SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/22/2018 9:21 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 The
Dissension
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts 15:1-5
Message of the verses: “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.’”
In our last SD on the introduction to Acts 15:1-35 I did
not do what I have usually done and that is quote the last paragraph of John
MacArthur’s commentary in order to show us what points that we are going to go
over. “Given those concerns, conflict
was inevitable. As long as the Gentile
converts were few and were already Jewish proselytes (like the Ethiopian
eunuch), the issue could be avoided. But
by the time of the Jerusalem Council, matters had come to a head. The issue was not whether God wanted to save
Gentiles, but how they were to be saved.
Could they enter the kingdom of God directly, without coming through the
vestibule of Judaism? That was the
question the Jerusalem Council convened to decide. From the inspired record emerge four
features: the dissension, the discussion,
the decision, and the development.” We
will begin looking at the dissension in today’s SD.
In both Peter and Paul’s writings they warned the church
of false teachers coming into the church.
These false teachers come from Satan to destroy the effectiveness of the
church, and that is what we are seeing in Acts 15.
Paul writes how a person is saved in his letter to the
Ephesians “8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of
yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one
may boast.” This is the simple message
of how a person was saved and Paul writes that works has nothing to do with
salvation. He goes on in verse then to
talk about working after one is saved, but works has nothing to do with
salvation as Jesus did all the work necessary and all we have to do is to
accept it, and that is not a work. If
someone gives you a gift it is not a work to accept it. John MacArthur writes “The most destructive
of the ‘destructive heresies,’ since it damns men, is the teaching that
salvation is by human works, which Peter warned against. That doctrine is the credo of all false
religion and the longest-running heresy in the history of the church.” We see where this hearsay came from in verse
one: “Some men came down from Judea” and
what they were teaching was “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom
of Moses, you cannot be saved.” This is
the hearsay they were teaching, adding something to the free gift of
salvation. As we looked at verse 24 we
read “"Since we have heard that some of our number to whom we gave no
instruction have disturbed you with their words, unsettling your souls,” and
this shows that they were not sent from the Jerusalem church. I have to believe that they were messengers
from Satan. I am sure that they believed
what they were teaching, but what they were teaching came out of the pit of
hell and was destructive.
Whenever one studies the letter to the Galatians they will end up going to this 15th chapter of Acts as Paul has much to say about this subject in that letter. These men who came from Jerusalem probably did not want to eat with the believers in Antioch. Paul writes about this in Galatians 2:11 and following. If they did not eat with them then how could they participate in the Lord’s Supper? Paul even writes in Galatians that Peter actually fell in line with the heretics while in Galatia. These men have a name and that name was “Judaizers” and what they believed is seen in verse one: “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”
Paul and Barnabas knew better and they rallied to the
defense of their flock as they “had great dissension and debate with” these
Judaizers. As you read some of Paul’s
letters you can understand how great of love he had for those in the flocks
that he had started, and even those he did not start as they were all children
in the Lord.
We will close with what the church at Antioch did and
that was to send Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem in order to talk to the leaders
of the Jerusalem church. By the way
Peter was not the leader of this church it was James the half-brother of our
Lord Jesus Christ. We read the following
“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.” John MacArthur writes “The issue of how
Gentiles were to be saved could not be settled in one local congregation. The decision would have to be made in
Jerusalem by God-ordained leaders of the church, the apostles and elders (cf.
Eph. 2:20),” “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone.”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Satan is tricky
and so I need to have my spiritual armor on each and every day.
My Steps of Faith for Today: To continue to study the Word of God each day
as this only teaches the truth.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Bless them” (Romans 12:14).
Today’s Bible
question: “Who did the Jews want
released instead of Jesus?”
Answer in our next SD.
3/22/2018 10:12 AM
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