Grace Over Gatekeeping

A young movement is spreading fast across the Roman world—and friction follows. When believers from different cultures collide in Antioch and Jerusalem, a hard question rises to the surface: do Gentile Christians need to carry the full weight of the Law to truly belong? We walk through Acts 15 and the Jerusalem council, where testimony, Scripture, and courage converge to protect the heart of the gospel.

We share how Paul and Barnabas arrive in Jerusalem with stories of Gentile transformation, how the church chooses to listen before judging, and how fear of Rome’s power feeds the impulse to control. Then Peter reframes the debate: God knows the heart, has given the Holy Spirit without distinction, and saves by grace—not by a yoke no one could bear. James anchors the decision in the prophets, arguing that welcoming outsiders was always part of God’s plan. Together they remove barriers to belonging while offering practical guidance to avoid idolatry and preserve table fellowship across cultures.

Along the way, we draw out four enduring practices: remember your faith when anxiety rises, love your neighbor by clearing the path to Jesus, resist legalism that sneaks in as “standards,” and name modern idols that compete with allegiance to Christ—success, power, identity, or even ministry itself. If you’ve wrestled with where conviction meets compassion, this conversation offers a path forward: clarity on essentials, wisdom on non-essentials, and charity in all things. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review telling us which barrier you think the church should remove first.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, Humor, And Momentum
• 0:56 Series Setup: The Long Way Forward
• 2:09 Acts Geography And Clarity
• 3:17 The Roman Pressure Cooker
• 4:59 Expansion Of The Church
• 6:14 Conflict Over Law And Belonging
• 8:19 How Healthy Churches Handle Disputes
• 11:15 Peter, James, And Grace Defined
• 13:03 Remember Faith, Love Neighbor, Resist Legalism
• 15:10 Idolatry Then And Now
• 17:20 Personal Invitations And Hope

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Uh well, good morning, uh everyone. Good morning, Madison Church. Good morning, Madison Church Online. My name is Kyle. I'm one of the elders here. And I figured I'd at least start off today by telling you how I got Steven in trouble this past week. I got him in trouble. We were coming up with a flag football name for what we're gonna do this this spring. And I said we should do bye week as our name so that every opponent thinks that they have a bye week every time they come and play us. It's pretty smart, right? Well, the league commissioner did not think it was so funny. So he sent an email to Steven saying, give us a real name. I'm tired of your jokes.

SPEAKER_01: 0:33

So anyway.

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

All right. But I think the other thing I'm surprised about this morning is how fast January went. I feel like January went really, really quickly. And if you were part of Madison Church, you knew that we had an event every single week in the month of January. Sometimes we had two events on a couple of those weeks there. So we've taken gotten a lot of momentum. We're really excited. We're gonna carry that into our small groups. Small groups are starting on February 18th. So we want to take that momentum with us. Actually, there might be a small group starting right before that too. So just look online, look on the app for smarting small groups. Now we are continuing our series today called The Long Way Forward. Now, the long way forward is designed to say, hey, the church in Acts is very new. It has a lot of growing pains. And then what happens when the church, they're trying to be faithful, but things keep coming up that block their growth. And like how do we handle that? And there's a couple of disclaimers that I want to throw out there as soon as we start talking about Acts 15. We're gonna talk about Acts 15 today. And Acts 15 is a very pivotal chapter in the book of Acts. You'll see N.T. Wright wrote a small e-book about it. You can go read it for free online. A lot of scholarship has been done on this chapter. And Acts is a bent is a very dense book. It has a lot of names, it has a lot of places, it has reference to customs that we will never fully understand ourselves. I remember just recently we went out to Portland over the holiday season. And so as I started telling people, hey, I'm going out to Portland, they started saying Maine or Oregon. And I was like, oh, wait, that's right. There are two completely different Portlands. One's in New England, one's in the Pacific Northwest. Those are two completely different cultures and even subsets of American culture, right? And the same with Disney, right? Oh, I'm going to Disney. Well, which Disney are you going to? Are you going to Disney World in Florida or are you going to Disneyland in California? And so we actually start to see that play out a little bit in Acts 2. We are finishing up Paul's first missionary journey. And he's in a place called Antioch. Well, it turns out there's an Antioch in Syria, that's the main one. And then there's an Antioch in Galatia, which is modern-day Turkey. That's really confusing, right? Well, we want to make sure we separate it. We never want scripture to be intimidating. So I'll highlight as we go through today some of that stuff. We're also going to hear from someone named James, the brother of Jesus. Now, if your memory serves you well and you were taking good notes when Stephen was preaching a couple weeks ago, you'll remember that James was killed by Herod. So how is James talking again in this story? There's a different James. Of course, there's a different James. James, the brother of Jesus, is who we're going to hear from today. He was not an original disciple. He's not the James you think of in the Gospels. He's actually thought to have come to Jesus and believed in Jesus after Jesus' resurrection. But today we hear from him. He's a very measured, centered guy, which I appreciate myself, right? And then the last note is we dive in. Today in Acts 15, there is a huge debate between Jewish customs and Christian customs. And what I don't want us to do is to somehow conflate this debate, the debates of Judaism and Christianity from then, and conflate that with the Jewish people of today. We want to make sure that we separate that just a little bit. For instance, if I asked you, what did it mean to be an American in the 1700s? You might say, well, some Americans were really cool with Great Britain, and other Americans wanted to go and do their own thing. Now, there are some commonalities of that with today, but it was a different context, and I want to highlight that as we go through. But the biggest thing that you can think about when you think about the New Testament, if there is one cultural driver in all of this, it is the power and the occupation of the Roman Empire. That affects every fabric of the New Testament. And that's what we're going to see today. Because fear and occupation will always, always drive some to go seek refuge within that system of power. They'll go make a name for themselves and they'll work inside that system while others will seek to flee and to rebel. That's not unlike the heartache we feel in our country today. We feel that even today. So let's dive in. I'll explain more as we go, but the first thing I want to talk about today as we jump into Acts 15 is the expansion of the church. I want to show you what that expansion means. So Acts 15, 1 through 3, let's read real quick. While Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch of Syria, that's the main one, some men from Judea, Jerusalem, arrived and began to teach the believers. Unless you are circumcised as required by the law of Moses, you cannot be saved. Paul and Barnabas disagreed with them, arguing vehemently. Finally, the church decided to send Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem, accompanied by some local believers, to talk to the apostles and elders about this question. The church sent the delegates to Jerusalem and they stopped along the way in Phoenicia, so modern-day Lebanon and Samaria, to visit the believers. They told them, much to everyone's joy, that the Gentiles too were being converted. Now let's stop here real quick. Where are we? Well, we just heard we're in Antioch of Syria, the main one, the big city. We are between Paul's missionaries' journeys. He just finished a missionary journey as we pick up Acts 15. Now, what does that mean and how do we make it make sense? All right, I'm gonna try a map. I don't know. I work with maps in my day job. This might be confusing, but I love maps. But what I want to show you is Paul's first missionary journey. This is uh what happened in Acts 14. He starts in Antioch and he comes around, he goes up to modern day Turkey or Galatia, so that the book of Galatians, and he comes back to Antioch. Now, when he gets back, they said some folks from Jerusalem or Judea come up to Antioch and they start saying, You gotta follow the law of Moses if you want to be a Christian. And Paul and Barnabas was like, I think you got that wrong. And so the Church of Antioch is going to send a delegation to Jerusalem to figure this out. And on the way, they're gonna stop in Phoenicia, where Sidon and Tyre are, and then Samaria, where Caesarea is, on their way down, and they're going to share about the good news of the gospel that is being being done in them. Why do I bring that up? Why do I put that map up there? Because I think with a map like this, it's a little bit easier to conceptualize how much the church is spreading in the first 10 to 15 years after Jesus' death. These are significant distances. They are major cities within the Roman Empire, all within the Roman Empire. And the church in Jerusalem is starting to get really worried if that gospel message is staying pure. Or maybe that gospel message is getting diluted and absorbed into Roman religion and theology. But in fact, it seems like it's almost the other way. It's getting too absorbed into Jewish theology. And that seems to be the problem we're facing. So my big takeaway is that as the church expands, it naturally leads to conflict. And that's what we'll look at secondly here. Expansion leads to conflict. Let's keep reading Acts 15, verse 4. When they arrived in Jerusalem, Barnabas and Paul were welcomed by the whole church, including the apostles and elders. They reported everything God had done through them. But then some of the believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and insisted, the Gentile converts must be circumcised and required to follow the law of Moses. I think the natural question for us is why do the Pharisees care so much? What exactly is at stake here? And why are we even dealing with the Pharisees? Weren't they like the main enemy of Jesus in the Gospels? Wasn't Jesus like no to all Pharisees? Well, let's remember that. Yes, Pharisees have always been a bit of the problem makers in the gospel, but Pharisees were converting to Christianity. Paul is a prime example. He was a Pharisee, he converted to Christianity. And it does make at least a little bit of sense why they feel the way they do, because from their perspective, God wants everyone to be pure. The Pharisees just don't want people to think that a priest is just holy in the temple, or that as you're a Christian, you can somehow just go do whatever you want and live however you want. The problem is the Pharisees take it too far. And to some degree, this type of rule following comes out of fear of the Roman Empire, too. The Jewish people are afforded a little bit of autonomy there in Jerusalem. They get their own judicial system, they get their own temple, they get to worship how they want to. So from the Pharisees' perspective, if they let their standards go, then the Roman government is going to come in and take away the few rights that they had. They would be like a loophole to a rebellion and they would be crushed. And they were right about their fears. That's going to happen 20 years later. The Romans are going to come in and destroy the temple. But the matter in question today is not whether the Gentiles should be allowed. That was already resolved by Peter and Paul. The issue is how the Gentiles should be welcomed. What rules do they have to follow? What does salvation actually mean? And so let's look at verse six. So the apostles and elders met together to resolve this issue. I think what is really painful for me sometimes is that whether it's in church, at work, whether it's a personal relationship, just because you understand a conflict does not mean you know how to solve it. Just because you understand something really well doesn't mean you know how to fix it. I think today I have a good grasp on the conflict. I think it's a little bit of bad theology. I think there's some cultural trauma, some religious trauma. And I think that there's a fear that the church will lose its way and that this will all have been for nothing. But I also think that there are a few lessons from this conflict that we can learn, especially rooted there in verse six, the apostles and elders met together to resolve this issue. And we'll throw the four up on the screen and I'll just walk through them really quickly. The first things first, with this huge theological debate, with this huge issue, the church did not ignore the problem. I think sometimes today it's really easy for a church to turn a blind eye or to look away from problems, to pretend like everything is okay. But in this instance, the church did not ignore the problem. I think it would have been too easy for Paul and Barnabas to see folks come from Jerusalem, from James, speaking what they perceived as nonsense, and for Paul and Barnabas to simply give up on the church in Jerusalem. I think I would have been tempted to do that. Oh, Jerusalem has lost its way. I don't even know them anymore, might as well move on. But instead, and in collaboration with the church in Antioch, they are sent to work out this major issue, a big regional church going to another regional church, trying to solve this problem. Now remember, Paul and Barnabas have been having some serious debates. They were arguing vehemently with these folks in Jerusalem. Could you imagine how fired up they would have been coming into this kind of council? I don't know about you, but I love a good shower argument. Anybody have any good shower arguments? That's when you're upset about something, you go in the shower, you come up with the perfect comeback from for what someone said to you. You're like ready to go. Knowing good and well, as soon as you step out of that shower, you're gonna forget it all, and you're gonna go back to, you know, just suffering. I imagine Paul and Barnabas had this feeling on their way down to Jerusalem. They are fired up, they're fighting the anger. They know how much it's consuming them and affecting them. But it says that they actually stopped along the way and still shared the good news that had been uh that God had been doing through them in Phoenicia and Samaria. Just because they were angry about an issue that mattered a lot, they also still got to celebrate the goodness of the gospel. It didn't rob them of their joy. And the church in Jerusalem chose to welcome that them in the same way. It says they welcomed them and listened to them. I feel like in today's age, the church in Jerusalem would have been like, sorry, you're coming down here to start problems. We don't have time for you. We'll meet you in the parking lot for 15 minutes and we'll send you on your way. Thanks for coming. But no, the church welcomed them. They wanted to hear how God was using them. Even in disagreement, they believed in one another. That's what we want to create here, not just in Madison Church, but with all of our church partners. Secondly, the church chose to be fully honest. You know, I actually enjoy making fun of Midwest culture a little bit. It's a strange place for a southerner like me sometimes. When someone jokes about something around here, they usually mean it. It's like everyone is nice and polite to everyone, even if they hate your guts. Like, still very nice, still very polite. You're not really sure what people are thinking at any given moment. But what I do appreciate about this passage is that we simply see them be honest. They're simply honest. They disagree, but they disagree openly, they disagree together. I admire that. Especially as someone who doesn't always want to openly disagree. I respect that. I believe in the same way, the church became a safe space even for disagreement. We're not, we're gonna see that everyone gets an opportunity to express their beliefs, even if that's not the direction the church ultimately goes. And that's our challenge to create relationships where people feel safe enough to be honest, to be open, to be available to disagree with one another, and to still stay close. Thirdly, the church chose to move together. Verse six is a great reminder. The apostles and elders met together to resolve this issue. The church understood how important it was to move as a unit, even across different cultures, across different cities. They wanted to handle this organically. And it doesn't ultimately work. We know the church still fractures. You can go to a thousand denominations, even today. But in this moment, they wanted to move as one unit. They wanted to handle this organically, but most importantly, they wanted to stay together. They wanted to stay at the same table. Lastly, and most importantly, the church committed to the newcomer, the outsider. This is the most important principle of all, especially in our cultural moment. The church is going to remove barriers for Gentiles to enter the Christian faith. They aren't going to commit to their ideologies, and they, excuse me, aren't going to say the gospel is only for a few. They're going to say the gospel is for all people, no matter where they are from, what they look like, or how their cultures might clash. And it's in that spirit of committing to the newcomer and the outsider, they reclaim the gospel. And let's look at how they do that in our final minute minutes, reclaiming the gospel. We're going to read from verse 7 through 20, and I'll explain a little bit along the way. So in verse 7, at the meeting, after a long discussion, Peter stands up and addresses them as follows Brothers, you all know God chose me from among you some time ago to preach to the Gentiles so they could hear the good news and believe. God knows people's hearts, and he confirmed that he accepts Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us. So why are you now challenging God by burdening the Gentiles' believers with a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors were able to bear? We believe that we are all saved the same way by the undeserved grace of the Lord Jesus. Everyone, listen quietly as Barnabas and Paul told about the miraculous signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles. And when they finish, now James is going to stand up and he's going to say, Brothers, listen to me. Peter has told you about the time that God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for himself. And this conversion of Gentiles is exactly what the prophets predicted. As it is written, he's going to read from Amos. Afterward I will return and restore the fallen house of David. I will rebuild its ruins and restore it, so that the rest of humanity might seek the Lord, including the Gentiles. All those I have called to be mine. The Lord has spoken. He who made these things known so long ago. So James starts speaking again, and he says, So my judgment is that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who we are turning to God. Instead, we should write to them and tell them to abstain from eating food offered to idols, from sexual immorality, from eating the meat of strangled animals, and from consuming blood, forms of idolatry at the time. So now how do we how do we interpret this? Like this happened 2,000 years ago. Well, in these just few verses, we read one of the most consequential theological moments of Acts and the early church. Peter and James, they clarify what salvation means, that grace is alone as the foundation of our faith, and they clarify who belongs in the kingdom of God. Now, for us today, how do we look at a passage like this and think that it means something for us? Is it just okay, well, thanks for keeping us in? I don't think so. I think there's a few more points that we can uh close out really meditating on about this passage. We'll throw them up on the screen as well. The first one is remember your faith. This is the fundamental message of Acts 15. Peter tells that council, there is no distinction in Christ. Christ knows everyone's heart, and Christ made the way. There's not a single person, not Moses, not Isaiah, not Peter, not Paul, who could keep the law. Don't place that burden on someone else, too. And then James stands up and reminds everyone, hey, this was always part of God's plan. He's quoting from the book of Amos that God was always going to restore the faith and allow all people to seek and find rest in God. And we can't forget the words of Paul in Ephesians 2 on the same subject. My King James brain comes out. For by grace are you saved through faith and not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And then verse 10, for we are God's masterpiece. He created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. Paul's actually going to go on in Ephesians 2. He's talking to a Gentile church there. He says, Don't forget you used to be outsiders. Don't take this for granted. He continues, God loved us all when we were dead in our sin, but he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. We must remember that and rest in that, for this is our hope and our only hope in the world today. Secondly, we're called in this passage to love our neighbor. In Acts 15, the church chooses to love the outsider, to remove any sort of artificial barrier to Christ. Peter tells the council, remember, all hearts are cleansed through faith. We are all saved the same way through the undeserving grace of Jesus. Remembering our faith is what allows us to love our neighbor because we understand what it means to feel lost. And we also remember what it means to receive grace, to receive light, to receive love. And if we find ourselves creating barriers for all who we will or won't love, we go too far. That's why our communion table in the back is open, because we wish all to come, for all to taste and see that the Lord is good. Thirdly, we are called to avoid legalism. Adding in requirements for faith quickly, quickly becomes legalistic. Peter reminds the council, none of our ancestors could keep all the laws. Don't go around thinking you can place that on someone else, too. This balances well with Paul's words in Ephesians. Salvation is not a reward for those good works, it's a gift of grace because of faith. We're actually going to see Paul call out Peter in Galatians for the very same topic and around the same time. Because sometimes we just can't help ourselves, I think. We start to feel like we're doing a good job. We start to build momentum in the faith. And then we start wanting to hold others to the same standards we're trying to hold ourselves to. But in Galatians 2, Paul doesn't hold back. He says, When Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face for what he did was very wrong. That's intense language. Peter, when he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers who were not circumcised. But afterwards, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn't eat with the Gentiles anymore. He goes on to say, and we have believed in Christ Jesus so that we might be made right with God because of our faith, not because we obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law. We must always ask ourselves in humility how we handle our convictions, ensuring we are not placing any expectation on salvation other than faith in the Lord's work alone. And lastly, we are told in this passage to avoid idolatry. The council does not end without some advice for new. Believers. This is what James stands up and says at the very end. He tells them to avoid idolatry, to not be flippant with their faith. And while here we are again, 2,000 years away from this council, we too are reminded not to fall into versions of idolatry today. And that includes traps like success or perfection, where we end up paying an allegiance to our career or to our reputation over the work of the gospel. That's a form of idolatry. Or when we pay an allegiance to power and identity, confusing our faith with ideology or nationalism or a sense of influence. Or when we pay allegiance to our economy, seeking security and confusing our financial success with stability and divine favor. Or even when we confuse good things like family or romance or ministry as some form of ultimate calling, that it can somehow replace the gospel and the Lord's work in our life. What James is getting at here is not just avoid pagan rituals, but reminding the communities they cannot serve Christ and something else. And ultimately that's going to cost James his life. Ten years after this moment, he'll be condemned to death. Not by the Romans, but by the Jewish population, the high priest. Why? Because he proclaimed Jesus as Messiah, because for him, that was the only thing worth professing allegiance to. And so in conclusion, perhaps you were here today and has seen long forgotten what it means to remember your faith. It may be one of those parts that has been distorted or shaped by legalism in your past. Today is the day to remember the words of James and Peter and Paul. You being invited into the faith was always, always part of God's plan. And it was always a gift freely given. Or maybe you were here today and you're feeling this internal war between loving your neighbor and feeling the pains of legalism in your life. God won't hear my prayers if I sin. How do I love my neighbor if I don't tell them how their living is wrong? Today is the day to remember your faith, to remember that there are no barriers to God, who is always there, who is always loved. That love is meant to be shared. And maybe you are here today and you're struggling with some form of idolatry, money, identity, control, career. What would it look like to pray about that stronghold? To ask if there is something there that needs letting go? What would it mean for the gospel to become more sensual, to carry on, carry that into our community? No matter where you are today, I hope you can rest in one of my favorite songs that I've memorized for a long time. It asks a question that I think we all wonder about from time to time, especially in moments where God feels so far away. Says this I thought that first that I had to clean up my life, but now I'm hearing I just need to cling to the light. I'm ready to do it, but Lord, I pray you understand. No matter my past, will you take me as I am? And the Lord's resounding answer is yes.