27th Sept 2010

Acts 15:1-21 – The Council at Jerusalem

• “How Right do you have to be to be a Christian?”
• Just a question.
• This passage records perhaps the most important day in church history after the resurrection of Jesus; the council of Jerusalem.
• Essentially many Jews began to kick off because the gentiles were following God and were able to do it with a kind of ‘easy religion’ as they saw it.
• So Paul and Barnabas are sent to the council to help decide what to do about this. What instructions and laws should they pass on to the new gentile converts?
• Firstly to note: Jesus had not really told them.
• He had instead empowered them to make these halakhic [religious legal] decisions by giving them authority to bind [forbid] and loosen [permit] things.
• They chat through this stuff and in making the most important decision they will ever make as a group, sum it up by simply saying “it seemed right to us and the Holy Spirit”.
• It brings up the question; how right to you have to be a Christian?
• Over the last few years I have felt a sense that some leaders doubt your salvation unless you believe specifically what they believe on some fairly fringe issues.
• This passage helps us answer that question.
• Firstly; I noticed that it says that some of the Pharisees who were believers stood up and argued that the gentiles should be circumcised.

• It turned out that the Holy Spirit thought they were wrong.
• But they were still believers.
• They were Pharisees. They were not former Pharisees, ex-Pharisees or fully made up members of the P.A. [Pharisees Anonymous] – they were practicing Pharisees.
• But they were still believers.
• Can you be wrong and still be a believer?

• Secondly; in verse 2 it says there was sharp dispute and debate.
• One Bile in its notes essentially suggests that this debate was in the form of the 400 year old practice of ‘Rhetoric’ an intellectual form of debate.
• Rhetoric had been invented in the latter half of 400-500bc.
• It was the art of convincing someone by a certain type of logical argument. The Sophists has adopted it and hired themselves our to teach people how to use this discipline. They made a lot of money from it.
• One of the key issues with this is that they prided themselves in the ability to argue convincingly from either point of view. So over time the discipline became less about truth and more about convincing others you were right.
• Plato hated the Sophists for this.
• Aristotle also sought to correct this by teaching that Rhetoric should involve three elements: logic, emotional appeal and etho; virtue.
• Rhetoric should be less about being right and more about finding truth.
• It seems that although these particular Pharisees were proven wrong, they remained believers. To their credit there is no reason to believe that these particular men disassociated themselves from the believers or were excluded.
• There were others of course, who continued to follow the Apostles around trying to convert the new gentile believers to their particular brand of religion.
• They were not believers.
• Who knows what it was that motivated them? The need for control? They jealousy of people experiencing god without paying their dues?
• All I know is this.
• You don’t have to be always have to right to be a believer.
• But seeking truth is commendable
• And avoiding that search in order to concentrate on being right is not.
• Praying I will notice Peter’s hint to the group of what helps you see the truth [see verse 8].
• P.S. In church yesterday while I was preaching a lady shouted out a question: it felt like the Bible.