Sermon Tone Analysis
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Humility
Humility is a cornerstone in our relationship with Christ.
Why is that?
We see God’s word saying that He resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.
I want you to think about this passage and let sink in.
If you are proud, you wake up every morning and the creator of the universe, heavens, and earth is at war with you.
Conversely, if we are humble, we wake up every morning and the creator of the universe gives us grace.
That is a pretty remarkable thought as well.
However, we still have not answered that the question as to why humility is the cornerstone of our relationship with Christ.
Pride usurps God’s glory.
That leads us to the next question, why does God even care?
Why is He so needy that He requires us to glorify Him at all times and resists us whenever we glorify ourselves?
Ironically, that is a question that many people have.
They see God as an egomaniac who wants everyone and everything to glorify Him all the time.
The key to answering this question lies in this whole notion of Christian Hedonism.
God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in Him.
There is perfect harmony in that statement.
If that statement is true, then our greatest happiness lies within God’s greatest glorification.
God’s glorification and our greatest enjoyment run perfectly parallel with each other.
They are never in opposition.
God’s glory shines in our happiness.
When our happiness is in Him.
God is the one being, whose self-exultation is the most loving act that we can ever experience.
If we exalt ourselves, we are distracting those around us from knowing the one person that can make them eternally happy.
If God exalts Himself, He draws our attention to the one that can make us happy forever.
If we do that, we are egomaniacs.
If God does it, He is infinitely loving.
It is a natural flow.
You will find the most happiness in God, which will result in His glorification.
Nothing demonstrates this more than the cross.
God saved us from eternity in hell by giving us His Son.
He was and is fully exalted in the cross and it is for our greatest eternal benefit—eternal life.
So, Paul, Luke, and the rest of the gang finally arrive in Jerusalem.
Verse 17: The brothers, which is referring to other believers in Christ welcomed them gladly or with joy.
They were happy to see them.
No doubt, they were happy to see them because they brought with them a substantial offering to give to the Church, but that wasn’t the focus of their joy.
They just elated to see Paul again after all of the miles he had travelled.
Verse 18: They go in to see James and all of the other elders.
This is James the brother of Christ.
They saw him as well as the elders of the church.
Notice that James is the only apostle that is mentioned.
By this time the other apostles had left Jerusalem and were away teaching and preaching on their own.
James stayed behind and was the leader of the church at Jerusalem.
I want to point out something that demonstrates the heart of Paul.
That is the beauty of this entire passage.
Paul’s servant heart is magnified in this entire passage.
Paul started approximately 20 churches, directly.
There is no telling how many he started indirectly, by producing reproducing Christians.
He goes back to Jerusalem and tells them the things that GOD has done among the gentiles through his ministry.
He gave God the glory 100%.
He took none for himself.
He knew that it was God working through him that was responsible for this work.
Then look at what James and the elders did in response to Paul’s good news.
They glorified who?
They glorified God.
Paul, James, and the Jerusalem elders knew that if he glorified himself, it would distract everyone from the one being that is capable of fulfilling their every need, God.
Folks, I want you to understand that Paul was a magnificent preacher and teacher.
He was extremely smart and had a wonderful gift of oration.
But, he knew and understood that it was gift from God.
I am quite sure that his flesh was telling him that he was responsible for all of those believers and the growth of the church.
That’s what our flesh loves to do.
The question is really a simple question.
Why does fleshly pride tend to flow from our gifts or abilities?
It’s quite silly actually.
We didn’t do anything to get those gifts.
God gave them to us.
If we are intelligent, it’s not because of something we did or didn’t do.
If we have an ability, any ability, regardless of what it is, we didn’t do anything for it.
God gave it to us as the result of His sovereign choice.
So, when we break it all down, the responsibility for any success we have in life flows directly to God and only God.
As soon as they glorified God, the conversation takes a little different turn.
Paul has ran head-long into a problem at the Jerusalem church.
Remember, that Paul has been planting these churches in areas where there was a large percentage of Gentiles.
However, there were also Jews intermingled that believed with the Gentiles.
James says that the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem have heard that he is teaching the Jews to forsake the law of Moses, not to circumcise their children and to throw away their Jewish customs.
Where they right or were they wrong?
Yes and no.
Clearly, Paul taught everyone, Gentiles and Jews alike that you did not have to observe the law of Moses to be saved.
In fact, it was impossible to be saved by keeping the commandments because you can’t.
In addition, he taught everyone that circumcision was not necessary for salvation.
In fact, this very church held a meeting and decided that the Gentiles did not have to be circumcised to be saved.
He also taught that them that they did not have to abide by the Jewish customs to be saved either—the rituals of cleanliness and eating, so on and so forth.
However, if you look closely at the text, it is a false belief that these Jews had.
Paul never told them to forsake the law of Moses or that it was unimportant.
I don’t like the way that ESV translates paidagogos (pidogogos) as guardian.
The NASB translates it as tudor.
If you listen to the word paidagogos, you can hear the word pedgogy.
Pedgogy, which means to teach. in fact, paidagogos is the greek root word for pedagogy.
So, Paul was saying here that the Law was a teacher until Christ came.
What did it teach us?
It taught us that we are incapable of keeping the law.
In that respect, Paul would never had said that the Jews should forsake the law of Moses.
He had a great deal of respect for the law.
Paul circumcised Timothy himself.
Now, his circumcision had nothing to do with salvation but more to do with identifying as a Jew because he was half Greek.
It was a credibility issue.
Still Paul did not forbid circumcision as the Jerusalem Christians claimed.
Neither did Paul tell them to throw away their Jewish customs.
He did tell them that the customs had nothing to do with salvation.
James and the Jerusalem elders have a problem.
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