June 21, 2026

"Gathered Together to Consider This Matter" (Acts 15:1-21)

Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church Scripture: Acts 15:1–21

Hear now the word of the lord from Acts 15, verses 1 through 21. But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, unless you were circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them.

But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, it is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses. The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the Gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us. And he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.

Now therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke upon the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear, but we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will. 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 Jacob 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, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled and from blood. For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him. For he has read every Sabbath in the synagogues.

This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated. And as you're taking your seats, let's please join our hearts together this morning in prayer. Gracious Father, we need help. We need help to interpret this passage that in one sense seems so distant from us, but in another sense is given its inspiration by the very words of the Holy Spirit.

It was written down for our instruction. It's designed to shape our vision, our understanding of your vision for your church. And so we pray, Father, that as we study this passage that we would understand something about the church, but far more that we would understand something about the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, Father, we pray that you would give us your spirit to give us eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to understand all that is contained in the good news of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's in Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

When I was first ordained a pastor, I was originally ordained in our current denomination, the pca. And I didn't grow up in the pca, but at some point I had been attracted to the PCA because of the doctrine of the pca. In college, I met a group of Presbyterians. They had some Bible studies. And one of the things that there was an ongoing study through was a study through the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms.

And again, I hadn't grown up in the pca, but as I was going through that study, I was just amazed by the clarity of the doctrinal conviction laid down in those confessions, not to add something to scripture, but to clarify the sum of what Scripture teaches. And I was just so amazed by that because it wasn't something that I grew up with. And so I ended up in the pca and I was ordained in the pca. And the first church that I was a member of as an ordained pastor was a wonderful situation where I was a bi vocational pastor working elsewhere in the world and I was an assistant pastor at that church. And everything was going well, everything was settled.

It was simple. It was a wonderful, wonderful early experience in my pastorate. And as a man who was young and naive, I think looking back on that time, I probably couldn't imagine ever having a situation that would arise where we would need this kind of a counsel like we read about in Acts, chapter 15. But that all changed about a year into that pastorate when the senior pastor at that church was suddenly found out to have been engaged in a very long series of heinous and disqualifying sins. And that dropped like a bomb in the congregation.

And I remember those early days where the elders and I alongside them was working to try to help put together the pieces in this congregation that had been so rocked and scandalized by what that pastor had done. And I remember specifically how difficult it was to know exactly what to do. We were very reactionary. There was a fire that came up. We tried to put that one out.

Then another one came up and we put that one out. And at some point, I remember in one of the meetings, the many, many, many meetings we had, but someone stood up and said, I think I am too close to this situation. You see, we all were. We were too close to the situation. We didn't have a distance from it to help us to deal with it objectively.

As hard as we were trying, we needed extra help. And thankfully, we were in the pca. There was a presbytery and they stepped in, they tried and they convicted that pastor for the sins, so. So that they deposed him from his office and removed him from being pastor in our church. And they helped to try to step in and put the pieces together.

I am certain that if we as a church had been alone in dealing with this, that church eventually would have torn apart from the inside out if we had just had ourselves to walk through that. But what I learned through that situation was that it wasn't just the doctrine. You can't just have doctrinal formulations and everything will just go perfectly. You need help, you need a structure, you need church, especially the connection to the broader church when things go awry at the local level. And the biblical example we have one of the greatest biblical examples, but not the only one, is here in Acts, chapter 15, where we are going to see the way that when there is a local controversy that arises, this gets heard and considered and decided by the broader church gathered in another place.

Now, by God's great providence. I didn't plan this, but I am just giddy about this. I get to preach this the Sunday before leaving for general assembly this coming week. This is the first general assembly in the history of the church. We are continuing very much in this tradition this week.

And I get to preach on this wonderful passage right before leaving for this. So I don't know how excited you are about that, but I am very excited at least about that piece. And what we are going to see here is something that I hope to be much engaged in this week, namely in seeing the controversies of the church judged in the light of God's Word. That's our theme for today, that the church must judge controversies in light of God's word. Now, the particular controversy here we're going to break out into three parts.

First, the controversy revolves around the teaching of salvation by works. Salvation by works in verses one through five. Second, we have the antidote to that, the truth, salvation by faith alone. But then in trying to pick up the pieces and trying to help these local congregations to sort out some of this controversy, we have a third part of this. And this is wisdom for fellowship. Wisdom for fellowship.

1. Salvation by Works (Acts 15:1-5)

So in the first part, we have salvation by works, the first section, salvation by works in verses one through five. Now, one of the commentators pointed out that this passage comes at the very center of the book of Acts. Acts has 28 chapters. We just finished Acts 14.

That's right in the middle. So this is the start of the second half of the book of Acts. But it's not just sort of in the middle of the word count of the book. It is very much at the center of the themes and the trajectory of this book. We have seen the gospel begin to be preached in Jerusalem among a tiny, huddled group of people as they waited the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost.

And we have seen the gospel break down every barrier, from persecution to foreign lands to move from Jerusalem into the wider Judea, from there into Samaria, and from Samaria now beginning to reach out to the ends of the earth, just as Jesus had originally commissioned his church to do. But now there's this controversy that arises. Before this can go too much farther toward the ends of the earth, this issue must be settled. Namely, how shall all of these new unwashed Gentiles come into the fellowship of what had been predominantly a Jewish church? How should the Gentiles be included?

And in verse one, we read that some of the men, some men came down from Judea and they had a particular idea on how this should work. Namely, they believed that these Gentiles must become Jewish in order to be incorporated into this new church body. And so they were teaching, unless you are circumcised, according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. Now, in the Old Testament, there were a number of Gentiles who came into the nation of Israel. And when they did, those Gentiles were required to become Jewish.

Namely, they were required to become Jewish, circumcised to bear the mark of the covenant that God had given to his people. And so the idea is, well, the same thing is still happening. They're coming into this. They're coming into the broader people of Israel, and they need to become Jewish to do so. They must therefore be circumcised according to the custom of Moses, or they cannot be saved by our covenant God.

Now, the problem was that adding a work to the finished work of Christ destroys the doctrine of justification by faith alone, namely, the Scriptures teach everywhere, and not only in the New Testament. We're going to talk also about the Old Testament, particularly when we talk more about all of this tonight. So come back tonight. But we are justified. That is, we are counted righteous.

We are deemed to have met God's infinitely holy righteous standard, not by what we do, but by what Christ has done for us. One commentator, Lenski, writes this. And I was actually on a walk with my sons, and we crossed over a bridge. And I brought up this illustration because I thought it was wonderful. I pointed at a. I pointed at a place where the bridge came together and where there were bolts.

And I said, guys, as strong as this bridge is, if this piece came apart, what do you think would happen to this whole bridge? And they said, well, it would crumble. And we were talking about it because they asked, hey, dad, do you think this is going to break apart and fall into the river? So we were already on the subject, but we were talking about it. And I said, well, think about this.

Think about this. If our bridge to heaven, and this is from Lenski, if our bridge to heaven is built where 99 out of a hundred parts of it is, on the perfect work of Christ, but we have one of our own bolts to add. Something rests on us as human beings, One work that we have to do to finish the job, then that will collapse and plunge. And there have been notorious cases of bridges with. That exactly has happened in Minneapolis several years ago, where one thing goes awry and the whole thing collapses.

And that's what's being taught here, that we have a work to add, and it's a human work. But the problem is, if our justification does not rest entirely 100 parts out of 100 on the exclusive work of Christ, then we will certainly find a way to mess it up. And so we read in verse two that Paul and Barnabas, they saw the error here. They weren't just reacting and trying to put out fires in the moment. They were trying to bring what this teaching was in light of the larger teaching of Scripture, saying, this cannot be the case.

The scriptures do not teach this. There are no works of ours that contribute anything to our justification. But at the local level, this is very hard to sort out. And if things had just been left to this local level, the church in Antioch would have certainly torn apart from the inside out. You'd have one church of the Judaistic heresy and you'd have the other church trying to limp along.

But instead of simply tearing apart, what do they do? They appoint Paul and Barnabas and some of the others to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question, to bring this question to the broader church, to get an objective biblical answer to how they should understand this question. Now, in verse three, what's very interesting is as they're going on their way, we read that Paul and Barnabas are describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, something that brought great joy to all the brothers. And this is through Phoenicia and Samaria. Now, part of the reason this is included here is you are seeing the broader church consider this at least informally.

And the broader church does not have the same concerns that these Judaistic, These Judaizers concerns that there needed to be circumcision. They're just rejoicing that the Gentiles are being brought to faith. Now, in the Church, controversies should not be decided by the loudest voices or by the largest crowds, but rather by the word of God. And yet the broader consensus of the Church should give us pause. If we are on an island teaching something that no one else thinks that should give us pause.

That's why we make a big deal of the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed. We want to be right down the middle of the fairway, joined with all Christians in all ages in confessing the basic truths that the Scriptures teach. We don't want to come up with some new novel idea on these things. Well, as we continue to read, we read that when they arrived in Jerusalem in verse four, they were welcomed. And there are kind of three groups that are envisioned through this whole passage.

We need to keep them in mind by the Church, the broader church of Jerusalem, lots of rank and file ordinary members, and then the officers and the apostles and the elders. So there's the church, there's the apostles and the elders. And when they got there, they declared all that God had done with them. There's a new report of these missionaries after they'd been trying to reach the ends of the earth. But here again, there's a group of these Judaizers from whom those original men of Judea must have come down from.

And they rose up and said it is necessary to circumcise them, I.e. these Gentiles, and to order them to keep the law of Moses. It is interesting to see that some of the Pharisees do indeed convert to faith in Christ. And perhaps this is not too strange or too much of a stretch to believe, because one of the things we know about the Pharisees is that they did, unlike the Sadducees, believe in the resurrection of the dead. So okay, Jesus has been resurrected from the dead, but we believe in the resurrection.

So great, let's believe in Jesus now. But there are some hang ups in their old Pharisaism that keep them from seeing the glory that that has been unfurled most clearly in Jesus Christ. Namely, that justification is by grace alone and by faith alone. For them, they think it begins by grace. But ultimately there's this work that you've got to do, your bolt that you have to put into that bridge if you're going to be able to walk across it to salvation.

Our salvation though, can only be as strong and secure as the weakest link. Again, if Christ's perfect obedience and his perfect sacrifice on the cross are our only grounds of justification, if 100% of the bridge is made up of Christ and what he has done, there is and can be no weak link in that bridge, praise God. But if our justification, our being counted righteous in God's sight, rests in any way on the works that we perform, then we are vulnerable indeed. Salvation thereby becomes impossible. And that's why Paul and Barnabas fought this tooth and nail.

And that's why the broader church was unconcerned with this strange heretical teaching. And yet these questions are too difficult to settle in the local church, too important for the court of popular opinion. The church must judge these controversies, and they must do so by a plurality of their appointed leaders, their officers. They had apostles and elders, but in our case, elders. Now, what we're going to see in the next passage is how the apostles and the elders joined together to answer these questions.

This doesn't exclude the larger church, but it does identify the unique function of elders to judge difficult cases in the life of the church. So we've seen salvation by works, this heresy that arises. Now in the second section, we come to salvation by faith alone. This is where the church has to evaluate this heresy and to show why it is wrong. In verses 6 through 11.

2. Salvation by Faith (Acts 15:6-11)

And so again in verse 6, the apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. Again, it seems like the whole church was there. There's a live stream, by the way, if you want to watch General assembly and sit at home and, I don't know, watch popcorn, watch parties, if you want to organize them, I'm sure that we can send an email about it, about that. But here, the church, whoever would have been there, had the opportunity to watch this in person, probably. But it's the apostles and the elders who had the responsibility of considering these things.

Now, to this group, and Notice in verse 7, there had been much debate. This is going back and forth. And if you've ever been to meetings like this, there can be back and forth and a lot of arguments being rehashed. Well, at some point after this, Peter stands up and he says to them, brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of Gospel and believe. You may remember back In Acts chapter 11, in Acts chapter 11, after Peter had brought the Gospel to Cornelius, again, a group of these people with these similar concerns said, you went to the house of an uncircumcised man and ate with him.

What were you thinking? And so he came to Jerusalem and defended himself. He told exactly what he had been doing, and he told exactly what God had done and bring the Holy Spirit, Spirit to the Gentiles. And after telling all this story of his interactions with Cornelius in Acts 8:11, verse 18, they all are stopped. And they say then to the Gentiles also, God has granted repentance that leads to life.

And so Peter's saying, you know this, we've talked about this. You've seen what God has been up to among the Gentiles. But then what Peter does is he sort of extends the logic of this. So to think about what you already know, you know what God has done. So start to draw out some of the implications of that verse 8.

And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us. If God's Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who made the temple holy by his indwelling presence, if he now indwelt unwashed, uncircumcised Gentiles, if he bypassed any need for circumcision, then what use would circumcision have? Now, how did these unwashed, uncircumcised Gentiles become clean? Well, verse nine, he made no distinction between us and. And them having cleansed their hearts by faith.

Faith did not begin their salvation by faith. God cleansed their hearts by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. And if the Holy Spirit indwelt them, what use would circumcision have? Now look then what he says at verse 10, because he actually takes this a step further. He says, now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?

Now, the language of yoke, it's the idea of yoking cattle together to pull a load. But the idea of a yoke is the idea of discipleship. Jesus himself says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. He was saying, become my disciple. That's the best kind of yoke you can bear.

But Peter is saying, why are we placing this yoke? That never worked. The entire Old Testament filled with examples of circumcised Jews, where we know from this story after story after story, we read that their circumcision did not guarantee or confirm or demand their obedience. And so if it wasn't a magic ritual to guarantee the obedience of the Jews, what benefit can it have for these Gentiles is the question he's asking. It gets to the crux of the matter in verse 11.

But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will. They're cleansed by faith. They are saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus. And this is not only for Gentiles, this is also for Jews. We will be saved in this way, just as.

As they will. Christ's bridge of salvation rests entirely upon him and his perfect work. There's not a single joint for us to uphold. Now again this week, Don Coy and I will be heading to General assembly in Louisville, Kentucky. Please pray for travel the General Assembly.

If you're not familiar with it, this is where a lot of questions move up that have been dealt with at a local level maybe, and then maybe at the regional level, still can't be answered. And so are carried up to the denominational level for consideration by the whole gathered church, not every member of all the churches, but rather by the whole, all the representatives of the churches and the elders who will be gathering their teaching and ruling elders together to consider a number of questions. And at General assembly, the priority is on listening well to other elders, because every case that comes is hard and the debate goes on for a long time. We need wisdom, we need the experience of elders. We need A plurality of elders, especially to draw out the implications of a particular controversy that might not be immediately apparent.

But the best speeches, and I can think of a few in my time that I've been present for, where men not only speak from their own wisdom, but where they hold God's Word in their hands and read from it and remind us and call us back to the Scriptures. Because we're not there to chart a new course for the Church. We are there to proclaim and administer what Jesus Christ has commanded for us in his church. The task of elders is not to be really smart people who know all the answers. The task rather is to lead and guide and oversee the church in accordance with God's Word.

But not all of those questions are pure doctrinal decisions. There's a lot of other questions that deal with questions of wisdom. How then should we sort this out? And this gets to the third section, Wisdom for Fellowship in verses 12 through 21. In verse 12, we read that the assembly fell silent.

3. Wisdom for Fellowship (Acts 15:12-21)

The significance of God's work among the Gentiles with Peter seems to be setting in. And then to that, Barnabas and Peter add further confirmation through their reports of God's continued work among the Gentiles. It wasn't a fluke for the Holy Spirit to indwell those in the household of Cornelius. He's continuing to do it on the frontiers of the front lines of ministry. What the works of the Holy Spirit demonstrate is that the need for circumcision has been altogether abolished.

Well, in verse 13, after they finished speaking, or literally, when they fell silent, James now stands up. Now, this James is not James the brother of John. James the brother of John was killed by Herod back in Acts, chapter 12, verse 2. This is James the Less, James the elder James, who is called in Galatians 1, verse 19, the brother of the the Lord. This is the brother of Jesus, who is not chosen by his brother as an apostle, but who becomes an elder in the church of his brother Jesus Christ.

And as James stands up, he seems to be the moderator. He seems to be the leader of this assembly. And as he stands up, he speaks and his speech seems to carry the day. He says, brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for his name.

But what he does, what James does then. I'm going to interrupt. What James does then is. Then he connects what the church is seeing in the wider world with the prophecies of Scripture, verse 15. And with this, the words of the prophets Agree, this isn't just a new thing that we think or imagine God to be doing.

We see this drawn from the clear teaching of Scripture. And here he quotes the Book of Amos, chapter 9, verses 11 through 12. And he seeks to confirm their understanding of God's work in light of God's word. Now, in this prophecy, the prophecy states the Lord will rebuild the Tent of David so that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord and the Gentiles who are called by my name. Now, the language of the Tent of David is not a reference to David's house.

It's never used in that sense in Scripture. It's rather to the tabernacle. Why would you call the tabernacle the Tent of David? Well, because David was the one who finally brought the tabernacle to its final resting place in Jerusalem. Remember that great scene in 2nd Samuel 7, where in all this festivities and David's dancing and their sacrifices and the Ark of the Covenant is brought in to a final resting place where the tabernacle sits in the resting place in God's permanent place of dwelling in Jerusalem.

So this is David's tabernacle, just as we would speak of Solomon's temple, which Solomon then built after David's death. Now, the uncircumcised had been forbidden from entering the tabernacle in the old covenant. But here in the prophecy, it's very clear that in rebuilding this tent and rebuilding whatever this tabernacle is, it's going to bring uncircumcised Gentiles in. And what James is saying is that God had always. Again, look at verse 18 from of old.

God had always planned to draw his entire people together, Jewish and Gentile, to himself. Circumcision to make Gentiles Jewish was never a part of the permanent plan. And so what James is doing is appealing to Scripture and after, he not only points to God's works, but now connects it to God's Word. Now the question is settled. No circumcision is no longer needed.

But yet there are still some questions of wisdom that remain unanswered. And that brings us to 1921. We read. Therefore, my judgment is. One commentator says that this is sort of like a formal motion.

I move that therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God. But then here's the wisdom part. Don't make them get circumcised, but we should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood. Notice how all of these things touch upon matters that are moral and matters that deal with ceremonial issues of the Jewish people. So there's idolatry, that's one kind of big issue.

And that gets to to the blood and the animals that are strangled rather than having the blood poured out. Because in pagan cultures often the blood would be eaten as a way of trying to access the life force of those animals. But there also that was something that was very repugnant to Jews in a way that Gentiles might not entirely register. They had never tried to drain all the blood. So it might not be on their mind that they needed to try to do so.

And then from sexual immorality, this not only covers the moral sexual sins, but it also covers some of the Jewish laws about like how closely you can be related to somebody before marrying them. There are some questions there that arise to say these are issues that are moral in one sense. But if Gentiles are sort of bulls in China shops around other Jews just sort of doing and living as they please because they're oblivious to these issues, there are going to be problems in the fellowship of the church. That's what he says in verse 21. For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him.

For he has read every Sabbath in the synagogues. You cannot do the things that are immoral, idolatry and things like that, eating food, sacrifice to idols. But you also need to have some care for the Jews who are in your midst. You should not be circumcised. That's not required of you.

But you need to be mindful so that there's not a constant tension between Jews and Gentiles. As the one church of Jesus Christ, the tent of David is being rebuilt. So what do we do with all of this? I'm stopping here today. We are going to consider sort of the application of this next week, Lord willing.

And again, that's kind of fun because all of this is the sort of the follow up from general assembly and we'll be doing that after the general assembly of the PCA is over. So again, that may only amuse me, but we'll be able to do that in that order, God willing. But what do we do with this particular passage and the controversy that rises here? Well, to begin we need to just build bask in the glory of the doctrine of justification. By grace alone, by faith alone and in Christ alone.

In every age, every age there are always attempts to add something that we must do or we cannot be saved in order to be justified. Of course, our long standing dispute is with the Roman Catholic Church on this point where they teach that justification begins by grace, begins by faith. If you say that we're justified by faith, they would nod their heads, yes, we are. But then you would say, well, but then what? We would say our justification is complete by grace and by faith.

But they would say that's just the beginning of the process. It must be completed then by our own works. The scriptural teaching is that we are counted righteous by faith in Christ. But Roman Catholicism teaches rather that justification is when we are conformed to God's righteousness. We must personally grow to become righteous people in order to be found righteous ourselves.

That's the difference between what the Scriptures teach and what the Roman Catholic Church teaches against this doctrine. Look at the man whom they claim as their first pope. Verse 11. But we believe that we will be saved not through our works, not by becoming personally righteous, but that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will. We are saved by grace alone, by faith alone.

In Christ alone, Christ does 100%. We do nothing by faith. We merely receive what Christ has done for us. This is the gospel for miserable, guilty, polluted, defiled, unwashed sinners like you and me. If you are here today burdened by your sins, the best news that I could tell you is that Christ died in your place.

And more so, Christ lived in your place, completely fulfilling all that the law requires of you. You have nothing to do to earn anything from God. You have only with the open hands of faith to look to Christ and receive what he has done for you. Hallelujah. You can do this today.

You can be reconciled to your Father in heaven today by faith in Jesus Christ.

This is the good news that we have. If you're here thinking that you are a good person, abandon that you cannot do enough. But if you worry that you are not a good enough person to receive God's salvation, understand you're not, but Christ is. And he's the one who extends that salvation. But the second thing, I would simply close this is just asking for prayer.

There's much to do at General assembly this week. There will be many questions, many issues, many controversies. Some will touch on issues of morality. Some will touch on issues of doctrine. Some will touch on questions of wisdom and prudence.

But to answer these questions, teaching and ruling elders will be gathered from around the world to consider all that we are doing in the light of God's word. Please pray for us as we labor in Christ Church together. And with that, let's close today in prayer. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would indeed give us Christ and the justification we have by faith alone, in Christ alone. Father, use your word to lead your church through whatever controversies that have come up and that will continue to come up, that Christ alone may be glorified as he continues to lead sinners to salvation through faith in him.

It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.

other sermons in this series

Oct 4

2026

"Preparation and Fulfillment" (Acts 19:1-7)

Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: Acts 19:1–7 Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church

Sep 20

2026

"Many Gifts among Many Members" (Acts 18:18-28)

Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: Acts 18:18–28 Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church

Sep 13

2026

"My Grace Is Sufficient for You" (2 Corinthians 12: 1-10)

Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: 2 Corinthians 12:1–10 Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church