Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Acts 15: The Jerusalem Council (Deliberations)
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

We read today for our sermon text from the book of Acts. And we see in this the flow of biblical history and the way our history moves as well. And we do see in this movement toward the unity we just sang of and prayed for as well to God for. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. We’re reading from Acts chapter 15. I’ll begin reading at verse 6. Acts 15:6. And we’ll continue on through verse 33.

And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter.

And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up and said unto them, “Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago, God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe, and God, which knoweth the hearts, bear the witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us. And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.

Now therefore, why tempt ye God to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved, even as they.”

Then all the multitudes kept silent and gave audience to Barnabas and Paul, declaring what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them. And after they held their peace, James answered, saying, “Men and brethren, hearken unto me.

Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. And to this agree the words of the prophets, as it is written, After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down. And I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up, that the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called, sayeth the Lord, who doeth all these things.

Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world. Wherefore my sentence is that we trouble not them which from among the Gentiles are turned to God. But that we write unto them that they abstain from pollutions of idols and from fornication and from things strangled and from blood. For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day.

Then pleased it the apostles and elders with the whole church to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch to talk with Paul and Barnabas, namely Judas, surnamed Barsabas and Silas, chief men among the brethren. And they wrote letters by them after this manner. The apostles and elders and brethren send greetings unto the brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch, in Syria, and Cilicia. For as much as we have heard that certain men went out from us, have troubled you with words subverting your souls, saying, “He must be circumcised and keep the law,” to whom we gave no such commandments.

It seemed good unto us being assembled with one accord to send chosen men unto you with our beloved Barsabas, Barnabas and Paul, men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things, that you abstain from meat offered to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication.

From which, if you keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well. So when they were dismissed, they came to Antioch. And when they had gathered the multitude together, they delivered the epistle, which when they had read, they rejoiced for the consolation. And Judas and Silas being prophets also themselves exhorted the brethren with many words and confirmed them. And after they had tarried there, they were let go in peace from the brethren unto the apostles.

Please be seated. We thank God for his word and we pray now that he may illuminate to our understanding.

## The Jerusalem Council

We’re discussing the council of Jerusalem, so-called. We began last week with talking about the controversy that produced the Jerusalem Council. This week we’ll talk about the deliberations of the council and then two weeks from today we’ll return to this text in Acts and look at the decision of the council and its effect upon the church at Antioch and the surrounding areas as well.

This is a big portion of scripture and has many implications for it. We could spend a lot of time on it. Three weeks is probably almost a bare minimum that we should spend on it.

Now what I want us to see out of today’s text that we just read—and we’ll focus really upon the first half of the text that was read—the deliberations at Jerusalem that occurred and result in response to this controversy. I want us to think about five specific things here by way of application.

## Five Points of Application

First of all, we see in this text as well as the text leading up to this from last week a proper procedure by which to handle problems, controversies and disputes. Now the specific reference is to an international conference controversy rather it spans nations, you realize, but we can make application of it within the church, within the home, within the civil state, within our communities as well.

Whenever there’s controversy, we see here a biblical procedure outlined for us that will be efficacious for us to follow in our own disputes as well—whether it’s in our homes or churches or whatever. So I want to look at some of the means by which this controversy is resolved. We talked about this a little bit last week. You remember we spoke about some initial principles about biblical conflict resolution.

Now, I want us to recognize however that while I do think it’s important to note these procedures, ultimately it’s not these specific procedures themselves that produce unity. It is the organism of the church. In other words, there’s a danger in relying too much on supposed procedures and a series of steps that you must go through in terms of conflict resolution. We don’t see here a reference to a biblically-based book of church order or something like that.

Now, they may have had one, but what we see here is rather an organic account. May be one way to look at it. And so there’s a balance to this first point. I want us to note as we go through these things, and you make application in your home, something about proper procedure for conflict resolution. But be careful to recognize that we can’t set up a series of numbered steps that will always produce the desired result.

What we have is a very dynamic and flowing sort of situation, because that’s who men are. We’re complex people, and I’m using men in the covenantal sense of the term. You know, men stands for men and women covenantally speaking.

But I want to talk about procedure. Secondly, so the first thing I want us to do is take applications of this in terms of procedure for conflict resolution.

Secondly, and this is really somewhat related to that, is that I want us to recognize that at the council of Jerusalem they argue biblically. The resolution of the matter is produced by reference to the scriptures. Now we have two talks given—well actually three. Peter speaks, Paul and Barnabas shortly give a little bit of—actually probably a long account summarized for us in a single verse—and then James speaks. James makes reference to the scriptures, Amos specifically. Peter makes reference to God’s miraculous act, repeating so to speak the Pentecost experience of the Jews with the Gentiles back when he visited Cornelius.

And so, first of all, biblical procedures. Secondly, in relationship to that, I want us to remember that we should argue, debate, dispute, consider events that are potentially divisive from biblical reasons—not making appeals ultimately to nature, to the created order, or to our reason and what seems reasonable to us, nor to our emotions, what is pleasing to our emotions. No, we want to base our discussions. Even using the correct procedures, we want to argue and discuss things biblically with reference to the scriptures whenever possible. So that’s the second point: first, procedure. Second, argue biblically.

Third, I want us to recognize that elders are important in this process. There are officers, there is a hierarchy, if you want to look at it that way, established in the church. Many of us years ago saw that movie, *The Mission*. And while we don’t espouse what the Catholic Church teaches, the Roman Catholic Church, nonetheless, one statement to every one of the Jesuit priests was excellent. He said, “The church is not a democracy. It is an order.” And so there is an order presented to us in the council of Jerusalem. Elders are important.

And in fact, I think this account gives us an increasing importance of elders. It’s a transition away from apostles to the permanent offices of elders in the church. Now, this is application to our homes as well. If we’re going to try to use biblical procedures, which we’ll talk about in a little bit, and we’re going to try to argue biblically, discuss things biblically in the context of our homes or our workplaces or whatever, we also want to recognize that in the home there is a hierarchy as well.

There’s a structure, and that structure must be preserved—not for the sake of somebody’s peace or well-being, but for the sake of bringing about the unity that we all seek. They achieve unity by attending to the fathers, so to speak, the apostles and elders and specifically Peter and James. Elders are important.

Third—or fourth, rather. The fourth thing I want us to remember or to make application of—is to understand the world in which we live.

Now I must confess that I came up with these five things. What I try to do is when I go through a text of Acts frequently, I try to think: what would I want to teach my kids? What would I begin to teach my boys who are young? What could I teach in some detail to my girls who are older? And I think I can teach them about biblical procedures for conflict resolution. I think I can teach them that they should discuss issues based on scripture.

I think I can teach them that elders, fathers, the hierarchy that God sets in the home, mothers—these are important positions. And I think I can teach them something about the world in this text.

In the world and in the church, we have problems, and problems resurface. Consider the Jerusalem Council here. Remember, if you’ve been listening to this series up to now, these are the same problems that Peter faced, I don’t know, maybe 8 or 10 years previous to this—the same problem exactly. Resurfaces again.

Problems are part of the world in which we live. Understand that divisions and dissensions are not abnormal. They’re normal in the context of the world in which we live. But they’re not the defining element of the world in which we live. The defining element of this instance are the bookends to the controversy. First, the unity and peace at Antioch. Then the controversy comes. It’s resolved. And by the end of the account—which is one reason why I read to the end of the account—Antioch rejoiced. They rejoiced in their consolation, the comfort they receive from this, the end result of what was potentially very divisive for their church.

So the bookends are the way to look at the thing. Even in the middle of this—we talked about this last week—we don’t have Paul and Barnabas and the people from Antioch going down to Jerusalem full of doubt and fear because there’s problems and divisions in the church: “Oh my, what are we going to do?” Hand-wringing—none of that. They go there with almost a triumphant procession, you know. They go from through Phoenicia—the scriptures tell us, and that word means palm. And it’s almost—you have images back of the triumphal entry of Jesus to Jerusalem.

Of course, that was going to lead to his death. But here we have a triumphal entry almost of Paul and Barnabas, recounting along the way to all the churches along the way the great things that God is doing through the conversion of the Gentiles. They don’t focus upon the division. They focus upon the work of God in a positive nature. And I can teach my children that. I can teach my children, and we should teach ourselves, remind ourselves, that the world is filled with problems and divisions and strife—and so is the church.

But as we apply biblical methods and as we respect biblical order and as we use biblical argumentation, we can expect all those problems to result in further strength and growth. More unity is the end result of this. More institutional unity is the end result of the Jerusalem Council. So I think I can get my children to understand something of the world in which we live and give them hope for the future. They hear enough about the problems. They need to hear the message of biblical hope as well. This is a story. This is an historical account of biblical hope.

And five—many of these things would relate to many other incidents in the book of Acts, but this fifth one is more specific to this particular dilemma. And I want to talk here about the restoration of discipline being an essential part of this process.

And maybe I should have put this fourth in the world in which we live, fifth. Maybe in a better order. But in any event, somewhere in this lesson, I’d want to teach my kids one of the—I think—telling points of this particular incident in the historical development of the church of Christ in the book of Acts is that essential for the development and maturation of the church, essential for that unity and that growth and victory, is the restoration of discipline.

Now, we talked about this before, didn’t we? You remember early on with Ananias and Sapphira? We talked about how God is restoring things back to Israel, so to speak, and the restoration of those people who had rule for God in the first six, seven chapters of the book of Acts. And there were various key events listed for us. There was the healing of the lame man—restoration, dominion, restoration to vocational calling, into worship. So you weren’t a beggar anymore. You can move to work. You don’t have to sit at the door of the temple. You can go in and worship at the temple. Restoration in terms of dominion and work and worship.

And there was also the story of Ananias and Sapphira—restoration of discipline. And there is a textual link between this text and that text, and we’ll get to that as we go through the exegesis of the passage. What we have here, I believe, is a movement in terms of the maturation of the church relative to discipline.

Then we had the apostles speaking the word, and Ananias and Sapphira fall down dead before God. Dead—not for, you know, adultery, not because they killed somebody, but because they simply deceived the church about their receipt of money from their sale of their home. And they tried to get honor in the eyes of the church deceptively. And in so doing, it’s lying to the Holy Spirit. Dead. Restoration of discipline.

We don’t see death now, and we don’t see the apostles issuing some sort of summary decree against these Judaizers. What we see is the elders distinctively coming to a pronouncement that deals with those Judaizers who would bring trouble to the church of Jesus Christ. They rebuke them. They publicly issue an encyclical included in which is a denunciation, a denial that these men are biblical teachers.

And so we have this transition from the apostles to the elders. We have the transition from the miraculous to now the non-miraculous. These guys—no big miracle happens with these guys. And you remember, if you’ve been here for several years, that’s the thrust. That’s the growth of biblical maturity.

Remember, we move from Jericho to Ai. Our lives are always that way. God treats us. He does things miraculously frequently early on in our Christian life as well. But he doesn’t want us to stay there. He wants us to build on that. He wants us to grow in our responsibilities so that we don’t have to simply march around the city now and rely upon his sovereignty in terms of the destruction of Jericho. We evidence his sovereignty now by applying our hands in tactics when we attack the city of Ai.

And so they’re not going to be able to look at the Jerusalem Council to see who dies and who doesn’t die. No more signs. They’ve matured now. They apply biblical principles. They deal with sin. And they do so through the declaration—not of the apostles’ inspired word, but through the elders now. And so I want my children to understand, and I want myself to understand, that essential to the maturation of the church—and the book of Acts gives us this—is the restoration of discipline.

And you know, implied in this, implied in that, is this: discipline is not the act by which a person is suspended, excommunicated, publicly rebuked or whatever. That’s a part of the formal discipline of the church. Discipline is to disciple someone. And the church must be being discipled to provide the basis in the church for the exercise of extraordinary, formal discipline. In certain cases, formal discipline is not efficacious if the church will not hear it. If the elders had made this decision and the church rejected the decision—if the church was not ready to deal with sin—then we wouldn’t see the happy end of this tale.

If the restoration of discipline is pictured in this text—I believe it is—it’s a restoration of discipline in the minds of the congregation as well: to discipline their own lives, to have all of their lives regulated by the word of God to the point that they are willing to see the exercise of formal discipline when necessary in the context of the church.

Now, this is a contemporary issue for us today. The last two days it’s become very contemporary.

We had a man—let me just tell you a story first. Last year, you know, when we went to Chicago, Doug H. and myself talked to Steve Wilkins. We had found out that he was part of a little group that was going to provide an appeal court for a church that is like our church, that grew out of reconstructionist origins. A pastor by the name of Mickey Schneider. They were going to discipline a fellow, and they needed a court of appeal should he decide to appeal. And Mr. Wilkins, Reverend Wilkins, a minister of the PCA, was going to sit on that board of appeals.

We spoke to Reverend James B. Jordan about the same incident last year at family camp. He told us a little bit about it. And what had happened was there was a church—I believe in Florida, close to where Mr. Jordan lives—that had excommunicated a fellow. And his sin was that he had spoken out in the congregation about the need to take offensive action against abortionists. By offensive action, I mean the need to get people to start to—actually, the legitimacy of physically attacking abortionists.

And they tried to get the fellow to not teach these sort of things at the church and not talk about them. He wouldn’t do it, and they excommunicated him. And Reverend Wilkins, Reverend Jordan thought that was perfectly proper, as did I. I assume that the church court would work itself out correctly.

Okay. Now two days ago I hear a story that a man has been, uh, has shot with a 12-gauge shotgun an abortionist in Florida in Pensacola, the area fairly close, I think, to where Reverend Jordan lives if I’m not mistaken. And this fellow—I hear on the news—is an excommunicated fundamentalist Presbyterian minister. I don’t know, you know, I probably shouldn’t even be talking about this. I don’t know that this is the same fellow that was excommunicated last year. But I do know that some church has—I can assume that some church had sufficiently matured as a congregation and as officers to where they could exercise the keys of the kingdom and excommunicate a man who then would, within a fairly short period of time, apparently become a murderer. But that’s what he is.

We don’t want anarchy to prevail in our country. Calvin’s doctrine of the lesser magistrate is absolutely essential in terms of trying to change the evils of our day. This man is a murderer. He didn’t work through that order or hierarchy that God has established in terms of the civil magistrate. And I am thankful to God that, as far as I know so far, some church had the maturity to declare this man outside of the church of Jesus Christ prior to him taking that action.

Well, those are the five things I hope that you’ll be able to take out of this: biblical procedures, biblical discussions and disputing and arguing biblically, not appealing to nature, reason or our emotions; the importance of elders; understanding the world as a world filled with division, but it is marked not by the division, it’s marked by the unity of the church and the growth of the church, the preaching of the gospel. And then, finally, in terms of all of that, it is absolutely essential to restore discipline.

Now, let’s look at the text and see where this, and I’ll hopefully I’ll be able to point to things like this along the way. But if I don’t, you’ll have gotten those five points, and I’ll repeat them at the end of the sermon. And I’m certain that most of this is fairly evident from the text as we go through it.

## The Context and Setting

First of all, in your outlines: then we have the controversy and these deliberations. We talked about that last week. The church at Antioch—men came down from Jerusalem who were teaching, not just once, but perpetual action. There were teachers, supposedly, at least assuming that they had some kind of commission to teach. They instructed the church at Antioch that unless they were circumcised, they weren’t saved. You had to be circumcised in order to be saved.

The issue was not the deeds of the law for sanctification. Rather, the issue was the law relative to salvation. And as we’ll see in two weeks from now, there are specific implications relative to the law and its ceremonial use. We’ll talk about that in two weeks—the decision of the council.

The context then is laid out for your outline, and we talked about it last week somewhat. So what happens is then the church at Antioch—there’s much disputing. They send Paul and Barnabas and several others down to Jerusalem to consult with the church there about this matter. And then we have an interesting description of the church of the trip. As I mentioned before, characterizing our view, our understanding of the world, we shouldn’t be focused on the problems as much.

They’re focused upon, as they go along, what God has accomplished in the Gentiles. The Gentiles have turned to God. That’s a good verse. It means to turn away from idolatry and turn toward the living God. And if you’re a Christian, your lives should be understood and marked by that kind of a turning away from evil, a turning away from unrighteousness, and a positive turning toward God. And that’s very important. That’s the flow. And that’s what’s happened in the Gentiles. And that’s what Paul and Barnabas are rejoicing about, and the churches along the way as they’re going down to Jerusalem—they’re rejoicing as well.

So it’s a real happy deal in spite of the problems that have happened, and that provides the context for them coming to Jerusalem.

When they come to Jerusalem, the scriptures tell us they got together and they met with the church at Jerusalem. In verse 4: “When they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church and of the apostles and elders. They declared all things that God had done with them.”

They didn’t start with the problems when they come. The picture here is of a meeting of the church with its officers. That’s what I think the intent of this verse is. And the basic thrust of the meeting is they’re reporting what God has done in terms of the Gentiles. They’re putting the issue of controversy in its proper place in the context of what God is doing overall.

They don’t come there just focusing upon a problem, but instead they put that problem in the context of God’s work in the Gentiles and its proper context. That’s a very important principle of conflict resolution. So often conflicts can overwhelm discussions and can overwhelm everything else. And after all, it had been some time since Paul and Barnabas had been bound to Jerusalem. They need to reestablish relationships, and they do it not over the issue of controversy. They do it over the issue, first of all, of what God had accomplished through them with the Gentiles.

You know, you could say that they’re thinking strategically here. You can look at this as a political maneuver on the part of Paul and Barnabas. And I guess that’s not such a bad way to characterize it if you understand that politics isn’t bad and it’s not bad to put things in their proper context. But these men do act strategically. They’re not doing so with guile. These are very forthright, open men, as we’ve known from the rest of the account of the book of Acts and the Epistles, et cetera. But they do so by putting this in the proper context.

In verse 4, in the context then of this congregational meeting and with the elders and the apostles, certain men of the sect of the Pharisees which believed said it is needful to circumcise them, to command them to keep the law of Moses. And so this is why this meeting takes place—the Jerusalem Council.

Now the actual council side of this occurs because the Judaizing element at the church in Jerusalem rears its ugly head, so to speak, in the context of this corporate meeting.

Let me just say something here too in terms of the restoration of discipline. What we read in verse 5: that these were certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed. Okay. These weren’t people outside of the church. These were Pharisees inside, or from the Pharisees who are now inside the church. Ananias and Sapphira were not outside of the church. Ananias and Sapphira were inside of the church. We would call them Christians.

These men who brought this controversy were Christians in the sense of being associated with the visible church. We have a funny situation when we read the scriptures. We read the Old Testament. We read the wisdom of Proverbs, for instance, as it regulates our relationships. And somehow, I think frequently we think of that in terms of those ungodly people in the world regulating our relationships there. Anybody who’s a Christian or who says they’re a Christian, we don’t want to judge things, evaluate things in the context of those people.

Now, that’s funny because the book of Proverbs is written to people, and most of the scriptures are written in the context of the visible covenant community. Israel as a nation was the visible covenant community. The only people that could live there, at least according to God’s law, was those people who agreed to abide by the laws of that community and to be moving toward in some way worship of the true God.

So when we read about the regulation of relationships, for instance by using Proverbs, it’s not to regulate relationships outside the church primarily—it can do that—but when you have unbelievers, people who are actively suppressing the truth of God and righteousness all their lives, what can you say? If you trust those people, you’re really crazy, or you don’t understand the scriptures. You’ve somehow bought into some kind of myth of neutrality.

Now, what I’m trying to say here is that the Proverbs tell us how to regulate relationships internal to the visible covenant community. The restoration of discipline begins with the discernment relative to other believers. And we’d call these people believers. The scriptures—these are members of the Pharisees who believed. You see, discipline has to do with those inside. Formal discipline is inside the body of Christ.

And so it’s very important that as we think through the regulation of our relationships, for instance, that the book of Proverbs and other places tell us about—that we don’t do so thinking somehow these things don’t relate to people in the context of the visible church. They certainly do. In the context of the visible church, you’re going to have slanderers, talebearers, people that go and want you to be shy for them, going into debt. You’re going to have people that do indeed plot wickedness, try to rob people either openly or you know in private ways—all those kind of things are going to happen in the context of the visible church. They do all the time.

This man who committed murder last week—most people would say he’s a Christian. See, he’s a Christian. Well, maybe some odd little Presbyterian church excommunicated, but he’s a Christian. You know, we want to be careful how we judge such things.

Okay. Anyway, so the point is this controversy occurs in the context of this public meeting and occurs in the context of people that were believers—we would call them. You know what their eternal state was? I don’t know. But they were part of the visible church.

Now, one other thing I wanted to point out before we move on from this is that they were brought on their way by the church at Antioch and received by the church at Jerusalem. And I don’t want to spend a lot of time on that. You know, I’ll give you some references to look up: Acts 21:5, 3 John 6, 3 John 9, Romans 15:7, 2 John 1:10.

2 John 1:10 says, “Don’t receive some people.” The idea of receiving and sending is a significant one in the scriptures. I could spend a lot of time talking about that. I don’t want to take the time today. But let’s just say that in the context of this story, we see the church at Antioch—probably men, women, and children—going out along the road with this crew to give them a send-off to go to Jerusalem. And at Jerusalem, they’re received at the church. That means something. It doesn’t just mean they open the door and said, “Oh, how you doing?” They were received.

The initial presumption of the church of Jerusalem is these are godly men who have done godly work. They receive them. And how we receive or fail to receive people should say something about our lives. The reception and delegation of people is regulated by the scriptures. And it’s significant.

You know, eating—this before—eating in the context of the scriptures is significant. Who you eat with? Eating was seen as a covenantal affirmation. Taking people, if you’re eating in the context of your home—taking them under your protection for the evening or whatever it was. And reception of people or sending out of people or failing to receive people is significant. It’s filled with meaning in the scriptures.

Little sidetracked, but let’s get back to the text.

## The Council Convenes

Then we see, as this controversy happens, in verse 6: “The apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter.”

We now have the deliberations to properly begin. It happens at the convening of the Jerusalem Council. This is a separate meeting. And at this meeting, we’re told only by implication the apostles and elders are there. They were received of the apostles and elders of the church. Now we see that the apostles and elders come together to consider this matter. There’s the hierarchy. There’s the structure. There’s the importance of officers in the context of the church. These men—officers of God, apostles and elders—the one who consider this matter.

It is not a congregational vote. It’s not a congregational meeting at its inception. It is a meeting of the designated officers of the church. When you have a controversy in the context of your home, it comes up. You don’t want to have that controversy necessarily heard by the whole family. Mother and dad go off and have a conference about the difficulty. Now they may bring in certain children who are part of the controversy to talk to them about it in private. But it is open to you—know, the family is not a democracy. It is an order. Again. And so the elders and officers are important.

Let me just mention here too that in Exodus 18 we see the biblical structure of authority given to us. Remember Exodus 18: Moses is overburdened. “How am I going to take care of all these cases, these law cases of these people?” He gets advice from his father-in-law, Jethro. He takes the advice, and God blesses it. It becomes the pattern for organization and structure in the Old Testament—in the military, in the Levitical order. Both sides of the structure—church and state—have the same patterns: of tens, 50s, hundreds, and thousands.

That pattern is penetrated down through Western civilization, only to be gotten rid of primarily in our day and age. The Shire courts in England were courts of a thousand—courts, thousand men judging over thousands. That same concept of alderman, elder-men, who would rule in the context of these geographic or—not geographical but numerical—groupings is found to this day in some of the cities and states of the eastern seaboard where you do have, instead of counties, shires, and you do have aldermen, elder[men].

What is pictured for us in Exodus 18 is what some have referred to as a series of graded courts of appeal. So you would have, for instance, if you have 10 extended families, you would have a judge who would hear the matter that came up in the context of those families—heads over tens. And then if something didn’t work out there, you could go to a head over 50 families. For every five of these first level judges, there’d be another judge. Heads of tens, heads of 50s, heads of hundreds, and heads of thousands.

Interesting structure, but these have been referred to in Presbyterian circles as courts of appeal. But they’re not really courts of appeal. Now, we could see appeals being derived from other places in scripture. We talk about this—if you’ve gotten the latest issue of the Constitution, it’s been available 2 or 3 weeks. There’s a section there on appeals. Very important that you read that material prior to a congregational meeting where we discuss these things.

I don’t think these are primarily courts of appeal. What it says in the book of Exodus is if a matter is too hard, too difficult, or perhaps too weighty for the head of 10, he refers it to the head of 50. What we see going on, I think, at the Jerusalem Council is not so much an appeal. It is a referral. Bannerman dealing with this text says, well, you know, we can suppose here that maybe there was a majority vote at Antioch which went against the apostles or went in favor of them. One of the two sides appealed the matter. This appeal was made to Jerusalem. So this is an appeal court that’s hearing the matter.

There’s no indication of that at all in the scriptures. That is what I can—what I would say—is a bureaucratic redaction, a rewriting of the history of Acts 15. Bannerman’s done a lot of great work, but I completely disagree on this particular point. What’s happening here is a matter of some controversy, and they go to Jerusalem to appeal a bad decision at the local church. They go there to refer the matter to a broader assembly—and actually an international assembly since they’re there to a different country.

So we see here very important implications relative to the polity of the church when the apostles and elders meet together to consider this matter.

Now, I wanted to—you know, this is a big topic, and I don’t want to get too far into it. But I would want to say a couple of small things. I don’t think you can see in this the Presbyterian model of courts of appeals. I don’t think that is what’s going on here. I also don’t think you can see in this a strict congregationalist perspective.

Some people have written in the reformed camp, for instance in many of these independent reformed churches. I read, for instance, a guy last year who wrote about this incident. He said, “Well, what’s going on here is just that these men came out from the church at Jerusalem. So what they’re doing is they’re taking the teachers from Jerusalem—the Judaizers—they’re taking them back to their original court of jurisdiction to deal with them. These are your members, church at Jerusalem. You deal with these guys. They’re heretics. You know, they’re schismatic.”

And that probably is a lot of why they’re going to Jerusalem. It’s certainly one reason why they’re going up there. We talked about that last week. There are other reasons. But see, the congregationalist then would say that the intent here is simply to deal with their own members and then to give advice to other churches because each church is essentially autonomous. This is when I say congregationalist, I mean radical congregationalists who believe that each church is completely independent or autonomous from all of the churches.

I don’t see that in this. We’ll get to this next week when we actually—two weeks from now when we consider the actual decree itself. But the decree brought binding, necessary things upon all the other churches. That’s the way I understand it. I’ll tell you why in 2 weeks. But if I’m right in that, we cannot see here a strict congregationalist model. We don’t see here a strict Presbyterian model. We see something different.

Let me read from Jim Jordan. You know, it’s interesting. I preached on this same text three sermons, 1987. And I’ve listened to those sermons several times the last few weeks. And I referenced this. I didn’t actually quote Mr. Jordan that time, but I’m going to quote it now. And I quote it because this is a very interesting, probably somewhat esoteric for some of you. But let me quote this and then make some comments.

Jordan says this: “The institutional church also reflects the equal ultimacy of the one and the many. We cannot say that the larger church is really more the church than the local, or vice versa. The former is a deviation in the direction of hierarchicalism—either monarchical or bureaucratic.”

By that he’s referring to episcopacy and bureaucratic Presbyterianism is what he’s talking about. There are two forms of polity—episcopal and Presbyterian—that at their worst (and they don’t necessarily include this element) at their worst become hierarchicalism: the belief that only from the top, the top level is where the church really is, that the local churches are created by the top.

I’ll go on. Let me continue to read: “The latter”—that is, that the church is really the church at the local level and not the universal level—”the latter into individualism. It is wrong to say that the local church is only a creation of the larger body and thus can be closed down simply by action of the larger body. On the other hand, it is wrong to say that the larger body is nothing but a creation of a group of local churches.”

With the—the precise delineation of—while the precise delineation of duties and responsibilities has been problematic in this area and can vary according to times and seasons, we ought to be committed at the outset and in general to a trinitarian presupposition in dealing with the problem.

Now, what he’s saying is you can—and I’ve seen this—I’ve seen this argued. I saw this argued several months ago. I’ll probably see this argued next year here in Chicago when the confessional conference will take on the issue of ecclesiology. And right now, part of the debate rages between two groups: between some of these people that have come out of the CRC and are now independent churches and want federative alliances, and those who are Presbyterian and who think no, the Presbyterian denomination is the right model.

These guys argue that it is the Presbyterian itself, it is the higher authority that creates local churches and brings legitimacy to them. And without that kind of thrust, there’s no legitimacy to the local church. That’s what they believe in their uttermost level. We face that at this church. We have people who use at least Presbyterian doctrine to tell us that since we’re not created by a denomination, not associated with a denomination, you’re not a real church.

We’ve had people say that recently. On the other hand, we’ll hear from some of these folks coming out of the CRC—because of their great fear now and aversion to denomination since their denomination is, you know, won’t discipline homosexuals, believes in evolution, dah dah—they’re saying that no, all power resides in the local church, and any other higher authority is simply delegated and derived from the local church. The local church is really the seat of government.

See? And what Jordan is saying—and all I want to say about this today—is that the trinitarian model, the equal ultimacy of the one and the many, particulars in the unit, indicate to us that in either one of these solutions, you’re expressing one thing to the denial of the other. And in the scriptures—and in Acts 15—we don’t see clearly that it’s this way or this way because it isn’t. The church is an organism that is much more complex than that.

And I don’t think the right questions have been asked in terms of the ongoing debate and discussion about ecclesiology. Hopefully, next year’s confessional conference will begin to ask some of those right questions. And we’re not going to get the right answers until we ask the right questions. We’ve been trying to do that at this church since 1987, at least talking about this same principle. And yet we’ve had people leave this church because we refuse to assert, for instance, the Presbyterian model and believe that all power must come from on high.

So this is a matter of great contention—this idea of polity. But what we can say from Acts 15 is that there is essential continuity between the polity, I believe, of Exodus 18 and Acts 15. Very important—a whole Bible approach to polity is necessary to correctly understand how to go about restructuring church government in our day and age to meet a more biblical model than we’ve received so far to date: from radical congregationalist democracy churches today on one hand, or the Presbyterian bureaucratic or episcopal monarchical movement on the other hand.

Something new is going to happen, and God’s in the process of doing it, with or without us, with or without you, whether you like it or not. Whether people like it or not, the spirit of God is moving across these lines and busting them down, and bringing people together who think and are beginning to say to each other: we need to think about this more holistically in terms of the whole scriptures and not just based upon appeals to nature or reason, but to the scriptures themselves. And not be content with what we’ve been given to date. But rather look for new biblical models based upon this equal ultimacy of the one and the many.

Well, that probably would go over some of your head. Don’t worry about it if it did. But if you’re thinking about these issues, you know what I’m talking about, and hopefully that’ll be somewhat helpful.

Suffice it to say also that Acts 15 clearly shows us the importance of the officers of the church, which is one of my five points of application for all of us: that we should see the importance of the elders and officers as they come together to talk about this controversy.

Okay. Boy, we’re not very far through the outline, are we? Well, that’s okay. If we don’t get done, we don’t get done.

## Open Discussion of the Controversy

Okay. Then we have an open discussion of the controversy amongst the elders and apostles. Verse 7: “And when there had been much disputing…”

First of all, the men who are leading the meeting—it is generally acknowledged that James is the chairman of the Jerusalem Council. He lets open debate and discussion ensue about the issue. Now, some people don’t like that. Some people, again, they have two opposite extremes here. Some people are control freaks. They want everything to be controlled. No discussion that could possibly get divisive. And, you know, that’s certainly—you know, that’s an enviable position to take. We don’t like controversy. But God’s way here, these were mature Christian men. The church is mature, and we’ve got apostles and elders. They let that discussion go for a while—very clearly much disputing had gone on.

This relates to my first application point: biblical procedures. There should be a lot of discussion of issues and great controversies that come up in our home, our workplace, our church, whatever it is. Now, it’s got to be controlled. You don’t want to let people sin. This wasn’t the sort of disputing we’re told not to dispute and grumble and dispute in Philippians. That’s not what’s going on here. It’s questioning and controversy about the issues.

So in the context of your family, for instance—a family matter that’s got to be decided. Perhaps the children don’t like something that the parents have done. There should be open discussion about that within the bounds of biblical—again, having our conversations regulated biblically. No sinful communication, no anger—unbiblical anger—no cutting people off.

Biblical procedures—we’ve talked about this a lot for the last few years. Joshua 22: you give weight to the other person. Let the other person say what he needs to say. You give him glory. He’s made in the image of God. He deserves—being made in the image of God—a sense of weightiness to his things that he has to say. And I’ve tried to reform the way I at least participate in congregational meetings to let people finish what they’ve got to say, no matter whether you think you know what they’re going to say or not. Hear them out. And this is so important in your workplaces and in your families as well. Hear each other out. Let much disputing and discussion take place about a particular issue. That’s what happens here.

But then we have then a series of three speeches given to conclude the meeting. And this is the other side of it. Some people—that’s all they want: discussion, debate, and a lot of philosophical discussions that never get anywhere. But that’s just as unbiblical as trying to control overtly, overly control a meeting, to let it go out of hand.

The balance here is the leaders now—leader of the apostles, Peter, and I believe the leader of the elders, James—end this thing and they end it on a positive note. They wrap everything up. They make the final arguments. And so they bring order to this thing. There’s both unity and diversity again here. The many people get to talk and speak, and then the unity of the church officers speak and direct the meeting to its conclusion.

And these three speeches are—well actually, yeah, there’s three. Peter, Paul, and Barnabas, and then James. And I want to talk a little bit about them.

## Peter’s Speech

First of all, Peter then rises up. After much disputing, he says unto them, “Men and brethren, you know how that a good while ago, oh God made choice among us that the Gentiles by mouth should hear the word of the gospel and believe.”

So Peter says, first of all, that this has already been decided, in a sense. We’ve already gone through this. He’s reminding them of 10 years previous when God called Peter by way a vision—remember—to go visit Cornelius. And while he’s preaching to Cornelius and his assembled and Cornelius’s friends and family, what happens? The Holy Ghost descends on him just as he did on the people at Pentecost at the beginning of in the book of Acts recorded in Acts chapter 2.

And so Peter says, “God chose me a long time ago, a decade ago, 10 years ago, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel.” The first time the word of the gospel is used here. You talking about the word of God, the logos. Now it’s the word of the gospel—the word of the good news of what Christ has accomplished. And by his mouth, they hear that word.

How can people believe? They don’t hear. How can they hear if someone doesn’t preach to them? And so Peter goes and preaches to them, sovereignly by the calling of God. And they believe. They should hear the word of the gospel and believe.

And God, which knoweth the hearts—more literal translation would be God the heart knower.