Acts Devotional Week 8

June 10, 2012

Acts 15:12-19

Everyone listened quietly as Barnabas and Paul told about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.  When they had finished, James stood and said, “Brothers, listen to me.  Peter has told you about the time God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for himself.  And this conversion of Gentiles is exactly what the prophets predicted. As it is written:  ‘Afterward I will return and restore the fallen house of David.     I will rebuild its ruins and restore it, so that the rest of humanity might seek the LORD, including the Gentiles—all those I have called to be mine.  The LORD has spoken—he who made these things known so long ago.’  “And so my judgment is that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.

Paul and Barnabas had completed their missionary journey.  It was successful wherever it went.  Many Jews and Gentiles had come to believe in Jesus Christ.  But they had faced opposition along the way.  Some tried to discredit them.  Others argued with them publically.  Still others got people agitated enough to attempt physical harm.  Paul is stoned during this journey and survived it.  Yet the message of Christ got through and now Paul is home.  Even at home there are questions about what to do with all these new believers.  Should they follow the old ways as practiced before or should we allow a new way of following Jesus to happen?

This is an age old question that follows believers every time God does a new or highly significant work.  What is the church to do when following God leads to places that don’t fit with what has been done before?  There is always resistance to change…even when it is clearly God at work.  We get comfortable in the pattern of how things are done.  Sometimes it’s hard to see how God can operate outside of that pattern.

This is what Paul and Barnabas are facing.  They are facing a council that is unsure about the changes God brought about through Paul’s work.  In that place, Peter and James stand up and declare that the old ways must change and the new believers not be given a difficult road to Christ.  They were right.  They still are.  If God is calling people we simply cannot let patterns and systems stand in His way.  It’s always been God’s Church and He should always be able to do as He sees fit in it.  May we never allow our natural resistance to change stand in the way of people coming to God.