Jesus 4 Everybody: A Movement of Unity

Good morning. I'm so glad to see you here. My name is Geoff Bradford. I serve as senior pastor at CTK. I want to welcome you in Jesus' name. It's so good to see all of us together in one place. This has been a dream for us for quite a while and we're excited to be together in one service.

Before I begin today's sermon, we read the scripture. I just want to give a personal note. I want to thank you for the way the congregation has reached out to me and my family as we've lost my dad in the past week. As many of you know, he's been in a three and a half year long battle with a really aggressive form of dementia. We've been grieving for three and a half years. It's been a long journey. We're grateful that my dad is at rest with the Lord. We're going to go this coming weekend and celebrate his life. I ask you to continue to pray for us, but I just want to thank you. Your cards, your texts, emails, your notes—it really means a lot and it speaks to the heart of this church and the way that you have loved me and my family. I just want to personally thank you.

So we're going to turn our attention to God's word. We're in Acts chapter 15 and you can read this along with me on the screen or if you use the QR code to get the bulletin, you can read it off that as well. We're in Acts 15, verses one through eleven and twenty-two through 31. Would you join your voices with me as we read God's word?

Some men came down from Judea and began to teach the brothers, "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom prescribed by Moses, you cannot be saved." After Paul and Barnabas had engaged them in serious argument and debate, Paul and Barnabas and some others were appointed to go up to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem about this issue. When they had been sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and they brought great joy to all the brothers and sisters. When they arrived in Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church, the apostles, and the elders. And they reported all that God had done with them. But some of the believers who belong to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, "It is necessary to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses." The apostles and the elders gathered to consider this matter. After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, "Brothers, you are aware that in the early days, God made a choice among you. That by my mouth, the Gentiles would hear the gospel message and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he also did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith. Now then, why are you testing God by putting a yoke on the disciples' necks that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in the same way they are." Then, the apostles and the elders with the whole church decided to select men who were among them and to send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, both leading men among the brothers. They wrote, "From the apostles and elders, you brothers, to the brothers and sisters among the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia, greetings. Since we have heard that some, without our authorization, went out from us and troubled you with their words and unsettled your hearts, we have unanimously decided to select men and send them along with our dearly beloved Barnabas and Paul who have risked their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, we have sent Judas and Silas who will personally report the same things by word-of-mouth. For it was the Holy Spirit's decision and ours not to place further burdens on you beyond those requirements: that you abstain from food offered to idols, from blood, from eating anything that has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. You will do well if you keep yourselves from these things. Farewell." So, they were sent off and went down to Antioch. After gathering the assembly, they delivered the letter. When they read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

So we're very familiar, of course, with lots of things that divide Christians. We're very familiar with bad news about the church of Jesus Christ. There's lots of bad news if you want to read it. We're very familiar with how COVID and politics and lots of other things—use of alcohol or the miraculous spiritual gifts or the view of the end times and, of course, the obvious one—circumcision divide Christians. It seems like if there's an opportunity for there to be scandal or division, there will be. And our news cycle is filled with bad news about the church. So it's really easy, and I don't know if you feel this, but it's really easy to get discouraged about the state of the church of Jesus Christ.

I feel some of this as a pastor. It's really easy to become cynical about the church. It's hard at times to be excited about the local church. Not because we don't love the people in this room but because of the cycle of bad news after bad news and I want to give you good news this morning.

Now, we have good news of course because for every church scandal and division that you read about, there are hundreds of faithful churches all over this city and all over the country that will never hear about who are faithfully loving one another, teaching God's word, living out the gospel message. That's true but we have even greater reason this morning to be optimistic, to be hopeful about the church and that's because of the Holy Spirit's work through the local church. We're doing this series this summer in the book of Acts looking at snapshot after snapshot from the book of Acts that mention the Holy Spirit and what he is doing. He, the Holy Spirit is the main character of the book of Acts.

So today, we're going to look at the Holy Spirit's priority, the Holy Spirit's passions, and then the people of the Holy Spirit. So let's jump into this text together.

The Priority of the Spirit

You know, the city of Charlotte, I think has a pretty bad advertising department. It's been over the last couple of years. Have you seen those ads? Or before that, there were billboards around downtown that said, "Charlotte > Raleigh."

Now, of course, that's ridiculous in two ways. First, it's ridiculous because we know that Raleigh is better than Charlotte. I mean, that's an obvious thing, right? Charlotte is a soulless city that wants to be Atlanta. We have the state capital. We have museums. We have the hurricanes. We have less traffic. We have a real civic identity. We have, of course, the International Bluegrass Music Awards. So we all know this is ridiculous but it's ridiculous in another way. It's ridiculous because the ad campaign is based on a false choice. You have to decide which city you're for and which one you're against. And I think when we talk about the church, we also are faced with false choices.

When we think about nostalgia, particularly for the early church, we are faced with some false choices. When we as modern Christians are faced with some of the organizational complexity, some of the corruption of the church, we long for the early church. We say, "Man, I wish we could go back to what the early church was because they got it right." We look around and go, "Everything is so wrong but that looks so right." We always think of the early church as something beautiful and simple and not caught up in the wrong things and that's true in many ways.

But one of the false choices that we make about the church is that we think the early church was sort of a loose movement of hippie Jesus people who were just hanging out and singing Kumbaya all the time. There was nothing organized or structured about the church. In that assumption, we make a couple of false choices that go down the line about the early church or about the current church.

The first false choice: human versus divine. Of course, we know the church is human. That's what's on the news cycles—failures of celebrity pastors, divisions within denominations. We're very aware of the human side of the church and yet scripture says over and over that the church is a living organism. The Spirit fills and embodies and empowers the church. It is his place of dwelling. We don't have to make a decision between those two things.

The second false choice: organic versus organized. When we think of organic, we think of something that's authentic. When we think of organization, we think of something that's less authentic, maybe even corrupt, maybe something that we'd like to walk away from. But organic and organized are connected. Your body, your physical body is organic, and I hope it is organized. I hope that all the organs are in the right places and doing all the things that are their job and are staying in their lane. It's a dangerous thing when your body parts don't stay in their lane. Organic and organized, authentic—those are not a false choice between those two things.

The third false choice: amoeba versus bus. I think without the gospel, Christians tend toward one of two extremes with the church—either crippling authoritarianism or crippling anti-authoritarianism. One's a school bus. One's the amoeba. So the school bus: one guy's driving. We got one leader. Everybody's just in the back of the bus. We're all going where that person is and we all want to get off maybe.

That's crippling authoritarianism, and the pendulum swing the other way is crippling anti-authoritarianism. We just wish the church was like a big blob, an amoeba floating around in goo, right? There's no discernible head. And yet again, false choices.

Instead, here's what we see in this passage about the early church. The early church was organized. We read in this passage about defined leaders—of course, the apostles in the book of Acts. Those people who had eyewitness accounts of Jesus, who saw the resurrected Jesus, including even the apostle Paul who saw him on his vision on the road to Damascus. But we also read for the first time in this book the word elder—Presbyteros in Greek. That's where we get one of the names for our church: Presbyterian, elder-led.

It's very clear that even right here, the early church already had an organizational structure to it. There were defined leaders in the church. It wasn't just hippie people singing Kumbaya. There was some kind of identifiable leaders between a congregation and those who were in charge who were called to be elders over the church.

The Connected Church

The second thing we see here is a church that is connected. There's a gathering of the leaders of leaders—Presbyterians, what we would call, what we read here in Acts chapter 15, the first general assembly of the church. The leaders of all the churches gather in Jerusalem and they have this big meeting where they talk out a big problem facing the church: the Gentile Pentecost. And again, this is really important to us: connectionalism. Churches being connected.

I think it's vogue right now in America for churches to be, for Christians to be cynical about denominations. And of course, it's very easy to get bad news about denominations. Denominations exist because in many cases, Christians couldn't agree on things and so there's splits. I remember reading in seminary, studying the history of the church in America, and it sounded like a bad TV soap opera with all the breakups—all the different denominations that exist. And so it's easy to be cynical about connectionalism.

But let me ask you a question: If you have a problem, if you struggle with denominationalism, which are more obedient to Jesus's prayer in John 17 for unity, for oneness—denominational churches or non-denominational churches? I mean, denominational churches like ours where we say, "Hey, we're even trying. We're trying to be connected with other churches. We're trying to have relationships." This is really important. And it's actually really important in the history of this congregation.

There was a time in the history of this church where we really needed a denomination. And our denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, stepped in. They even brought in an interim pastor to help care for and nurture this congregation. The denominations mattered to us. It's provided a lot of health.

Governance Over Personality

We also see in the early church that it has governance and a process to this—not just a personality. Now, I want you to think about who is listed here. This name may not mean much to you, but there's the name dropped: the man named James, who was the brother of Jesus. James was the head of the church in Jerusalem. He was the clear leader.

And James, in this gathering where all these church leaders come together, think about how he could have flexed on the entire assembly. "Well, I'm his brother, guys. You gotta do what I say." But we have no record here of somebody going, "Well, I was with Jesus more than you guys. I know the Bible better than you guys. I'm older than you guys. I'm Jesus's family, for crying out loud."

Instead, what you see is that these leaders come together and they debate. There's testimony and reasoning and back-and-forth discussion. And what comes out of this is an agreement, a consensus. Not only James, but all the leaders—in fact, all of them—have a say in this decision. And they write this letter. They say the apostles and the elders, with the consent of the whole church, have decided. But they say something really unique. This is where I want to go for the rest of our time.

It was the Holy Spirit's decision and ours. — Acts 15:28

Such a powerful statement. Such a simple statement.

What I want us to remember today—this is my main idea—is that the Holy Spirit, his ground zero is the local church. He loves and empowers and embodies and fills the local church. The Holy Spirit loves this kind of gathering. When Christians all over this country, all around the world today are gathered around the person and work of Jesus, who come around the table just like this one we're going to receive from later today. This is the Holy Spirit's main thing. The Holy Spirit loves the local church.

The Holy Spirit worked through and not around the community of the local church in the book of Acts. The church is the priority of the Spirit. And it's notable even in this passage that Luke, as he writes this out and describes what's happening when all these leaders come together, he puts them in the right order. He says, "the Holy Spirit and us." It was the Holy Spirit's decision and also ours. He's emphasizing that it's the Holy Spirit who is empowering and working and involved. He's the chief driver and director beyond everything that's going on.

Now, how do I know that? Not just because it's written down. How do I know this? Because what we see in the rest of this passage is the Holy Spirit working in line with everything else that he loves. Everything that's in line with the passions of the Spirit. Those are two things—the passions of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit regularly works through normal churches like ours and normal churches like in Acts 15. And I'm not saying that of course every local church and every decision is in line with the Spirit, but the Spirit does work when churches operate along the two main passions we see in this passage: the purity of the gospel and the unity of the body.

The Purity of the Gospel and the Gentile Pentecost

Look at this. The first general assembly decided in favor of the purity of the gospel. Now, let me remind you of where we are in the book of Acts. This is right after what I've described as the Gentile Pentecost. Pentecost was that day in Acts chapter two where the Spirit was poured out as Jesus had promised onto the early church, and all these Jews from all over the Roman Empire were there in Jerusalem that day in order to celebrate the Passover feast—or sorry, the feast of Pentecost, a harvest festival. But at that first Pentecost in Acts two, what's remarkable and I want to remind you of this, was entirely Jewish. Jews from all over the Roman Empire, all different people groups but all multicultural yet monoethnic—all Jewish.

And what we see later on in Acts chapter 10, which I preached on a couple of weeks ago, is then the Spirit is given to the Gentiles, beginning with Cornelius. The vision of the sheet that comes down from heaven where God tells Peter, "Get up and eat. Take and eat"—it's a symbol. This is the beginning of the Gentile Pentecost.

Now, I asked this a couple weeks ago. How many of you know someone, even know someone who's a messianic Jew, a completed Jew, who's Jewish ethnicity but is a Christian? Yeah, like, how many? A few of you. Do you realize how remarkable that is? What we read in Scripture is an entirely Jewish movement of the church. If the Gentile Pentecost would not have happened, this room would not be filled with people who look like us. Most likely, the church would still be predominantly ethnically Jewish.

And you're here today because somebody, most of you—somebody from a non-Jewish background—shared the gospel with you, told you about Jesus, invited you to know him. This is what's remarkable. The church throughout the world today is multiethnic and multicultural. It looks like every tribe, people, and nation. And this was really important to preserve because here's the crisis then facing this early church community: What do we do with these new Gentile converts? What do we require them to do? Do they need to look like us before they can be one of us?

The Giraffe and Elephant Story

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a community of giraffes, and these giraffes had lived together in a community for a long period of time. They had built houses that were very appropriate for giraffes. Of course, giraffe houses have tall doorframes. They have really high tables. They have really skinny chairs. You don't need wide chairs for giraffes. And they thrived together for a long time. They were very peaceable.

Well, one day, they began to realize they were making friends as a community more and more with elephants. And they wanted to be able to invite elephants over for meals and they wanted elephants to come in their home, so they were very welcoming. These giraffes invited the elephants over and elephants showed up. Of course, they could tell the intentions. They could tell that these giraffes loved elephants. But as they came into giraffe homes, they noticed some problems with giraffe homes. The doorways are so skinny and the tables are so high, and when you sit in the chairs, if you're an elephant, you break the chairs. Nothing seems to work really well for elephants.

That's a great picture of what's happening in Acts. The church at this point had been set up for giraffes, and suddenly all these elephants are coming in. And they're like, "Wait, do you have to become a giraffe before you can be a Christian?"

And so the debate was really, do we add on to all of these new converts, all the Jewish law, all of circumcision, the dietary restrictions, do we make them have to become like us before they can be with us? And of course, the early council here decides, no. Jesus and salvation is in him and him alone. You don't need to do anything else. You don't need to look like a giraffe or be shaped like a giraffe or move like a giraffe in order to be part of our fellowship.

It's a really important point to guard the purity of the gospel. This is one of the passions of the Holy Spirit—that we would not add anything, any extra requirements on people to come to faith in Jesus. And yet, churches do this all the time. Do you recognize how often it is in churches that we sort of have unspoken rules of how you dress? Unspoken codes of what you're supposed to say and talk about and what you're not. People know you don't wear beer t-shirts to church. People know you dress modestly coming to church. This is the South for crying out loud. We sort of have this expectation that people will be cleaned up before they come in. And yet, when we do that, we miss the gospel.

It is the spirit's role to clean up people. Ours is to bring them in. It's the spirit's role to sanctify. And it's really important that we always put the train cars in the right order. We don't expect people—we shouldn't expect people—to look like us, to talk like us, to have all the right Christian language, to be dressed the right way, to be put together in all the ways that Christians know you're supposed to act before you can be part, before you can come in.

One of the things that I've loved over the years—I've been here as a pastor of this church over eleven years—and one of the things I've loved about this congregation has been the way the elders of this church have guarded the purity of the gospel. We've had several key moments where we've had to make decisions: Will we allow this person who's kind of a mess to come into fellowship here? Will we allow this person who rightly owns Jesus by faith, yet their life is kind of a mess to come into our fellowship? And our elders over and over again have said, yeah, it's our job to bring them in, to make sure that they really actually profess Jesus, but it's the spirit's job to sanctify them. And we put those in the right order.

And I pray that our church continues to do that by the way we welcome, by the way that we greet other people. We don't blink an eye. We expect sinners to come to Jesus, and we're hopeful of that.

The Peace and Unity of the Church

The second passion we see in this passage is the peace and unity of the church. This letter is kind of odd to us. I mean, hearing language about, hey, don't eat food with blood in it. Don't eat food that's been strangled or been sacrificed to idols. It's really odd language. I acknowledge that, but I want you to understand—these are not pre-conversion requirements but post-conversion principles that they were asking of the early church. They were not saying, hey, you've gotta be like us in order to be with us. Rather, they're saying, once you're in, can you fight hard for the unity and the peace of the body?

Let me show you where this comes from.

You abstain from food sacrificed to idols. You don't eat food that's got blood in it, from food that's been strangled, from sexual immorality. You will do well if you keep yourself from these things.

This reminds us again—we obey because we're saved. We're not saved because we obey. But these post-Christian principles underscore a really important point for the body of Christ: that we honor one another's consciences, that we care more for the unity of the body than we do over our personal preferences.

There's a comedian, Emo Phillips. A couple years ago, he had one joke that was rated the highest joke in the country. And this is how the joke went. He says, once I saw this guy on a bridge, he's about to jump off, and I said, don't do it. He said, well, nobody loves me. I said, god loves you. Do you believe in god? He said, yes. I said, are you a Christian or are you a Jew? He said, a Christian. I said, me too. What franchise—Protestant or Catholic? He said, Protestant. I said, me too. What denomination? He said, Baptist. I said, me too. Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist? He said, Northern Baptist. I said, me too. Northern conservative Baptist or Northern liberal Baptist? He said, Northern conservative Baptist. I said, me too. Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region? He said, Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region. I said, me too. Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region Regional Council of 1879 or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region Council of 1912?

He said, oh, Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region Council of 1912. And I said, die, you heretic, and I pushed him off.

Why is that so funny and not funny? The butt of the joke is unity—the lack of unity in the church. Unity is one of the Spirit's greatest passions for the church. That we would exercise, that we would live out a type of you, more important than me unity.

I mean, if we want to rewrite the city of Charlotte's ad campaign, it shouldn't be "Charlotte greater than Raleigh," but this is what it should be like for all of us: Us greater than me. Our unity greater than my preferences. Our collective good better than what I want, the types of songs I want, the way I want things to be done. Us over me. Us greater than me.

This is what they did in this passage. They were very careful. The Jerusalem Assembly wrote this letter and said, "I want, we want you to do some bare minimum things to protect the unity of the body and so not to offend everyone." So they had these four post-conversion principles straight out of Leviticus 17 and 18, and they said, "Please do these things. Please do these things so the Gentiles and the Jews can be together."

It's really important that we exercise our unity, mutual love, mutual respect. Again, I want to underscore: this is the heartbeat of the Holy Spirit. The unity of the church. The Spirit loves it when we prefer one another in love, when we take care even of the conscience issues and the people here in this community who will disagree with you on lots of things. And that's the way it should be. A church is not called for everybody to think the same and be the same. That is so boring.

Church is most beautiful when we are essential and united around the gospel and those things which are central to our faith, and we allow the consciences to dictate. We promote, pursue forgiveness and reconciliation, not making too much of little things.

Belief in the Holy Spirit

What does it mean for us to be as a church, a people of the Spirit? Every Sunday, when we're in our church or many Sundays, we recite the Apostle's Creed and we say two statements and they're right next to each other. I want you to notice this next time we recite this. We say, "I believe in the Holy Spirit," and right after that, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the church throughout all times and places." I believe in the church.

And I think that those are right next to each other for a reason. Because the way we express our belief in, our confidence in, the Holy Spirit—what he is doing, what he's able to do—has gotta be worked out in the way that we believe and function within this community, in our relationships with one another.

So here's my call for us today: Believe in the Holy Spirit. Trust the Holy Spirit is able to work, and he does regularly through the body of Christ, through his people.

Practical Applications

Here's what this may look like. I've got a bunch of applications. So buckle in.

First, join the church. I know everybody is deconstructing right now. There's all kinds of bad news about the church. But there are only two places where people regularly take vows to one another. I did a wedding a couple weeks ago, and I was very mindful of this. A young man and young woman stand up, face each other, hold hands, and make all these promises. The only other place you do this in society is in a gathering like this, where people stand up and say, "I believe and I want to be a part of Jesus's family. And I'm going to try to live and love this family." We take two vows for the purity and the peace of the church. If you haven't joined the church, take a step. Identify yourself with Jesus and his people.

Second, care about the business of the church. Come to a congregational meeting. We're going to have one in three Sundays at 9:00. We'll have breakfast served and everything. I think it shows something about our unbelief in the Holy Spirit where we love worship and we love teaching and conferences, but functionally, it's really hard to get a quorum of people to show up at a business meeting for our church. Because we've separated two things that the Holy Spirit holds together: the worship and work, right? The teaching and worship with the business of the church. Come to a congregational meeting. Get involved. Nominate somebody to be a leader in our church. It's one of the great privileges of being a member of our church.

One of the things that frustrates me: when we come around to nominating elders and deacons, people are like, "Well, I don't know who to nominate. I don't know anybody." That is not my problem. That's a you problem. But can you help us fix that problem? Because it is the great privilege of the church to be about the organization of the church.

Third, resolve conflicts with other believers. You know, do you believe in the Holy Spirit?

Do you care about what the Holy Spirit cares about? Then, my encouragement again this morning is to take the extra steps to make things right. "Hey, I didn't mean to say that." "Hey, I don't understand why you said that to me." "Hey, I don't understand what's happened to our friendship." "Hey, it's really important to me that we used to experience being together, something's happened. We need to make this right. Would you help me make this right?" Such simple things, such significant things.

No leader can do this for you in the church. It is incumbent upon the local church to exercise and prize unity by pursuing peace, by making things right.

Don't Ghost

One of the heartbreaks for me as pastor during COVID was the way that people would disappear without a conversation. Disappear without follow-up. It's really important for us as a body. We take this connection really seriously. When you join the church, when you're part of a community group or part of fellowship with other Christians, that really matters and your absence really matters. So I encourage you, have the conversations. The church is the living creation of the spirit. Remember that. Don't leave without a conversation.

Help tear down barriers to belief. Would you help us as a church continue to be a place where giraffes always welcome elephants. Where we don't raise an eyebrow when somebody comes in through the door, either of our community groups or of this gathering. We're not surprised. We're not shocked. We're like, of course. Of course, Jesus is for everybody. This is the spirit's great passion. Can we tear down insider language, pretending like we all know the same thing, or we all agree on all the same things?

Finally, believe in the Holy Spirit and his normal work in the body of Christ, the church. I know that many of you struggle with the institutional church. The news is routinely bad. The social media news cycle is routinely bad about the church. But you know who is not cynical about the church? The Holy Spirit.

Just as the Holy Spirit is not cynical about you. You may be cynical about you. You may be wrestling with unbelief in areas of your life that are stuck where you have repeated sins. You know who's not cynical about you? The Holy Spirit. He knows you inside and out, and he is also not cynical about this.

G.K. Chesterton said that the Christian faith at least five times in history has gone to the dogs. And you know what's happened every time? The dogs died. The dogs died, and somehow the spirit has continued throughout the centuries to inhabit and indwell and empower the gathering of God's people, the regular gathering of God's people, just like you, just like us here today. He has poured out his spirit upon us. This is ground zero of the spirit. May we be filled with encouragement and optimism. May we have eyes to see. May we be looking for the spirit's power at work among us. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Prayer

Would you pray with me?

Father, we thank you for your church, for the bride of Christ, the people of God. Father, we thank you for your promises and even what we see worked out in this passage of the way the Holy Spirit was the driver behind everything going on in that Jerusalem Council.

Lord, we pray this morning. Would you come and have your way with this body of people? Would you come and work powerfully among us? Lord, for the purity of the gospel and the unity of the body. Lord, would you fill our joy cups to overflowing as we see how your Spirit's at work powerfully among us?

Would you remind us, Lord, that you're not cynical about us and you are not cynical about the church, though you know it inside and out better than we do? Lord, we pray, Father, we take our eyes off the news cycle and back into your word. Fill us with expectant hope of what you're able to do through the local body of Christ, the church. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Would you respond to God's word in song together? Would you stand with me?