“When Should Christians Give Up Their Rights” (Acts 21:15-25) June 21, 2026

What happens when rumours, misunderstandings, and personal convictions threaten to tear a church apart? In Acts 21:15-25, the Apostle Paul arrives in Jerusalem and is immediately faced with a conflict — false rumours are circulating about his teaching, and the unity of the early church hangs in the balance.

In this message, we look at what Paul does next — and why his response is one of the most Christlike examples in the entire book of Acts.
In this sermon, we explore:

✅ Why rumours and misunderstandings are one of the greatest threats to church unity
✅ How to tell the difference between Gospel essentials and non-essentials
✅ What Paul's willingness to set aside his rights, reputation, and personal freedom teaches us about following Jesus
✅ Practical questions to help you identify where you might be holding onto something that's creating division

Big Idea: For the sake of Christian unity, disciples of Jesus are to set aside their preferences and rights on non-essential matters.

Whether you're navigating conflict in your church, your small group, or your family — this passage has something to say to you.

📖 Scripture: Acts 21:15-25
📅 Preached: June 21, 2026
🎙️ Speaker: Pastor Sam
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Transcript

Speaker: 0:05

Today's passage is taken from Acts chapter 21 verses 15 to 25. After this, we started on our way up to Jerusalem. Some of the disciples from Caesarea accompanied us and brought us to the home of Mnason, where we were to stay. He was a man from Cyprus and one of the early disciples. When we arrived at Jerusalem, the brothers and sisters received us warmly. The next day, Paul and the rest of us went to see James, and all the elders were present. Paul greeted them and reported in detail what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. When they heard this, they praised God. Then they said to Paul, "You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law. They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs. What shall we do? They will certainly hear that you have come, so do what we tell you. These are four men with us who have made a vow. Take these men, join in their purification rites, and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads shaped. Then everyone will know there is no truth in these reports about you, and that you yourself are living in obedience to the law. As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they should abstain from food sacrifice to idols from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality." This is the word of the Lord. Praise be to God. Alright, church, good morning. May the peace of the Lord be with you. And also with you. So welcome to service, everyone. I know it's still tempting to be outdoors. We will be outdoors in a couple of weeks in August, as we always do to close the year end, or the summer part of our year, celebrating the end of summer and the beginning of the fall. But if you're a new guest with us here this morning, welcome to Crucible. My name is Sam, and I am the pastor here. If you would like to connect with me and my family over a meal or coffee, we would love to do that to help me follow up with you. Please help fill out a connect form on the table in the lobby there, and that would give me the necessary information to be able to follow up with you and find a time and a date for us to get together. Church, we will end the end of our current sermon series on the Book of Acts, and we will transition to a brand new sermon series on community, on Christian community specifically. Now this series will be about 11 weeks long, and our first Sunday of this will be August the 2nd. So don't miss out on that. Be sure to join us as we begin that journey. But before we continue on this morning, I would like to say Happy Father's Day to all of our fathers, father figures, spiritual fathers, and fathers-to-be. I hope you find a way to celebrate today with your families and friends. But I also know that a day like today is not always the easiest or the happiest of days for everyone. So if you have lost your father or have a relationship with your father that is estranged, I just want to say that as a church community, we stand by you and we stand with you here today. You are not alone, and if you want prayers after service, please don't hesitate to come to me or any of our elders to receive prayer, support, and encouragement. Now as for this morning and for our message, we want to dive into the passage that was read to us in Acts 21, the 10 verses that Barney read. The big idea here in this passage is this. "For the sake of Christian unity, disciples of Jesus are to set aside their preferences and rights on non-essential issues or matters." So this is what we will see unfold here in Acts 21. What happens when there is conflict and tension at church? How are God's people to resolve tension and conflict? And let's not be surprised about this church. The reality and the truth is that as the body of Christ, the church is so diverse that conflict and tension are bound to arise. And when they do, how do we respond to them? In my personal pastoral experience, people tend to respond in two ways. They either pull away from conflict and tension and refuse to engage, or secondly, they dive head in, ready to fight and engage. As in most things in life, the healthiest approach is probably somewhere in the middle. In other words, a compromise. Let me open our time here this morning with a story. In my early 20s, I pastored my first church in Vancouver. There was a moment in the life of the church when the community engaged in a pretty big issue. Can you guess what that issue was that caused tension and division within the church community? What do you think the issue was? Come on, just throw it out at me. Sorry, what? Pastors too young? No, that wasn't the issue, although that might have been, maybe, my lack of experience. What else? What else could it possibly be? Allowing drums in the church. No, but that's a common issue. No, no, no, yeah. Good try, good try. What else? Two more guesses of what this issue might be that caused tension and division in the community. Sorry? Okay, how they spend the funds of the church. No, but that's a good one. No, that's not it. One more. One guess. Yeah. Sorry? Different groups in the church. No, no. So those are very good guesses. No, okay. But nobody got it, nobody guessed it. The issue that tore the church apart was the issue of this. Anybody know what this is? So the issue of barbecue pork. Nobody knows what cha-siu means. It's called barbecue pork in Chinese. The issue of barbecue pork and whether as Christians we can eat it was a major issue in the body. So much that it threatened to tear the church apart. You laugh. You laugh now. But this was a major issue, okay? I remember very vividly spending hours debating about the merits of barbecue pork with people on a Sunday morning and at our board meetings. What does the Bible say about this? Does the Old Testament teach on whether we can eat it or not? And if it does, how does the Old Testament apply to the New Testament and the New Covenant that we as Christians today are under? Are those who have eaten cha-siu all their lives going to hell? Like these were real questions that we had to wrestle with, unfortunately. But even then as a young minister I knew this whole issue on barbecue pork that caused this unity and division in the church was absurd. And when I look back on it years later it was unnecessary tension and division that was placed on the body of Christ. Why? Because there were groups and factions of people in the community who had convictions about this. They believed that they were right and neither side or multiple sides were willing to budge. And it's very much like us, isn't it church? Me personally, my default instinct is to believe that I am right. And maybe that's you as well. But when we look at Acts 21 we are given a different posture and we are given a different heart. One that is harder, one that is more costly, and one that is more Christ-like. We live in a culture and a society where we are obsessed with personal rights, preferences. And that mentality and that attitude does not stay outside the church but it begins to filter into the church. And a lot of church tension and conflict isn't over major doctrinal beliefs or issues, convictions. They are over preferences and personal rights, methods and styles and traditions that we tend to raise and elevate into essential status. So how? How do we navigate through that? And that's what we want to look at here in Acts 21. We'll see what the issue is and how Paul responds and what he does and what our passage here this morning teaches us about how we ought to respond. So let's look at three major areas here this morning in Acts 21, 10 verses. The first is that rumors and misunderstandings are real threats to the unity of the church. Paul arrives in Jerusalem and within a day he makes contact with James and the elders of the church in Jerusalem. They welcome him openly, happily. They were genuinely glad to see Paul. They are not hostile against him. And Paul shares about what God is doing within his ministry among the Gentiles, how people were hearing the gospel, the good news, and they were responding by putting their faith in and trust in Christ. Lives were being transformed. Lives were being changed. Marriages were being saved. Christ was not only being known and the church was growing but the church community was flourishing. And the elders as they were listening to Paul's testimony were moved. They were so deeply moved by his sharing of what God was doing in the world that they were moved to praise God for all that God had done and is currently, was currently doing. These stories that Paul was sharing were of life change. It would have painted a picture of a kingdom, God's kingdom coming in, a picture of heaven on earth, a picture of God's will and rule and reign being lived out and expressed in the people of God the church. But the elders also had some concerns about some rumors that they were hearing about Paul and what Paul was teaching these new brothers and sisters who were coming into the faith. These rumors that the elders heard were that Paul was teaching these non-Jewish believers, the Gentiles, things like to turn away, not just non-Jewish, but even the Jewish people, the Jewish believers, to turn away to abandon, to rebel from the law of Moses. And these elders were concerned about two things primarily, that Paul was teaching people to disobey the law and secondly, that he was teaching them not to circumcise their children. Now to better understand why this was an issue for the elders, we need to ask the question, what was the law of Moses? So when we come across this phrase in Acts 21, the law, which occurs twice in our passage, it is specifically referring to the law of Moses. So what was the law of Moses? Okay, so to simplify what the law of Moses is, it can be understood as a manual that God gave to the Israelites to help them live together as a community, as a people, and to love God. Now it's called the law of Moses because it came from God to and through Moses. Now one of the most important laws or parts of the law was called the Ten Commandments. You might be familiar with it. These Ten Commandments were kind of like house rules. These commandments told people what God expected of them and some commandments told them what God expected them not to do. Now these commandments and these laws were never meant to earn God's favor or love. God had already loved his people. But instead the laws were to help the people stay close in relationship to him. Now at the heart of these laws and commandments was one kind of big central idea and theme, loving God and loving people. So essentially the law of Moses was really a compilation of laws and commands from God to his people to give them guardrails to protect them on how to treat each other and how to walk with God in loving, obedience, and trust. Now the law of Moses does not directly and specifically today apply to us like the whole barbecue pork incident. But the principles do still apply. The spirit of the law of Moses still applies to God's people today and it has been fulfilled by Jesus and in Christ. Jesus himself would actually say that he has not come to destroy the law, but he has come to fulfill it. So we have to remember that Paul was a Jew and he was a very proud Jew. He was proud of his Jewish heritage and custom. But the gospel of Jesus Christ was even more important than his cultural roots. Paul eventually moved to Jerusalem to become a Pharisee and that move indicated, expressed his commitment and his passion and his zeal to keeping every part of the law. So as someone who has come to faith in Christ, Paul was no longer obligated to follow the law because Christ has already fulfilled it. What is required of Paul and other believers like him at the time was not to follow the law, but to follow the law of Christ. And the law of Christ is found in two commandments. Love God and can you guess the other? Love people. Now circumcision was mentioned here as well. Most of us will understand what circumcision is for contemporary times, for today. But we have to understand why it was important to the Jews here in Acts 21. We don't understand why it was important for them. We will not understand the objection that Paul had for not teaching the Jews to circumcise their children. So why was it important for the elders and why was it important to Jewish believers? Circumcision has its roots in the Old Testament where God commands Abraham and his descendants to practice circumcision as a sign, as a symbol, as a mark of the covenant relationship between God and his people. Every male living in the covenant was to be circumcised representing participation in this relationship between God and his people. Now those who rejected this act were to be taken away. They were to be removed from the community. And over time this ritual of circumcision became a marker and an identity for Jewish believers, for Jewish people. Now circumcision was seen and understood as an outward sign of being a part of God's community, of God's people. So at least in the Old Testament, under the Old Covenant, those who wanted to be a part of this community, circumcision was then required of all men and boys as they converted into Judaism. Now this rumor that was going around had this rumor and this misunderstanding not been handled well by the elders. They could have very well divided and destroyed the church and created great disunity among the people. We are bound to have misunderstandings and when they are left unaddressed they will fracture and divide people and the community at large. Maybe you have experienced this personally. I have. You can imagine what would have happened if Paul had ignored the elders' concerns about the rumors that were circulating about Paul, about what Paul was teaching. Things could have gone so bad that disunity and suspicion would have grown even deeper between Jews and Gentiles. And at the time there was already a divide between these two groups of people. But if the misunderstanding and the rumor wasn't dealt with it would have caused an entire deeper split at the time. So what is the solution? Well there is a second point here this morning that disciples of Christ are to set aside their rights and preferences on non-essential issues and matters. So the elders here in Jerusalem they proposed to Paul a strategic proposal. This is what they say. "There are four men with us who have made a vow, a promise. Take these men, join them in their purification, rights and pay for their expenses so that they can have their heads shaved. Then everyone will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law." So what needs to be understood here is that the elders' proposal is not about changing the Gospel. The good news of Jesus Christ is not at risk here. It's understanding what is essential and what is non-essential. And when we don't get this right as a church and we confuse the two, churches tend to get into all kinds of trouble. Like barbecue pork. Now an essential sign or an essential, what is considered an essential are things that define the Christian faith. So for Paul this would have been things like salvation through grace by faith alone in Christ alone. Things like the Gentiles do not need to follow the law or be circumcised in order to be justified before God. There were non-negotiables for Paul. Other essentials would be things like the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the physical death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Trinitarian God, God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three persons, one God. Jesus as fully God and fully man. The sinfulness of mankind and our need for redemption. These were non-negotiables for Paul. Non-essential practices, non-essential are things or practices, customs, traditions that are not directly tied or connected to the issue of salvation. So things that may be cultural, relational importance but are not necessarily essential to the gospel. So for example, again I'm going to go back to the main kind of story, the issue of barbecue pork and my first church. This should not even have been a discussion to begin with. It's clear that whether people eat it or not does not depend on their salvation. If they eat barbecue pork they are not going to hell more than a person who has eaten it all of their lives. And the person who has eaten it all their life is not more saved than the person who doesn't. This is a non-essential issue. It has nothing to do with salvation and has nothing to do with the gospel. So what is the issue here with Paul and the elders? Is it an essential or non-essential issue? The issue is non-essential, meaning the concern is more about practice and tradition than about doctrine. So Paul was directed to go with these four men who had vowed to cleanse themselves or purify themselves, to pay for their expenses so that they could have their heads shaved. Now we need to understand what this vow was about. What was this promise that these four men were about to make? This vow that these four men were about to take was called a Nazarite vow. What is a Nazarite vow? The Nazarite vow has its roots again in the Old Testament, Numbers chapter 6 if you're interested in reading that. It's a person's special dedication and commitment to God through specific restrictions and practices. So one of the most famous Nazarites in the Old Testament, does anybody know? It's a guy with long hair. Yeah, who said it? Samson, that's right. He was not allowed to cut his hair. He was indulged in grape juice and grapes and there were certain things that Samson could not do. So Paul agrees to this proposed solution by agreeing to go with these four men, to support them in their commitment and dedication to God, and undergo this purification rites with them. And he was doing something highly visible and culturally important to the Jews. He's saying in the most public way that he honors the Jewish customs and traditions and that these rumors that were circulating about him were completely false. Consider however what it cost Paul. He set aside his rights and his preferences for the sake of church unity. He set aside his reputation. Paul spent years working and building up his credibility as an apostle to the Gentiles. And so for him to participate in Jewish rituals could have been a great misunderstanding by the very people he was called to reach. Paul, aren't you talking about we are being saved by grace? Why are you going back and trying to live under the law when you have told us that we are no longer obligated to it? He was risking his reputation by agreeing to do what the elders had proposed. He set aside his time. Seven days, it took the purification ritual process seven entire week. Paul was a busy man, a man on a mission. Setting aside seven whole days was a significant amount of time and commitment. But he did it for the sake of the church's unity. He set aside his rights to personal freedom. Paul was under no obligation, zero obligation to do this. But yet he agreed to it. He wasn't forced. There's nothing in our text this morning where there's any sort of indication that the elders shamed him or guilt tripped him to doing this. He did this on his own terms. He could have stood his ground and he could have refused to do a ritual to satisfy those who were believing in the lies and in the rumors about him. But he chose a more sacrificial and costly way for the sake of the body of Christ. He set aside his comforts. There is something very humbling about being asked to do something to demonstrate your innocence when you actually have done nothing wrong. And so for Paul to agree to what the elders were asking of him, he would have had to put aside his sense of personal justice. And yet he did it. Not because it was comfortable for him, but it was uncomfortable and it was for the sake of God's people. See, Church, what Paul does here is the pattern of Christ himself. Jesus had every right more than Paul because he was God. He owed humanity nothing. And yet he willingly set aside his divine rights and privileges, became a man, lived among us, and then died an unjust death. Paul's decision to set aside his rights was only doing what Christ had done. He was emulating him, choosing others over self, choosing unity and love over personal preference and rights. He was living out the cross-shaped life, a life that gave way for the benefit and for the sake of others. And so when we look at the cross, it is the ultimate example of setting aside one's rights, one's preferences for someone else. It is what Jesus has done for us, and it is what we are called to do for one another. Now the last area, this one that we will look at, is knowing the difference between essentials and non-essentials. So we kind of earlier listed some of the essentials, the non-negotiables for Paul. So now we want to look at some of the non-essentials here in Acts 21. The non-essentials would be things like observing Jewish dietary laws. So there is a list of things in the Old Testament that you are not allowed to eat as a Jew. Kosher, non-Kosher things. So this is the text actually that got me into trouble, got the church into trouble by this whole barbecue pork. Pork is an animal with hooves, right? And an animal with hooves is a restriction, you are not allowed to eat animals with hooves, at least in the Old Testament, under the Old Covenant. This doesn't apply anymore. Observing Jewish dietary laws, non-essential. Circumcision as a cultural practice, not necessary for salvation. Purification rituals, not necessary. So here are some examples of what non-essentials could look like for us here today as a church. Worship style, music preference. Bible translation, preferences. Believe me when I tell you that there are people who will fight to the death over translation. King James Version or we die. No other version, this is God directly from the heavens. NIV, demonic. NLT, even worse. What about the message? That's like a summary, it's not even a translation. And churches have split over Bible translation versions. Other non-essentials, start times, carpet colors, order and structure of a church service. So on and so forth. Knowing and understanding the difference between essentials and the non-essentials can be theologically clear in our heads, but hard in practice for two reasons. We tend to elevate, we tend to promote our preferences into essential status. Sometimes what starts off as a personal conviction can turn into an essential. Not because of scripture, but because it's comfortable and familiar for us. Look at the Jewish believers who had spent their entire lives observing and following the law. Their observance of the law shaped their understanding of what it means to be God's people. And so to ask them to hold the law loosely, to let it go even, felt like asking them to let go of their faith entirely. Non-essentials, secondly, non-essentials often carry spiritual significance. These Jewish believers, their customs have been given to them by God. And it has shaped their community for generations, hundreds of years. And I think we need to remember that what's important here to remember is that non-essential does not mean unimportant. So just because it is not essential to the gospel does not mean that it is unimportant to us. It can be very important to us. But we can learn, church, to honor the importance of a practice or a custom or even a tradition and their spiritual significance while at the same time, right, recognizing that it is not an essential to the gospel. So what do we do with a passage like this in Acts 21? The reality of the truth, church, is that if we're honest with ourselves this morning, we are better at identifying the non-essentials in other people and their inability to let things go than we are at identifying the non-essentials in our own hearts and our inability to let it go. So there's three questions I want to end here, our time with, that I think we need to be asking ourselves, but also processing and working through well past this service this morning. First, what are the preferences and rights that you currently hold onto that creates tension and division in the church? In our small groups, maybe even among your families. So this could be a conflict about how something is done in the church. It could be something more subtle, like a personal conviction that you're applying to other people when other people don't necessarily share the same conviction. It could be a past wound, hurt, where you have been wronged and you have never been able to let it go. Whatever it might be, we must identify it and we must name it. We must bring it into the light, because before there can be any sort of movement towards unity, there has to be an honesty about whatever is standing in the way, or else we don't know how to remove that object. Secondly, have you done the hard work of being able to differentiate what is essential from what is simply important to you? There is a difference between "this is really important to me" which reveals our preferences and our convictions, and "this is essential to the Gospel." Two different things. And many of the things that we argue and fight over actually fall into the first category, preference. "This is really important to me." Again, it doesn't mean that it's not important, it just means that we need to be flexible and accommodating so that the Gospel can move forward. And we're not fighting and we're not hindering people from receiving the hope that is found in Jesus. Last question. Are you willing to follow the pattern of Jesus in setting aside your rights, your preferences, for the sake of not just someone else, but for the sake of the body, the church? When we look at Acts 12, sorry, when we look at Acts 21, how Paul responded was not just good conflict management. It was Christ-likeness. It is the pattern of the cross, the pattern of Jesus. Jesus, who had every right, chose to set aside those rights for us. He did not come to be served, but came to serve and to give his life away as a ransom for many. This is the pattern that this morning, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, that you are called to this pattern and to pattern your life after this. Jesus' posture is our posture. Jesus' willingness to lay down his rights becomes our willingness by the power of the Holy Spirit also to lay down our rights. Imagine a church. Imagine what a church could look like if we took Acts 21 seriously as a model of how to do community as a church, as a model on how to resolve tension and conflict. Imagine for a moment where the first question that's being asked when in conflict and when in tension is not, "What is my right here?" but rather, "What does love require of me in this situation? How can I lay down my preferences in my rights for the other, for the sake, for the sake of unity?" Church, believe it or not, how we engage in conflict is a form of witness to the world that is watching us. That's God's people. A church that lays down its rights and its preferences, chooses to give way in love, out of love, for the sake of others, is a church that looks like Jesus. And we want to be that kind of community, crucible. We want to be like Jesus. As a church, my encouragement for you this morning is this. Come to the cross, come to Jesus with open hands and open hearts. Lay down whatever you have held onto too tightly. Receive the grace that costs Jesus everything. And then go and do likewise in our church, in your relationships, in your friendships, at work. So for the sake of Christian unity, let us as disciples of Jesus Christ set aside our preferences and our rights on non-essential issues and matters. May this be true for us, crucible. Amen? Let's pray. Father, I thank you for Acts 21, this collection of ten verses, a challenge to us, not just as a community, not just as a church, but as individuals here in this room. You know, if you're honest, and if I'm honest, Father, my default posture at heart is to believe that I am always right, that I'm right. But sometimes, because we're all so different in this room, we have different ideas and different thoughts, we're not always right. And how is it that we can lay down our preferences, lay down our rights for the sake of unity in the body? Jesus, we don't want to split. We've seen so many disunity and division in our world, even in churches. I pray to God that you would guard our hearts against the very thing that breaks your heart. You dedicate an entire chapter on the Gospel of John, this priestly prayer on unity for believers then, but also for future believers, believers today. This was important to you. And so I pray, God, that as we look at Acts 21, we see this issue that was really a big issue for the church at the time, for Paul, for the elders. What is the equivalent today in our churches, in our church? Whatever that might be, God, help us to look at Paul's example. Ultimately, help us to look at your example and how you had every right, and yet you laid down your rights for the sake of the body, for the sake of your people that we might benefit and that we might live. So help us by the power of the Holy Spirit, not out of our own wills, not out of our own strength, but by your Spirit that we might do the same. For we ask this in Jesus' name, Amen.