that Paul and Barnabas and some others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders concerning this issue. 3 Therefore, being sent on their way by the church, they were passing through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and were bringing great joy to all the brethren. 4 When they arrived at Jerusalem, they were received by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. 5 But some of the sect of the Pharisees who had believed stood up, saying, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to direct them to observe the Law of Moses.” 6 The apostles and the elders came together to look into this matter. 7 After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brethren, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles would hear the word of the gospel and believe. 8 “And God, who knows the heart, testified to them giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us; 9 and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith. 10 “Now therefore why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? 11 “But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are.” 12 All the people kept silent, and they were listening to Barnabas and Paul as they were relating what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.
[PRAYER]
[CONTEXT] In those verses we just read together, we saw the situation facing the church, the question that had to be answered, and some testimony in support of one answer.
The situation involved false teachers from Jerusalem coming down to the church in Antioch, telling the Gentile followers of Jesus there that they also had be to be circumcised according to the custom of Moses to be saved.
The question involved the root of salvation: Are people saved from the wrath of God by faith alone in Jesus or by faith in Jesus plus obedience to the Law of Moses?
The testimony in favor of faith alone in Jesus was given by Peter and Paul and Barnabas.
Today we look at James’s judgment.
[CIT] In Acts 15:13-21 James, the leader of the church in Jerusalem, decides in favor of faith alone in Christ alone as the root of salvation.
Look at what James sames says in vv. 13-21…
13 After they had stopped speaking, James answered, saying, “Brethren, listen to me. 14 “Simeon has related how God first concerned Himself about taking from among the Gentiles a people for His name. 15 “With this the words of the Prophets agree, just as it is written, 16 ‘After these things I will return, And I will rebuild the tabernacle of David which has fallen, And I will rebuild its ruins, And I will restore it, 17 So that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, And all the Gentiles who are called by My name,’ 18 Says the Lord, who makes these things known from long ago. 19 “Therefore it is my judgment that we do not trouble those who are turning to God from among the Gentiles, 20 but that we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood. 21 “For Moses from ancient generations has in every city those who preach him, since he is read in the synagogues every Sabbath.”
[INTER] Why do we need to look at James’s judgment today?
[PROP] We need to consider James’s judgment so that our own commitment to faith alone in Jesus alone as the root of salvation will be strengthened.
Many in the Christian church are still confused on this issue.
[ILLUS] I once was at an event in which churches were inviting college students to their churches, and I heard a student ask another brother in Christ, “Do you believe that you have to be baptized in order to be saved?”
I expected this brother to say, “No. It’s faith alone in Jesus that saves us,” but to my surprise he said, “Yes, I do believe that you have to be baptized in order to be saved.”
[ILLUS] On another occasion, I had a sister in Christ tell me, “I wish you would stop saying that baptism isn’t necessary for salvation.” She had heard me say in a sermon, “Baptism is necessary for the saved, but it isn’t necessary for salvation.”
In other words, if you are saved, then you’ll want to make your public profession of faith in Jesus through baptism, but that baptism does not save you.
It’s faith alone in Jesus that saves you.
Confusion over faith alone and baptism stems from a misunderstanding of Peter’s words in 1 Peter 3:21…
21 Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you—not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
Peter was talking about Noah and his family being saved from the judgment of God as they were protected in the ark.
In the same way, Christians are protected in Christ, who saves them from the judgment of God.
Peter is not referring to water baptism in 1 Peter 3:21. He is referring to spiritual baptism in Christ, which only happens by faith.
When possible, water baptism as a public profession of faith will be a fruit of salvation, but the root of genuine salvation is faith alone in Christ alone.
People also get confused about faith and good deeds. They ponder, “If salvation is by faith alone, then why do Paul and James and John talk so much about good deeds or good works?”
The answer is, as James writes, that a faith in Christ that doesn’t produce any good deeds for the glory of Christ isn’t a faith that saves. Faith without works is dead.
Goods works are the fruit of salvation, or to put it the other way around, salvation produces good works, but good works are never the root of salvation.
Salvation is only by faith alone.
So you can see, there is still much confusion on this issue of faith alone in Christ, and we want this issue ever more firmly settled in our hearts, so we need to consider what James’s judgment in Acts 15.
We dare not put anything in the way of anyone who is turning to God through faith alone in Jesus Christ.
[TS] Let’s take a look at four STATEMENTS in James’s judgment…
Major Ideas
Major Ideas
STATEMENT #1: James said the Gentiles had encountered God (vv. 13-14)
STATEMENT #1: James said the Gentiles had encountered God (vv. 13-14)
13 After they had stopped speaking, James answered, saying, “Brethren, listen to me. 14 “Simeon has related how God first concerned Himself about taking from among the Gentiles a people for His name.
[EXP] Simeon is another spelling of Simon, which of course refers to Simon Peter. He had just testified that God the Holy Spirit fell upon the Gentiles when he preached to them the good news of salvation by faith alone in Jesus.
Cornelius and the rest of the Gentiles encountered God through faith alone in Jesus Christ.
The troublesome teachers who had come down to Antioch proclaiming circumcision and obedience to the Law as necessary to salvation certainly believed that the Jewish people had encountered God at Mt. Sinai when God gave His Law to His people.
Now James said that the Gentiles had encountered that same God in the gospel message of salvation by faith alone in Jesus Christ.
James said, “Simeon has related how God first concerned Himself about taking from the Gentiles a people for His name,” (Acts 15:14).
It was God who had concerned Himself with this matter. He could have ignored the preaching of salvation through faith alone. He could have punished the preaching of salvation through faith alone.
But He did not ignore it. He did not punish it.
Instead, in the good news of salvation through faith alone in Christ alone, God visited the Gentiles just as He had visited the Jewish people.
The Gentiles had encountered God.
[ILLUS] People are looking for an encounter with something transcendent today, something beyond themselves, something beyond this world.
Phil Cotnoir is a writer and editor who wrote an article in 2022 called, “Joe Rogan and the Search for Transcendence.” In that article he gives examples of how people have searched for an encounter with the transcendent.
He writes, “A new convert at my church shared with me how, soon before coming to Christ, she had travelled to Brazil to experience a shaman-guided experience with the psychedelic Ayahuasca. Thankfully the ceremony was cancelled at the last minute.”
Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brewed-drink used by folk healers in the Amazon.
On his extremely popular podcast, Joe Rogan often champions the use of such psychedelic substances to encounter the transcendent. He also champions technology as a potential pathway to the transcendent.
Cotnoir writes, “Joe Rogan is very excited about Elon Musk’s Neuralink, an embedded brain-machine interface that promises you the ability to control computers and machines with just your thoughts – as soon as you let a robot-surgeon implant the microchip directly in your brain. (“It’s like a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires,” says Musk. I’ll pass). The first human trials are due to start this year.”
On May 26, 2023, Reuters reported that the FDA approved Neuralink for human trials in a clinical setting.
I’m telling you all this not so much to warn you about Joe Rogan or psychedelics or Neuralink; I’m tell you all this to point out that people are desperately searching for the transcendent, and they are willing to take desperate measures to experience transcendence.
But real, lasting, eternal transcendence is only experience in salvation by faith alone.
[APP] The only way to have a real encounter with the One who is really divine is through faith alone in Christ alone.
Everything else is either demonic, a hallucination, a manipulation of the senses and brain, or all of the above.
These Jewish false teachers were looking to encounter God in the Law.
People today are looking to encounter God in psychedelics and technology.
But the only way to really encounter God is to trust in Jesus, the Son of God who lived for us, died for us, and rose from the dead so that we can be saved through faith in Him.
[TS]…
STATEMENT #2: James said the Gentiles had been chosen by God (v. 14)
STATEMENT #2: James said the Gentiles had been chosen by God (v. 14)
14 “Simeon has related how God first concerned Himself about taking from among the Gentiles a people for His name.
[EXP] God was under no obligation when Peter preached the message of salvation through faith alone to Cornelius and the other Gentiles. He wasn’t obligated to save anyone. He didn’t have to “take from the Gentiles a people for His name,” but He did. God sovereignly saved Cornelius and the other Gentiles with him when they heard the good news of God’s saving grace through faith alone in Christ.
The same thing can be said concerning the Gentiles who heard the Gospel during Paul and Barnabas’s first missionary journey, and the same thing could be said for the Gentile believers in the church at Antioch.
God was under no obligation to save anyone when they heard the message of salvation by faith alone, and yet God saved Gentiles through faith alone in Antioch and in all the places that Paul and Barnabas traveled during their first missionary journey.
God has His people, chosen from before the foundation of the world, and He identifies them and takes them for Himself through the message of faith alone in Christ alone.
The troublesome teachers from Jerusalem believed that God had chosen the Jewish people for Himself from all the other peoples of the world.
6 “For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
God choice of them was contingent upon their obedience to the Law of Moses.
5 ‘Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine;
But now James was saying that God had taken from the Gentiles a people for His name, but that choice was not contingent upon Gentile obedience to the Law of Moses; it was contingent upon faith in Jesus who fulfilled God’s Law with His perfect obedience, died for our sinful law-breaking with His perfect sacrifice on the cross, and proved His perfection with His resurrection from the dead.
In the old covenant, God took a people for Himself so long as they were perfectly obedient, but they fell short.
We all fall short.
Not one of us will be saved if salvation is contingent upon our perfect obedience.
In the New Covenant, however, God takes a people for Himself through the perfection that is in Jesus.
By grace God sovereignly gives the gift of faith to His people, and that faith trusts in Jesus’s perfection alone.
[ILLUS] I didn’t grow up in a Christian home. We rarely went to church, so when my friend started inviting me to his church as a teenager, I quickly decided that church, Jesus, Christianity—it wasn’t for me.
But my friend was persistent, he invited me one last time, saying, “Come one more time, and if you don’t want to come after that, I’ll stop asking,” so I decided I’d go just to get him off my back.
But as I sat in what I thought would be my last church service, something miraculous happened: one moment I was listening to the preacher as if I were listening to a school teacher drone on about some inconsequential subject, and in the next moment I knew that the preacher was telling the truth about Jesus.
I trusted in Jesus that night as a 14 year old boy.
It wasn’t a perfect faith (and it still isn’t), but it was (and is) faith in the only One who is perfect, and it was a gift given by the sovereign will of God.
God took me from among the Gentiles for His name.
[APP] If you have trusted in Jesus, that faith you placed in Him is the gift of God.
You didn’t figure salvation out.
You didn’t figure God or Jesus out.
God sovereignly took you for His name, for His own possession, by giving you the gift of faith in His Son Jesus.
Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
[TS]…
Conclusion
Conclusion
[PRAYER]