https://youtu.be/_QXx9kPkRDc

The Highway of Holiness

Acts 15:1-21

Certain Jewish believers have come in and are requiring the Gentile converts to be circumcised. This was the covenant seal of the Jewish people that they belonged to God.

Paul’s rebuke of Peter was due to these Jewish believers requiring circumcision for salvation.

Galatians 2:11-16 New King James Version (NKJV)

11 Now when [a]Peter had come to Antioch, I [b]withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; 12 for before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing [c]those who were of the circumcision. 13 And the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy.

14 But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, “If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not as the Jews, [d]why do you compel Gentiles to live as [e]Jews? 15 We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, 16 knowing that a man is not [f]justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.

And so the Jewish council, with the Apostle James as its leader comes up with satisfactory requirements:

19 Therefore I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God, 20 but that we write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from [f]sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from blood.

Abstain from these things: things offered to idols, eating of animals that have been strangled, tasting or eating blood— three ceremonial laws and one moral law- sexual immorality. 

Although the not eating of blood goes all the way back to Genesis- the life is in the blood. Paul had told the Corinthian church they could eat meat offered to idols, but that demons were associated with those festivals were they sacrificed the meat. 

“Observe Israel after the flesh: Are not those who eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? What am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons.” I Corinthians‬ ‭10:18-21‬ ‭NKJV

These new converts in Christ were to look and act different then their surrounding society.

Ceremonial laws- the Jews saw these things as extremely nasty and unholy. The apostles wanted the Gentile converts and Jewish converts to be a new religion- Christianity. Not a modified Jewish religion, a new called out and consecrated church, of which Jews and Gentiles would become brethren and love one another.

The Tabernacle of David (Amos 9:11-15, just a reference)

The Jewish remnant that survives God’s judgment would become one Body along with born again Gentiles to make up ONE church.

Why the moral law?? Sexual immorality was so a part of the Gentiles culture, they would need help in separating from it.

Why not murder? Because even in the most deprived societies,