Sermons Worth Stealing - Pt 10

And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written, “‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old.’ Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God.”(Acts 15:12-18 ESV).

It's now about 15 years since Jesus died and rose again. Some zealous Jewish Christians from Jerusalem make a trip to Antioch and begin to preach among the Gentile Christians: "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved" (Acts 15:1). This does not go over well with Paul and Barnabas. In fact, if we can judge from Paul's attitude in his letter to the Galatians, the controversy was red hot. The church decides to send Paul and Barnabas to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem to see if some doctrinal unity can be achieved. Our text is the response of James to the declaration of Paul and Barnabas. He quotes from Amos (cf. Amos 9). What the prophet recounts from God is that the time is coming when his anger will be turned away and that the ruined people will be restored. It's PEOPLE that he has been talking about in the preceding verses: "All the sinners of my PEOPLE shall die by the sword" (v. 10). And, it is people that he has in mind in verse 12: "That THEY may possess the remnant of Edom." We must conclude that the repairing of the booth or the tent of David (v. 11) is a graphic way of speaking of the restoration of his people to spiritual wholeness. It is the people who have fallen into the ruin of sin and judgment. Now it is the people who will be repaired and rebuilt. Then the purpose of that rebuilding is that Edom, the typical hostile Gentile nation, might be possessed by the new, rebuilt people of God. At first that might sound merely like defeat and subjugation of Israel's enemies. But, the purpose of repairing and rebuilding the sinful people is not merely to possess the remnant of Edom, but to possess "all the nations who are called by my name, says the Lord" (cf. Amos 9:12). If defeat and subjugation were in view, he would not say that the target is the nations called by God's name. These are not enemies. People called by God's name are God's people. So the point in this text is not defeat and enslavement, but conversion and ingathering. This is world missions, not world domination. This was the purpose of God in the mission to the gentiles. We would do well to remember that is our calling as well.