SEPTEMBER 26/27, 2020
Week #6: Unstoppable Unity - Part 2
ACTS 15
5 WAYS TO MAKE PEACE IN CONFLICT
In Essentials Unity,
In Non-Essentials Liberty,
In All Things Charity
- RUPERTUS MELDENIUS
INTRODUCTION
(1) Choose your
“Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: ‘Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. The church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the believers very glad.”
• Am I yielding to Scripture or am I trying to bend Scripture to me?
• Have I become a single-issue Christian?
• Am I taking this too personally?
• Am I reacting or responding?
• Am I right that I am wrong?
• Is my background blurring my vision?
• Is this a hill I want to die on?
• Has winning become more important that making change?
(2) Plan your
“The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: ‘Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”
(3) Learn to
“The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them.”
(4) Make your
“It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us …”
(5) Make your
“You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.”
“Those four imperatives had nothing to do with keeping the law and everything to do with keeping the peace. Specifically, peace in the church …. Corporate unity would require personal sacrifice. From both groups.”
- STANLEY, ANDY – IRRESISTIBLE (P. 127-128) ZONDERVAN