Road Maps? Or Road Blocks?

And that's what we started last week in chapter 15, was looking at chapter 15 with that idea in mind. Are we like roadmaps pointing the way to life or are we like roadblocks putting obstacles in front of people's paths and keeping them from finding the wondrous grace

And then fourth, through James. Paul and Barnabas, we saw last time, always give us first the example of what God has done. Always. In their presentation, it's always, this is what the Lord has done. And they laid out, as they share with the Jews and then with the Gentiles, this is what God has done. When they share with the Jewish people, it's always, this is how God first moved

and He chose out Abraham. And through Abraham, He brought about our forefathers. And through them, He gave the law. And then they were disobedient to the law, but He brought them back to Him. Brought judgment and chastening and yet brought them back. And they continued to rebel and He continued to reach out and they continued to resist. And so He finally brought a Messiah,

the Lord Jesus Christ, that would be that bridge that would bring them finally into His presence. Then the same way with the Gentiles, as they would share with the Gentiles, it's always, this is what God has done. You look out into creation and God has made this creation. He's made this world and He made that to communicate to you that He loves you and that if you'll seek Him, you'll find Him.

And He's made then a way through the giving of His Son to provide that way into the presence of the Lord. So constantly, as Paul and Barnabas would tell people about God, that's what they would focus on. They'd focus on the Lord. And there was always rejoicing. Even though people's hearts were cut to the quick because they realized their sinfulness and their need for a Savior,

there was always a time of rejoicing. And the only times that there are people that are agitated is because they're jealous of the response that people are giving to Paul and Barnabas' testimony. Then we also saw last time that the Judaizers emphasized what man needs to do. That's their focus. They're constantly focusing on this is what man needs to do. First you need to be circumcised, verse 1.

Unless you're circumcised, you can't be saved. Down in verse 5, they added then, not only circumcise but obey the laws of Moses. If you don't do those things, you can't be saved. And so there's constantly a focus on changing you. This is what you need to do to change. This is what you need to do to be saved. And we see that same example in many, in much of the church today.

For you really to be a believer, you know, you have to tithe 10% and sign on a thing that says how much you make and we'll come find out how much you make and make sure you're tithing your 10% or you can't really be saved. You have to be baptized this way in our church or you can't really be saved. You have to wear your hair a certain way or not wear certain clothes and not do these things and sign a list to say don't do this and don't do that. And they focus on what man need to do and that always leads to division, we've seen, and always leads to disputation, to disputing, to argumentation, always leads to condemnation rather than conviction.

Always kind of tends to push people away from the Lord rather than draw them to the Lord. And then Peter shared, beginning in verse 7, verses 7 through 11, and Peter said, hey, let me just lay it out for you. You're looking at whether or not man has anything to do with his salvation or if it's simply God alone and I'll tell you in these few verses, it's God only. It's God alone by God's grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

That's all it is. Verse 7, God made the choice among you. He chose to give the gospel to the Gentiles, Peter said. Verse 8, God knows the heart. Again, in the middle of verse 8, He's the one that showed us that He accepted the Gentiles. How did He show us that? By giving them the Holy Spirit, just like He did. Verse 9, God's the one that made no distinction

between us and them by the giving of the Holy Spirit. Again, verse 9, God's the one that purified their hearts by faith. That was apart from the law, apart from the sacrifices. He did it through faith in Jesus Christ. And so Peter says, verse 10, so why are you seeking to lay on the necks of the Gentiles some heavy yoke, some heavier weight? Why are you trying to jerk them around with your rules

of how they should be when God's already shown that He's accepted them just simply by faith? And now it's James' turn to respond. James stands up. Verse 13, and after Paul and Barnabas had again spoken and shared about the miracles that God had done among the Gentiles, James stands and says, Brothers, listen to me. Simon has described to us how God at first showed His concern

by taking from the Gentiles a people for Himself. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this as it's written, After this I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent. Its ruins will I rebuild and I will restore it, that the remnant of men may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things that have been known for ages. Okay, now I want to stop and just look at that for a minute.

Look at what James shares after Peter's spoken. This James is the half-brother of Jesus. It's not James the brother of John because that James has already been killed back in chapter 12. This James is Jesus' half-brother. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary's womb before Mary and Joseph ever came together. So He was born of the Virgin Mary. After Jesus was born, Joseph and Mary had a physical relationship

and Jesus had several half-brothers and sisters as is mentioned in the Gospels. And James is one of His half-brothers and has written the epistle James that we have in our Bibles. Jude is another half-brother of Jesus and we have his epistle backed by the book of Revelation. That's another of Jesus' brothers, of His half-brother. And James now gives us a different focus

where the Gentiles are concerned, where God's work is concerned. Peter took us back to the beginning because Peter was actually the first one to minister to Gentiles when he went to Cornelius' house back in chapter 10. And Peter mentions it's God who's done this. So this is what God's done in His working with the Gentiles as He began back in the past. Now Paul and Barnabas are sharing what God has done right now

as they've gone out to Cyprus and over to Antioch and Pisidian and Iconium and Lystra, all those areas that we followed them through on this journey. This is what God is doing right now. This is the way He's working in the lives of the Gentiles right now. Now James is going to focus on the future. This is what God will do. This is what God will be doing. And it's exciting because he takes an Old Testament passage out of Amos,

and I'm going to have you turn back there in just a minute, and gives an application, a commentary on those verses out of Amos. Now, the best commentary you have on Scripture is the Bible. And that's why when you're reading through a particular text and seeking to understand what it's saying, the best thing you can do is start with the Bible. And if you have a study Bible, you have footnotes that will lead you to other texts, other areas of Scripture that are talking about the same thing that you're reading about in your particular chapter.

And that's the best place to start. And when you have something like this where an Old Testament Scripture is brought up and given an application by either Jesus or James or somebody like that, that's the best commentary you can have. And so we see in these few verses here James' application of a prophecy from the book of Amos. Now hold your finger here in Acts 15 and go back with me to Amos chapter 9.

And you're going, oh my God, Amos. Listen, it's no problem if you look in the table of contents in the front and look and see where Amos is. But if you kind of open your Bible to the middle, you'll probably hit Isaiah. That's the first of the major prophets. Keep going to your right, you'll go through Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Daniel and Hosea and Joel is a short little chapter.

And you'll come to Amos. Amos has nine chapters. If you hit Obadiah, you've gone too far. Amos chapter 9. Now the first thing you do when seeking to understand what a particular verse means, what a particular text means, is you always look at your text in its context. James is quoting Amos chapter 9, verses 11 and 12 here in the book of Acts. Well, you go back to chapter 9 and to look at that text in its context,

we need to look at all of chapter 9 and see where it sits, what's surrounding it, what's before it and what's after it. So if your name is chapter 9, just start with verse 1.

Surely the eyes of the sovereign Lord are on the sinful kingdom. I will destroy it from the face of the earth. And yet I will not totally destroy the house of Jacob, declares the Lord. So this whole chapter is dealing with God's judgment upon the nation of Israel, upon the people of Israel. If you talk to the Jews in the nation of Israel today and ask them if they believe in God, the majority don't.

Israel today is a non-believing nation. And one of the reasons, the main reason that they don't believe is because they don't believe, they say they can't believe in a God which is the same argument that everybody uses. I can't believe in a God who would allow what happened during the Holocaust to happen. I can't believe in a God who would allow those innocent people to die.

Well listen, we're all born in sin. We all deserve death. It's amazing to me that God lets us live. We have no reason to live apart from God's mercy because we are wholly steeped in sin. All of us, every one of us is born in sin. You're not born with a clean slate. The Bible doesn't say that. Lo and sin was I conceived in my mother's womb, David writes in the Psalms.

So it's just God's mercy that we're not all snuffed. But you read through God's judgment and God took his nation into judgment and judged them throughout history. And he said he was going to, wherever they tried to hide themselves, he was going to reach in and grab them and pull them out. And so you look at the Holocaust as just an extension of his hand of judgment upon his nation Israel.

And you go, but those people were not, they didn't live back here thousands of years ago. God's hand is in judgment on these people today. Why as a result of all of this back here? Hey listen, sin affects others. Your sin affects others. And our leaders in our nation need to understand that. There is no personal life. We've been going through 2 Samuel and the life of David.

And it's interesting to me because in the Traveler and in the Eagle, they're quoting how both President Clinton's pastor and his attorney had brought up David and how David was forgiven. And you need to read the rest of the chapters in there. We're in chapter 12 in 2 Samuel on Wednesday night. Yes, and immediately David confessed, and immediately Nathan said, you're forgiven, but as a consequence for your sin, your child is going to die.

The firstborn among you is going to die, and not only that, there were actually four sons of David that died as a result of his sin. And not only that, one of his sons, Absalom, as a result of David's sin, threw the entire nation of Israel into chaos and ran David out of the throne. David had to flee for his life, and the entire nation was in chaos under Absalom because of David's sin. So it's unbiblical to say, well, this is my private life, and this is my public life, and neither the twain shall meet.

That's totally unfounded scripturally. God brings judgment. There is a consequence to sin, and you better handle that now, or it's going to affect a whole group of people later, your kids and your grandkids. So we see this in Amos.

Now we come to verse 11. Now this is what James is quoting in Acts, verse 11. And in that day I will restore David's fallen tent, I will repair its broken places and restore its ruins, and build it as it used to be, so that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and all the nations that bear my name, declares the Lord, who will do these things. Those are the two verses that he quotes, James quotes, in the book of Acts.

Now let's finish this, and I'll come back and we'll talk about that. The days are coming, declares the Lord, verse 13, when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading the grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills. I will bring back my exiled people, Israel, and they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them.

They will plant vineyards and drink their wine. They will make gardens and eat their fruit. And I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land that I have given them, says the Lord your God. So Amos, this chapter is dealing with God's judgment on the nation of Israel. That looks like it's going to be total, but not. He's going to leave a remnant that he's going to bring back to the land that will be the

manifestation of his name. And in that remnant, he will repair David's tent. We'll talk about that in a minute. And all of the nations of the earth will be blessed through this nation, Israel. And he will pour out his blessing upon them, and they will never again be uprooted from their land. Now when is all that going to happen? Well, you're going, well, Israel's back in the land.

Yes, that's true.

Has David's tent been fixed, been set back the way that it was? Well, what is that? Well, let me just say right now, we'll go back and talk about David's tent, but let me just say, no, it hasn't. Israel has not suffered all that they're going to suffer. They will be moved during the great tribulation period, during that seven-year period that God set aside called the time of Jacob's trouble, when he is going to pour out his wrath upon

all the earth, and he's going to bring his people Israel back to himself. During that particular time of tribulation, at the midst of that tribulation period, after the first three and a half years, Jesus warns that when you see the abomination that causes desolation set itself in the temple, then flee to the mountains. The only people he's talking to at that particular time is the nation of Israel. He's talking to the Jew, and he's saying, when you see the abomination that causes desolation set itself up in the temple, let the reader understand what Daniel has said.

Daniel talks about that. In the midst of the great tribulation, the Antichrist is going to go into the temple, so the temple needs to be rebuilt, and he's going to sit himself on, if the Ark of the Covenant's been found at that time, we don't know, possibly, but whatever the throne is that will be in that temple, he will seat himself on that throne and proclaim himself to be God, and at that point, when the Jews see that, they are to flee, and they will run to a place prepared for them. It may be Petra. We're not sure.

In verse 9, or verse 11 in chapter 9 of Amos, Amos says, in that day I will restore David's fallen tent. Now, if you flip to Acts chapter 15, James says, quoting Amos, but putting a little twist on it, he says, after this, I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent. Now, you say, well, big deal, just a change in words, you know, it still means the same thing.

That doesn't happen until after these things, after the church age. That's exciting to me that James says that here in chapter 15. He says, after these things, after this, metatauta, I will return. After what, James? Well, if you go back up in verse 14, James begins to say, Simon has described to us how

The Greek word for the church, the assembly of believers, is the called out ones.

And James is saying, okay, Peter is telling us about how God at first showed his concern by taking out of the Gentiles a people for himself. Now, that's exciting, because God took out of the Gentiles a people for himself just the same as he took out of the world Abraham and made of Abraham a great nation for himself. God has now done a similar thing with the ecclesia, with the called out ones of the church. Why?

Because there was a point that Israel kept rebelling against God, kept turning its back against God, and God, the Bible says that God has for a season, for a time, set Israel aside and has now called out a people out of the world for his own name. That phrase for his name is a Jewish phrase. That's what Israel was called, was a people for his name. But why did he call them out?

He called them out so that he could live through them and show himself to the nations of the world so that the people of the world could know who God is through the nation of Israel and be saved and come to the Lord and worship him. But they turned their back on the Lord and went after their own ways and God judged them and set them aside for a season and he's pulled out of the Gentiles a people for his name. That's the ecclesia, the called out ones, through whom he seeks to work in the same way that he worked through the nation of Israel, to let people know about God, to let people know what God's doing, how God has provided a way for us to come to him through Jesus Christ. That's our responsibility.

It's not to live, love, and be happy.

There's a point in time where the Gentile church is going to be full and God's going to pull us out and then in Romans chapters 9, 10, and 11, Paul says, God's not finished with the nation of Israel. God's not done with Israel. The church has not replaced Israel. God has temporarily blinded them until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. Then during the tribulation period, God's going to set his nation Israel back in the

forefront and through them, he's going to be the witness to the world again and there will be more people, listen, there will be more people saved during the tribulation period through the witness and the testimony of saved Jews than at any time in the history of the world according to scripture. But right now they've been set aside temporarily and God has called out a people after his name from among the Gentiles. That's what James is saying. Now he says, after this, I will return.

What's he saying? After that time, after that time of the Gentiles is complete, I will return. Same phrase that John uses in Revelation chapter 4. I believe that James is taking us clear out to the end of the age and saying, after this, after the fullness of this Gentile calling is come in, I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent or literally, I will rebuild David's house and its ruins.

Now he's not talking, David already has a palace. He's not talking about a physical dwelling in the rest of chapters 10 and 11. Chapter 10 in 2 Samuel talks about the house that God's going to build for David is his lineage. And he makes a promise to David in 2 Samuel that he will have a descendant of his that sits on the throne forever. Now Jesus had fun with that prophecy with the Pharisees and he asked them a question

that they couldn't answer as far as who's, if this is David's son, how come David says of him, my Lord, if he's his Lord, how can he be his son? And the Pharisees went, because David was in prophecy was referring to Messiah that would come and reign, sit and rule and reign on the throne of David. So God said to David, I'm going to build you a house. I'm going to build you a lineage.

I'm going to put one of your descendants on a throne and he's going to rule forever. That's what this is talking about in Acts.

There is a remnant of Jews who will be saved during the tribulation period who flee to Petra. They realize that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. They will flee to Petra or a place prepared and God will preserve them. And I believe this is the remnant James is talking about that will survive through the tribulation to the end of the age, to the coming again of Christ and all the Gentiles who bear my name says the Lord who does these things that have been known for ages.

And James is saying we are seeing this happen. This time of the Gentiles happen and after these things comes the kingdom and it's on top of us and God's going to restore his throne and the remnant of people will believe and all of those Gentiles who named the name of the Lord, we're finally going to live under the kingdom of God. And James is saying, man, this is the time. What you're seeing now is a fulfillment of God's prophecy concerning that.

them to abstain from food, polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood for Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and has read in the synagogues on every Sabbath. Now, let me try and get through this briefly and quickly without bogging anybody down. Hang with me. I know it's hot outside.

It's kind of warm in here and you're tired and it's early on Sunday morning and you'd rather be doing something else. Hang with me. Please. Four things. James says that we need to just write to the Gentiles for abstentions, for things that

You go clear to the back of your Bible, you'll hit the book of Revelation. If you come back through it, you'll come through Jude, and then you come to 3 John, 2 John, 1 John. Because we can look at this today, Acts 15, and go, well, as far as I know, I don't eat any meat that's been offered to idols. I don't think to drive a load of cattle truck up unto the idol of Jupiter, and they offer it, and then they drive it down to the rodeo and butcher it, and it ends up in the grocery store.

Does this have some application for me today? I think it does. John, in his epistle, in his first epistle in chapter 5, ends his epistle very strangely, if you don't understand where this is all coming from. If you look in 1 John chapter 5 and look at the very last verse in John's epistle, verse 21 in chapter 5, it says, he says, Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.

Now, why does he say that? Well, it's a thing to do, keep yourself from idols. That's a good statement. Well, good. Okay. Any idols you know of? You don't have any little wooden things set up in your home?

through his Son. And if you know his Son, you know you know God. If you have his Son, you have life. If you don't have the Son, you don't have life. Sin keeps you from the Son. So keep yourself free from sin. If you really belong to the Lord, you won't want to keep on sinning. You want to follow the patterns of the Lord. You want to lay yourself before the Lord and keep following the Lord. And so

then he comes down to get clear to the end. Verse 20, we know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true, excuse me, we are in him who is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Dear children, keep yourselves from idols. According to the context,

an idol is anything that keeps you from your relationship with the Lord. That's an idol. It can be your family. It can be your spouse. It can be your job. It can be a hobby. It can be a TV. Anything that keeps you from that wonderful, growing, vibrant, intimate relationship with the Lord is an idol. And John warns, keep yourselves from idols. Now going back to Acts, I think that's the intent

of the first admonition here. It's not just don't eat meat that's been polluted by idols. That has no significance to us today. It would to them because it would mean the same thing that John wrote in 1st John chapter 5. Keep yourself from anything that hinders your relationship with the Lord. Secondly, he says, and keep yourself from sexual immorality. Well,

duh! Isn't that just a given? Isn't that, well, you'd think, duh, but you look at our society today. You look at the leaders in our society. You look at pastors in our society. Fall into sexual immorality. Is it a duh? Or is it a warning that needs to be heeded? That isn't. That's causing people to doubt trust in anybody or anything. And so when you go to tell them about a loving God, they go, duh.

Look at the pastors that have fallen. God raised up our nation. Yeah, well, duh. Look at the leaders that have fallen. And so it's more than just abstaining from the physical act. We need to get back to the understanding that biblically sexual intercourse was given to a husband and wife not for simply procreation, not simply for pleasure, but as a picture of worship. You totally give yourself to another person in a

physical relationship. And that's the kind of worship that God wants from us. He designed our physical relationship to be a reflection of what he wants in a relationship. That's why Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 5, when he talks about the marriage relationship, behold, I'm showing you a mystery. I'm not talking about a husband and wife. I'm talking about

Christ and his church. The intimacy that's involved in a physical relationship is the intimacy God wants in our worship, in our relationship with him. And so when we pollute that, you see, we're distorting the picture of the relationship God wants. And so now you've got, in our day, there's a popular song that says, what's love got to do with it? Because people have rendered a physical

relationship solely for pleasure. Solely for pleasure. What's love got to do with it? Why should there be any kind of a commitment because we have this physical relationship? It's just solely for pleasure. What's love got to do with it? Everything. Everything. And because we're a society that's neglected God's Word and that particular admonition right there, and the church in general is doing

that, the witness of the church is garbage. Abstained from idols, abstained from sexual immorality. Those are the two admonitions on morality. Then he gives two on hospitality. Stay away from meat strangled and from blood. Why? Well, God told us, told his people not to eat blood before he gave the law. So that particular admonition was before the law was given back in Leviticus.

Stay away from blood. Don't eat the blood because the life is in the blood. The representation of life is in the blood. Stay away from blood. That's totally mine. When God instituted the sacrificial system, the blood was to be offered on the altar, to be sprinkled around the altar, and then the rest of it burned on the altar. It was God's. It belonged to the Lord.

And the Jews, that's what, when you're back in Acts 15, look down at verse 21 real quick. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath. That's what James is saying here. As you now, part of the Gentiles and part of the church with the Jews, sit down to have fellowship together, you gotta realize that from the time they were infants, they've been ingrained with the law.

They've been ingrained with the teachings of Moses, which say to abstain from meat strangled and from blood. And if you come in and seek to have fellowship and do these things, it's gonna be an offense and you guys won't be able to fellowship together. So have some consideration for your Jewish brothers who are ingrained in this and can't just turn it off. I mean, God's gonna have to do a work in their hearts. Just have some consideration

to not put a stumbling block in front of them. Stay away from things strangled. Why? Because the blood stays in something that's strangled. Unless you cut it and bleed it, the blood stays in the meat. And stay away from eating blood. Now let me tell you, I have no problem with staying away from eating blood. But there, when we were in Scotland, that's a delicacy over there. And

I don't see how unless you're raised with it. But the main emphasis there is on hospitality so that you can fellowship together. And Paul's gonna deal with that in another one of his epistles. Don't put a stumbling block before one another. If you are more spiritual and can do certain things, but your brother is a little weaker and he thinks certain things are

wrong, then don't do those things in front of him trying to prove your spiritual maturity. Have some consideration. And for the sake of your brother, sacrifice that so you can fellowship together so that you can talk about the Lord and encourage each other in the Lord and they're not hung up on this other thing. It's just hospitality for fellowship where that's concerned.

Now everybody thinks that that's a great idea and they decide to go ahead and send a letter out to Antioch where all this disputation first occurred. And they want to communicate the feelings the best they can in this letter to let the people there know what they've decided at this council in Jerusalem. Now when you send a letter, letters are very hard to communicate emotion and the feeling of a situation. If you have a computer and you're in a chat room or you receive anything from anybody on an email, it's hard to get the inflection. You don't get inflection. You know, you don't

hear somebody's tone of voice or if they're joking or whatever. You just get words on a page. So you really have to write something well to communicate feeling and so that's what they try and do with this. Let me give you an example. School's starting and so kids are back from camp and a lot of you guys went to camp or have kids that went to camp and you hopefully either wrote a letter if you were off of camp or

maybe if you were a parent you really encouraged your kids to write a letter just to let you know how they were doing. And here's a letter that came from a kid that was at a scout camp back to his mom. And it communicates very well I think. Dear mom, our scout master told us all to write our parents in case you saw the flood on TV and got worried. We are okay. Only one of our tents and two sleeping bags got washed away.

Luckily none of us got drowned because we were all on the mountain looking for Chad when it happened. Oh yes, please call Chad's mother and tell her that he's okay. He can't write because of the cast. I got to ride in one of the search and rescue jeeps. It was neat. We never would have found him in the dark if it hadn't been for the lightning. Scout master Webb got mad at Chad for going on a hike alone without telling

anyone but Chad said he did tell him but it was during the fire so he probably didn't hear him. Did you know that if you put gas on a fire the gas can will blow up? The wet wood still didn't burn but one of our tents did and some of our clothes. John is going to look weird until his hair grows back. We will be home on Saturday if Scout Master Webb gets the car fixed.

It wasn't his fault about the wreck. The brakes worked okay when we left. Scout Master Webb said that a car that old you have to expect something to break down. That's probably why he can't get insurance on it. We think it's a neat car. He doesn't care if we get it dirty and if it's hot sometimes he lets us ride on the tailgate. It gets pretty hot with ten people in the car so he lets us take turns riding

in the trailer until the highway patrolman stops and talks to us. Scout Master Webb is a neat guy. Don't worry he's a good driver. In fact he's teaching Terry how to drive but he only lets him drive on the mountain roads where there isn't any traffic. All we ever see up here are logging trucks. This morning all the guys were diving off the rocks and swimming out on the lake

and Scout Master Webb wouldn't let me because I can't swim and Chad was afraid he would sink because of his cast and so he let us take the canoe across the lake. It was great. You can still see some of the trees under the water from the flood. Scout Master Webb isn't crabby like some Scout Masters. He didn't even get mad about no life jackets. He has to spend a lot of time working on the car so we're trying not to cause him

any trouble. Guess what? We've all passed our first eight merit badges. When Dave dove in the lake and cut his arm we got to see how a tourniquet works. Also Wade and I threw up. Scout Master Webb said it was probably just food poisoning from the leftover chicken. He said they got sick that way with the food they ate in prison. I'm so glad he got out and became our Scout Master. He said he sure figured out

how to get things done better while he was doing his time. I have to go now. We're going into town to mail our letters and buy bullets. Don't worry about anything. We are fine. Love, Cole. P.S. How long has it been since I had a tetanus shot? See, when you write a letter you want to communicate as best you can the feelings and emotions of the moment so that the people

you're writing to can try and get an understanding of what's actually going on there and that's what they try and do with this letter. The apostles and the elders with the whole church decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas and they chose Judas called Barsabbas and Silas, two men who were leaders among the brothers, and with them they sent the following letter. The apostles and elders, your brothers, to the Gentile believers in Antioch. Greetings. Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia. Greetings.

We've heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friend Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, we're sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we're writing. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to not burden you with anything beyond the following requirements.

You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, and from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell. The men were sent off and went down to Antioch where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter. And the people read it and were glad for its encouraging message. And Judas and Silas, who themselves were prophets, said much to encourage and

strengthen the brothers. And after spending some time there, they were sent off by the brothers with the blessing of peace to return to those who sent them. But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch where they and many others taught and preached the word of the Lord. Now, first of all, notice who was sent with the letter. Paul and Barnabas, of course, but they came from Antioch where all the disputing was going on, so

they needed somebody to go with them to verify what was said. So they sent with them Silas and Judas, also called Barsabas. Now, Silas we're going to know at the end of this chapter and the first of chapter sixteen because he's going to end up being Paul's travel companion. But it's interesting that they sent this guy named Judas, also called Barsabas. And you think, that's insignificant. What's so significant about that? Well,

first of all, Judas was not a real popular name right now because of Judas, Iscariot. But they called this guy by a nickname just like they called Barnabas was Barnabas's nickname. Well, they called this Judas Barsabas. Well, what does that mean? Well, Barsabas means son of the Sabbath. Bar is the Hebrew for the son of and Sabas, the Sabbath, he was the son of the Sabbath.

Probably nicknamed because he was a Jew who was very strong in his faith, in his keeping of the law, very extensively keeping the law, very strong in the keeping of the Sabbath. Now, one thing I want you to notice here is in this letter, in the requirements for the new believers, there's no mention of the Sabbath. If it were that imperative that the church keep the Sabbath Saturday as the Jews did, if it was that imperative, if that was a determining factor, then they'd put it in a letter because it was that much of a priority. Let's don't put any stumbling blocks.

If there's any requirements, these are the requirements, and they listed the four, but it wasn't worship on the Sabbath. Why? Well, Paul's going to deal with that one later in another epistle because God created the Sabbath for man. It's a time of rest, a time of being able to spend that time with the Lord. He made it for our blessing, for our rest, and he sent this letter, this wonderful

letter, with Bar-Sabbas, Bar-Sabbas, the son of the Sabbath, to encourage these new believers, these Gentile believers, that, hey, you can really find your rest in Jesus Christ, in your faith in Christ. It's not the keeping of ritual, it's not the keeping of one day over another. Paul will say later, some esteem one day, some esteem all days alike. Great! As long as you're doing it to the Lord, that's fine. It's interesting, though,

that even though they have this letter, and the letter was meant to end all of the squabbling, that throughout Paul's ministry, throughout his missionary journey, we're going to find that Judaizers still tail him and still try and place burdens on the people in their worship of the Lord, and so it is today. So much of the church tries to hinder, tries to throw roadblocks in front of people in their worship of the Lord, instead of just laying Jesus out there and saying, this is what Jesus is like. Let me show you a clear picture of the one who loves you, who went to the cross for you, who rose again to be able to impart life to you, and he gives it freely, by grace, he gives it to you. So many churches want to hinder that by placing

restrictions and rules on the people, burdens, throwing roadblocks instead of being a road map. May that not be true with us. The time is too short. People need to see Jesus. May they see him through you. Father...