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Welcome to our look together at Acts chapter 15. This is day two of week four
and as we enter into looking at this chapter we're going to be talking about
when life gets sticky and things may seem to be going along great and all of a
sudden you run into one of those four star sticky situations. Seems like
nobody's going to be happy, it can't be solved, everything is going to blow up
in your face like a kid who tries to get just a little too big a bubble out of
his gum.

Everything blows up and life gets really sticky, really messy. In verse two of
Acts chapter 15 you see the results of one of the greatest evangelistic efforts
in Christian history, Paul's first missionary journey. You'd expect that the
results would be all good but they're not.

As we talked about yesterday with growth comes problems. So in chapter 15 verses
one and two some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the
brothers unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses you
cannot be saved. This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate
with them so Paul and Barnabas were appointed along with some other believers to
go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question.

The result of this great missionary journey was great dissension and great
debate. Now what was the issue? The issue was through a group of upset former,
probably Pharisees, like Paul was a former Pharisee, a group who had trusted in
the law and had given up much of that trust in the law to trust in Christ.

The former Pharisee had been taught all of his life to uphold the Jewish faith.
That idea had been let go of when he came to Jesus Christ but sometimes it crept
back in. And it crept back in with the idea that somehow in order for people to
be saved by Jesus they had to first become Jewish.

Lloyd Ogilby says about this passage, "The Pharisee Christians banded together
to make sure that no one slipped by Mount Sinai on the way to Mount Calvary. "
Mount Sinai where the law was given, Mount Calvary where Jesus died for us.
"That no one slipped by the law on the way to grace.

" And so those that believed this saw this first missionary journey of Paul and
Barnabas not as a cause for rejoicing but as a cause for alarm. So much so that
they went into Antioch and began preaching the message, "No, all these new
Gentile believers, they've got to be circumcised. They have to follow the exact
commands that God gave in the Old Testament beginning with Abraham.

" They in one sense stood with one foot on the dock of the old law in the Old
Testament and the other foot on the boat of God's grace. And Paul's revving the
engine of God's grace and they're getting more and more worried. We're going to
fall in.

We can't make this work. The early church deals with this problem. We talked
about that yesterday.

You deal with the problem and in dealing with it they show us, they teach us
some great lessons about how to make decisions as a church or also in your
family, also in a business. To their credit, the early church does not resort to
human politics, but instead shows some great spiritual wisdom in the way that
they handle this problem. What do they do?

How do you handle a sharp disagreement with another believer? Number one, you
get together. You can't handle a disagreement unless you're talking with each
other.

So you get together. In verse 4, "When they came to Jerusalem, they were
welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported
everything that God had done through them. " They went all the way from Antioch
to Jerusalem so they could get together.

Some people won't even go across the room to get together, across the street to
get together. So no wonder the problem goes on for years and years and years.
Now I can't promise you that when you get together with someone that you have a
disagreement with that it's going to be solved.

I can't promise that. But I can promise you that if you never get together, it's
never going to get solved. So you get together.

It starts there. They made the decision to do that. Second thing you do is this.

You get it out in the open. You don't just talk around the problem or talk about
another problem instead of the problem. You talk about the problem.

Verse 5, "Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees
stood up and said, 'The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the
law of Moses. '" That's clear. They didn't play politics.

They just said what they believed. That would be so refreshing, wouldn't it
sometimes? This happened immediately in their conversation.

Sometimes it takes us many conversations, seemingly weeks and months to get to
that point. All I can do is the best I know how, be honest in the situation. And
then I rely on God to motivate the other person to be honest in that situation.

You get it out in the open. Until you get it out in the open, you can't go any
further. And if you're trying to solve a situation with someone and you've gone
to them and you can't get it out in the open, then you need to leave it in the
hands of God.

Because until the problem is out in the open, nothing can happen. The second
thing you do is you get it out in the open. Third thing you do is you get the
heart of God.

You get the heart of God on this issue. And what do you look to to get the heart
of God? We get some strong lessons here.

You look to the truth of what God's done in your life. You tell the stories of
what God's done in other people's lives. And you look at the word of God, the
truth of what God wants to do in all of our lives.

Look first of all at the truth of what God's done in your life. It's
hypocritical in a disagreement to talk against what God's doing in your own life
just because you want to angle for somebody else to do something or just because
you're trying to please another. In honesty, you have to say this is how God has
worked in my life.

And that's exactly what Peter does. In verse 6, the apostles and elders met
together to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and he
addressed them, "Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among
you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and
believe.

God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit
to them, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for
he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by
putting on their necks, on the necks of the disciples, a yoke that neither we
nor our fathers have been able to bear?

No, we believe it is through by the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved,
just as they are. " Peter just stands up and he speaks with honesty. He says,
"God came to me, remember a few weeks ago we looked at Cornelius and Peter and
how God had shown him that the Gentiles were to hear the message of the good
news, but Peter is even more honest than that.

" He says, "Not only is this true, but it's also true, we've never been able to
keep this law. We've never been able to follow the ways of God. We've never been
able to entirely, perfectly keep the Old Testament law.

It is a yoke on our neck, so why would we ask them to do this when it's the
grace of Jesus that saves us? " You look at the truth of your experience. That's
how you get to the heart of God on the issue.

Second thing you do is you look at the stories of what God has done. You tell
those stories. In verse 12, the whole assembly became silent as they listened to
Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done
among the Gentiles through them.

Sometimes the reason we have a disagreement is because the stories haven't been
told. You haven't told what God has done in your life or what you've seen God do
in somebody else's life that's causing you to think the way that you do. You
think somebody else is going to think that way.

You need to tell the story. Tell the story of what happened in your family. Tell
the story of what happened on a missionary trip.

Tell the story of what happened as you shared the good news with somebody else.
You tell the story and that brings somebody else to the same place as you are.
But then you do a third thing to get to the heart of God on the issue, and it's
the most important.

You look at the Word of God. If God's Word confirms your story and your
experience, that strengthens it. If God's Word tells you that your story and
your experience is heading you in the wrong direction, then you listen to God's
Word first.

It has the authority. In verses 13 to 16, down to verse 17, "When they finished,
James spoke up. " Now this isn't the James who was martyred a few chapters ago.

This is James, the brother of Jesus. "James spoke up, 'Brothers, listen to me.
Simon has described to us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the
Gentiles a people for himself.

The words of the prophets are in agreement with this as it is written. After
this, I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent. It's ruins I will rebuild,
and I will restore it, that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the
Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things.

'" Wow. This preaching that James, the brother of Jesus, does turns the entire
group to the Word of God. In the end, you have to look back to God's Word and
see the confirmation in God's Word for the experience that you're having, for
what God is doing in your life.

So you look at what God's doing, you enjoy what God's doing, you're excited
about what God's doing, then you look at the Word of God. You get the heart of
God on the issue. So what do you do?

You get together, you get it out in the open, you get the heart of God on the
issue, but then you've got to do a fourth thing. You've got to make a clear
decision. In verse 19, "It is my judgment, Peter says, therefore, that we should
not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.

Instead, we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by
idols, from sexual immorality, and from the meat of strangled animals, and from
blood, for Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times, and is
read in the synagogue on every Sabbath. " Peter says, "These things that
everyone knows that have to do with morality, that everyone is following, we'll
tell them to do that, but we're not going to ask them to keep the entire Old
Testament law. " That is leadership.

Peter makes a decision. He doesn't say we're going to go out from here and each
go our different ways. He makes a decision, and then he does something else, and
this is what you have to do in order for an indecisive moment not to overwhelm
the opportunity.

They've come together, they've gotten together, they've made a decision, but if
no one else knows what's going to happen, so you have to communicate that
decision to everyone, which they did. They wrote a letter, and then in verse 22,
"Then the apostles and elders with the whole church decided to choose some of
their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, and they chose
Judas called Barsobus and Silas, two men who were leaders among the brothers.
With them they sent the following letter.

" I'm not going to read the entire letter, but the letter lays out what we just
talked about together. They communicated it to everyone. This is where
leadership often falls down.

A decision gets made in a room, but it doesn't get communicated to everyone. One
of the major tasks of leadership, leadership in your family, leadership in your
school, leadership in your work, leadership in community, is communicating the
decision so that all can know. God does great things, and because of that, verse
30 happens.

"The men were sent off and they went to Antioch where they gathered the church
together and delivered the letter, and the people read it and were glad for its
encouraging message. " That is great. All the problems are solved, right?

The Jerusalem conference has happened. That's what this conference is called. It
happens in Acts chapter 15.

This chapter on the disagreement in the church, very interesting. It ends with a
disagreement between two friends. Verse 36, "Some time later Paul said to
Barnabas, 'Let's go back and visit the brothers in all the towns where we preach
the word of the Lord and see how they're doing.

' Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not
think it wise to take him because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not
continued with them in the work. They had such a sharp disagreement that they
parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas
and left commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord.

" This chapter reminds us not to be afraid of disagreement between believers,
even between brothers. They just saw things differently, and so they did
different ministries. It's not that one gave up on ministry and the other went
ahead with ministry.

They just did different ministries. While the church has to come to agreement
theologically, we've got to agree on who Jesus is. These two men did not have to
agree relationally.

They could agree on loving Jesus, but go separate ways in ministry. There's a
great lesson here everyone needed to hear this week. Do not treat a personal
disagreement the same as a theological disagreement.

I've seen a lot of people struggle with this one. They make a personal
disagreement into a theological issue and all of a sudden you don't love Jesus
if you won't see it like I see it. You won't love Jesus if you won't talk with
me again and again and again and again so that eventually we're doing the same
thing.

Sometimes you just disagree, and you know what? God used Paul and God used
Barnabas. By the way, eventually we're going to see in the book of Acts, in the
later letters of the New Testament, they come back together and they begin to
serve together again.

God has a plan. Don't treat a theological disagreement the same as a personal
disagreement. One needs to be solved.

The other may be able to be solved, but maybe in love and saying we both love
Jesus Christ, there comes a point where you say we're going to do different
ministries now. As we end this complicated chapter, complicated because we hate
to disagree, let's ask for the simplicity of God's truth in our lives. Jesus,
while we as human beings may disagree, we don't have to disagree with you
because your way is always the right way, you are Lord.

And so help us instead of following people and getting caught up in petty human
politics of getting our way, help us to get caught up in loving you. Help us to
get caught up in following you, Jesus. In your name we pray.

Amen.