SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/24/2018
7:03 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “The Dissension”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts 15:1-5
Message of the
verses: “1 Some men came down from
Judea and began teaching the brethren, "Unless you are circumcised
according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved." 2 And when Paul
and Barnabas had great
dissension and debate with them, the brethren determined that Paul and
Barnabas and some others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and
elders concerning this issue. 3 Therefore, being sent on their way by the church, they were
passing through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion
of the Gentiles, and were bringing great joy to all the brethren. 4 When they
arrived at Jerusalem, they were received by the church and the apostles and the
elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. 5 But some of the
sect of the Pharisees who had believed stood up, saying, "It is necessary
to circumcise them and to direct them to observe the Law of Moses."”
We are going to look at the last verse in this section
today and then give a couple of quotes that hopefully will help us understand
this verse better.
We have mentioned the Judaizers in an earlier SD from
this section of verses and they were the ones that Paul and Barnabas were
debating at the beginning of this section, but now when we get to verse five we
see another group, the Pharisees who are basically saying the same thing and it
all has to do with legalism. Legalism is
limited grace, and this is not what the Bible teaches: “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on
the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace (Rom. 11:6). John MacArthur quotes a man named Lenski:
“To add anything to Christ
as being necessary to salvation, say circumcision or any human work of any
kind, is to deny that Christ is the complete Savior, is to put something human
on par with Him, yea to make it the crowning point. That is fatal. A bridge to heaven that is built of 99/100 of
Christ and even only 1/100 of anything human breaks down at the joint and
ceases to be a bridge. Even if Christ be
thought of as carrying us 999 miles on the way, and something merely human be
required for the last mile, this would leave us hanging in the air with heaven
being still far away. (R. C. H. Lenske).”
Now as we look at the Pharisees of verse five we see that
they were different than the ones who had a great hand in the crucifixion of
Christ as it says “who had believed” and so as mentioned in our last SD they
were holding onto something from their past life that surely needed to be
changed. Now these Pharisees were not
arguing that circumcision was needed for salvation, but that believers were
still obligated to keep the Law of Moses, and so they missed the point that
Jesus kept all the Law and then died so that believers did not have to keep the
law as a means of salvation. John
MacArthur writes “They were much like the weaker brothers of Romans 14:1-10,
who held to dietary laws, rituals, and Sabbath codes for conscience’s
sake. They were convinced that Jesus of
Nazareth was the Messiah who died for their sins and rose from the dead. That, however, did not immediately cause them
to forsake keeping the Mosaic Law as a way of life.”
If we compare the Pharisees with the Sadducees the
Pharisees believed in the literal interpretation of Scripture, a literal
resurrection, life after death, and the existence of angels, however the
Sadducees did not. Thus
They shared the basic
convictions of the Christians (Pharisees).
Because of this they are sometimes in Acts found defending the
Christians against the Sadducees, who had much less in common with Christian
views (cf. 5:17; 23:8f). A major barrier
between Christians and Pharisees was the extensive use of oral tradition by the
Pharisees, which Jesus and Paul both rejected as human tradition. It is not surprising that some Pharisees came
to embrace Christ as the Messiah in whom they had hoped. For all their emphasis on law, it is also not
surprising that they would be reticent to receive anyone into the fellowship in
a manner not in accordance with tradition.
That tradition was well-established for proselytes—circumcision and the
whole yoke of the law. (John B.
Polhill).”
John MacArthur concludes:
“New Covenant believers are freed from the unbearable burden (Acts.
10:13-15; 15:10) of keeping all the Old Covenant ritual. Yet they are not ‘without the law of God but
under the law of Christ’ (1 Cor. 9:21).
There is no license to sin in Christian liberty.”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Peter” (Acts 10:34).
Today’s Bible
question: “Where did John baptize Jesus?”
Answer in our next SD.
3/24/2018 7:33 AM
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