Introduction: An expert in time management spoke to a group of business executives, a group of high-powered overachievers. The speaker said right off, "OK. Time for a quiz." He bent over, reached inside his podium, coming up with a wide-mouthed Mason jar, the gallon size. He bent again, now producing an assortment of fist-size rocks. One by one, placed them into the jar until no more would fit in. He asked, " Now, is the jar full?"

The overachievers responded as a group that of course the jar was full. The rankest underachiever could see that. But the speaker said, "Really?" He bent again. This time he produced a bucket of gravel. He dumped the gravel in and shook the jar, causing a settling into spaces around the rocks. Asked again, "Is this jar full?"

The hall was still. Except for one guy. He said warily, "Probably not." So next he reaches down for more supplies. He brings forth a bucket of sand, and starts pouring it into the jar, filling in around the gravel and stones. "Is this jar full?"

"No!" the class choruses. No idea why, but now in the spirit of whatever is going on. "Good!" says the speaker. He bends again and comes up with a pitcher of water which he pours in until the jar of rocks and gravel and sand is filled to the brim. He looks up and addresses his high-powered overachievers. "Tell me, what is the point of this illustration?" A hand goes up and its owner quickly provides the answer. "The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you really try hard you can fit some more things in."

The man sits back, satisfied. His fellow achievers, highly competitive, rebuke themselves for not speaking this obvious answer first. "No," says the speaker. "That is not the point. The truth this illustration teaches us is—if you don’t put the big rocks in first, you will never get them all in."

Then he asks, "What are the big rocks in your life? Your children? Your loved ones? Your education? Your dreams? A worthy cause? Teaching or helping others? Doing things that you love? Time for yourself? Your health?". He emphasized, "Remember to put these big rocks in first or you’ll never get them all in. If you sweat the gravel and sand, then you will fill your life with little things to worry about. Things that in the long run don’t really matter and you’ll never have the quality time you need to spend on the big stuff. So ask yourself, "What are the big rocks in my life?"

Just as good time management requires focusing priorities on the truly important things of life so does our relationships with other Christians. Let me ask you some questions:

Question 1: What are "the big rocks" of your Christian faith? What are the matters of my faith I consider to be the essentials? What do I believe that is absolutely necessary to be a Christian?

Question 2: What is "the sand and gravel" of your Christian life? These are things that are the non-essentials? They can go either way. They are not as important as those in number 1.

Question 3: When other Christians don’t agree with my answers to question 2 what is my response? Do I demonstrate love?

In our relationships with other Christians it’s easy for us to get our lives so filled up with the "sand and gravel" of the non-essentials and neglect the "big rocks" of what is essential. When we sweat the sand and gravel then we don’t have room for the big rocks. The challenge comes then that if someone doesn’t bend on the non-essentials the fellowship will break.

How to keep the fellowship from breaking apart was the very issue that faced the church 2000 years ago. We have come in our study of Acts to the first official debate in the history of the Church. It certainly hasn’t been the last! Initially it had to do with the basis of salvation for non-Jews or Gentiles. It ultimately became the issue of how to maintain the fellowship, unity and closeness between the Jewish Christians and the non-Jewish Christians. When Paul and Barnabas returned from their first missionary journey and reported to the church at Antioch that God "had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles" (14:27), the news was explosive, creating no small stir. Suddenly there was the need to clarify how a non-Jew could become a Christian. How the issue was handled and solved is of crucial importance to this day. The specifics may be different, but the overriding principles are constant. These are the principles we don’t want to miss. They discovered that if the fellowship was going to hold together then someone was going to have to bend or the fellowship would break.

Let’s start with some important background. Recall that 10 years before this event Peter was confronted with the reality that non- Jews or Gentiles could be saved the same way that the Jews had been (Acts 10). That event opened the door to the rest of the world to become part of the church of Jesus Christ. So now by the time of this controversy in Acts 15, Gentiles were being converted at such a rate they could easily outnumber the Jews.

To add to the problem Paul and Barnabas had just returned from their first missionary journey and reported to the church at Antioch what great things God was doing among the Gentiles (Acts 14:26-27). Yet this was not good news for the Jewish Christians at Jerusalem! They were afraid if you let Gentiles become Christians without being circumcised then also not keeping the dietary laws, very soon Judaism would be meaningless! So the solution of some was to say: To be a Christian you must be circumcised and also keep the dietary laws! It was not so much that Gentiles could be saved but what were the conditions they could be saved and accepted into the church? (Acts 15:1)

Before we write the Jewish Christians off has hopelessly narrow try to understand their perspective. The traditions of circumcision and the dietary laws were what identified the Jews as Jews. To give up on these things was to lose their identity as the people of God. These were traditions handed down over two thousand years that were the core of who they were and they would not be changed easily. They were trying to sincerely hold to what they knew to be the will of God, as they knew it!

We need to be clear about the nature of a worship service in the first two centuries of the church. Typically the Christians would gather in the home of one of the members, perhaps the person with the largest house. A city church would have many such cells, each with an absolute maximum of perhaps sixty people, given the size of even large rooms in those days. The central feature of the service was a meal to which members contributed what they could. At the beginning a loaf of bread was ritually broken and shared, and at the end a cup of wine was likewise shared. But between the two a full meal was eaten. This means that if they were in the same church Jews and Gentiles would eat together and share each other’s food in the context of worship.

The problem came when the full meal was served. For the Jews they had followed the laws of Moses that prohibited them from eating any meat that had been offered as a sacrifice to an idol. To do so was to participate in the worship of that idol. They also were taught that the meat they ate was to be drained of all the blood and the animal could not have been strangled when it was killed. For the non-Jews typically the only meat they could get was meat that had been offered to an idol. They liked their meat with blood in it and always strangled the animal to keep the most blood in the meat. So when the meat was served if it was bloody the Jewish Christians saw that as a sin and something they could not tolerate so they would not eat it. They in turn judged the non-Jews and believed they were not Christians.

Naturally, when these Jewish Christians came to a Gentile oriented church like Antioch and said, "If you are going to be saved then here are the other things you must do", there would be internal dissension (v. 2-3). But regardless of the dissension, wise leadership prevailed, a decision was made to take it to Jerusalem for the matter to be decided there (v. 2-5). So from an internal dissension the scene shifts in Acts 15:6-12 to a careful investigation of a difficult problem.

Their purpose for the investigation was to respond to the question: Can Gentiles be saved without obeying the Jewish laws, both circumcision and the dietary laws? They listened to Peter story of how God had worked in his own life to show him that Gentiles were saved in the same way they had been-all by grace! (7-11). Then they listened to what Paul and Barnabas had experienced on their journeys (v. 12).

After listening to the different sides discuss the issue, James (the half brother of Jesus) offers a decision. Essentially, it’s this: Let’s affirm the essentials (Acts 15:13-35). James saw that if they gave in to the Jewish Christians to require circumcision and the rules for eating that they would deny that they could be saved only by grace through faith. That in turn would result in the gospel being hindered. If they gave in totally to the Gentile, non-Jewish Christians then they were denying the very heritage of Jesus himself. Doing that would completely alienate the Jewish Christians.

What was James’ solution? First he made it clear that the salvation of non-Jews was something that God was doing not them (v. 14). God is at the heart of this, not people! Second, he showed them how the Scripture was being fulfilled, not contradicted (v. 15-18). In other words God had told them this for centuries. Third, he affirmed that the big rock in their jar for fellowship was that salvation is based only on grace, never works (v. 19) and to add anything for salvation was only "troubling" to these believers. Finally, James proposed writing a letter that described a compromise for Jews and Gentiles to worship together (v. 20-21). He affirmed that salvation was by grace through faith and asked that the non-Jews keep three rituals and one moral law: don’t eat meat offered to idols, meat that has blood in it or meat that comes from a strangled animal and maintain total abstinence form all immorality. Both sides were being asked to bend on the non-essentials without breaking on what was essential!

What was their response? A unified decision to affirm the essentials: Freedom by God’s grace and responsible living because of God’s grace (v. 22-29). It’s fascinating to see that there is not one verb of command in letter! What was the result in Antioch? They followed it gladly (v. 30-35)! Why? It was presented with one basic precept: Freedom by God’s grace and responsible living because of God’s grace. When faced with a fracture in the body of Christ they learned that someone has to bend on the non-essentials or the fellowship would break apart.

Striking a balance between the big rocks and the sand and gravel is never easy. Sometimes finding where to bend without breaking can be very difficult. Leroy Eims writes, "All of us are strangely inclined towards trying to turn our opinions and practices into rules for everyone else to follow." A solution is never easy!

There are a multitude of issues floating around with individual Christians and in churches that can and have been bending or breaking points. Christians have differing opinions about secular music, movies, clothes, use of alcohol, smoking and more. Churches are divided on the styles of worship that are acceptable, the role of women in leadership, styles of pastoral leadership, basic statements of faith and many more. From this passage I find four questions to ask that the answers can show us where to bend in order to keep from breaking the fellowship.

What is he doing around us and within our fellowship? This is the thing that Peter, Paul and James all affirmed (v.6, 12, 28). This takes time and spiritual wisdom. It takes the issue out of the realm of another person’s agenda or trying to adapt for the sake of adapting to current trends or culture. It says that we believe that God is doing something that we need to recognize.

There was a lot at stake if they did not make some concessions toward each other (Acts 15:19). The very spread of the gospel with non-Jews was jeopardized if they could not find a compromise. The loss of fellowship with those who were the first to follow Christ as Jews was in danger if they could not get it worked out. Whenever we are divided over the non-essentials we must take a close look at what we will lose if we insist on making our non-essential the essential! How much are the individual members of the body of Christ worth to you and to me? Is it worth the losing of one or more of it’s parts? Before you apply an all or nothing approach the question needs to be asked, "What will this cost us?"

The church had to decide what was essential to the faith and what was not. They all agreed that the one essential element was that they all came to Christ by his grace (Acts 15:11). I can say to you that that is the one thing we are more likely to forget whenever we are divided over differences. We forget that the ground we all stand on is level at the foot of the cross! We imagine that somehow because of my belief or doctrine I am elevated above someone else. There is nothing that stinks up a church, a class, a relationship or a dorm room like spiritual elitism and pride. Our answer to the question of , "What is essential?" will say more about us than any other statement we can make.

Acts 15:28-29 shows that the church made a decision to ask the non-Jews to keep some of the dietary laws but not all of them. They asked them to keep away from the immorality that was rampant in the Gentile culture. They didn’t suggest anything else. They were all being asked to bend. Unfortunately most Christians and churches never get to this point. They avoid, deny, give in to one side or the other or choose to see any attempt at bending as losing. It’s as if compromise is a four-letter word. Sometimes it is a four-letter word: L-O-V-E! Remember these words of Jesus, John 13:34-35. Where can you bend on a non-essential to keep the fellowship from breaking apart?

Conclusion: For months the CBS show Survivor has been in the top ten in the TV ratings. As you know the show is the story of a group of people placed on an island who are systematically excluded until one person is left. The lone survivor stands to when one million dollars! This August 23 the lone survivor will be known. It could be Richard, Sean, Susan, Kelly or Rudy. They have all had to somewhat use backstabbing methods to succeed at being the last survivor!

Christians, churches and even denominations can play their own game of Survivor. We decide that the only ones who get to stay on the "island" are the ones who agree with me. We then choose to break the fellowship rather than bend on our opinion. When it comes to the non-essentials a win/lose strategy guarantees one thing: everybody loses. You may be the winner of the Christian version of the game Survivor but the loser is the fellowship of the Body of Jesus Christ. The bottom line is: When it comes to the non-essentials in the Christian life someone has to bend or the fellowship will break!

Sunday, August 20, 2000

Dr. Bruce Tippit

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

[email protected]