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Good morning dear friends, today is Memorial Day, Monday May 27, and I hope you are having a great weekend.
Before we dig into our chapter of God’s Word today, which is Acts 15, I just have to tell you briefly about an amazing experience Dawn and I had Saturday. A large gathering of retired missionaries, most in their 80’s and 90’s, was held in Orlando. We drove down to immerse ourselves into the midst of it. . . Why? Some of these are my greatest living heroes.
Friends’ for 5 hours it was like I was with Hudson Taylor or DL Moody or David Livingston or any of the greatest Christian names you can think of.
They had one thing in common… they had all gone to a remote place called Irian Jaya, to serve Jesus as missionaries among the tribal peoples of those jungles. Most tribes had never before seen a white person. Never seen someone with clothes on or wearing shoes!
The languages of these tribes were unwritten and unknown outside of the tribe. These little villages were undiscovered before these missionaries, flying over the tree tops in the 1950’s and 60’s, discovered them and hacked their way through the jungles to find them.
It was remarkably difficult living and missionary work. There was nothing of modern civilization out there, not even schools for their kids so the missionaries all sent their kids out to boarding schools hundreds of miles away.
Fast forward 60 years. . .oh my! The Gospel has transformed Irian Jaya, today called Papua! There are hundreds of thousands of followers of Jesus Christ among the villagers. The Church of Jesus Christ is large and growing with Papuan Pastors and they are sending their own out as missionaries to other remote tribes or even other countries!
Their languages have been learned and alphabets written and the Bible translated and schools begun to teach the people how to write their own languages. Medical clinics have been established and the people taught basic health and hygiene and their death rate is plummeting. As they have become Christians morality has improved and violence has declined dramatically. It is one of the most amazing stories of the power of the Gospel of Jesus anywhere in the world…, since the days of Jesus… and I had an afternoon among these modern day Paul’s!
If you know me well, you can imagine I didn’t sleep much last night! In my mind, I was in the jungles of Irian Jaya. . .
Oh, don’t for a moment think it was a men’s gathering Saturday… there were more women than men in the gathering. Some of the most courageous women who’ve ever lived, I think. I can’t begin to explain what hardship it was for these dear women, some accompanying their husbands out there, bearing children out there, as fully engaged in the hard life and ministry as their husbands were. In the most primitive conditions you could possibly imagine.
And some, of course, went as single women who never married… but who left remarkable legacies in the villages.
OK enough, thanks for letting me share…
Today we’re in Acts 15 as we continue our 150 days of Summer 2019. If you’ve been on the journey with me since May 1, you’ll recall we looked at this chapter briefly when we were looking at Galatians 2, for they fit together.
Acts 15 is a ‘defining moment’ in history. A top level meeting of the leaders of the Jesus movement, was held in Jerusalem, to discuss a vital question: Must ALL men who trust Jesus Christ to be their Savior be circumcised to be in obedience to the Old Testament law of God given first to Abraham and then included in the ‘law’ as taught by Moses? Would their salvation be legitimate if they were NOT circumcised? You see this in Acts 15:1.
Underlying this question were these other questions…
1. Will God accept, as born again Christians EQUALLY, those who are Jews and those who are Gentiles?
2. Is ANYTHING needed to complete or accomplish our salvation from our sin OTHER than fully trusting in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and His death and resurrection as sufficient payment for our sin?
So in Acts 15 you see Paul & Barnabas sent to Jerusalem to resolve these fundamental questions with the Apostles and others, and Galatians 2 gives you additional detail about this meeting.
You can imagine thousands of the first generation of Christians, both Jew & Gentile, all over Palestine, held their collective breath…and waited. What would the Holy Spirit lead these men to conclude? What had Jesus taught them? What would the future of the global church be?
Notice Acts 15:8-11 Peter speaks up in this meeting with great courage and reminds them of his experience with Cornelius and his house full of Gentiles in Caesarea, as recorded in Acts 10. Remember?
Don’t you love the pronouncement made by James in vs. 19 of Acts 15. This James, by the way is Jesus’ 1/2 brother who wrote the book of James which we just finished reading. As you can tell, he’s one of the key leaders of the Jesus movement by this time.
Can I point out one or two other interesting things I see in Acts 15. Notice in vs. 22 the leaders decide to send a delegation of two of their leadership, back with Paul & Barnabas to make sure the Gentile Christians understand they really are well received into this great movement. Do you see who they send? Silas and “Judas called Barsabbas”. Now look at Acts 1:21-26, could this be the same “man called Barsabbas” who had been considered as a replacement for Judas Iscariot? Interesting thought isn’t it…
OK friends, now one more major part of Acts 15. . . There is evidently a wonderful time of peaceful Church growth between verse 35 and 36 something like Acts 11:26.
But then comes the dramatic moment of a disagreement between Paul & Barnabas, which turns into an irreconcilable difference and they agree to separate and form two teams. Barnabas taking young John Mark and Paul taking Silas and they head off in two different directions.
Perhaps you’ve been troubled by this painful conflict as you’ve contemplated it in the past. No doubt voices were raised, harsh things were said, perhaps even tears were shed as they dear friends argued and then walked away from each other. No doubt for many years to come, they both replayed this moment over and over and prayed over it.
In the end, may I give you this perspective?
Remember Jesus’s last recorded words in Acts 1:8 “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, all Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.”
This was God’s ONLY and DEFINITIVE strategic plan for distributing the Gospel around the globe and planting the Church of Jesus Christ in every people group of the world, even the stone-age peoples of Irian Jaya, Indonesia in our day.
Those men to whom Jesus had said this, His disciples, had begun well… in Jerusalem and some of Judea, as the Holy Spirit empowered them. That’s the story of Acts 2-7. But it was the execution of Stephen and the persecution of Saul beginning in Acts 8 that scattered Christ followers, taking the Gospel into Samaria and beyond.
It was the transformation of Saul in Acts 9 on the road to Damascus, the Corneilus Gentile miracle of Acts 10, the mutli-ethnic Gentile Church of Acts 11 which finally propelled that first missionary journey of Acts 13 & 14 into modern day Turkey.
But my dear friends, it was this disagreement in Acts 15 which sent out TWO wonderful teams… Barnabas & Mark; Paul & Silas, which really launched the final part of Jesus’ commission… “to the ends of the earth” , as I described to you at the beginning of my comments today, as seen in Irian Jaya, Indonesia in our day.
Now, beginning tomorrow morning, the story of the growth of the first century Church of Jesus, primarily follows Paul and his journey’s, his letters and what God does with those he mentors.
One final note… don’t you love Barnabas, always the encourager, always the optimist, who sees potential in young John Mark who had abandoned them in Acts 13:13. This Mark was years later affirmed by Paul near the end of his life, as important to him (2 Timothy 4:11). This same Mark is the author of the Gospel of Mark, which is often the first book of the Bible translated into the language of a new group of people receiving the Bible for the first time, like those villagers in the jungles of Irian Jaya 50 years ago!
Thank you for such patience with me today my friends, for those of you just joining our journey, I normally try to keep this short enough you can read it in about 3 or 4 minutes. This was an exception… I simply had so much to share.
Have a great day, enjoy Acts 15!
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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