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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. Good morning, friends. Good morning. Good to see you. Let me just briefly pray and then we'll get into the scriptures and the sermon time and all that. God, I'm. I know I'm a broken record up here every week, but I'm. I'm just grateful to be here even in the warmth. I'm grateful to be here with friends. I'm grateful to be able to say prayers together and speak to you together. I'm grateful for these worship songs which root us in our faith and remind us of beautiful things. I'm grateful to be able to partake in the Eucharist together and just do these rituals, partake in these things that form us and shape us as people. Because, see, I want to be formed and shaped more by these things than my Facebook reels or my chosen news platform or the politics of the day that seems like they are just non stop in my ears and eyes and imagination. I want to be formed and shaped more by these ideas and themes and invitations that you're giving us. Jesus of hope and life and beauty and goodness. So just come continue to do that. Amen. Think with me for a moment about villains in the Bible. Villains in the Bible who are some decent quintessential. Who's a villain in the Bible? Give me some thoughts. Let's do some little Sunday school activity as our kids are in Sunday school. Let's do it. Do that together. Who's a villain? Who. Forrest is going for the jugular right here. Satan. Right. Like you. That's. Yes. Good. Yes. Chad, I saw something on the tip of your tongue. Pharaoh. Another good major villain. We are getting some big ones out of the way here. Other villains of the Bible. Pharaoh. Satan. Who? Judas. Sheesh. Poor guy. You know, Cain. This is a fun exercise. What were you gonna say? Nebuchadnezzar. Yeah. In kind of a complex one. Right. Who else? Herod. Woo. Which one? Right. Keep going. Goliath. Goliath, yeah. Haman. Ooh, that's a deep cut right there. Eric. Who else? Villains in the Bible? Well, here, let's think less character, less person and more group. And here I'm just going to cut to the chase because it's hot in here. I would say the. Possibly the biggest villain or group of people who constitute kind of a villain in our imagination are pharisees. Right, Pharisees. I mean, it doesn't get much worse for you to go down in history in the most popular, bestselling book of all time as the people who were. Who set themselves against the savior of the world, right? And we Christians have. We have a really good time of vilifying Pharisees. I mean, there are ministries named after Pharisees, but mostly like, don't be a Pharisee. Right? I mean, there's. I know I have friends who are church leaders who have blogs with Pharisee in the title because that's what they don't want to be. Jesus sparred with the Pharisees. The Pharisees picked fights with the Pharisees all the time throughout the Gospels. It's just littered with these stories. And the ironic thing is that the Pharisees, there were different groups of religious leaders, Jewish leaders in Jesus day. And the Pharisees, the ironic thing is that they were kind of the leaders of the people, right? They were, they were the people's religious leaders. See, the Sadducees and other religious leaders. They were the elite, the wealthy elite. They were way too good to be found among common folk. But see, the Pharisees were actually common folk. They were not wealthy. They were not the elites. They were what we would consider middle class or even lower middle class. They were the leaders who were in and of and among the people. They were the popular ones. And the reason that Jesus sparred with the Pharisees so much or the reason that they picked so many fights is because the thing that motivated the Pharisees, the thing that fueled kind of the way, the way they saw the world was the hope for the restoration of Israel. Everything they did in their religious lives and in their whole entire lives revolved around trying to get God to reestablish Israel and re establish the kingdom of God on earth. And so the way that they thought that they would do that, and this is just a normal religious thing, this is actually. They would say biblical and they were probably right is the way they would do that is by obsessively following the law. They thought that if we as a people follow the law really rigidly and really completely, God would restore Israel to its rightful place in the world. God would restore the church to its rightful place in the world. Are you here? Are you with me? And so if. If the way to reestablish Israel's prominent place in the world is by following the law, let's get it right, they thought, right. And so what they did was they actually went above and beyond the written law that. That God's given in the. In the Scriptures. And they created what's called the oral tradition. If you, in the Gospels read the oral law or the oral tradition, we're talking about the laws that people like the Pharisees kind of made up to go first, further than the even written law. Here's the thinking behind it, is that if the law is like a fence, a wall around goodness, and if you want around. Around the dangerous stuff, it keeps us from the bad stuff and keeps us in God's good graces. The wall keeps us from that stuff. How about this? Let's not try to figure out. Let's not be like a bunch of teenagers trying to figure out how far is too far, right? Let the reader understand. But let's actually build a wall around the wall so we stay as far away from it as possible. This was literally their logic. They used phrases like, let's build a fence around the law so that we can stay as far away from sin as possible. So they would do something. They would do things like this. They would take laws that were made for the priests in the temples, and they would say, now everybody has to follow these, such as ceremonial washing before a meal. This was something that a priest would have to do. But they said, now everybody has to do it. And not just washing your hands. See, they would go to a base in a bowl, and they would pour water over their hands to wash their hands so that they didn't defile their food that they were eating, which would defile themselves, Right? And so instead of just washing their hands, they would. Some of the pious and devout ones would wash up to their wrists. And then the Pharisees said, that's not even enough. So just to make sure, they would put their. They would wash their hands. They would pour it all over from the bowl, and then they would put their hands up and they would let the water run all the way down to their elbows. And they figured some people think they're holy and sacred by washing their hands. I'm gonna get. I'm gonna get my arm up to my elbow just to make sure. See, because we're building a fence around the law, because that's what God wants from us, and that's what will establish and restore Israel to its rightful place in the world. More laws, not less. More strict adherence, because this is what God is after. Now, why am I talking about Pharisees when we're in the Book of Acts? Now, the ironic thing is that, well, Now Pharisees are popping up in the Book of Acts and in ways that I would never expect. See, the crazy thing is that these Pharisees who were just years earlier were sparring with Jesus and testing Jesus and trying to murder Jesus. Some of that group of Pharisees are now following Jesus, said yes to this Jesus that they had killed. That's astounding. But the wrinkle is in the story that we found in the Book of acts, in Acts 15 last week from the Jerusalem Council, is that some of these Pharisees say they existed in this Jerusalem church where everyone was their kind of religious person, everyone was a Jewish Christian obsessed with the law, and they just brought Jesus into their Christianity, their Jewishness. But then they heard about this church in Antioch where there's a bunch of dirty, unclean, impure, dangerous, sinful Gentiles getting saved left and right and the church is being formed around it. And can you imagine the concern and worry and even anger boiling up in the Jerusalem church among these Pharisees who are obsessed with following the law and think that's how you usher in the kingdom. And they just put Jesus on top of those religious, that religious worldview. Now they're getting angry. So they go down to Antioch, they go through the trouble of the, of going down, traveling several weeks journey to go and tell the church in Antioch. Unless you do all these rules and customs and follow this fence building theology and worldview, you can't be saved. And that begins a problem as we saw last week in the Jerusalem Council. So what we're going to do now, well, before we actually dive back into the scriptures, here's another little interesting wrinkle. See, there's another Pharisee in this story. It's not just these Pharisees who are obsessed with the law and kind of superimposing that on their worldview, on their Christianity. There's another Pharisee in the story. And that other Pharisee completely sees things in a different way. We're gonna read about this, see the contrast and ask why. And I promise I'm not gonna be too long as I do that. All right, let's. This is Acts 15. Starting in verse one. We're just gonna go right back to the beginning. We're gonna skip over a few things because we went dove into this text pretty in a pretty thorough way last week. But here we go. Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers. Unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved because that's in the Bible. You feel me? Like they're not just saying this. They didn't just pull this out of thin air. They pulled it out of the Scriptures. Like we have these debates today. This is the side that has the Scriptures to stand on. Unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses in the Bible, you cannot be saved. This brought Paul and Barnabas into a 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. Ecumenical council, like, think Vatican ii. Think major, major formational. This is important stuff. The Church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told of how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the believers very glad. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders to whom they reported everything God had done through them. Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, hey, the Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses. It's biblical. The apostles and elders met to consider this question. Kind of a sidebar. And after much, much discussion, Peter got up and 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 and of the Gospel and believe. He's speaking about the meeting with Cornelius and his friends and family. And they know that there's a famous story in the church by now, God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. As I pointed out last week, Peter doesn't justify what's going on in the church. The scandalous stuff going on in the church using scriptures. He justifies it using his lived experience experiencing the the Holy Spirit doing things he never would have expected. I'm going to point that out every time. See, the Spirit 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? That must have gotten the Pharisees really mad. No, we believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved just as they are. 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. When they had finished, James spoke up, who is the leader of the Jerusalem church? And he said, brothers, listen to me. He goes on, I'm not going to read it. You can read it yourself if you weren't here last week. But here's their conclusion about this dilemma. Do we. Do we force the Gentiles who are following Jesus to follow all the rules of Moses and to be circumcised and to do all the things, or do we not? He said, here's what we've settled on. Here's the letter to the Gentile believers in Antioch, in Syria and Cilicia. Greetings. We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said, the Pharisees. So we all agreed to choose some men and send them with our dear friends Paul and Barnabas or Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, we are sending Jude us in Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. I love that phrasing. Not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements. You are to abstain from food sacrifice to idols, from food with blood in it, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. You will do well to do these things. Farewell. Now, they could have worked on the conclusion a little bit more, you know, could have made a little more personal. But we hear those things. You are to abstain from food sacrifice to idols, from food with blood in it, or drinking blood and the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. Now, another Pharisee wrote a bunch of the Bible, a bunch of the New Testament. Obviously, I'm talking about the apostle Paul, right? Go to First Corinthians 8 and see what Paul seems to think. See, Paul, let me just remind you before we do that, could you just take that down, Beulah? Paul being a Pharisee meant that Paul was motivated by the same things that these guys were. That is strict adherence to the law. Building a fence around the fence of the law, that means persecuting the church because he was so obsessed with the way of God and the kingdom of God in following the Scriptures. This was Paul. And then he says this. And remember the Jerusalem Council, said James, the leader of the church, kind of the Pope at this time said, hey, we don't want you to eat food that's been sacrificed to idols. That's Been that that we don't want you to eat blood. And then Paul says this to the church in Corinth. Now, about sacrifice, food sacrifice to idols. We know that all, we all possess knowledge. But knowledge puffs up while. While love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves is known by God. So then, here we go. So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols. Paul should tell everyone what the Jerusalem Council said, right? We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many quote unquote gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live. What a beautiful picture. And there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food, they think they of as having been sacrificed to a God. And so their constant, since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. But food does not bring us near to God. We are no worse if we do not eat, or no better if we do. In other words, we know that this whole thing is a bunch of nothing. It's a big nothing burger. Like this whole debate, we have been told our whole lives that you shouldn't eat the food sacrificed to idols. This is what the Church has told us. But here's the deal. If you're mature in the way you follow Jesus, you should know that there is only one God. So you can dedicate and sacrifice the food to as many stupid false gods as you want. It doesn't mean a thing. Nothing. Go ahead and eat it. Paul's like, I do it all the time. Now if you could, to be honest with you, if you contextualize this, he says right after this. But hey, if it makes your friends and your family and your fellow Christians, followers of Christ stumble and sin, don't do it. It's a really beautiful way of living. But Paul's saying, this is silliness, friends. This is for immature followers of Jesus, Which is wild because Paul is directly going against what the Jerusalem church in Acts 15 in the Jerusalem Council commanded the church to follow. Paul saying that's for immature believers. Can you imagine how mad that made some people in the Jerusalem Church and some leaders? But here's my question for us. How did Paul get there? You have Pharisees on both sides of the argument, people who lived their whole lives obsessing about the law, obsessing about finding, following the law. And yet you have some Pharisees on one side, the most of the Pharisees saying, yes, following Jesus still looks like obeying the Scriptures and following the law. And you have a Pharisee on the other side saying that's we know better now. See, in Christ, we now know better and we have a different law and we follow the law of grace and we, we see things more fully now because of Jesus. How. That's my question here. How did Paul the Pharisee get there? Because I want to tell you, Paul the Pharisee lost lots of friends, wasn't welcome in many churches, I'll bet, because of this, right? Family relations grew fuzzy because of this. Because he took this step and said, everything's different now because of Jesus. How did Paul get there? And here's just a cut to the chase. Here's how it seems like Paul got there. Couple words, proximity and friendship. Proximity, friendship and love. See, if you really read the New Testament, if we just pay attention to the Book of Acts, we'll find that Paul the Pharisee, Paul the guy who is motivated, just like these other ones, to build fences around the fence of the law, obsessing about it, thinking that's how we restore Israel and bring in the usher in the kingdom of God. He had a paradigm shift when he met Jesus. But see, that doesn't change just everything. Naturally, all these Pharisees met Jesus too, and they still kept the. Their old biases and their old beliefs and just kind of put Jesus, superimpose Jesus on top of it. It's what most of us religious people do all the time. But see, here's the difference. It's those three words. Paul just found himself immersed and called to the dirty, unclean, impure people that he spent his whole life excluding. He found himself just sitting at tables with them, Sitting in circles with them and talking to them and getting to know them. He did something that was super dangerous for a religious worldview, for religious people. He spent time with the people that his tradition told him are the most dangerous. He lived among the people that his tradition had told him the whole time. The Bible says stay away from these ones. The Bible says it's because of these people that the wrath of God is upon us. Stay away from them. See, Paul spent his, gave himself to this group of people, found himself in proximity with this group of people. And what happened then is his religious biases just melted away, because that's what love does. Paul started speaking these things that he thought his former self would have thought are heretical simply because. He chose to live his life among the people who his tradition were, excluding friends. And so I could spin a whole lot of more words around this and kind of cultivate this idea in the space. But I just want to get to the point here, the application part, so we can get to the park. This is where the application for us, I don't think has. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand what do we do here with this passage and how then should we live? See, this, this. This passage in this reality speaks to me deeply because this is kind of my story as well. See, I grew up a really sheltered Christian kid and really doubled down on it in my youth and discovered that I wanted to be a pastor in that same time. And I was zealous and passionate for the Kingdom of God. I mean, everything. I was obsessed by it. But that whole time, like the first several decades of my life, I lived a very, very, very sheltered life. And it made it very, very easy to see things and see the world in black and white ways, just like Paul, just like these Pharisees. And what changed my life was just literally working amongst a group of people that I'd never thought I'd find myself amongst. Working as a server in a restaurant here in downtown Milwaukee amongst a group of people that changed my life. Can I even say this more than the church did? See, Because I saw what I would never have expected here in that group of people. In that group of people. I'm talking about people who partied hard, who did not go to church on Sunday because they were out late on Saturday night. You know what I'm talking about? I'm talking about people that I was scared of. I was discipled and raised to be scared of queer people. And the next thing you know, I've got this queer man who's trying to be my friend. And I want to figure out. I'm trying to figure out how far away I need to stay away from him. Because I don't know what's going to happen to me if I become his friend. That's my. That was how I entered into that workplace. And by the time I was done at that workplace, the spirit was undeniably inviting me to start a church for people just like those folks. Because they told me over and over again, there's no place for us to go. I would stick out like a sore thumb. And what happened is these folks started discipling me in some ways. Now that's a dangerous thing to say in the church. But I want to tell you, here's, here's. Let me say that clear, Jesus and the Spirit of God started discipling me through these folks. See, because what I discovered there is that the Holy Spirit was at work in these places where I thought the Holy Spirit was empty and void, in these places where the presence of God did not exist. And that's exactly what these stories are about in Acts 15. And so here's where the application comes in for us is friends, this is not again, doesn't take rocket science scientists to see this. We live in a world that is so siloed, where we live in echo chambers and silos because we don't want to be around people who think differently than us, who see things differently than us. So here's just for a moment, I want you to think. I want you to think for a second. Who is it that epitomizes Antichrist for you? And by Antichrist I don't mean this end times figure that's gonna ruin everything, right? Maybe you could think of that because maybe you think that they're walking around on planet Earth today. But I'm talking about who is it? Who's the person or the kind of people who you think most opposes the way of Jesus? We all have them. Think of it. Who is it for you? Beulah, can you put up the list? Is it one of these people? Which ones? Which one? Is it the MAGA Trump voters? Is that the one that you think is the worst kind of human right opposing Jesus? Is it woke liberals that you think stands opposed to all the ways of God? Is it wealthy people? Wealthy people are. We love to hate wealthy people in our world today even though they run our world, right? Trans people? Is that the community or is it people who hate trans community? Is that it for you? Or is it queer people? Is it homophobic people? Is it black people? Is it people who have black Lives Matter signs? Is it people who have all Lives Matter signs? Is it your neighbors who have blue Lives Matter signs or we back the badge signs? Or is it white suburban people? Who is it for? You. See, because I just want to say if Acts 15 is teaching us anything, it's that whoever it is on that list. Or maybe they didn't make my list. Maybe I couldn't make it long enough, you know, but maybe your, your person is another person. I think Acts 15 is telling us what God's Calling us to do is not hatefully point the finger or obsess or watch Facebook Reels or TikTok reels or whatever the weather do these days to fuel our hatred and division in silos and echo chambers. I think Acts 15 might be telling us to put those phones down, break ourselves off from the algorithms, and go make friends with those same people. Like, actually engage with your neighbors who have the yard signs that are opposite of what you think. Like, maybe become friends and immerse yourself in and seek out a trans person if you have a hard time loving trans people or have kind of bought into the lie that there are everything that's wrong with our world. My friend Bob, where are you? Bob, tell us what you said about Muslim people years ago. You said, wasn't it something like, I know I hate Muslim people. After 9 11, I had a. I went from indifference to hatred toward Muslims. Yeah. And a few years later, Jesus said, you love your enemies? And I said, well, of course, you know the guy that flips me off on the freeway. Be brief, Bob. Yep. Yep. Yes. And I realized that I needed to get to know some Muslims. And that hatred melted. There it is. There it is. Just in case you're on this side of the room or online and you couldn't hear, my friend Bob, he said, After 9 11, basically, I just filled with hatred towards Muslim people. And to get to the punchline, basically, Jesus just told them, I think you need to get to know some Muslim people. And then when he got to know some Muslim people, first of all, Bob, way to answer the call of the spirit and just say, I'm gonna go and move towards the. That I hate. That I love to hate. Not all of us have the guts to do that. And when he did that, his story is, I grew to love him. Now, I'm sure you could tell me several names of Muslim people that you love that are in your life, Bob. Right. Yeah. See, that's what love does, is it melts these hatreds and these divisions. What is it? Differences are inevitable in life, but divisions are chosen. And so here's the last question I promised. This will take, like, two minutes. Here's my last question for you from Acts 15. I wish we could go another two weeks in Acts 15, but we got to keep moving. But here's the question. There's religious people on both sides of these. Of this argument. Pharisees who are obsessed with the law, and a Pharisee who is. Whose love and experience with these hated people melted all that hatred. Here's the question what kind of religious people people are we going to be? See, because I know maybe, maybe you're here and you didn't grow up in the church and you're an atheist and you're not a religious person. You're the one person who's exempt from this. But what I wanted to put up here was what kind of Pharisees do we want to be? Because I think we're all Pharisees, right? Like, we've all, many of us, most of us have grown up in the church and in these religious circles, and we're discipled in certain ways and we're all obsessed with certain things religiously. So the question isn't, are we Pharisees or are we religious people? It's what kind of Pharisees, what kind of religious people are we gonna be? Are we gonna be the religious people who are obsessed with the law and people following it? Or are we gonna be the kind who are obsessed with bringing the ones that we hated in? Are we gonna be the kind of religious people who are obsessed with closing and locking the gates to. To all those dangerous people out there to the church? Or are we going to be the kind of religious people who are opening our doors to all sorts of people, especially the ones that we used to love to hate and exclude? What kind of religious people are we going to be? Are we going to have a table of Jesus that represents Jesus in a way that says that this is only for us and our kind of people, not you dangerous, dirty, unclean kind of people? Or are we going to have a table of Jesus that says all are welcome? It doesn't matter who you are, what you've believed, who you love, what hat you wear, who you vote for. All are welcome. We're all religious people. In the story of Acts 15, the question is, which ones are we? Let's, if you're able, friends, let's stand and pray. And as we close out our time together, sing one more song before we go on our way to the picnic. Jesus, as I read this stuff in the scriptures, I have this common refrain through my head, which is one of the common refrains, is man, Jesus. I know these debates are raging today, just like this one. And would you help me to be found on the right side? Would you help us to be the kind of religious people who let proximity and friendship and love melt away our hatred? Just like Bob said? Would you help us to be the kind of religious people who've been discipled and immersed in the scriptures and have all sorts of voices in our ears and in our heads and in our hearts telling us what we should and shouldn't do who we should and shouldn't be around. Would you help us listen, hear you clearly and follow you in your voice only Holy Spirit Would you help us to testify to the work of the Spirit in and among the people that we find are so much closer than we ever thought? Would you help us to learn and be discipled in those spaces? Learn to disciple to see see you at work Holy Spirit. So we just I thank you for this for these stories. I'm grateful for them that continual invite invite us into more maturity, more fullness, more goodness and seeing the world in more beautiful ways. And so Jesus we sing to you one more time together. 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.

Summary5 min read

Podcast Summary: Brew City Church — Proximity Melts Hatred | Holy Disruption

Episode Date: July 26, 2026
Host: Brew City Church

Overview

This episode, “Proximity Melts Hatred,” centers on Acts 15 and the Jerusalem Council, exploring how religious traditions and rules can both divide and be transformed by proximity, friendship, and love. The message challenges listeners to re-examine deeply held religious biases, especially about who is "in" or "out," drawing parallels between biblical conflicts and today's polarized climate. The host uses personal stories, biblical exegesis, and community testimony to advocate for inclusion and the transformative power of encountering those we have been taught to exclude.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Biblical Villains & the Pharisees (03:00–10:00)

Host opens with a participatory question: Who are the villains in the Bible? Answers include Satan, Pharaoh, Judas, Nebuchadnezzar, Herod, Goliath, Haman.
Insight: “Possibly the biggest villain or group of people who constitute kind of a villain in our imagination are Pharisees. Right, the Pharisees.” (07:15)
- Pharisees, often vilified, were not the religious elite but the “common folk,” obsessively devoted to restoring Israel through strict law-keeping.
- Their approach: Build a “fence around the law” to ensure no one even approaches the line of sin.

2. Acts 15 and the Jerusalem Council (11:00–20:00)

Setting: Some Pharisees, now Christian, struggle with welcoming Gentile believers unless they follow strict Jewish laws.
- “They just brought Jesus into their Christianity, their Jewishness. But then they heard about this church in Antioch where there’s a bunch of dirty, unclean, impure, dangerous, sinful Gentiles getting saved.” (12:45)
Text Read: Acts 15:1-11 quoted and discussed. Pharisaic believers argue Gentiles must be circumcised and keep the law.
Peter’s argument: Experience of the Holy Spirit among Gentiles trumps the law; “the Spirit did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith.” (17:30)
- “Peter doesn’t justify what’s going on in the church...using scriptures. He justifies it using his lived experience.” (17:55)

3. Paul the Pharisee: A Paradigm Shift (21:00–34:00)

Contrasting Pharisees: Some cling to the law, but Paul, himself a former Pharisee, now proclaims the law no longer applies in the same way because of Jesus.
Key Quote:
- “Paul saying that’s for immature believers. Can you imagine how mad that made some people in the Jerusalem church...” (28:30)
How did Paul change?
- Not just a theological or intellectual shift, but through proximity, friendship, and love with those he was taught to avoid.
- “Paul just found himself immersed and called to the dirty, unclean, impure people that he spent his whole life excluding...he spent time with the people his tradition told him are the most dangerous.” (33:25)

4. Personal Testimony: Proximity Changes Everything (34:30–38:30)

The host shares their own journey, transitioning from a sheltered, law-observing Christian to being transformed through friendships outside the church, especially with marginalized communities.
Notable Quote:
- “What changed my life was just literally working amongst a group of people that I’d never thought I’d find myself amongst...Can I even say this more than the church did?” (36:24)
Inclusion of queer friends and others dismissed by the Christian community led to spiritual growth and a call to plant a radically inclusive church.

5. Modern Application: Who Is Your “Other”? (39:00–48:00)

Challenges listeners to consider: Who do you view as antithetical to Christ’s way? Who do you avoid or judge—Trump voters, woke liberals, wealthy people, trans or queer folks, BLM supporters, suburbanites?
Practical call: Don’t vilify from a distance. Get close, build relationships, let real love and proximity melt hatred.
Community Testimony:
- Bob (listener): Having moved from indifference to hatred toward Muslims post-9/11, he intentionally befriended Muslims, and his hatred “melted.” (46:00)
- Host: “See, that’s what love does, is it melts these hatreds and these divisions. Differences are inevitable in life, but divisions are chosen.” (47:10)

6. What Kind of Religious People Will We Be? (48:10–53:50)

We’re all shaped by religious traditions; the choice is whether we’ll be those who “lock the gates” or those who “open the doors.”
Final challenge:
- “Are we going to be the kind of religious people who are obsessed with closing and locking the gates to all those dangerous people out there...or are we going to be the kind of religious people who are opening our doors, especially to those we used to hate and exclude?” (50:20)
The “table of Jesus” is meant for all, regardless of “who you are, what you’ve believed, who you love, what hat you wear, or who you vote for.” (52:30)

Notable Quotes

“I want to be formed and shaped more by these ideas and themes and invitations that you’re giving us, Jesus—of hope and life and beauty and goodness.” (03:20)
“If you really read the New Testament...Paul...had a paradigm shift when he met Jesus. But that doesn’t change just everything...Paul started speaking these things that his former self would have thought are heretical simply because he chose to live his life among the people his tradition were excluding.” (32:00–33:40)
“What changed my life was just literally working amongst a group of people that I’d never thought I’d find myself amongst. Working as a server in a restaurant here in downtown Milwaukee...” (36:24)
“Differences are inevitable in life, but divisions are chosen.” (47:10)
“Are we going to be the kind who are obsessed with bringing the ones that we hated in?” (50:00)

Important Timestamps

03:00 — “Who are the villains in the Bible?”: Pharisees explored
12:45 — Section on Jewish Christians and the church in Antioch
17:30 — Peter: “The Spirit did not discriminate...”
28:30 — Paul vs. Jerusalem Council on food sacrificed to idols
33:25 — How Paul’s proximity to non-Jews transformed him
36:24 — Host's personal testimony of transformation
46:00 — Bob’s story: Befriending Muslims after 9/11
47:10 — “Differences are inevitable; divisions are chosen.”
50:20 — The core application: What kind of religious people will we be?

Conclusion

The episode calls for a radical rethinking of religious boundaries, urging spiritual growth not through stricter rules but through relationships with those we’ve been taught to fear or exclude. The host and community voices emphasize that hatred and division are overcome not by argument or greater knowledge, but by genuine proximity, friendship, and the inclusive love modeled by Jesus. The challenge for listeners: Who are you willing to draw close to, and will you let your encounters transform your heart and your view of God's community?

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[00:01]
A
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. Good morning, friends. Good morning. Good to see you. Let me just briefly pray and then we'll get into the scriptures and the sermon time and all that. God, I'm. I know I'm a broken record up here every week, but I'm. I'm just grateful to be here even in the warmth. I'm grateful to be here with friends. I'm grateful to be able to say prayers together and speak to you together. I'm grateful for these worship songs which root us in our faith and remind us of beautiful things. I'm grateful to be able to partake in the Eucharist together and just do these rituals, partake in these things that form us and shape us as people. Because, see, I want to be formed and shaped more by these things than my Facebook reels or my chosen news platform or the politics of the day that seems like they are just non stop in my ears and eyes and imagination. I want to be formed and shaped more by these ideas and themes and invitations that you're giving us. Jesus of hope and life and beauty and goodness. So just come continue to do that. Amen. Think with me for a moment about villains in the Bible. Villains in the Bible who are some decent quintessential. Who's a villain in the Bible? Give me some thoughts. Let's do some little Sunday school activity as our kids are in Sunday school. Let's do it. Do that together. Who's a villain? Who. Forrest is going for the jugular right here. Satan. Right. Like you. That's. Yes. Good. Yes. Chad, I saw something on the tip of your tongue. Pharaoh. Another good major villain. We are getting some big ones out of the way here. Other villains of the Bible. Pharaoh. Satan. Who? Judas. Sheesh. Poor guy. You know, Cain. This is a fun exercise. What were you gonna say? Nebuchadnezzar. Yeah. In kind of a complex one. Right. Who else? Herod. Woo. Which one? Right. Keep going. Goliath. Goliath, yeah. Haman. Ooh, that's a deep cut right there. Eric. Who else? Villains in the Bible? Well, here, let's think less character, less person and more group. And here I'm just going to cut to the chase because it's hot in here. I would say the. Possibly the biggest villain or group of people who constitute kind of a villain in our imagination are pharisees. Right, Pharisees. I mean, it doesn't get much worse for you to go down in history in the most popular, bestselling book of all time as the people who were. Who set themselves against the savior of the world, right? And we Christians have. We have a really good time of vilifying Pharisees. I mean, there are ministries named after Pharisees, but mostly like, don't be a Pharisee. Right? I mean, there's. I know I have friends who are church leaders who have blogs with Pharisee in the title because that's what they don't want to be. Jesus sparred with the Pharisees. The Pharisees picked fights with the Pharisees all the time throughout the Gospels. It's just littered with these stories. And the ironic thing is that the Pharisees, there were different groups of religious leaders, Jewish leaders in Jesus day. And the Pharisees, the ironic thing is that they were kind of the leaders of the people, right? They were, they were the people's religious leaders. See, the Sadducees and other religious leaders. They were the elite, the wealthy elite. They were way too good to be found among common folk. But see, the Pharisees were actually common folk. They were not wealthy. They were not the elites. They were what we would consider middle class or even lower middle class. They were the leaders who were in and of and among the people. They were the popular ones. And the reason that Jesus sparred with the Pharisees so much or the reason that they picked so many fights is because the thing that motivated the Pharisees, the thing that fueled kind of the way, the way they saw the world was the hope for the restoration of Israel. Everything they did in their religious lives and in their whole entire lives revolved around trying to get God to reestablish Israel and re establish the kingdom of God on earth. And so the way that they thought that they would do that, and this is just a normal religious thing, this is actually. They would say biblical and they were probably right is the way they would do that is by obsessively following the law. They thought that if we as a people follow the law really rigidly and really completely, God would restore Israel to its rightful place in the world. God would restore the church to its rightful place in the world. Are you here? Are you with me? And so if. If the way to reestablish Israel's prominent place in the world is by following the law, let's get it right, they thought, right. And so what they did was they actually went above and beyond the written law that. That God's given in the. In the Scriptures. And they created what's called the oral tradition. If you, in the Gospels read the oral law or the oral tradition, we're talking about the laws that people like the Pharisees kind of made up to go first, further than the even written law. Here's the thinking behind it, is that if the law is like a fence, a wall around goodness, and if you want around. Around the dangerous stuff, it keeps us from the bad stuff and keeps us in God's good graces. The wall keeps us from that stuff. How about this? Let's not try to figure out. Let's not be like a bunch of teenagers trying to figure out how far is too far, right? Let the reader understand. But let's actually build a wall around the wall so we stay as far away from it as possible. This was literally their logic. They used phrases like, let's build a fence around the law so that we can stay as far away from sin as possible. So they would do something. They would do things like this. They would take laws that were made for the priests in the temples, and they would say, now everybody has to follow these, such as ceremonial washing before a meal. This was something that a priest would have to do. But they said, now everybody has to do it. And not just washing your hands. See, they would go to a base in a bowl, and they would pour water over their hands to wash their hands so that they didn't defile their food that they were eating, which would defile themselves, Right? And so instead of just washing their hands, they would. Some of the pious and devout ones would wash up to their wrists. And then the Pharisees said, that's not even enough. So just to make sure, they would put their. They would wash their hands. They would pour it all over from the bowl, and then they would put their hands up and they would let the water run all the way down to their elbows. And they figured some people think they're holy and sacred by washing their hands. I'm gonna get. I'm gonna get my arm up to my elbow just to make sure. See, because we're building a fence around the law, because that's what God wants from us, and that's what will establish and restore Israel to its rightful place in the world. More laws, not less. More strict adherence, because this is what God is after. Now, why am I talking about Pharisees when we're in the Book of Acts? Now, the ironic thing is that, well, Now Pharisees are popping up in the Book of Acts and in ways that I would never expect. See, the crazy thing is that these Pharisees who were just years earlier were sparring with Jesus and testing Jesus and trying to murder Jesus. Some of that group of Pharisees are now following Jesus, said yes to this Jesus that they had killed. That's astounding. But the wrinkle is in the story that we found in the Book of acts, in Acts 15 last week from the Jerusalem Council, is that some of these Pharisees say they existed in this Jerusalem church where everyone was their kind of religious person, everyone was a Jewish Christian obsessed with the law, and they just brought Jesus into their Christianity, their Jewishness. But then they heard about this church in Antioch where there's a bunch of dirty, unclean, impure, dangerous, sinful Gentiles getting saved left and right and the church is being formed around it. And can you imagine the concern and worry and even anger boiling up in the Jerusalem church among these Pharisees who are obsessed with following the law and think that's how you usher in the kingdom. And they just put Jesus on top of those religious, that religious worldview. Now they're getting angry. So they go down to Antioch, they go through the trouble of the, of going down, traveling several weeks journey to go and tell the church in Antioch. Unless you do all these rules and customs and follow this fence building theology and worldview, you can't be saved. And that begins a problem as we saw last week in the Jerusalem Council. So what we're going to do now, well, before we actually dive back into the scriptures, here's another little interesting wrinkle. See, there's another Pharisee in this story. It's not just these Pharisees who are obsessed with the law and kind of superimposing that on their worldview, on their Christianity. There's another Pharisee in the story. And that other Pharisee completely sees things in a different way. We're gonna read about this, see the contrast and ask why. And I promise I'm not gonna be too long as I do that. All right, let's. This is Acts 15. Starting in verse one. We're just gonna go right back to the beginning. We're gonna skip over a few things because we went dove into this text pretty in a pretty thorough way last week. But here we go. Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers. Unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved because that's in the Bible. You feel me? Like they're not just saying this. They didn't just pull this out of thin air. They pulled it out of the Scriptures. Like we have these debates today. This is the side that has the Scriptures to stand on. Unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses in the Bible, you cannot be saved. This brought Paul and Barnabas into a 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. Ecumenical council, like, think Vatican ii. Think major, major formational. This is important stuff. The Church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told of how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the believers very glad. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders to whom they reported everything God had done through them. Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, hey, the Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses. It's biblical. The apostles and elders met to consider this question. Kind of a sidebar. And after much, much discussion, Peter got up and 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 and of the Gospel and believe. He's speaking about the meeting with Cornelius and his friends and family. And they know that there's a famous story in the church by now, God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. As I pointed out last week, Peter doesn't justify what's going on in the church. The scandalous stuff going on in the church using scriptures. He justifies it using his lived experience experiencing the the Holy Spirit doing things he never would have expected. I'm going to point that out every time. See, the Spirit 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? That must have gotten the Pharisees really mad. No, we believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved just as they are. 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. When they had finished, James spoke up, who is the leader of the Jerusalem church? And he said, brothers, listen to me. He goes on, I'm not going to read it. You can read it yourself if you weren't here last week. But here's their conclusion about this dilemma. Do we. Do we force the Gentiles who are following Jesus to follow all the rules of Moses and to be circumcised and to do all the things, or do we not? He said, here's what we've settled on. Here's the letter to the Gentile believers in Antioch, in Syria and Cilicia. Greetings. We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said, the Pharisees. So we all agreed to choose some men and send them with our dear friends Paul and Barnabas or Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, we are sending Jude us in Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. I love that phrasing. Not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements. You are to abstain from food sacrifice to idols, from food with blood in it, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. You will do well to do these things. Farewell. Now, they could have worked on the conclusion a little bit more, you know, could have made a little more personal. But we hear those things. You are to abstain from food sacrifice to idols, from food with blood in it, or drinking blood and the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. Now, another Pharisee wrote a bunch of the Bible, a bunch of the New Testament. Obviously, I'm talking about the apostle Paul, right? Go to First Corinthians 8 and see what Paul seems to think. See, Paul, let me just remind you before we do that, could you just take that down, Beulah? Paul being a Pharisee meant that Paul was motivated by the same things that these guys were. That is strict adherence to the law. Building a fence around the fence of the law, that means persecuting the church because he was so obsessed with the way of God and the kingdom of God in following the Scriptures. This was Paul. And then he says this. And remember the Jerusalem Council, said James, the leader of the church, kind of the Pope at this time said, hey, we don't want you to eat food that's been sacrificed to idols. That's Been that that we don't want you to eat blood. And then Paul says this to the church in Corinth. Now, about sacrifice, food sacrifice to idols. We know that all, we all possess knowledge. But knowledge puffs up while. While love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves is known by God. So then, here we go. So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols. Paul should tell everyone what the Jerusalem Council said, right? We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many quote unquote gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live. What a beautiful picture. And there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food, they think they of as having been sacrificed to a God. And so their constant, since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. But food does not bring us near to God. We are no worse if we do not eat, or no better if we do. In other words, we know that this whole thing is a bunch of nothing. It's a big nothing burger. Like this whole debate, we have been told our whole lives that you shouldn't eat the food sacrificed to idols. This is what the Church has told us. But here's the deal. If you're mature in the way you follow Jesus, you should know that there is only one God. So you can dedicate and sacrifice the food to as many stupid false gods as you want. It doesn't mean a thing. Nothing. Go ahead and eat it. Paul's like, I do it all the time. Now if you could, to be honest with you, if you contextualize this, he says right after this. But hey, if it makes your friends and your family and your fellow Christians, followers of Christ stumble and sin, don't do it. It's a really beautiful way of living. But Paul's saying, this is silliness, friends. This is for immature followers of Jesus, Which is wild because Paul is directly going against what the Jerusalem church in Acts 15 in the Jerusalem Council commanded the church to follow. Paul saying that's for immature believers. Can you imagine how mad that made some people in the Jerusalem Church and some leaders? But here's my question for us. How did Paul get there? You have Pharisees on both sides of the argument, people who lived their whole lives obsessing about the law, obsessing about finding, following the law. And yet you have some Pharisees on one side, the most of the Pharisees saying, yes, following Jesus still looks like obeying the Scriptures and following the law. And you have a Pharisee on the other side saying that's we know better now. See, in Christ, we now know better and we have a different law and we follow the law of grace and we, we see things more fully now because of Jesus. How. That's my question here. How did Paul the Pharisee get there? Because I want to tell you, Paul the Pharisee lost lots of friends, wasn't welcome in many churches, I'll bet, because of this, right? Family relations grew fuzzy because of this. Because he took this step and said, everything's different now because of Jesus. How did Paul get there? And here's just a cut to the chase. Here's how it seems like Paul got there. Couple words, proximity and friendship. Proximity, friendship and love. See, if you really read the New Testament, if we just pay attention to the Book of Acts, we'll find that Paul the Pharisee, Paul the guy who is motivated, just like these other ones, to build fences around the fence of the law, obsessing about it, thinking that's how we restore Israel and bring in the usher in the kingdom of God. He had a paradigm shift when he met Jesus. But see, that doesn't change just everything. Naturally, all these Pharisees met Jesus too, and they still kept the. Their old biases and their old beliefs and just kind of put Jesus, superimpose Jesus on top of it. It's what most of us religious people do all the time. But see, here's the difference. It's those three words. Paul just found himself immersed and called to the dirty, unclean, impure people that he spent his whole life excluding. He found himself just sitting at tables with them, Sitting in circles with them and talking to them and getting to know them. He did something that was super dangerous for a religious worldview, for religious people. He spent time with the people that his tradition told him are the most dangerous. He lived among the people that his tradition had told him the whole time. The Bible says stay away from these ones. The Bible says it's because of these people that the wrath of God is upon us. Stay away from them. See, Paul spent his, gave himself to this group of people, found himself in proximity with this group of people. And what happened then is his religious biases just melted away, because that's what love does. Paul started speaking these things that he thought his former self would have thought are heretical simply because. He chose to live his life among the people who his tradition were, excluding friends. And so I could spin a whole lot of more words around this and kind of cultivate this idea in the space. But I just want to get to the point here, the application part, so we can get to the park. This is where the application for us, I don't think has. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand what do we do here with this passage and how then should we live? See, this, this. This passage in this reality speaks to me deeply because this is kind of my story as well. See, I grew up a really sheltered Christian kid and really doubled down on it in my youth and discovered that I wanted to be a pastor in that same time. And I was zealous and passionate for the Kingdom of God. I mean, everything. I was obsessed by it. But that whole time, like the first several decades of my life, I lived a very, very, very sheltered life. And it made it very, very easy to see things and see the world in black and white ways, just like Paul, just like these Pharisees. And what changed my life was just literally working amongst a group of people that I'd never thought I'd find myself amongst. Working as a server in a restaurant here in downtown Milwaukee amongst a group of people that changed my life. Can I even say this more than the church did? See, Because I saw what I would never have expected here in that group of people. In that group of people. I'm talking about people who partied hard, who did not go to church on Sunday because they were out late on Saturday night. You know what I'm talking about? I'm talking about people that I was scared of. I was discipled and raised to be scared of queer people. And the next thing you know, I've got this queer man who's trying to be my friend. And I want to figure out. I'm trying to figure out how far away I need to stay away from him. Because I don't know what's going to happen to me if I become his friend. That's my. That was how I entered into that workplace. And by the time I was done at that workplace, the spirit was undeniably inviting me to start a church for people just like those folks. Because they told me over and over again, there's no place for us to go. I would stick out like a sore thumb. And what happened is these folks started discipling me in some ways. Now that's a dangerous thing to say in the church. But I want to tell you, here's, here's. Let me say that clear, Jesus and the Spirit of God started discipling me through these folks. See, because what I discovered there is that the Holy Spirit was at work in these places where I thought the Holy Spirit was empty and void, in these places where the presence of God did not exist. And that's exactly what these stories are about in Acts 15. And so here's where the application comes in for us is friends, this is not again, doesn't take rocket science scientists to see this. We live in a world that is so siloed, where we live in echo chambers and silos because we don't want to be around people who think differently than us, who see things differently than us. So here's just for a moment, I want you to think. I want you to think for a second. Who is it that epitomizes Antichrist for you? And by Antichrist I don't mean this end times figure that's gonna ruin everything, right? Maybe you could think of that because maybe you think that they're walking around on planet Earth today. But I'm talking about who is it? Who's the person or the kind of people who you think most opposes the way of Jesus? We all have them. Think of it. Who is it for you? Beulah, can you put up the list? Is it one of these people? Which ones? Which one? Is it the MAGA Trump voters? Is that the one that you think is the worst kind of human right opposing Jesus? Is it woke liberals that you think stands opposed to all the ways of God? Is it wealthy people? Wealthy people are. We love to hate wealthy people in our world today even though they run our world, right? Trans people? Is that the community or is it people who hate trans community? Is that it for you? Or is it queer people? Is it homophobic people? Is it black people? Is it people who have black Lives Matter signs? Is it people who have all Lives Matter signs? Is it your neighbors who have blue Lives Matter signs or we back the badge signs? Or is it white suburban people? Who is it for? You. See, because I just want to say if Acts 15 is teaching us anything, it's that whoever it is on that list. Or maybe they didn't make my list. Maybe I couldn't make it long enough, you know, but maybe your, your person is another person. I think Acts 15 is telling us what God's Calling us to do is not hatefully point the finger or obsess or watch Facebook Reels or TikTok reels or whatever the weather do these days to fuel our hatred and division in silos and echo chambers. I think Acts 15 might be telling us to put those phones down, break ourselves off from the algorithms, and go make friends with those same people. Like, actually engage with your neighbors who have the yard signs that are opposite of what you think. Like, maybe become friends and immerse yourself in and seek out a trans person if you have a hard time loving trans people or have kind of bought into the lie that there are everything that's wrong with our world. My friend Bob, where are you? Bob, tell us what you said about Muslim people years ago. You said, wasn't it something like, I know I hate Muslim people. After 9 11, I had a. I went from indifference to hatred toward Muslims. Yeah. And a few years later, Jesus said, you love your enemies? And I said, well, of course, you know the guy that flips me off on the freeway. Be brief, Bob. Yep. Yep. Yes. And I realized that I needed to get to know some Muslims. And that hatred melted. There it is. There it is. Just in case you're on this side of the room or online and you couldn't hear, my friend Bob, he said, After 9 11, basically, I just filled with hatred towards Muslim people. And to get to the punchline, basically, Jesus just told them, I think you need to get to know some Muslim people. And then when he got to know some Muslim people, first of all, Bob, way to answer the call of the spirit and just say, I'm gonna go and move towards the. That I hate. That I love to hate. Not all of us have the guts to do that. And when he did that, his story is, I grew to love him. Now, I'm sure you could tell me several names of Muslim people that you love that are in your life, Bob. Right. Yeah. See, that's what love does, is it melts these hatreds and these divisions. What is it? Differences are inevitable in life, but divisions are chosen. And so here's the last question I promised. This will take, like, two minutes. Here's my last question for you from Acts 15. I wish we could go another two weeks in Acts 15, but we got to keep moving. But here's the question. There's religious people on both sides of these. Of this argument. Pharisees who are obsessed with the law, and a Pharisee who is. Whose love and experience with these hated people melted all that hatred. Here's the question what kind of religious people people are we going to be? See, because I know maybe, maybe you're here and you didn't grow up in the church and you're an atheist and you're not a religious person. You're the one person who's exempt from this. But what I wanted to put up here was what kind of Pharisees do we want to be? Because I think we're all Pharisees, right? Like, we've all, many of us, most of us have grown up in the church and in these religious circles, and we're discipled in certain ways and we're all obsessed with certain things religiously. So the question isn't, are we Pharisees or are we religious people? It's what kind of Pharisees, what kind of religious people are we gonna be? Are we gonna be the religious people who are obsessed with the law and people following it? Or are we gonna be the kind who are obsessed with bringing the ones that we hated in? Are we gonna be the kind of religious people who are obsessed with closing and locking the gates to. To all those dangerous people out there to the church? Or are we going to be the kind of religious people who are opening our doors to all sorts of people, especially the ones that we used to love to hate and exclude? What kind of religious people are we going to be? Are we going to have a table of Jesus that represents Jesus in a way that says that this is only for us and our kind of people, not you dangerous, dirty, unclean kind of people? Or are we going to have a table of Jesus that says all are welcome? It doesn't matter who you are, what you've believed, who you love, what hat you wear, who you vote for. All are welcome. We're all religious people. In the story of Acts 15, the question is, which ones are we? Let's, if you're able, friends, let's stand and pray. And as we close out our time together, sing one more song before we go on our way to the picnic. Jesus, as I read this stuff in the scriptures, I have this common refrain through my head, which is one of the common refrains, is man, Jesus. I know these debates are raging today, just like this one. And would you help me to be found on the right side? Would you help us to be the kind of religious people who let proximity and friendship and love melt away our hatred? Just like Bob said? Would you help us to be the kind of religious people who've been discipled and immersed in the scriptures and have all sorts of voices in our ears and in our heads and in our hearts telling us what we should and shouldn't do who we should and shouldn't be around. Would you help us listen, hear you clearly and follow you in your voice only Holy Spirit Would you help us to testify to the work of the Spirit in and among the people that we find are so much closer than we ever thought? Would you help us to learn and be discipled in those spaces? Learn to disciple to see see you at work Holy Spirit. So we just I thank you for this for these stories. I'm grateful for them that continual invite invite us into more maturity, more fullness, more goodness and seeing the world in more beautiful ways. And so Jesus we sing to you one more time together. 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.