In Acts 15 the church leaders in Jerusalem are wrestling with the new phenomena of Gentile Christians and how they fit into the church alongside Christians from a Jewish background. How do the freedoms we read about in the gospels fit with the traditions of the Old Testament faith of Israel? How are these Jewish Christians to make sense of the clear acts that God is performing in and through Gentile Christians? What about circumcision or eating pork? And so a council is called for the church leaders to come together, to pray and to discuss this exciting development in the life of the early church and how best to respond to it.
‘What has this to do with us at CBC?’ I hear you ask. The letter that was sent out from the Jerusalem church uses the phrase (verse 28) “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us …” rather than phrases such as ‘God has said…’ or ‘God has told us that…’
As we look forward to meeting together next Wednesday you may:
- feel certain about what God has been saying to you over these last few weeks,
- have some idea about what God has been saying, but you’re not sure how much of it is God and how much of it is you,
- not feel that you’ve heard from God at all but you’ve got some good ideas about the way ahead.
One of the things that this verse in Acts 15:28 shows us is that all of these responses would be expected within a church, and is valid within a broader context of prayer and a desire to obey God.
Sometimes God does speak clearly leaving us in no doubt as to what it is that he is saying. For example, this might be through a vision, or through an interpreted tongue, or through an audible voice.
Sometimes we think we hear from God but we’re not sure whether it is God or whether it’s just thoughts that we’re having, generated by our own good ideas. For example, a thought comes into our head as we’re praying, or we have a picture - which we then try and interpret. Over time and through experience we might get a better sense of what is God and what is me - so we’re fairly sure it’s God but not 100%.
And sometimes, even though we’ve been praying, we don’t feel we’ve heard anything from God but that doesn’t stop us thinking about things and discussing them together.
One of the things that we should always do as individuals and as a church is to test and to weigh what we believe God is saying. And that is what we’ll be doing next week as we come together. We will spend some time praising and worshipping God and praying together and then we will split into smaller groups to listen to what we believe God has been saying over recent weeks concerning who we are and what we should be doing.
Hopefully each of us will feel able to feed into this conversation and that by the end of this whole process (which is not the Vision Evening) we can say ‘it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…’
