The Word of God. Acts chapter 15. I'm going to be talking today about finding clarity in confusion. Clarity in confusion. And life often presents us with confusing and uncertain situations. Have you ever faced any of them? Don't know what I'm facing right now and I don't know how I'm going to handle it. I don't know how we're going to work this out. I'm confused. Well, that's what happens in Acts chapter 15. And we're not always sure which path to take or how to solve difficult situations. But the Word of God always has instruction for us that will help us to learn some principles to get through those times. Acts 15 is a story of confusion, disagreement in the early church. And the question was, whether Gentile believers, anybody that's not a Jew is a Gentile in the Bible, and so at first salvation through Jesus, he was a Jew, and Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world, but the Jews having been taught all their life that they're God's people, and they were, they didn't really realize that Jesus had died for everybody, Gentiles too, the non-Jews. And so now Gentiles are reported to have been saved recently and some of the Jewish Pharisees who were still trying to live under the law and live as a Christian at the same time, they were trying to put old wine in new wineskins and it wasn't working out very good. But these people who had been under the law and were what you'd call nominal Christians, I mean, they were probably saved and just didn't have everything together and didn't know everything that there was to know about living for the Lord in the New Testament era. And so the question quickly came up. Some of these Jewish Pharisees said, you know, those Gentiles professed to be saved But they need to become Jews like we are, and they need to practice the law of Moses if they're going to be saved. And so, boy, this threw a monkey wrench in the teaching that you're saved by grace, plus nothing, minus nothing. And that's what Paul and Peter, Barnabas, and the church at Antioch had been teaching, salvation by grace. You don't have to do anything to earn it. It's a free gift when you believe, when you trust Christ. And so, this question comes up. Should these new Gentile believers, should these men be circumcised and should they follow other rites of the Jewish faith in order to be saved? And so, there's confusion. But God brought clarity through His Word, through His Spirit, and through His people. Let's read about it. Acts 15, we'll read the first six verses. Acts 15, one. And certain men which came down from Judea taught the brethren and said, except you be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you cannot be saved. When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain other of them should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and the elders about this question. And being brought on their way by the church, they passed through Phoenice and Samaria, declaring the conversion of the Gentiles, and they caused great joy unto all the brethren. And when they had come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church and of the apostles and the elders, and they declared all things that God had done with them, but there arose certain of the sect of the Pharisees, which believed, saying that it was needful to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses. And the apostles and the elders came together for to consider this matter. Father, I pray that you'd bless in the moments to follow that we would see in your precious word, answer not only to the question of grace, but Lord, how to deal with dissension and disputes contention and confusion among Christians. I pray that you'd bless in this time we have together in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, the progress of the gospel has often been hindered by unwittingly people involving themselves trying to insert certain teachings into Christianity that just don't belong there. And such was the case in 1786 when William Carey laid the burden of world missions before the ministerial meeting in Northampton, England. And the eminent Dr. Ryland said to him, when William Carey said, I've got a burden to take the gospel to all parts of the world, to India. And Dr. Ryland said, young man, sit down. If God chooses to save the heathen, He can do so without you or me." Well, William Carey, thank goodness, didn't heed that advice. That was a dissension and it came under scrutiny and some still held to the fact that Well, if those people are supposed to be saved, God will save them anyway, and so no use for us to send out missionaries. They'll just get saved. I'm not sure how they figured that would happen. I guess their view of predestination might have been that God's just going to reach down and save them without faith, and they'd just trust the Lord somehow mysteriously. But William Carey took the gospel because he wanted to see people saved. A lot of spirit-filled servants of the Lord over the years have taken the gospel out and were hindered by spreading the gospel because of some who didn't understand, and they would add other things to it, like baptism. They would say, you just can't be saved unless you get baptized. If somebody's teaching you, you've got to be baptized, or you've got to participate in the Lord's Supper, or you've got to go to church, or you've got to read your Bible, or you've got to pray, and you've got to do this, and you've got to do that, If they start adding things to the gospel, they're saying Jesus didn't do quite enough on the Cross of Calvary. He died for our sins and He paid it all. Didn't we sing that a little while ago? Jesus paid it all. So then how can I pay more by getting into Baptistry or participating in some other ritual? I'm for Baptistry. I'm a Baptist. But you get baptized because you are saved, not get baptized in order to become saved. And all the other things that we do, the issues of modest dress, the issues of clean language, the issues of whether we win somebody to Christ or whether we witness, those are all important things because we are saved, not in order to become saved. Jesus paid it all. Well, Paul and his associates faced this same type of problem when the Judaizers, it talks about it more in the book of Galatians, you've read it, and it talks more about how the Judaizers came in and started saying, well, you can't just get saved by faith. There's more to it than that. We have churches surrounding us as we speak who are teaching that you've got to do this and that We've got these six steps and seven steps or ten steps that you've got to take if you're going to really be saved. Well, Paul and Barnabas have been preaching salvation by grace. And grace through faith, no works involved in the matter of salvation. Nobody works their way into heaven. And that's what Paul and Barnabas are defending at this conference they go down to in Jerusalem. Let me give you just a summary, a quick summary of what transpired at this time. First of all, down in Jerusalem where the first, I say down in Jerusalem because it's south of Antioch where we're talking about, but Jerusalem is up on a hill and that's why the scripture says, they went up to Jerusalem or they went down to Antioch. I'm from the south, so everything to me points north is up, whether it's mountains or not. But they said down in Jerusalem there's this group of people unauthorized by that Jerusalem church. Now the first church was at Jerusalem, but this group of people's kind of self-appointed apostles, and they weren't apostles, they were false teachers. And they said, you know, those Gentiles just can't get saved by faith. They've got to do some works. They've got to follow the law of Moses. And so they appoint themselves not under the authority of the church at Jerusalem, not under the authority of their pastor or anything else. They just secretly sneak out and they go up or down to Antioch. And they slip into that church. They sneaked in. And they begin to spread among some of the people at that great church at Antioch. Man, that's a Bible-believing, Bible-preaching, Bible-believing church, and they're sending out missionaries. But here come those self-appointed Pharisees in, and they say to little groups in the church, now, listen, those Gentiles, they can't just get saved by faith. They've got to do the works of Moses. Paul and Barnabas hear about it. They say, hey, boys, What are you telling our folks? You can't come in here and just tell our folks that they've got to be saved some other way than we've already told them. And so having understood then, Paul and Barnabas understand these guys are coming in trying to teach works for salvation. And so they challenged them. And it says that they had a pretty hotly debated dispute right there at Antioch. And Paul and Barnabas said, OK, if you guys are not going to take our word for it. Keep in mind, Paul has already been instructed directly by God in the deserts of Arabia. He got his instructions about salvation directly from the Lord. And so, Paul knows he's right. And so he and Barnabas say to these Judaizers, boys, you can't just come in here and start teaching that stuff. Let's go back down to your church and see if this is so. See if that Jerusalem church is really teaching salvation by works. And so they go down to Jerusalem to confer. Now, if you've got a Bible with headings in it, it probably calls this the Jerusalem Council. I really don't particularly care for the title council for it. I'd rather call it a conference because, I mean, that's not just being nitpicky, but it just sounds a little bit too much like a Catholic church to say that this was a council. It was a conference, and because the Jerusalem church was an independent church, and the church at Antioch was an independent church, they didn't control each other, but they could have a conference, and they could discuss things just like we were an independent Baptist church. and were not controlled by some denomination or headquarters anywhere. And neither were these two churches. But they had fellowship together and they were concerned to see what the church at Jerusalem was teaching. So Paul and Barnabas decide to go down with these old boys and see what's going on down there. And so when they get to Jerusalem, they get into another hot debate. Paul and Barnabas are standing for the truth. And ladies and gentlemen, you and I must stand for the truth. There may be some good people who love the Lord, but they don't know what the Bible teaches. And they may say, you've got to do this, or you've got to do that, and they may have different ideas. But if it's not biblical, it's not of God. And so they go down there, and they get into some hot disputes down there. And so they have a little preaching conference, I think. Peter stands up, and he preaches. He says, listen, you remember when I went over to Cornelius? in his household, they're Gentiles. And we took the gospel over there and sure enough the Holy Ghost fell on them as soon as they believed and they started living for the Lord. The Lord changed their lives and they got baptized. Man, they're Christians. They give every evidence of being a Christian. Peter tells about his experience. And so then Barnabas gets up, and Barnabas preaches. He said, listen, Paul and I, we've been going out to some cities and preaching the gospel, and we've preached in Antioch, and those Gentiles are coming in, and they place their faith in Christ, and they're just as saved as anybody. Jew, Gentile, you name it. And so then Paul gets up and preaches. And finally the pastor at that Jerusalem church, he gets up and he preaches. Now at this point there's just kind of a group of elders and preachers and apostles that are all gathered together trying to hash this out and because it all arose because of that self-appointed group of Pharisees that went up there and tried to insert some false doctrine. And so the pastor finally stands up and he says, listen, I've heard the testimony of these guys. They're saying the Gentiles got saved. They're saying the Gentiles got saved. They're saying the Holy Spirit fell upon them. They even spoke with tongues just like they did on the day of Pentecost. And these people, these people are saved. And so the pastor there at Jerusalem said, we don't need to hang another yoke around those Gentiles' neck that not even our people, not even the Jews could follow all the law of Moses. Have you ever tried following the law? It's hard to live up to everything God wants us to do, isn't it? Isn't it? Well, James, the pastor at Jerusalem, he said, man, our own people couldn't live by the law. That's why Jesus came, to fulfill the law for us. And so then Pastor James says, I'm going to write a letter then if you guys are all agreed and then they call the whole church together in our text. If we read on just a little bit further you'd see that the whole church there at Jerusalem came together and they got on the same page of the book with their pastor and with those other apostles, Peter and Paul and Barnabas and so they came to a conclusion. You're saved by grace, no works involved. Now they also gave them, in this letter, gave the Gentiles some instructions like abstaining from fornication and not eating blood and stuff like that. That was not keeping the law to be saved. What they were doing, they were saying, you Gentiles, when you get saved, you're saved by grace, but there's some certain things you ought to stay away from. If you want your testimony to be effective among those other Jews out there that's not saved, if you start eating blood, and things sacrificed to idols, that's going to offend those Jews, and they're not going to listen to your message. And that's why Paul did circumcise Timothy later on, but not Titus, because Titus was a full-blown Gentile. Timothy was half-Jew, and so he was considered a full Jew by the people around him. So Timothy was circumcised, not because he had to be because of the law, but just for testimony's sake, that the Jews wouldn't be offended, and they'd listen to him preach. There are certain things we do, you and I, as Christians. Certain things we do, like moral things. Morality won't save you. But we do it to keep a clean testimony so people will listen to us. Does that make sense? I mean, if I smoke and cuss and chew and run with women who do, then people might not be willing to listen to me as well as they would if I try to keep a cleaner life. Do you agree with that? It's awfully quiet this morning. So they write this letter from Jerusalem and send it back up to Antioch and what it says up there, man, those people in Antioch said, whew, man, glad to hear that. We don't have to keep the law in order to be saved. And so they sent that same letter out among other churches and the Gentiles were all relieved saying, boy, those other Jews are telling us we had to do all sorts of stuff to be saved. pleased and thrilled and we rejoice to know that we're just saved by the blood of Jesus. Plus nothing, minus nothing. So Silas returns. Silas is a church member down at Jerusalem. He returns with Paul and Barnabas to go back up to Antioch and deliver that letter. Then when they get up there, Silas decides to stay. He said, I kind of like that fellow, Paul. I like that guy. And I want to help him up here at Antioch. So Silas stayed up there and Judas, one of the other fellows and their brethren went back down to their church at Jerusalem. And then at the end of our passage we'll find that even Paul and Barnabas, two of the finest Christian men, servants, missionaries that you'd ever meet, even Paul and Barnabas kind of had some contention. And it was pretty hot at the very end of the chapter. So this whole chapter is about Confusion and contention. Hot debate, conference, and resolution. First, there's going to be three stages we'll see in this event. First is the confusion. Confusion can lead to division if we don't follow God's guidance. Confusion. These people were confused about the doctrine and that can lead to division. It's an awful thing when division enters into a church. It was taking a toll there at Antioch and then it also came to bear down at Jerusalem, the division that was caused by this confusion. We see it there in the first five verses. Confusion and disagreements are common in life. You ever have a disagreement with somebody? How many married people never had a problem with each other? If you raise your hand, we're all going to know you're a liar. Never have a problem. Never got crossways with anybody at work, have you? Ever got crossways with somebody that's a friend? Relationship? Ever have problems with anybody in church? Well, not this church. We never have problems. We haven't had a lot of problems, thank goodness. I mean, none of us are immune, but they can crop up here and yonder. confusion. That's why we need the Word of God. To keep from having confusion just run amok. Confusion causes division. When I was 16 years old I had a cousin who lived in Washington and they came back and they'd come back and visit us every fall and she had a friend named Connie that was schoolmate there in Wenatchee, Washington. And she wanted me to start becoming a pen pal. Does anybody know what a pen pal is anymore? I mean, we've got Facebook now, so probably nobody knows what pen pals are. We used to actually have to take a pencil or a pen and write on real paper. Yeah, and you had to put it in an envelope. You know what an envelope is, right? And address it and send it across the country U.S. Postal Service would get it from Arkansas to Washington in about five or six days. I think they might be doing a little better now. But I became a pen...not. Paul works with the post office. So I became pen pals with Connie out in Wenatchee, Washington. We were writing back and forth. Of course, we fell in love right away. Neither one of us had ever seen each other before. We exchanged a picture, I think. And so we were pen pals. We'd write and tell how much we loved each other in letters every week. Isn't that mushy and yucky? And so here we are, pen pals, and that goes on all for probably six months or longer. Well, summer came, and a lot of people from Izzard County would move out to Washington to work in the fruit in the summertime, the fruit trees, fruit orchards, and then they'd come back to winter in Arkansas. Well, some of my ancestors had done that forever, I'm 16 now, you know, and I'm full grown, and I'm a wise man already. And I tell my parents, I want to go to Washington. Now, in my heart, I was wanting to go see Connie, you know, because we're deeply in love, never seen each other. But I said, I want to go to Washington and work in the fruit harvest. probably unwisely allowed me to go, probably only because I was going to be living with my aunt out there and working in the fruit. So I caught a ride with some guys in Arkansas. We drove three days to get to Washington. I got there and meet Connie. We had it set up. I told her in the last letter, I'll be standing outside your school when you get out. Our school was already out, but they had to go to school longer. And so you never want to live in Washington. You got to go to school too much. And so I was waiting outside the school. And when we we had some signs made up with me, she's when we met, she said, Well, I'm glad that was you. Let's do that other guy over there. She's I saw a guy in cowboy boots that were about six sizes too big for him. And he was really slouchy looking guy with scrounds you looking hair and stuff. She said, I thought that was you. And I was going, oh no. And so we got along famously for about two days. And suddenly she fell out of love with me. I think it was because I was uglier than she thought I was in that picture. You know, You ought to marry somebody spiritual instead of somebody that's good looking. I told our young people that years ago and my wife was sitting on the front row with some of the girls and I was telling those girls, marry somebody that's spiritual and don't just look for somebody that's good looking. And my wife said, he's right, that's what I did. She's such a smart aleck. Confusion. If it's left unchecked. will lead to greater conflict. You remember about Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Surprise attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor. 2,400 people lost their lives. Service personnel lost their lives in that bombing attack and come to find out There had been some signs and some communication that should have clued in the commanders there to know that this attack is coming. In fact, there was a radar indication that a bunch of planes were on their way to Honolulu and so the commanders there thought this is just American bombers coming in. We're supposed to get a bunch of new bombers in here and that's probably them. I didn't know there was a fleet of the enemy coming to attack them. After all those people were killed, years later, Well, investigations probably started before the years later, but it went into years and years of investigations, congressional hearings. Washington, D.C. is blaming the commanders in Hawaii. The commanders in Hawaii are blaming Washington, D.C. They get Congress involved in all kinds of investigations, finger-pointing, going in every direction. You should have known. You should have known. You should have told us. We should have known. And so the conflict got worse and worse. confusion, it brings on conflict that will just keep growing. This entourage from Jerusalem were not authorized to go up to Antioch and tell those people what to be teaching up there, but it happened. God brings clarity through His Word. We need to get God involved in our conflicts. Would you agree with that? We need to get God involved in our conflicts. He can bring some clarity. Look at verse number 6 in our text, Acts chapter 15, verse number 6. It says, And the apostles and the elders came together for to consider this matter. And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up and said unto them, Men and brethren, you know that a good while ago God made a choice among us that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel and believe. He had got the word directly from God. And so here's some men trying to subvert the clear teaching of the Word of God. If we have conflict, we need to get the Lord involved, get His Word involved, and try to get clarity so the confusion doesn't keep on going. And so they have testimony of the works that's been going on, and each one of those men are telling what God has done for them and done for the Gentiles. What happens if we don't get the word of the Lord in? Say for instance we decide we've got conflict with somebody and we just let our temper run wild, let our imagination run wild. You know sometimes a lot of the problems we have, and listen to me closely, a lot of the problems that we face, not all of them, but a lot of them that we face have been conjured up in our own mind. we begin to think about things. And that's why it says in 1 Corinthians that we ought to cast down vain imaginations. I've let my mind run wild before, and it just about always came to no good. My wife didn't come home one night. Years and years ago, she didn't come home one night. It was like 1 o'clock in the morning, and she wasn't at home. So I'm sitting there thinking, I've trusted this woman all these years and here it is one o'clock in the morning and she's not home. What's going on? And I was a Christian, but I began to imagine things. Two o'clock in the morning and she wasn't home. I said, that's it. That's it. This woman, this woman has gone too far. And so I got in my car at 2 o'clock in the morning. I knew her and another lady in our church had gone to do some work for one of the other ladies in her house, I think hanging wallpaper or something. And so I got in my car and I'm headed, you know, it's probably 2.30 by this time when I'm going down the road, and I met her car. And boy, I got out and I started loose on her. I was telling her how the cow ate the cabbage. She said, wait a minute. She said, do you remember I told you that we were going to keep hanging paper until we got it all done because we were going to quit in the middle of it and it might be way up in the morning before we get done? And this other lady was with her. She said, that's right. We just got through hanging the paper. Boy, we're tired. I had to bite my tongue. I had to eat some crow. because I remembered then she had told me and I forgot. I thought this woman had found a rich man to run off with and she's gone. Your imagination can run wild and when you think somebody's got something against you or somebody's doing something to you or you become the victim and you just let your imagination run wild, it can lead to much confusion and division and affect your family, your church, It can affect you mentally, emotionally, and spiritually because we didn't get God involved in it. That's why it says, you know, and look, secular psychology can do a fair job of describing some emotional issues. They don't do a very good job of treating. Secular psychology says when you get something in your craw, you just got to vent. I mean, go to that person and just lay it out there, railed on them. Tell them what you've got going on inside. Most of the times I've vented, I usually wished I hadn't. Now there's times like this conference at Jerusalem, they needed to talk this through. That needed to be done. But a lot of the things that we vent about is problems that many times could have been overlooked. Love covereth a multitude of sins, the scripture says. There are doctrinal issues that can't be glossed over, but there's a lot of personal hurt that we accumulate, that we magnify, lick our wounds when we didn't have to. We didn't have to stay hurt. You know, there is such a thing as forgiveness. How often are we supposed to forgive somebody? Jesus said forgive them 70 times 7, not just 7 times. In other words, just keep on forgiving. It doesn't matter. Aren't you glad that when you got saved and you messed up several times since you've been saved, Jesus forgave you every time you asked Him? How do I know that He did? I know that He did because He said He would. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's what Jesus promised us, forgiveness. Shouldn't we do that for other people too? In Philippians 4, 1-7, we see contention arise in the Philippian church. And there's a couple of women not getting along with each other, named as Euodias and Syntyche in chapter 4 of Philippians. I'll read it. Listen to this carefully. Paul says, Therefore, my brethren, dearly beloved, and longed for. Now look, Paul loves those folks at Philippi, but he identifies a problem that's going on. Somebody told him. He said, You're my joy and my crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved. And then he says, I beseech you, Euodias, and Syntyche, that they be of the same mind in the Lord. And I entreat thee also, true yoke fellows, help those women which labored with me in the gospel with Clement and those also with other my fellow laborers whose names are in the book of life. He said, Rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say, Rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Now what's he saying there? The Lord is at hand. Does he mean the Lord's coming back right now? You better straighten up. The Lord's coming back. Well, He is coming back someday. But the Lord is at hand right here in Philippians. It's not talking about Him appearing suddenly. It's saying the Lord is at hand. He's among you. And so Jesus walks among you. He said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. And that means in the middle of contentions and confusion, If we get Him involved, He's at hand. He says, I'm there. I'll help you out. We'll work this through. So we need Jesus involved, don't we? Clarity comes when we listen to God's voice. Clarity comes when we listen to God's voice. Years ago, I got hurt. It was decades ago, 30 some odd years ago. I got hurt in a church because I felt betrayed by some of the members and the preacher who had said one thing and then they came back at me with something else. I was an associate pastor at the time and because I had stood up for the pastor who had resigned earlier, And a new pastor had come in. This new pastor said, Brother Brooks, I want you to stay on as associate pastor. And I said, I probably shouldn't. I better get out of here. Some of those people are mad at me just like they were the pastor. I better resign and let you just be the new pastor and you take over. He said, no, I want you to be with me. He said, if there's a problem in the church, you can help me identify and solve these problems. I want you to stay. And so after I offered to resign three or four times, he never accepted my resignation. He wanted me to stay every time. So finally some of the other people got mad at him and started holding their tithe back so he wouldn't get his salary. And so they put financial pressure on him to get rid of me. So he stood me up in church one Wednesday night and he said, Brother Brooks, we appreciate the service you've been to the church, but we're going to relieve you of your position and responsibilities. And I'm saying, what? I've offered to resign a dozen times and you told me that you want me to stay. I could have been gone a long time ago. I felt betrayed. And my hurt was about to get the best of me. I sat under an oak tree with a glass of iced tea that summer and I'd cry and pray and read my Bible and I told the Lord I'm quitting. I'm not preaching anymore. I'll still go to church. I'll sit on the back row and I'll keep my mouth shut. And I'm not teaching a class. I'm not preaching a sermon. I'm not doing anything. I'll just go to church and that's it. And Aaron, our associate pastor right now, was a little toddler at the time. I'm sitting under this tree feeling sorry for myself and licking my wounds and he comes out the front door and walking across the yard towards me. And the Lord broke my heart. I looked at that little toddler and I thought, he's going to grow up one of these days. And one of these days he'll come up to me and say, Dad, didn't you used to be a preacher? Didn't you used to teach Sunday school? Didn't you used to go out and try to win people to the Lord? Dad didn't used to be active in church. What will I tell him? God smoked my heart and said, you better get back to being busy for the Lord. I said, Lord, I can't go back to that church and serve there anymore. They don't want me and I don't want them. He said, you can serve somewhere. I went in the house and told my wife, I said, we're moving to Oklahoma City. I'm going back to finish up that last year of Bible college I left undone. I said, get packed. She said, are you sure about this? I said, yeah, I'm sure. She said, well, I'm glad I didn't unpack all the boxes from that last move we made. When God got involved in it, when God got involved in it, things got better. God gave me clear direction on where to go, what to do, and leading us from point A to point B, we ended up back here. Next week we'll celebrate 27 years of being in this church, starting this church with the assistance of the Lord. I assisted the Lord, He didn't assist me. I'm saying when God gets involved in your conflicts, He can work things out. Yesterday we had a high school reunion in Mount Pleasant, Arkansas up in Izzard County. And it's not this Mount Pleasant church up the road here a little ways. It's Mount Pleasant way up in Izzard County where I grew up. Yesterday we had a high school reunion up there and after we finished our little visit there at the reunion, my wife and I went over to the church that I just told you about. the church where I was hurt and almost bombed out of the ministry over 30 years ago. I went to that church. Of course, I've had different pastors over the years. April the 13th, this coming April 13th, I will have been saved 40 something years. 45? I'm glad you can count. I can't. 45 years, this coming April 13th. So I told the preacher, I said, I've always wanted to come back here. I said, I used to go to church here. I got saved in that building up there in April 13th of 1980. And if you don't mind, I'd like to come to church here and worship with you on April 13th next year. The 13th falls on a Sunday next year. He said, sure, no problem, come on. And so there was a couple of ladies that he said, now there's some people here you might still know. He said some of them are gone, some of them passed away. But he said there's a couple more up there. Now this guy didn't know much. He probably didn't know anything much about the history of the church. I don't think he knew me. But he said there's a couple of ladies up there cleaning church right now that you probably know. They've been here a long time. And he called their names. And I said, yeah, I'd like to go talk to them. So we visited and we laughed and talked. We didn't talk about what happened 30 years ago. Because God worked all that out. And I told them, I want to come to church here on April 13th. So y'all got to find somebody to preach for you April 13th this coming year. Maybe Aaron will do it. If not, Connor will do it. Or Paul will do it. Denny will do it. Who else? We got some more preachers around here somewhere. We'll just call on somebody. But I'm going to church up there. I'm saying when God got involved in that, that took 30 years. Because they didn't come to me and I didn't go to them. You know, conflict doesn't have to last 30 years. It can be taken care of a lot faster when we get God involved in it. Counsel. These people at Antioch went down to the Jerusalem church and they took counsel with each other. One church was not bossing the other church and one church was not in authority over the other church. Churches in the Bible were autonomous, independent. They didn't have headquarters somewhere, except heaven. That's why we're an independent Baptist church. We're not part of a convention nor a denominational headquarters or anything like that. Every church makes its own decisions. And these churches did, but they met together to discuss and to consider counsel from each other, and they found a resolution. I haven't, I guess, in three or four decades ago, in the early years especially, I hadn't always valued my pastor's advice and counsel like I should have. Brothers Neithern was my Pastor, we're greatest of friends, always have been over 40 years now. He's the one I got saved under. But when I first got saved, some of the advice he gave me, I just kind of brushed it off back then. But God had him in his position for a reason. I can look back now and I can see I should have listened. He knew what he was talking about. But me being a year old Christian, I figured I knew everything by then. Sometimes we get to thinking we know everything and we don't. Let me give you the third thing and we'll be done. God provides counsel or provides practical guidance for moving forward. James and this conference down at Jerusalem, they hashed this thing out and they finally come to the conclusion, that little group of Pharisees that went up to Antioch trying to introduce their false doctrine, they were the ones in error for starting this. And James and Peter and Paul and Barnabas and the other elders and apostles and preachers, they got together and talked it out and they came to the conclusion, you're saved by grace, not by works. Now take this letter and show those other Gentile churches they can relax. They don't have to get circumcised, they don't have to become Jews, they don't have to follow the Mosaic law to be saved. So they work things out. Clarity leads to a practical action. When you ask For a counsel, advice from somebody who's known the Lord for quite a while and know their Bible, it can save a lot of heartache and a lot of confusion, a lot of dissension because if God's in it, it'll help get things solved a long time, a long time before it could turn out to be if you let it fester too long. A pastor is not perfect. A pastor makes mistakes. But there's generally a few things that's true of your spiritual leaders. They generally love you. They generally want the best for you. And they generally are going to give you good biblical advice. There has to be a respect for the Word of God coming down through His people. Now some people fall away from that. Brother Paul did. Denny's not here. I've got to pick on you, Paul. Paul was here. He's our treasurer. He was here working in the church one day and a man came through the door, a loud-mouthed guy. He's hollering around through the house and Paul went out and said, yes, sir, can I help you? And the man said, yeah, I'm looking for the head hog. Paul said, well, head hog, what are you talking about? He said, I'm looking for the head hog, you know, the guy you'd probably call pastor. Paul said, well, I'm sorry, sir, but we don't call our pastor a hog. And the man said, well, that's OK, I'll go somewhere else. He said, I had a check for $10,000 I was going to donate to the church. Paul said, wait a minute, I think I hear the big pig coming right now. Now, I just made all that up. It sounds like something he'd do though. I think we're a biscuit ministry. You know what a biscuit ministry is? I didn't until just a while ago when I made it up. A biscuit ministry. My mother, she'd been in heaven now for over a decade. She could make the best biscuits. And they'd fluff up there real tall and they were airy, had big air holes in them and they were just clingy enough that they'd hold together that you could pull them in half and put a piece of sausage in there and close it up and it wouldn't crumble apart. It was still tender enough to eat. Nice big old brown biscuits. Nobody could make biscuits like my mother. I tried to duplicate them a number of times and just about two weeks ago I found the secret. Lard. You take and put some flour and baking powder and stuff in the bowl and chop up some lard in there until it's about the size of a BB or a little bigger. And that lard, when you begin to bake the biscuit, that lard will melt and leave big air holes in it so it's light and airy and fluffy but still nice and springy. And so, I'm thinking we're a biscuit ministry. When you start putting together the ingredients, I mean, Just like members of a church and people who attend a church, you have ingredients. In your biscuits, you've got some flour and some baking powder, probably some buttermilk and soda, maybe a little salt and the lard. Don't forget the lard. Lard is not healthy for you. It's better than that hydrogenized stuff. And so you put all that stuff together, start stirring it up. Any one of those ingredients by itself wouldn't be very good. Can you imagine taking a teaspoonful of flour and just eating it? That'd be kind of yucky, wouldn't it? Or what about a tablespoon of lard? Just put a tablespoon of lard in your mouth. That'd be kind of yucky. Or a tablespoon of salt. That'd be kind of yucky by itself. Buttermilk? I kind of like buttermilk. Okay. But you put all that stuff together and stir it up and you put it in the oven and boy out comes some nice, aromatic, flavorful biscuits. You know what we are? We're a bunch of flour and salt, buttermilk. Some of you are saltier than others. And you put all that stuff in a bowl and you turn it. When you put everybody in a church and you stir it all up, we all work together. Everybody does its job. The baking powder in the biscuit dough doesn't say, you soda, you get out of here. I'm the one doing the rising. The soda says, no, I can rise too. Mix me a little buttermilk and I'll rise. And the salt doesn't say, the rest of you get out. I can handle this by myself. No, it'd be a pretty yucky biscuit if it just had salt. And so when you stir it all up together, it makes a pretty good biscuit. And when you take everybody that's part of the church, even though everybody's a little bit different, and anyone by himself wouldn't make a very good team, but together we make a pretty good team, a pretty good recipe. And that's what a ministry ought to be. And when we resolve our issues, our discouragements, and our contentions, we handle them in a godly way, Joy comes in Acts 15, back in our text, Acts 15, 30. It says, So when they were dismissed, they came to Antioch. And when they had gathered the multitude together, they delivered the epistle, the letter, which they had read, they rejoiced, which when they had read, they rejoiced for the consolation. When we get our contentions, our disputations, our dissensions, our confusion, we get it all worked out, doing it God's way, by observing God's Word, with God's people, then there can be joy and rejoicing. And that's what happened there. Let's wrap it up. What can I say? Well, a little boy came to Washington, to the Washington Monument, and he noticed a guard standing there. And the little boy looked up at the guard and said, I want to buy it. And the guard stooped down and said, how much money do you have? And the boy dug in his pocket and he pulled out 25 cents. The guard said, that's not enough. The little boy reached in his pocket and dug a little bit more and he came out with a few more pennies and laid it there, everything. He said, that's all I've got. The guard said, that's not enough. He said, that's not enough to pay for it and that's not enough not only to buy it, but it's not for sale. And in the third place, You're an American citizen, you already have it. It's yours. You know that's the way it is with the gospel. You can't buy your salvation for it's not for sale. You can't buy it because he's not going to sell it and if he did sell it, you wouldn't have enough to purchase it. And besides all that, if you're saved, you've already got it. how this Jerusalem problem got solved. They finally figured out the payment Jesus made with his blood on the cross was sufficient. It did it all. And there's nothing I can do and nothing you can do to add to it. And so we just rejoice in our salvation. We rejoice that God put us together as people worshiping the Lord. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, I pray that you would bless us. as we come before you thanking you for paying for our salvation, thanking you that we're saved by grace, not of ourselves. We're purchased with the sinless, precious blood of Christ. And Lord, if there's someone under the sound of my voice who has not come to Jesus yet for salvation, I pray that this very moment they would in their heart turn to Christ and say, Lord, I'm a sinner. I need your blood to cover me and to forgive me and make me a real Christian. Lord, for the Christians who may face difficulties and contentions, dissension, confusion, Lord, I pray that they also would determine in their heart to let Jesus handle those as well. If He can handle our soul, for eternity, he can certainly handle our small disputes. I pray that you'd bless in this invitation time.