Courage: The Courage to Become
February 7, 2016
Dr. Tom Pace
Acts 15:1-11

We are concluding our series on “courage,” and we’re going to look at a really key moment in the life of the church. It’s described in the fifteenth chapter of Acts as the church is grappling with whether it will change. That’s the real issue. Will the church change and begin to accept gentiles who have not converted to Judaism first into their community? We’re going to look at how that happens and how we ourselves change. So I want you to listen as we hear our Scripture read this morning from Acts 15.
The early Christians are struggling with whether or not they should continue to obey the ceremonial laws of Moses.
Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders. So they were sent on their way by the church, and as they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, they reported the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the believers. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them.But some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, “It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses.”
The apostles and the elders met together to consider this matter.After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “My brothers,you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers.And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us;and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us.Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear?On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of our Lord Jesus, just as they will.”


Let’s join in prayer. O God, open us up. You have something for us to hear this morning so open our eyes that we might see and our ears that we might hear, and open our hearts that your word might fall in and then, O Lord, open our hands that we might serve. Amen.
What do you want to be when you grow up? I mean, it’s a question we ask young people all the time. We ask these Scouts – “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I want to ask you who are adults “what do you want to be when you grow up?”
You say, “Well, I’m already a grown up.” I hope not. I hope not, because if you say the word grown up, it implies that you’re done, finished. You’re not going to grow any more.
I thought it was funny that sometimes men’s ears keep growing forever and forever. I heard some chuckles when you said that, because no one had the nerve to say it, so I thought I would right now. Given that I’m a man, ears just keep growing. That’s how we’re supposed to be. We’re supposed to keep growing all the time.
In Ephesians 3 it uses the image of the human body, and it says that we “should grow until we attain the full measure and stature of Christ.” So, friends, if you’ve reached that point, where you’re just like Jesus, then the Scripture gives you permission to stop growing. But until that time we are in the business of growing. And you can’t grow without changing. It can’t be done.
Now I must confess that sometimes I get stuck. I’m just stuck. I want to grow, I want to change, I want to become, but I can’t seem to do it. The old habits die too hard, and I pray that the Holy Spirit would come and transform me. The religious word, the Jesus word, for this is sanctification. The Holy Spirit comes into our lives. As we come to know Christ, the Holy Spirit comes into our lives and changes us, transforms us that we might become. And sometimes I just seem to be stuck. Other times things around me are changing, and the winds of the world are pushing me toward change, and I put my heels down, and I cross my arms and I say, “I’m not changing! Not me! You may be pushing me to change, but I’m going to dance with him who brung me!” I’m just not changing. And either way, whether I want to change and am stuck, or whether I’m refusing to change, I’m still not moving, and I’m still not growing. The truth is we’re called on to change.
In 1998 a little book came out that was on the business best seller list for five years, longer than any other book at that time. It’s called Who Moved My Cheese? by Dr. Spencer Johnson. Many of you may have read it in those days. It’s a little parable about two mice, Sniff and Scurry I think it was, and two humans, Hem and Haw, and all four of them live in a maze. And in the maze there is cheese and the cheese is at various cheese stations. And Hem and Haw and Sniff and Scurry eat at a cheese station and slowly and surely the cheese gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Sniff and Scurry, the mice, they kind of recognize this, and they set out to look for some new cheese. But Hem and Haw, the human beings, they just stay at that same cheese station till all the cheese is gone. Then they say, “Who moved my cheese?” And they’re mad. They shout and they complain and gripe and grumble. Who moved my cheese?
The moral of the story and parable is clear. It’s that the world will change, and change will happen. You can wish it won’t happen all you want, but change will happen. And if you want to succeed in business, which is the moral of this book, then you’re going to have to adapt to that change.
I would say the same thing is true of the church. The church, if it wants to continue to make the Gospel of Jesus Christ relevant, then it too will have to change. And if you look back over the centuries it has changed regularly, it’s a dynamic thing. What we do is say, “That’s right, but the church we have now – that’s the right church. That’s the good church. All that stuff before? Naaaa… But this is the right one.” My friends, the Holy Spirit has worked in the church for twenty centuries moving it forward in a dynamic way.
There’s a little group of an association of pastors in churches called Acts 29. I love that name. You go look in the Scripture and see what it says in Acts 29. There is no Acts 29. Acts ends in chapter 28. The point of the name is to say that the Holy Spirit didn’t stop at the end of Acts 28. It’s still working, still moving, still transforming, still in the business of growing the community of faith and us as individual Christians into who God wants us to be. To transform the church into the Kingdom of God and to transform each one of us so that we’re just like Jesus.
Now our Scripture today is the story of Acts 15, and it was a pivotal moment in the life of the church. Here’s what had happened. I want to get through the history as fast as I can, so those of you who don’t like history can think about something else for a few minutes.
There were two geographical centers for the church. This was about the year 50 A.D. There were geographical areas of focus. One was Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem Simon Peter, and James, the brother of Jesus, were in charge. The disciple James, brother of John, has been martyred long ago, so this James is the brother of Jesus who is leading the church in Jerusalem. And in the church in Jerusalem there are Jews, and they follow all the Jewish laws.
At this time in the Roman Empire Christianity was a sect of Judaism. So if you look at the list of approved religions in the ancient Roman Empire, you don’t see Christianity listed there. But it was considered to be a part of Judaism because the early church followed all the Jewish customs, all the Jewish traditions. They saw Jesus as the Messiah, but they followed all the laws, all the dietary laws, and all the men were circumcised, all of those things happened to say, “We are Jews who have accepted Jesus as Messiah.”
Up in Antioch is the other focus of the church. Paul is in Antioch with Barnabas, and from Antioch this amazing church he launches his missionary journeys. He is planting churches and the church is growing like wildfire all over. And most of those who are coming into the faith are Gentiles. They’re not Jews. And Paul is saying, “Don’t worry about all those ceremonial law. Don’t worry about being circumcised. What matters is faith.”
The people in Jerusalem aren’t happy about this, so they send a team to Antioch to set them straight. They say, “Here’s the way it’s going to work. You have to be a Jew and if you’re a gentile, we’re welcome but you’re going to have convert, have to be circumcised, have to follow the laws.” And Paul and Barnabas say, “No, that’s wrong. You should see what’s happening in these churches.” So they then send emissaries – actually Paul and Barnabas go themselves – to Jerusalem to settle the matter.
And here’s what happens. They have a great debate. It clearly is tense. It’s clearly a challenge. Peter finally stands up and says, “Look, I believe that I too was called to reach gentiles not Jews. And these people have Christ, the Holy Spirit has come into their hearts and has changed them and cleansed them. And that’s what matters.”
Then Paul and Barnabas stood up and said, “You should see the things that are happening in the church.” And they told of the wonders and signs that are being done in the church of the gentiles. Then James, brother of Jesus, stands up finally, and notice there’s no vote. It’s not a democracy. James is in charge and he decides. And here’s his decision. He quotes the prophet Amos and says, “Amos said that the tabernacle would one day be rebuilt, and it would be a light to the whole world including the gentiles. So here’s what we’re going to do.” And he proclaims this compromise.
I’ll talk about the compromise in a moment why I think it’s so funny. Here’s the compromise. “Therefore I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those gentiles who are turning to God, but we should write to them to abstain only one, from things polluted by idols, two, from fornication, three, from whatever has been strangled, and four, from blood.” That’s the compromise. They’ve accepted Christ into their hearts, they’ve been cleansed by the power of the Holy Spirit, by the grace of God, and what they need to do is follow just these four things. And they wrote a letter and sent it back with Paul and Barnabas and they sent two other disciples, Silas and Judas (not Judas Iscariot – a different Judas). They sent them back to read this in all the churches and the church in Antioch and to spread it through all the churches, and that settled it.
Now here’s why I think this is important. It teaches us something about how we change and about how the community of faith changes. All of those are written there, and I know you’re worried that you won’t make it to the Super Bowl, so I’m not going to go through all six of those. So I printed them there, because I think you might be struggling with issues of change in your heart and life, and those would be helpful for you to look at. I want to lift up just a couple of them, a few of them.
The first is that I want you to see that what they’re asking, what they’re trying to do, is discern what the Holy Spirit is doing among them. Your key verse for the week is Acts 15:28. If you want to memorize it, you can. It says, “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose no further burden than these essentials.”
This is what the Holy Spirit is doing among us. It isn’t “What do you all want to do?” He didn’t gather the people together and say “Let’s decide. What do you all want to do? Does this matter or does that matter? What do you want to do?” He said, “We’re going to discern, we’re going to tune into what God’s doing among us.”
And I will tell you that God is at work in your life and at work in this church and at work in the big C-Church, and God is at work in the world. And what we’re going to do is discern what the Holy Spirit is doing, and we want to get on board. That’s the issue, the question we need to ask. What’s the Holy Spirit doing?
Interestingly, this has become a formula for church councils for the last 20 centuries. So anytime a church council comes out with a new declaration, from Vatican 2 all the way back to the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, all of those begin with these words, “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us that….” Because what they’re trying to do is discern what the Holy Spirit is doing among us. That’s the question. It’s not what you think. It’s what God’s doing through the Holy Spirit to move and transform and grow the church or you in your own personal life.
Here’s the second thing I want to lift up. It’s that they had to figure out what was essential that they could hold on to. “It has seemed good to the Holy Sprit and to us to impose no further burden than these essentials.” Peter has told us what’s essential – that the heart is cleansed by the power of the Holy Spirit accepted through faith. That’s what’s essential.
This week I got caught watching “Fiddler on the Roof.” I kept saying, “I’ve got to go to bed. I’ve got to go to sleep.” And I watched the whole stupid thing. It’s a great movie. You know the story. Tevye is a Jew in occupied Russia, and the world is changing around him. He just doesn’t like it very much. He has these debates with himself. “On the one hand…then on the other hand…” He’s trying to struggle with all the change with all that’s happening. His first daughter pledges herself to a man she’s fallen in love with, a tailor, when Tevye had already pledged her to the butcher, who’s rich. “Okay, Whatever,” he says, and he gave in on that one.

The second daughter fell in love with a revolutionary and wanted to marry him and go off to Siberia. In fact she was going to do it, no matter what. And he kind of liked the guy, so he gave in. His heart was broken and in a terrible scene she leaves for Siberia.
The third daughter fell in love with a gentile. And Tevye says, “On the one hand…and on the other hand…Wait! There is no other hand.” He says, “If I bend that far, surely I’ll break.” He never really gives in. Really? If you bend that far are you really going to break?
What is essential? What really matters? All of the other stuff that goes on – what is it that’s really essential in the faith? The Scripture tells us. That their hearts are cleansed by the power of the Holy Spirit, that they’ve invited God into their hearts. That’s the essence, that’s what’s central. And we’ve got to decide what is essential, and that’s what we can hold onto. You know what? You may not like the new hymns they sing. And you may not like a new way of worshipping. We may not like the new color of the carpet or whatever it is. If I could take out all of the arguments that happened in churches over things that aren’t essential… what is essential in your heart and your life?
I’m not just talking about the community of the faith but, I’m talking about within you. What really matters? What is the thing that you hold onto that’s most important? Because the rest of it might change as you grow, and you have to let go of some opinions. You might have to let go of some habits, some ways of living. You might have growing pains along the way. But we identify what’s essential, and we hold fast to that.
He also looked at what God was doing all around. They talked with one another. You don’t make these decisions in a vacuum – you talk to one another.
One of the things I wanted to lift up was how James sort of broke open the Scripture for them. Think about this – the traditionalists, the ones who’d been saying for sure you have to follow all the laws of Moses. They were quoting Scripture all the time. They were quoting the Torah, they were pointing it out saying, “Look, here’s what it says. You’ve got to do it. You’ve got to do it.” James says, “Look, don’t you know what Amos said?” And he breaks that Scripture open so, they see that in a whole new way.
When I went off to seminary I had been in Bible studies all through high school, since I’d come to Christ. I’d been in Bible studies in college and I knew the Bible. I understood it. In fact I got it all. I had it down. I had my Four Spiritual Laws booklet that I kept by the side. I understood exactly what it said and what it meant. I got it.
And I went off to seminary, and I remember in my first semester taking an Old Testament class taught by Dr. Bill Power, and he was talking about the book of Genesis. He said, “Do you know that when you read the Scripture that Satan was right?” I said, “What? You can’t say that. No, no.” Then he said, “Look, Satan said to Adam and Eve, ‘The day you eat of that fruit on that day you will surely die.’ And they ate of the fruit and did they die?” And I thought, “You’re messing with my mind. Don’t do that.” It sort of shook the foundations because I thought I understood the Bible. I knew what it said. I had my mental picture of “This is the way I understand it, and this must be right.”
And once that sort of got broken loose I began to learn something. I began to grow. I found my heart racing and beating faster as the Scripture was opened up to me. I began to understand it in new ways. That’s what James did for the people there in that day. This is what it says – do you not get that? This isn’t just about Jews, this is about the world. So he shared that. We begin to look at Scripture in new ways, and that’s how we change. That’s how we grow.
All right, one more thing that I think is important. So this was the compromise. I don’t know why I think this was so funny. It says, “We should write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from fornication…” So that speaks to – in the circuses which were like the plazas – the Roman towns were built around a circus and in the circus there were archways that were called fornix. So the word fornication came from the prostitutes who would stand in those archways and especially during April when they had a festival to worship the goddess Venus. All sorts of crazy things happened. And so he’s saying, “You have to give that up.” It goes on “…abstain from food sacrifices to idols, from fornication, from whatever has been strangled…” I don’t know what that is, “… And from blood.” You can’t eat food that’s still bleeding. No rare steaks for any of you.
How did he come up with those four? Seriously, it seems like there were 500 and some laws and these were the four that are going to be it if you don’t think that this had to have some sort of political process involved. They were saying, “We’re going to make this compromise. These things are going to stand, because they’re clearly important to some of us. But we’re going to move forward on the other part. And no, they don’t have to become Jews. And no, they don’t have to be circumcised, and they don’t have to follow the laws of Moses. But these they’re going to hang onto.”
It wasn’t ten years later before Paul was writing a letter saying, “Don’t worry about the food sacrifice to idols, not a big deal. If it seems to bother your brother you might not want to do it with him around. But idols aren’t real so it doesn’t matter.”
Now here’s what I saying, you see how they just take steps. They don’t take giant leaps though this was a big one. But there’s always this constant movement forward. There’s always growth, and it comes in small steps.
When we work with Stephen Ministers - they’re members of our congregation who’ve been trained - they meet with care receivers, people who are going through difficult times, and they meet usually once a week, sometimes every two weeks, just to be with them and be Christian friends and listeners and help them know they’re not alone as they go through tough times. They’re not therapists, they’re just friends. But one of the things in the training for a Stephen Minister, one of the exercises is called “Small Steps.” It’s about asking a simple kind of question. See, when people come and are visiting or are in a bad place, it’s often because they’re stuck. They might say, “I’m in a marriage that is unhappy, and I’m stuck” or “I’m in a job I don’t like and I’m stuck” or “I don’t have a job and I’m stuck,” or “I’m grieving and I just can’t seem to get over it and I’m stuck.” So they say, “Okay, I understand you’re stuck. I can’t solve your problem for you, but I wonder if there is just one little step you can take to make it feel like you were moving. Is there one little thing you can do in your marriage that might make it a little better? It’s not going to solve your problem. I know that. But it might make it a little better.” It’s to help people just begin to move a little bit. Just a little bit. Small steps.
Sometimes the Holy Spirit moves us fast, but most of the time growth – real growth – that’s the image here – growing - real growth is gradual. You see your nephew once, and then you see him again a year or even six months later, and you pinch his cheek and you say, “Oh, my, how you’ve grown!” But when you’re looking at your nephew, you can’t see him grow. You only see it in layers, because it’s gradual. That’s the way God works in us usually. Just move a little bit, and a little bit.
I want to close by going back to where we began at the beginning of this series four weeks ago. God was speaking to Joshua as Joshua was staring over the River Jordan into the Promised Land. Moses has died and Joshua has to take over. And God says to Joshua, “Be strong and very courageous.” And then he goes on to explain why. “Be strong and very courageous, because I will be with you wherever you go. Whatever decision you make I will be with you. You make the wrong one, I’ll be with you. You make the right one, I’ll be with you. You stay where you are, I’ll be with you. You move forward, I’ll be with you. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid you’re going to mess up.”
You remember from the book Who Moved My Cheese, the characters Hem and Haw? Haw never did get his act together, and Hem wrote on the wall a question for himself. Here’s the question, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” It’s a good question. What would you do if you weren’t afraid? How might you step out in faith? How might you move forward and grow if you weren’t holding fast because you’re just afraid to let go?
Many of you know that my favorite book of the Bible is Philippians, Paul’s letter to the Philippians. It’s so upbeat, it’s especially poignant because he writes it from prison, so full of joy and love. And in Chapter 3 he writes these words, “One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind, and straining forward to what is ahead, I press on toward the goal of the mark of the high calling of Jesus Christ.” Straining forward to what’s ahead, I press on. I want to encourage you, friends, to put aside your fear, to be strong and very courageous, to step out in faith. To move forward, to press on, to grow, until you’re just like Jesus.
Let’s pray together. Lord God, we pray that you would work in our lives by the power of your Holy Spirit to transform us. Change us, grow us, and move us forward. We confess that sometimes we’re stuck. Sometimes we put our heels down and dig ourselves in and won’t change. We ask that you would take us over and grow us and move us forward. In the name of Christ. Amen