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Welcome to the Brew City Church Podcast. We are a Christian church following in the way of Jesus and located in the heart of downtown Milwaukee. We're glad you've joined us, and we hope you enjoy this week's message. Can we pray? Let me pray. Father, thank you for, for these ones, for. For a community of faith. I'm grateful that this here, these ones, these. These friends and this familiar gathering and the rituals that we partake in here and go through, I'm grateful for all of it because it roots me in a story that tells me there's something more to life and to this world, to my existence, than what I know. What we do here roots me in a community, a family, in a way that I just know I have people holding me and surrounding me and loving me and walking with me. I'm grateful for rituals like this table that's always set before us every week that root me in this reality that Jesus, you're redeeming, you are healing, you're restoring and repairing, you are unifying, forgiving. These are stories that I need. So would you continue to invite us to drink from these wells, to drink from the water that you have to give Jesus, as you were talking to the Samaritan woman in John 4 and said, I have water that will satisfy. Only I have it. So, Jesus, we just come to you again, wanting to drink from that well in Jesus name, Amen. As we've moved through our series, our sermon series here in the Book of Acts, there's common recurring themes that we've been navigating through and testifying to and seeing, diving into. And one of those recurring themes is that there are shifts there that the people of faith, the people of God, at this moment in time in history, in the early church, are experiencing these profound shifts in their spirituality because of Jesus. They're experiencing these profound shifts in how they worship and who belongs, who's included, what the scriptures mean now, reinterpreting what they always thought of as solid, unchanging God's word. Now, because of Jesus, everything is shifting and changing. It's a disorienting time to be a part of God's people. And in this early church, we romanticize it and really hold it up. And it is fascinating, isn't it? But when we do that, we lose the tension and the angst in these conversations, in the relational tension these shifts produce. So here's what I'd like to hear from you this morning, as mostly as usual, and I'd love to hear, for many of us at Bruce City, probably many of us who are here this morning, we've experienced these holy shifts, these shifts in our spirituality or our theology or the way we see the world. That changed. It felt like it changed everything for us. Right. Or changed a lot. But here's the particular angle I want to hear from you. Those shifts oftentimes and almost always send ripples through our lives. And mostly I'm talking about our relationships, our community. Sometimes when that holy shift happens, that shift in our spirituality, our theology, the way we see the world, when that shift happens and changes, there's a change that happens. Whether it's in our church, things change, or we're looked at as different, or we're kind of seen as outcasts now. Or maybe we had to change faith communities because of the shift that happened. Or maybe the change that this spiritual shift happened and maybe the fallout from that or the rift was in our family of origin or in our friend group, in our relationships that were kind of the relationships in the, the people and the friendships and the love that we stood on are kind of changing now. I'd love to hear, have any of you have that experience, a shift in your spirituality, a shift in your theology that changed. That kind of changed, shifted, brought some tension into your relationships, community, whatever. Anyone have a story like that? Anyone experience that in real life? Who's bold enough to say, we got. Oh, Montavious. Thank you. I grew up thinking that the end of our faith was going to heaven. Yeah. Float around in the sky. Yep. Pretty much all of us did. Right? Yeah. Yep. Then you open the book and like, you can't find it in there enough. And now my thinking is to end it. Lord Jesus, reigning as king here on earth. And yes, okay. The resurrection. Yep. That's not. Everybody has believed that, that story, like, bodily. So it's hard to have this conversation sometimes. You don't want to offend people. Yep, yep. Montavious is articulating. And here's, here's why. I, I, I love sharing with one another because some of these shifts are huge and monumental and some of them are a little bit subtle, but they still change so much. And Montavious said one of the shifts that has happened in the way I see my theology, the way I see even kind of eschatology or end time stuff, what happens after we die is Montavious was like, I was brought up to think that when you die, you go to heaven and we all float around and it's kind of like this cartoonish reality. And he's like, I no Longer believe that because when you open the Bible, you don't see that at all. What you see is stories of resurrection, of God ruling and reigning on this earth, but kind of a new heaven and a new earth. Right. And us in the resurrection. And when you, when something like that changes or switches or you see it differently, it becomes awkward. Montavious said, I don't even know how to talk about it with people around me because I didn't know if they had a grid for it. Am I kind of getting it? Yeah. You know what, does anyone else know what that feels like of just like how do I actually engage and talk about this stuff with people who think totally differently now, any other stories like that? Okay, Megan, you got it. Jonathan, could you unmute the handheld? Or don't. Yeah, that's okay. Okay. I grew up like the Golden Youth Group child. Right. Like, I was really good at church. I was really good at being a Christian. And when my faith started to shift, lots of people were concerned about me. Right. Like I got lots of conversations, lots of messages. I'm just concerned. I'm just concerned. And at this point there's just a lot of things that aren't even on the table for us to talk about. Right? Not so much because I don't know how to, but because it's like that's just going to. It's not going to go anywhere. It's going to be a non starter. And so people continue to just be concerned. Yes, yes. That's. That's when you go through one of these holy shifts, this shift in your theology, spirituality. It's a common refrain that Megan is speaking to, where you get a lot of. I know exactly what that feels like. Just checking in because I heard some things and I'm a little concerned or maybe even they'll leave out the concerned part. But it's just an overarching vibe that you get. Right. Like a hall monitor, a teacher, a pastor checking in. Because we're concerned. Especially if you're that really faithful person who's been known to be the kind of. Megan is an all star of Sunday school and awana and all these things. Yes, the concern is there. And then it changes that dynamic in your relationships, doesn't it? And I know it means well, that concern, but sometimes it feels like condescension. And when you. The concern is because you might be heading to hell forever and ever without end, that concern turns into something that becomes hurtful then, doesn't it? It's hard to engage relationally. Anyone else have A story like that. I know this is a lot to ask. We got another. Oh, Ben. Yeah, Good. Passing the mic to the spouse. Right. I'll chime in a little bit as a conjunction of Megan. So her faith really shifted in different ways than mine, especially at the time. And so she went through a faith shift. I kind of did. It rocked our marriage, changed our lives. Right. And so now she wasn't only dealing with a faith shift. It was also like, all right, how do we show up for one another when what was in many ways the bedrock of how we came together was different? Yes. Right. So not only was it a faith shift, those other relational shifts were, I'd say, in some ways, equally as unsettling. Yes. And so it led to just this snowball effect of, this is a lot of change. This is really hard. Yep. Yes. Thank you, Ben. Absolutely. Even these. These shifts within our theology, they get real, real intimate sometimes, don't they? Right. And Ben's articulating something where my wife had this shift, spiritual shift, and it happened before me and, man, that introduced. Speaking of tension, not just in our church or in uncles and aunties. Right. Or in people in our church, but actually in our marriage. It introduced this tension where we're not used to being on different pages spiritually, theologically, and that's challenging, man. I've talked to people whose marriages have ended over that stuff. Some of you are in marriages as we speak, where you see things differently, and we're navigating how to learn to love one another and choose one another, even when we don't see everything eye to eye. These things are major and serious. Any. I'm gonna thank you for these. These stories. Anybody else who wanted to. Just really wanted to share something. Yes. If the mic. If you don't want the mic, you can just talk to me. It's. But it's. I just, like, was literally taught women were literally less than men. And, like, that's how God wanted it. Yeah. And, like, they weren't allowed to be leaders. Hurts. Brains didn't work that way. And, like, as a woman, that was tough. Yeah. Like a leader in the church, like Megan. I was like, oh, okay, cool. So then when I took that away, I was like, what does that mean for me and everyone who raised me? Yep. Kind of don't trust them. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Thank. Remind me of her name. Rachel. Thank you, Rachel. Rachel was saying, I was brought up, raised in the church to believe that women really don't have a place to kind of lead in the church and to use their voice in the church. And as I began finding my own voice, perhaps, and as I began seeing just things differently, then I just have to ask the question, like, where do I fit in this community? Am I getting it right? Rachel, like close right, where do I fit anymore? And even do, like, when you see something differently and that shift happens there, then there's like follow up questions that happen. And for Rachel, it was, do I even trust these people as much as I used to? Because I don't. I'm not able to drink the Kool Aid anymore. I'm not able to say yes to everything. And I think this is one of the beautiful things about this church, is that there are people who agree and disagree about me, major things here. And that's something that I hope we continue to live into, because I don't want to come to the place where we disagree with one another. And we're like, I don't know if I can trust this anymore. I don't know if I can be with this community anymore. But that's what it feels like. And the reason that I'm asking. Thank you, friends who were willing to share, the reason that I'm asking these questions is because our text today deals with exactly this kind of stuff. Our text today is Acts 15. It's the Jerusalem Council. And for Bible geeks, this is a monstrous text. It's a huge text. And when I say monstrous, I don't mean ugly and scary. There's those texts in the Bible, but this ain't one of them. By monstrous, I mean this text is kind of a microcosm that changes everything for the church. We are part of the church because of this text. All of these shifts were happening in this one major shift in the church that we've seen in the book of Acts is whether or not these dirty, impure, unclean people, who we've been told all our lives and for century upon century upon century in our faith tradition, don't belong among the people of God. Now they're getting in. And now some of us who grew up in that tradition that said these people are dirty, impure, unclean, we actually kind of believe that they're not anymore. Like we see. Jesus changed my perspective about almost everything. And that means that these people that I was raised to think are dirty, impure, unclean, you need to stay away from them. They certainly have no place in the people of God and in our church. Now they're getting in. And that is the middle of this tension, this holy shift. And we're gonna be looking at this conversation. They have basically what is kind of like the first Vatican Council, the first ecumenical Council. There's the church in Jerusalem, which is the powerful church, the original church, the ogs of Christianity. And then you have the new, fresh, dangerous. Maybe many people in Jerusalem think this church in Antioch is heretical, blasphemous, doesn't belong because they're letting all these. They're made up of these dirty, impure, unclean people called gentiles. In the church, you have these two realities and it's going to come together and explode. And we're going to. We're going to see the. There's a church conference that happens, a gathering that happens. Say, how are we going to be the people of God moving forward with this shift, with this rift, with this tension? And we get to see. See how they navigated it. So without further ado, we're just going to walk through this is. I'm going to spend two weeks on Acts 15. I would love to spend more, but we got to keep moving. We're going to spend two weeks here. And today, what I'm. All I'm going to do is just. We're going to dive into the text and we're going to. I'm just going to kind of give some background on the story of what's going on and bring a little bit of extra background. Next week, we're going to dive into some of the characters in particular, see what we have to learn from them. But we're gonna start in Acts 15, Verse 1. We're just gonna work our way through. I'm gonna start and stop a lot. This is what we're gonna do. This morning. I'm just gonna read. And when I get to a point that I want you to know something or that I want us to fit to think about together, we're gonna pause and we're just gonna start and stop a lot. It's gonna be one of those road trips. Verse 1, Acts 15. Certain people came down from Judea, from the Jerusalem church to Antioch to the church in Antioch, and we're teaching the believers. Unless you are circumcised. Everyone knows what circumcision is. Great. Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved. That's a mic drop, right? Like, that's like talking to a bunch of gentile Christians and followers who have not been circumcised and saying, look, unless you have been. Not unless you've been circumcised. You're not part of the community of faith you think you might be in, but you're not. You have to do this certain thing. And now what's likely here is that this was a group of Pharisees. Basically, most scholars think that this was a group of former Pharisees who met Jesus not literally, but were encountered by Jesus, like all of us have been, and chose to follow Jesus. They integrated Jesus into their Judaism. See what was going on here, what's going on in the early church is that this is the church in the Book of Acts is not seen as a new kind of religion, a brand new religion that we're all abandoning one and jumping into the other. Jesus was seen in the early church as a fulfillment of all the promises of Israel. Like, this is not a new religion to these folks. This is an extension of the Judaism that all of these folks had grown up with in the century upon century upon century. Jesus is the fulfillment of the promises to the people of Israel. Jesus saw it the same way. If you remember, Jesus had some awkward encounters with people where they were asking for his attention and for his healing and for his deliverance. He's like, look, I've been sent to the lost children of Israel. And so the question isn't here. What the question isn't is I'm diving into a new religion and I got to tell my family all about it. The reality is that this is an extension of what's happening. And the question is, what laws of Israel do we have to have everyone abide by? That's the question. Because we are still the people of Israel. And as we're integrating people who didn't belong in now, what do we. What's our common agreements? What do we have to. What. How can we agree where we are to live? What laws? Because there's a lot of laws in this Jewish history, in this tradition. Let's continue. So these people came down from Jerusalem to the church in Antioch. They're spreading this. This teaching that unless you're circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved. This brought Paul and Barnas into sharp dispute and debate with them. You know what those kind of conversations feel like. 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 church sent them on their way. And as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. And this news made all the believers very glad when they came to Jerusalem. They were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders to whom they had reported everything God had done through them. 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 keep the law of Moses. In other words, duh. Like, if you. That it's scandalous that we would even have Gentiles in the church, in the community of faith at all. But at the very. And I'm sure there were many, many people we know there were many, many people who thought they should never be allowed in, no matter what. So to even say Gentiles can be allowed in is a radical thing. But now they're saying, at the very least, if we're allowing all these people that we thought were dirty and impure and unclean in, can we at least have them follow the rules of our faith tradition? Like, can they at least follow the Scriptures? Do these arguments and conversations sound familiar. Now as Luke is painting this picture of the Jerusalem Council, he's telling us this story. And the way we read it, it seems like Luke is telling us everything that happened at this gathering, at this church conference. And the reality is that Paul spoke about this same gathering in Galatians 2. And it's a little different when Paul speaks about it and speaks to it. And that's probably because scholars will tell us it's not verbatim. This isn't exactly how it happened. The way Luke tells it, this is probably a larger gathering with many kind of breakout kind of conversations. If you've ever been to a church conference and there's main speakers and then there's breakout sessions and little conversations. And some of us are most excited at those church conferences to talk to people that we haven't seen in a long time. That's what this was like. There's many other side conversations happening, but Luke is kind of just reducing it down and telling us what we need to know. So the apostles and elders met to consider this question. This is the question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them. Brothers. Unfortunately, Rachel is just brothers at this point, right? Brothers, you know that some time ago, God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might. Might hear from my lips the message of the Gospel and believe. What is Peter talking about here? I'm seeing faces who have heard these certain who we've walked through Acts before. What is. Does anybody recall what Peter is speaking to here? Cornelius. Peter and Cornelius, thank you. The dream he had and the engage Like God calling Peter to go hang out in a Gentile's house, which he would never do as a good Jewish person, preaching to them in this explosion of the Holy Spirit happened. That's what he's speaking to, right? Brothers, you know that some time ago, because this is a famous encounter now. And what. What scholars tell us is that this Jerusalem Council, that this is Acts 15, Peter and Cornelius happened in Acts 10. But there's several years that have gone by in that time. Several years have gone by. And now this gathering that Peter was at with Cornelius and his family and his friends and his community, it's become famous in the church. And some people want to kick Peter out of the church because of it, probably, and others trust it because it's Peter. There's all this conversation. Brothers, you know that some time ago, God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might. 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. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. FF Bruce, evangelical New Testament scholar who's dead now, he pointed this out and he said, do you notice that Peter. What Peter articulates here is pointing to the fact that the Holy Spirit immersed these Gentile believers in the presence, in the life and the gifts of the Holy Spirit before there was any ever verbal proclamation of faith like Peter's recounting this story. And if you remember this story, Peter's preaching, and all of a sudden the Gentile converts just start speaking in tongues and going kind of berserk in the Spirit. And that's before any profession of faith was made. And what FF Bruce is trying to point out here is that it seems as if God doesn't care about our formulas of faith and salvation, right? Like we have this little kind of proper succession and road to what it looks like to be a person who follows Jesus. And you have to put your faith and you have to put your. Publicly confess it, and then the Holy Spirit kind of enters your reality in your life. And all that in FF Bruce is like, none of that happened here. The Holy Spirit just immersed these believers in their. In. In the Holy Spirit's presence, and things changed. God know God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. Verse 9. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their Hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? Whoo. Now, let me just. What Peter's saying here is super controversial because, see, to the Jewish people and to their kind of religious worldview and theology, the law is life. To the Jewish people, the law means that we are the people of God. To the Jewish people, the Torah, the law, and all that's part of it. And all that it means, it's kind of the seal, the stamp, the badge that says we are the people of God. And Peter here is saying that that law that we stand on, that law that makes us the people of God, that law that we think, it justifies us, all of it, it's actually a burden. It's like this dead weight hanging around our necks. And now we want to put that on some new people. That's what Peter's saying here, which is a radical thing to say. But do you know where Peter learned this concept from? Let me read for you. I don't have it on the overhead, but this is Matthew 23, when Jesus says. Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, the teacher of the law. Teachers of the law. And the Pharisees sit in Moses seats. They are the ones in authority. They are the gatekeepers. They are the people in power. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you, but do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. Jesus is throwing down some fighting words here. He says this. This is Matthew 23:4. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. And what Jesus was saying there we often miss is that this law that we love to see as our salvation, this law that we love to see as our guiding light, this law that the psalmist waxed poetically about over and over and over again, it's become a burden too heavy for people to bear. But see those gatekeepers, they love to put these burdens. As a matter of fact, they're adding to the law over and over and over again. Jesus referred to the law as a burden way before Peter did. But this is some radical stuff here. Let's continue. In the story, we believe that it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved just as they are. The whole assembly became silent and listened to Barnabas and Paul. But before we move on there, see what. Luke is trying to show us that after Peter spoke, there was kind of a hush that came over the crowd. Right, Right. Things and dynamics are changing as Peter tells this story. But what's interesting to me here is what changed the dynamic of this gathering, of the conversation, of the trajectory of this conversation. I would think as a person who's been brought up in the faith, brought up in the church, knows the Scriptures, loves the Scriptures, all that Peter brought a powerful expositional teaching on the Scriptures as to why the Gentiles belong in the family of God and as to why the Gentiles shouldn't be asked to go through circumcision and shouldn't be asked to observe all these kosher laws and these food rituals. I would think it would be the Scriptures and a good, compelling, sound argument and teaching from the Scriptures that changes the tone of the conversation. That would make sense to me. That's what I've been kind of discipled to explain. How about you? But see what changes the tone of the conversation in the. In Acts 15 here, friends, is what Peter's experience, Peter's lived experience. And the reason that I need to point that out to a Christian church is we have been told, and I've said this in this series before, but it's worth pointing out here. We have been told you can't trust your experience. Has anyone ever been discipled in that sort of way? You can't trust your lived experience. You can only trust the authority of God's Word. And I want to tell you, I believe the authority of God's Word is a really big deal, a really important thing. It's a real thing. But we live in this kind of. Humans think naturally in binary sort of ways. And so we kind of think that if the Scriptures have all this authority, nothing else can. And especially your experience cannot. You cannot trust your sinful perspective. Right. We've been all discipled like this. But what we find in the Scriptures and stories like Acts 15, is that Peter, when he goes to kind of justify this huge, huge shift that's going to introduce a rift in the church. He doesn't do it with this slick expositional teaching from the Scriptures. He does it by telling his story through bearing witness to what the Holy Spirit did among some people, bearing witness to what the Holy Spirit did among some people who were who we thought were unclean, excluded, don't belong. But guess what? The Holy Spirit thinks something differently. And I wanna say, if this were happening in the church today, we would get laughed out of the building because it's not a scriptural argument. It's based on their experience. I just wanna hope we're learning from these conversations that we can honor the Scriptures and have these conversations because of the Scriptures and. But we can also pay attention to where the Spirit's leading us. It's not one or the other that's so important, friends. All right, let's keep going. And just so you know, now Peter disappears from the Book of Acts. Like wave bye bye to Peter. He's nowhere else to be found. That's it. It's a good way to exit. So the whole assembly after Peter spoke and shared his experience became silent as they then listened to Barnabas and Paul. And now it's easy to think because of Paul's kind of place in the New Testament canon, that when Paul speaks, everybody listens. But the reality is that Paul and Barnabas here are kind of just witnesses. They're just kind of. They're there along for the ride, called to bear witness. But they're not even there as consultants. They're not even there as decision makers. The people, the leaders of the Jerusalem Church, are the decision makers here. Paul and Barnabas are just there to bear witness to what they see happening in their ministry, what the Holy Spirit's doing. So the whole assembly became silent as they listened to Paul and Barnabas telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. What Shelley was talking about last week when they finished, James spoke up. So there's one more person to speak, and it's James. This is the brother of Jesus, and it sure seems like he has become the leader of the Jerusalem Church. They're probably mimicking the leadership structure that they find in the Sanhedrin, what they know up to this point. And if that's the case, James is the high priest. So James speaks as the powerful person in the room. And he said, listen to me. Simon, who is Peter, has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. Just that saying right there. I could go into how radical that is because this is Israelite language here. I'm not going to do it. 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, its ruins. I will rebuild and I will restore it. Then the rest of mankind may seek the Lord. Even all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things, things known from long ago. He said, it is my judgment, 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 for food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. In other words, what this whole conversation is about, friends, is table fellowship and what that means. That's a really Bible geeky way of saying in these days, the most intimate sign of acceptance, of inclusion, of belonging, of community is. Is sitting down and eating a meal with people. If you sat down and ate a meal with people, it meant that these are my people. We are friends together. We are a community together. And what happened in Cornelius's home where Peter sat down with all these Gentiles? It became excused because it was kind of under divine compulsion. Right. But later, what we find in the book of Acts is that Peter sat down with a bunch of Gentiles to eat dinner at the Church of Antioch. And it sent shockwaves through the church. Literally. The news of Peter sitting down, who he had dinner with, the news of it got to Jerusalem. And this is before social media and email, like for news to get from Antioch to Jerusalem. It was some urgent stuff. We're talking about who belongs here. Verse 21. For the law of Moses had been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in synagogues on the Sabbath. On every Sabbath. So then the apostles and elders with some, with the whole church, decided to choose some from their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They chose Judas, called Barsabbas and Silas, men who were leaders among the believers. That Judas we. This is the only time we hear of him. Silas we get to know. In Paul's missionary journeys with them, they sent the following letter. The apostles, elders, your brothers, to the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia. Just saying that was a shift. We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. So we all agreed to choose some men and send them out with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, we are sending Judas and Silas and to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to not burden you with anything beyond the following requirements. You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell. Not the warmest letter in the world's history, but it does the job. So the men went off and went down to Antioch. When they gathered the church together and delivered the letter, can you imagine the suspense? The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message. Judas and Silas, who themselves were prophets, said much to encourage and strengthen the believers. After spending some time there, they were sent off by the believers with the blessing of peace to return to those who had sent them. But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, where they and many others taught and preached the word of God. Now, it's easy to sit here and read this account and read this story and narrative and think, this is no big deal. This is just kind of business as usual for the church. None of these conversations and debates are live conversations and debates in our real time. But see, let me just. I want to get into the experience of what it was like to be in these conversations and contextualize this a little bit. These were like. Felt like life and death issues to the people having these arguments and debates. These were things that they have been taught all their lives. This is what gives you life. This is what makes you in and you cannot compromise it. This is what the word of God says it. And you cannot change that, manipulate it, interpret it any which way you want to interpret it. Have we heard those arguments before? It was so emotional. Let me just tell you a story of a little background, a little context as to things that made this a really passionate argument. There's a story that in the second century BC There was a mother with seven sons. They were arrested by King Antiochus, who is a Seleucid king, who was kind of like the leader of the empire of the day. The Jewish people just spent centuries under the thumb of the empire, whether it was the Babylonians and then the Persians and then the Seleucids or the Greeks and then the Romans. It was just hundreds and hundreds of years of being under the thumb of the empire. And in two Maccabees and four Maccabees, there's a story that speaks of this mother who had seven sons. She was arrested by King Antiochus and she was put on trial. And her sons, her seven sons, one by one, were put before a crowd and were tortured. And what would make the torture stop is if they just ate pork, if they just ate kosher food. See, Antiochus in the empire was trying to get them to renounce their. Their food laws and their prohibitions as to what they could and couldn't eat, because he knew this made them a people they believed so steadfastly in it. And so he was like, I'm going to torture your sons until you tell them to eat this unclean food. And one by one, he tortured her sons, doing horrible things to them. You can look this up. And instead of encouraging them to just eat the food, food, be done with it. What are we doing here? This mother, they say in these rabbinical stories that have been shared, she spoke to her sons in their native language, probably Hebrew or Aramaic, and she was reminding them of the Scriptures. And she was encouraging each and every one of her seven sons, as they were being tortured, to look to heaven and to know that the God of heaven and earth sees them and is judging right now and that they will live in eternal glory in the promise of the resurrection if they stand firm. And one by one, they were executed right in front of her in this crowd, one by one, until she herself had no more sons and she was executed for not eating this impure, unclean food. Imagine having stories like this as a people and saying, this woman, our people have suffered and died to keep these kosher laws. Are you with me? Who do you think you are by saying we no longer have to eat this this way? Who do you think you are that you can. You think that we can compromise and change the Scriptures? People have suffered and died for these laws. But see, the work then was no different than the work is now. And that is following the Spirit of God and trying to reconcile all that we've learned and all that we know in Scriptures to what we see the Spirit doing in real time. This is what the church was doing in Acts 15. And this is our work here today, friends. As a matter of fact, I want to go back if there's what we see happening. And when I was talking about Peter, kind of interpreting his moments through his experience and not through the Scriptures. Luke, Timothy Johnson is a Catholic scholar. When he was interpreting this and studying this, he's a biblical scholar. He said this about this text. Thank you, Lee. The text of Scripture does not dictate how God should act. This is so huge. I hope you're listening. The text of Scripture does not dictate how God should act. Rather, God's actions dictate how we should understand, or I put in there, interpret the text of Scripture. If we understand this, we understand so much. Because, see, most of us, including these believers here in Acts 15, were told that the text of Scripture dictates how God should act, that God must follow the rules of the Scriptures. Are you with me? And what Luke, Timothy Johnson, this Catholic Biblical scholar is showing and pointing out is something that the apostles and these early church leaders are realizing is that God's actions dictate how we understand the text of the Scripture. See, this is the work, friends. When we're told, you can't do that because the scriptures say a certain thing and we've interpreted the certain things Scriptures in a certain way, this has always been happening. See, the writers of the Scriptures were constantly re understanding and reinterpreting and reimagining the Scriptures in light of Jesus. And if you don't, the New Testament is just full of reinterpretations and new understandings of the Scriptures because of Jesus. And friends, what this is showing us is that this is always our work. Interpreting the Scriptures through where the Spirit is leading us into the future. Friends. And this is why I want to spend another week in this text, is letting the reality of these conversations and the histories that brought these people to these points inform our current dynamic. Because we are in very similar times and similar dynamics both in the church at large, as the Southern Baptist Convention figures out, if we can allow women to even speak in churches, right? Or in the United Methodists who are splitting off because of the question about homosexuality, or in our church where we've changed our mind about sexuality. And lots of other churches in the area are looking to us to say, will this work? It's kind of a new Antioch. Will this work, friends? We're doing the same work here 2,000 years later, following the Spirit of God and reconciling what the Spirit is doing among us and among these people that God thought wasn't. That we thought weren't included. Now, how do we understand the Scriptures in light of it? We're doing the same work. And it gives me so much encouragement, it gives me so much peace as I navigate these disruptive conversations around us and we see that those things are same things are happening in scriptures. If you're able, friends, let's stand. God, I want this story to mold and shape and transform us as we have these very similar conversations and live through these very similar dynamics. I know there's so many people in this room watching online who didn't share because it's even too intimate, too raw. I've had conversations with so many people in these same exact dynamics. 3 Family tension or tension with my former community or my church or people around me in these charged conversations. God, would you encourage us that these conversations, these tough, excruciating, painful, tenuous conversations have been happening since Jesus walked this planet, that this is what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus is to be in the midst of these tense conversations, reimagining things and having new understandings and seeing the scriptures in different ways. Why would we think it's any different today? So come Holy Spirit and guide us. Come Holy Spirit and point us to the truth. Come Holy Spirit and make these conversations life giving for us to come Holy Spirit and invite us into the future and show us what the future looks like in the church. I'm excited. The church so many people say is in decline and bad things are happening in the church. In America we hear this narrative that numbers are dwindling. But Jesus, I want to say I see you alive and active. I grew up hearing about revival all the time and I got weary of it. But Jesus, I see a revival happening and people that I was told could never walk with you. And it fills me with worship and wonder that these areas that we thought were dead and unavailable to you and your life. Spirit of God, they're coming alive now. Thank you again for being with us. We would love to have you join us if you are ever in the Milwaukee area and we hope you have a healthy place to gather wherever you are from.