God doesn’t change, but he is always on the move. That is the paradox that as believers we have to live with. Sometimes believers have emphasised the fact that God is unchanging. Calvinism has a tendency to be rather like that. Calvinists had a tendency to study the bible in great detail, and tie everything about God down to doctrines and rules and regulations.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day were rather like that, very strict. You see; it is far easier to cope with God if everything about him is fixed and he can be tied down to rules and regulations. Now it is a wonderful truth that in his character God is unchanging. God is just, God is loving, and God is merciful. The Ten Commandments are unchanging, because they reflect God’s character, and by seeking to live by them, men and women themselves who are made in God’s image can reflect something of God’s character.

Jesus’ words do not change; he said that even if heaven and earth pass away, his words do not. Yesterday, today, forever, Jesus is the same. But that is just one aspect to the Godhead. If all you perceive about God is the truth that he is unchanging, you have a God who is very different from the God of the bible. You have a very remote God. That is not the God of the bible. God is a living God, is not just a set of rules. God interacts with his creation; God’s plans have a momentum to them.

God’s plan for human history is moving and changing. It begins in a garden, but it ends in a city, the New Jerusalem. Although God’s love does not change, yet God’s love is living and active. The Holy Spirit is active in our world, moving things on according to God’s dynamic plan of salvation. Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in the New Testament. Jesus’ coming into the world brought profound change. The world would never be the same again. He instituted a new covenant, through his death on the cross.

He instituted new principles whereby people should worship. He said worship should no longer be centred on the temple in Jerusalem, but that people could encounter God wherever in the world they might be if they worshipped in spirit and in truth. Above all, Jesus instituted a new community of God’s people: the church. In the church, although there was continuity with God’s people of the Old Testament, yet the church was living and dynamic, led by the Holy Spirit. It was moving outward and onward; taking the gospel to all mankind.

That’s what we see in the book of Acts. But whenever there is change, where there is life and activity; there is also tension. There is a tension between those who want to be going on ahead, between the trailblazers, and the more cautious. We have a good example of that today in Acts 11. Peter had been led by God to baptize and accept into the church people who were gentiles.

This was such radical change for the church that it caused quite a stir. Jews had a tradition that they should as God’s chosen people keep themselves separate form foreigners. They certainly would not share a meal with a gentile. But Peter had actually gone to stay with a Roman centurion named Cornelius, obviously sharing the hospitality of his table, and eating meat that did not comply with the Jewish requirement to be ritually clean.

Throughout its history, the church has had it controversies as the living God has continued to move his people on in his purposes. We continue to have disagreements today as to which way God is leading his church. The tragic truth is that far too often in the past, differences of opinion over where God is leading the church have caused divisions that have been a hindrance to God’s purposes.

The church has split and divided into denominations that have on occasion even taken nations to war, or resulted in years of animosity and mistrust. Yet what we have before us today is an example of how the church was able to handle a controversy, without it becoming divided. They were able to maintain the unity of the Spirit. That is something that the church continues to need to learn.

Let’s look then at how the problem was dealt with and see the things that enabled the church to find God’s way through the issue that threatened to divide. Peter arrives in Jerusalem; news of what has happened has gone ahead of him. Many of the believers criticise him because he has mixed with gentiles, and shared their food. It seems that it was quite normal in the early church to be able to question and criticize the leaders.

That is not an unhealthy thing either. If we have a problem with something that is going on, then the appropriate thing to do is to raise it with the person involved. That is what Jesus had taught, and that’s what they did in the early church. Peter is willing to answer the questions that people have. He does not hold himself ten feet above criticism.

Notice a few things about the way Peter explains what has happened. Firstly, Peter is quite open and honest about everything. He explains everything precisely as it happened. There is no putting a spin on the story. Secondly, Peter is not trying to justify an executive decision that he had chosen to make. What had happened was that God had clearly guided Peter. He himself had the same reservations about relating with gentiles as the others had, but God had clearly guided him to change his mind.

Thirdly, Peter had not acted on his own. When he had gone to Caesarea, he had taken six Christians with him from Joppa. They had witnessed everything that had happened. Peter had also brought these fellow believers with him to Jerusalem, and they could confirm exactly what had happened in Caesarea. There was a sense of mutual discernment as to what God was doing in imparting salvation to gentiles.

Notice also how Peter refers back to the teaching of Jesus, his promise for believers to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. It is when Peter and his companions see the Holy Spirit come on Cornelius and his household, that they are sure that God is doing something new and different, gentiles are now welcome among God’s people.

When they heard this, those assembled to meet Peter raised no further objection. They praised God. They accepted that even gentiles, through repentance could now be part of God’s family. It would be foolish to think that this one meeting together of God’s people settled all the problems relating to opening the church up to gentiles. As you go through the book of Acts and as you read the letters of the New Testament, you find that the church continued to struggle with the issue for some time. Peoples’ gut feelings do not change overnight. But there had been an acknowledgement of God’s will on the matter. The principle had been settled, salvation was for all people, not just for the Jews. What was going on there was a willingness to be led by the Holy Spirit. Being led by the Spirit meant a willingness to move out of the comfort zone. It meant willingness to go and meet with those we have differences with and take the time to talk to each other and to listen to each other. Above all it meant a desire to see where the Spirit was leading and to listen to what God was saying.

That is what God wants his Church to be willing to continue to do. So easily disputes can become clashes of personality. So often Christians are more concerned to get their own way, than to discern God’s way. We also have a tendency as well to avoid those with whom we have a difference, and prefer to talk to those who we think will take our side. But when we are really led by the Spirit, then we have a love and commitment to all God’s people, we seek to follow God’s will in harmony and unity.

As the story goes on in chapter 11 we find the first large gentile church being founded. The general pattern of how the church was growing was through the message being spread to other Jewish communities in different places as the believers who were fleeing the Jerusalem persecution travelled to other parts. But some of the Greek speaking Jewish believers who travelled to a town called Antioch, which was in Syria; as well as sharing the gospel with Jewish people, preached to Greeks as well.

The Lord’s hand was with them. Many of these gentiles believed and turned to the Lord. It was there in Antioch that the believers were first given the name ‘Christians’, followers of Christ. But they are still part of the one church, so when the church in Jerusalem hear what’s happened, they send Barnabus north to encourage them. He would be ideal. He is from Cyprus, so he will be fluent in Greek, and he’s also an encourager, he’s the one who encouraged Saul when as a new Christian he arrived in Jerusalem and made sure that he was welcomed into the church.

He is also generous, he had sold a field he owned to give the money to the apostles to use for the needs of others. But there is a specific issue that this large group of Greeks who have become Christians now raises. Unlike the Jews, they have little or no knowledge of the scriptures. What they really need is a good Old Testament scholar. Barnabus realizes just the person who can do the job. That young man Saul. They had packed him off for his own safety after his zealous arguments with former Pharisee colleagues in Jerusalem, and probably everyone had breathed a sigh of relief; Luke diplomatically commented at that point that the church had peace and was built up.

But Saul was an Old Testament scholar. He had studied under Gamaliel. No one knew the scriptures better, and he had a zeal for the gospel and a love for the Lord. So Barnabus goes in search of Saul and he finds him. Tarsus is comparatively close to Antioch. Together Saul and Barnabus spend a year teaching the faith to the large number of new Christians there at Antioch, the first significant gentile church. But they are not a new and separate denomination.

They are bound by love and fellowship with the rest of the Christian church the reality of the link is there, prophets visit Antioch from Jerusalem to bring God’s word. One named Agabus reveals through the Spirit that a famine is going to affect the church in Judea. The Antioch church realises that help is needed. Everyone according to their ability do what they can, and Barnabus and Saul are sent off with a gift to relive their fellow believers. They take a gift from people of one nationality to people of another; a gift from gentile to Jew.

We have a picture of a Spirit filled church where people work through together where God is leading them. It is a church where they don’t use disagreements as an excuse to break away, but take seriously Jesus command to love one another.

We see a church made up of people who naturally share the good new wherever they go, a church that reaches out to embrace people of other cultures and whose lives are characterised by a generosity.

We see a church that values the importance of teaching the scriptures. We see a church where there is a place for the talents of all to be used, and a church that is looking to God to lead and guide. May God help his church today to know where he is leading, and in love and harmony to follow together.

Amen.

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