The Main Thing

INTRODUCTION

We are back in our series this morning called Great Grace. We are taking this deep dive into the life of the early church in the book of Acts. This series is actually the culmination of something we’ve been doing all year. All the way back in January, I felt that the word God gave for our church was rebuild. There are these different seasons of life; the author of Ecclesiastes actually has a poem about this, that there is an appointed time for everything, a time to tear down, and a time to build (Ecclesiastes 3:1,3). The point of this is that God directs those appointed times—in Greek the word is kairos, and it’s helpful to me to think of these unexpected opportunities in life as kairos moments. So when it felt over 2020 like everything was falling apart and we didn’t know what our church community was going to look like beyond the year? I believe that was a kairos moment, a season dedicated to tearing down, to stripping away everything and getting down to the core of who we are, what we believe, what grounds us and steadies us and motivates us as a people of God. And this year has been a different sort of kairos moment, a season dedicated to building, to growing into our identity as a community. There are questions we’ve to reckon with like: what’s our theology, our system of beliefs? What’s our mission, the purpose for existing as a people? What’s our mode of operation; how do we live this out? That’s 2021 for us. It’s our year to build.

And as we’ve been going through Acts, what we are finding is that the early church grew because of their absolute reliance on the Holy Spirit, their willingness to be generous, their trust in leadership, and their all out dedication to the mission of Jesus Christ. They were 100% committed to the ministry of the message of the gospel, and out of that gospel, they discovered a love for one another, and heart for restoritive justice, and courage to speak out about grace and forgiveness.

Our message this morning comes smack dab in the middle of Acts. We are nearing the end of our series, as the story moves out of the portraits of church life and into the missionary journeys of Paul. In fact, we will hear from Peter for the last time in this chapter. Here, we find this important moment in the greater community of the church; it’s a reminder of sorts, but it is also more than that. It asserts a principle that will guide the community and defend its mission until the end.

We are in Acts 15 today, and it’s a two-part message. The church is confronted with this question about what it requires to be a follower of Jesus, and why it is so important to keep the main thing, the main thing; next week tells the story of how they got there, and how as a church we can seek God’s direction clearly and confidently.

PRAY

THE SCANDAL OF GRACE (Acts 15:1-5)

We’re back at the church in Antioch; remember these guys? They are the church of Gentiles, a culturally diverse group of believers that got together are just started living life together, preaching the word, acting in love and power, and carrying out the message and mission of the gospel. They have no historical or cultural connections to the Old Testament Scriptures, but they know Jesus, they know the Spirit, and they are a transformed people of YHWH. They’ve been radically generous as well; they sent whatever they could to Jerusalem during the famine, and they sent two of their best leaders on a missionary journey to the Gentiles. And so far it has been the idea picture of what we would hope to see in the church. But all of a sudden, this voice of dissension shows up, and it creates a bit of a crisis of faith.

Acts 15:1–5 CSB

Some men came down from Judea and began to teach the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom prescribed by Moses, you cannot be saved.” After Paul and Barnabas had engaged them in serious argument and debate, Paul and Barnabas and some others were appointed to go up to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem about this issue. When they had been sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and they brought great joy to all the brothers and sisters. When they arrived at Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church, the apostles, and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. But some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses.”

There is a question that stirs up the church and breaks up the simplicity and unity around the church in Antioch, and it is fundamental to everything they are all about: How do you become a Christian? What must you do to be saved? Here was this church, going about its work, loving God, loving others, expericing joy and peace and all kinds of signs and wonders worked through them by the Spirit. And suddenly someone shows up and says, you’re not really part of our deal, because you haven’t been circumcised. You haven’t performed this ancient Jewish ritual and followed the ways of Israel’s covenant heritage, and so you’re not actually part of us.

This messes them up, because it seems from the text as if they were coming in and trying to speak for the apostles and elders in Jerusalem, the central hub of the Christian movement. And it gets the church thinking: Did they really believe this? Is this really something we are supposed to be doing? Are we not really Christians?

The question of circumcision struck at the very heart of their identity. With a simple, seemingly well-intentioned declaration, the community non-Jews was exiled from the family of God because they didn’t fit in with the cultural heritage. All of a sudden, Jesus was no longer enough.

Now why ask this question? Why complicate the gospel? Because grace is scandalous.

Here’s what I mean by this. Accoding to Oxford, the definition of scandalous is this: Causing general public outrage by a perceived offense against morality or law. It is improper, unseemly, unbecoming.

To many Jewish Christians, those brought up in the laws and rigid structures of Moses, the idea that one could simply be welcomed into the fold of God simply by trusting in the work of Jesus flew in the face of everything they had worked so hard for. And so the argument was simple: Let’s remove the scandal. Let’s make Christianity something you earn, something you work for. If you have to be circumcised and fulfill the law of Moses, no scandal, no offense. There must be a gatekeeper. There has to be a proper barrier to prevent just anyone from being a part of the church. Circumcision was that barrier.

We are going to get into this a little more, but I want you to be aware of something. There will always be attempts to minimize or negate the offense of the cross, to make Christianity more palatable, more reasonable. I once met a man in the Christian book section of Barnes and Noble who told me that I needed to look beyond the cross, to transcend Jesus, and gain control of my emotional and physical state. An offenseless Christianity says, what must I do to enter heaven, to earn favor with God?

Is Jesus truly, actually, completely enough?

QUESTION: Have you ever felt like you or others should be doing more? Have you ever questioned your salvation (or someone elses) because of… something? If so, what is that something?

BOUNDARIES VS. CENTER (Acts 15:6-11)

Now, this is causing all sorts of issues when these men come and question their faith. It says that Paul and Barnabas actually engage in serious argument and debate with them, which I’m guessing is Luke’s nice way of saying there was an all out theological tag-team throw down in Antioch. The church sent Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem to talk with the founders and leaders of the church to get some answers. Let’s pick up the story in verse 6:

Acts 15:6–11 CSB

The apostles and the elders gathered to consider this matter. After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you are aware that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles would hear the gospel message and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he also did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith. Now then, why are you testing God by putting a yoke on the disciples’ necks that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus in the same way they are.”

That last sentence is an absolute gut punch, and I want to get back to it in just a moment. The apostles and elders are working this out, and it’s challenging them. And this is good, because when the scandal of grace challenges your cultural expectations and presuppostions, it forces you to define what matters more clearly. It causes you to confront your own expectations of what a Christian looks like: is that shaped by my culture, or is it shaped by God’s word?

Peter gets up here and speaks, for the last time in the book of Acts. And he recounts how God led him to preach the gospel to a people he thought were not worthy of the message of Jesus, who were not pure or ritually clean, who he did not even see fit to eat with, much less share in the inheritance of the kingdom of God. And yet, what did Peter find? Verse 9: God made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.

Here is the issue at hand, and it is a warning to us as we consider the future of our church, our call to mission, our invitation to membership, even our theological focus from day to day, week to week. The circumcision party, those who were concerned about the outward sign of covenant faithfulness, were focused on the boundaries, instead of the center. We take on the responsiblity of gate-keepers to protect a God who does not require our protection. We strive and fight to keep God’s hands clean, when he is the cleanser of hearts.

John Ortberg puts it this way:

A boundary-oriented approach to spirituality focuses on people’s position: Are you inside or outside the group? A great deal of energy is spent clarifying what counts as a boundary marker. But Jesus consistently focused on people’s center: Are they oriented and moving toward the center of spiritual life (love of God and people), or are they moving away from it?

Now this talk about boundary markers may feel strange, but every culture has them. Oh, you say you love the environment? What kind of car do you drive? Does your fruit have that organic sticker on it? Hmm. The products you buy, the clothes you wear, the posts online you make, these signal outwardly the value-system you claim inwardly. The party you voted for, the team you root for, the city you live in; each of these brings in cultural preferences and assumptions that you must assimilate to if you want to belong. They require you to conform to a type of person worth their time and energy. They are yokes placed upon you. Peter makes note of this. A yoke is this device attached to a pair of worker animals like oxen or horses to force them to go in the same direction. They can be heavy and uncomfortable, even painful, but they serve a purposes of aligning direction. These are the boundary markers we use. And what often happens is that these yokes become way more important than anything else. And if you don’t believe me, just ask an oxen what they are thinking of. Are they focused on the joys of working together and planting a field and serving their master? Or are they focused on the weight and pain of the yoke forced on them?

I want us as a church to consider the types of yokes we put on people, however well-intentioned. And it’s not just traditional stuff. You might be thinking about the ultra-conservative church down the street that expects suits and ties and floor-length dresses. But what about the church that rocks the tee-shirt and jeans, or the flannel hipsters of 2010, or the sandals and shorts? This is not about innovation vs. tradition. It’s about how easily cultural preferences and assumptions can creep in and begin to squeeze out the gospel message.

Our boundaries, and how hard we fight for them, become signifiers of what we truly value. And this is why Peter reminds the church that the center is more important than the boundary.

Remember that last gut punch sentence? We believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus in the same way they are. The first time I read this, it threw me for a loop, and I think it’s because I expected to read it the other way around. In other words, we ought to welcome others into our church, to accept outsiders as part of our family, because God loves them just as much as he loves us. Yeah, it seems far-fetched that God would accept those strange people with their weird cultural preferences and taste in music, but I guess that’s what grace is for, even them.

But that’s not what Peter says. Peter says, look, we’ve been patrolling the borders of our kingdom, making sure, the right people get in, but look, there they are, right in the center, with Jesus, enjoying him, celebrating life with him, reveling in his generosity and love and comfort. It’s not them who are missing out on the faithfulness of God. It’s us!

Our pride says that others can saved like we are. If they act like us, talk like us, vote like us, dress like us. But the great truth of Jesus says, no, do not forget, you can be saved like they are. Without the hoops, without the formalities, without the policies and the procedures. Because it is essential that that people meet Jesus rather than fit a cultural profile.

What ought to define our invition, our place of beloning, should have nothing to do with our little rites of passage, the minor theological molehills or the cultural hurdles. Instead, it should have to with one thing, and one thing only: Did Jesus come and die for you? Will you surrender everything to follow him?

I’ve said this before, it doesn’t cost much to follow Jesus, just your whole life. If our church is centered wholly and completely on Jesus, barriers don’t matter quite as much. You can protect the outside and rot away on the inside. A well-protected border and a well-neglected center is recipe for a white-washed tomb.

But, if Jesus is the center? And our focus is on him? We will be so changed, we will be so loved, that we can’t help but welcome all into his presence. Once we accept the fact that we are saved in the same way others our, our pride turns to humilty, and our walls begin to drop.

WRAP IT UP

COMMUNION PASSAGE

Matthew 11:28–30 CSB

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

PRAY