July 5, 2026

"Godly Disagreement" (Acts 15:36-41)

Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church Scripture: Acts 15:36–41

Hear now the word of the lord from Acts 15:36, 41. And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are now. Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark, but Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work. And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other. Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus.

But Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord. And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

As you're taking your seats, let's join our hearts together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we need your help as we study your word. Father, issues of church unity are no less pronounced than they were in the early church. In fact, much more pronounced. And so we need help as we study this text to understand it, to see the unity that is given to us in the faith we all share in Jesus Christ, and, Father, to recognize where there may be godly disagreements.

As we study this, we pray that you would give us your spirit, fill us with your spirit. You would give us hearts to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear all that is contained in the good news of the gospel of your son, Jesus Christ, our Savior. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Well, in our passage this morning, again we are dealing with a question that touches directly on the unity of the church.

I love Psalm 133. How good and how pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. And that particular version of Psalm 133 is one of my favorite songs to sing. We sing it at general assembly every year at the close of the assembly, after we've done all the business. We just sang it a week or so ago, a little bit more than a week.

After all the business is done, after we've had all of our disagreements and shared different views and have debated things and have maybe sometimes deferred decisions to the future that we couldn't finally come to agreement upon, we remind ourselves in seeing that despite all of those agreements, the church, Jesus Christ, is united as brothers and sisters. And so we sing that together. And it's a wonderful thing to sing here in the local congregation, the Body of Christ as we remember the unity that we have in spite of the disagreements that we may have in this church as well. Now, one of My favorite things that also happens at the General assembly every year is, is that we often hear from fraternal delegates. Now, when I first started going to General assembly, it was in 2017.

We heard from a lot of fraternal delegates. We heard from foreign delegates from Korea and Japan and Brazil and Mexico, often through translators. And we would hear from sister denominations, from the URCNA and the OPC and the RPCNA and different sister denominations that we have fraternal or brotherly relationships with. And getting to hear from these other denominations was a reminder that though we are organizationally separated, we don't share the same General Assembly. We don't oversee one another's churches or one another's ministers or one another's members, that nevertheless we share a fundamental unity, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so there's a recognition that we are separated in some sense, but yet we are still, despite all of that, united one to another. Now, in the Protestant world which we find ourselves, we famously have many denominations, and we are not unified with all of those denominations, but there are several with which we are in unity. We do stand within unity, even though we are separated in those organizational structures. But then, as you think about the local level, we have individual churches, we worship here, and we don't have jurisdiction to oversee the members of other churches in town. And yet we recognize we are not united with all of them.

Some of them teach very, very false things about Jesus Christ, and we don't stand in unity with those. But there are many that we stand in unity with, even though we are worshiping in separate places here on Sunday morning, just maybe down the road, or in various places throughout the area. But nevertheless, we are united in the spirit of Christ. But all of these raise a lot of questions, because before Jesus went to the cross, he prayed in John 17:11 that his church may be one, just as we. And he was talking about his Father, just as the Father and the Son are one.

So how do we have that unity, especially when there are separations. And these separations apparently go a very long way back, as we see all the way back in Acts 15. How do we have unity even in the midst of separation? Well, our theme this morning from this passage is that Christ builds His kingdom through disagreement. Not only when there's not disagreement, but even Christ builds His kingdom through disagreement.

And so as we study this short but absolutely necessary passage, we'll look at two parts to this. First of all, godly goals. Godly goals and building up the church in the unity of faith. But second, Godly disagreement, how the church grows in the midst of and even through disagreement. So we'll start with godly goals.

1. Godly Goals (Acts 15:36)

And we're going to look at verse 36 for this first section. But before we get to verse 36, I want to peek just at the previous verse. In the last passage we looked at last week in verse 35. But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch teaching and preaching the Word of the Lord with many others. Also, this phrase, the Word of the Lord comes up right again in verse 36.

That's the connection that I want to start with exploring, because Paul turned to Barnabas after some days, after they continued teaching and preaching the Word of the Lord. And he turned to Barnabas in 36 and says, Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the Word of the Lord and see how they are. So it's very important as we start off with that we understand what this word of the Lord is meaning. Now, we say this every time we read the Scriptures. This is the Word of the Lord.

What does that mean? Well, there's two parts to this phrase. There's two aspects of it, two kind of ways of understanding it. And it really has both of these aspects in mind whenever we talk about the Word of the Lord. The first is that this is the word from the Lord.

That is, this is the word that the Lord speaks. And when we read a passage of Scripture, whether it's a famous passage of scripture like John 3:16 or something like that, or whether it's maybe a more obscure passage of Scripture, perhaps like the one we're looking at today, we still say that this is the word that God speaks. This is a part of the full counsel of God. You could not remove this passage from the Bible without damaging, without excising, removing something that God has given to us for the blessing of his church. This is necessary for the building out the wisdom that we need for life in the soul, in our individual, private lives, in the homes, in public, and in the church.

And so ministry requires an ongoing work of preaching and teaching all of the Scriptures to shrink from nothing. That's why Paul and Barnabas were remaining for such a long time in Antioch teaching and preaching this Word of the Lord. And they were training many others also, who were also beginning to engage in the work, who would have to take over when Paul and Barnabas were eventually to depart. This is the Lord's Word. But we need ongoing teaching because our flesh is ignorant of it, we don't intuitively understand it.

And also at a Gut level. Because of the sinful nature of our flesh, we're intuitively resistant. We often have to hear the word of the Lord many times to hear it again and again before it starts to dawn on us, oh, I'm guilty of these things that I've been nodding my head along with. I'm doing the very thing that I say that I don't want to be doing. And the Lord continues to open our eyes to these things.

And we need to continue to grow in these areas and shrink from nothing.

The next aspect of the word of the Lord that we're talking about is that this is the word about the Lord. It's the word from the Lord, and it is the word about the Lord, the message about the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, Christianity is fundamentally not a series of teachings that we just sort of passively receive. A lot of religions are like that. You receive the teachings, you sort of hear them, listen to them, you try to apply them in various areas of your life.

It's sort of a self help kind of a thing. The more you imbibe the teachings, the more you put the teachings into practice. You're sort of receiving, receiving, receiving. And that's how that works. But Christianity is not really like that.

Christianity is a message, a declaration, a proclamation about a person. That is, Christianity is declaring something about the Lord Jesus Christ, the one whom we confessed earlier together in our common confession in the Apostles Creed. Now, in the early church, if you remember the previous passages that we've looked at the last few weeks, there was a controversy about whether the person and work of Jesus Christ was sufficient to save, about whether Christ's blood and righteousness were enough or whether to be saved. Human beings had to add some kind of works to sort of get over the hump to find salvation. Christ had done much of it, but we would need to then add a particular work to finally be saved.

In the early Church, the question was whether that extra work was circumcision, if people had to become Jewish before God could save them. And as this controversy was discussed in the light of the word of God, in light of the work of the Holy Spirit in the early Church, very clearly the Church recognized that Jesus Christ is sufficient to save, that his blood and righteousness alone is sufficient to cleanse us from our sin and to count us righteous in Christ through faith alone, in Christ alone, alone. And there is no work that we could add to this. And if we try to add a work, we subvert the whole basis of what it means to put our trust in Christ to do something for us that we cannot do for ourselves. We're passive in this.

We are simply the ones who hold out the hands of faith, not to do something, but to receive what Christ has done for us. And this message proclaims all that this person has done. But there's sort of a third aspect that emerges. The Word from the Lord and the Word about the Lord. As we are engaging with the Scriptures, we are really hearing God speak personally and directly to us.

The Person of God, the three persons of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are declaring to us in the words of the Scriptures, what God wants, what God loves, what God hates. He is shepherding our souls to teach us to trust in him, to know him, to believe upon him, to leave all of our cares and cast them upon Him. This is what we are taught, to trust in God personally, not merely to hear from him, but to listen to his voice and to respond with trust and faith and love in His Word. Now there's so much of this to continue to remind ourselves. There's so much that we need to continue to draw from the Scriptures, which is why ongoing teaching and preaching ministry has to be at the center of the Christian church in Antioch.

It took the temporary labors of Judas and Silas along the ongoing alongside the ongoing labors of Paul, Paul and Barnabas. But in verse 36, we read that after some days, even Paul and Barnabas had to end their ministry in Antioch to continue to fulfill the call that was upon their lives, to proclaim the Word of the Lord to the farthest ends of the earth. Now, again, they're not leaving Antioch alone. There are many others who've been raised up to continue preaching and teaching this Word of the Lord. But there's an urgent need for Paul and Barnabas to leave.

There's actually a word, a small word in Greek that our English translations leave untranslated. But it means something like indeed or certainly. Paul is saying, we must certainly return. We must indeed return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaim the Word of the Lord and see how they are. It was not only their ministry to preach the Word initially in these places, to set up churches, but also to continue as much as they could, to engage in some kind of ongoing oversight.

And so there's this godly goal to revisit these churches, just as they had done before back in Acts chapter 14, if you remember, after they completed their journey on their way back to Antioch, they visited these churches and strengthened them along the way. But now to continue doing this and to have one more pass to make sure that these churches are continuing to grow. Now, before we see the rest of this where a controversy arises, I want to stop and consider the practical application of understanding the nature of the word of the Lord. And I want to apply this with an observation or confession from my own life.

One of the key spiritual warning indicators, you know, you got your dash, dashboard, maybe in your car, and sometimes when that check engine light. Oh, man, I don't know about you, but I ride with that thing on for a very long time. That one's fine. I'll just ignore it, right? But one of the key warning light indicators, I've also been on times where I've gotten the ones you've never seen before.

And that gets your attention, like, ooh, this is bad. I can't just keep riding on this, right? One of the key warning light indicators that says, this is bad, Pull over, figure out what is happening before you continue to move forward. Or you could do serious damage to your car. I did this.

I was driving back to school in college, and I got a scary new warning thing. And I called my dad and I said, what should I do? And he said, well, what's going on? And the time that we talked, suddenly my car just stopped. And there I was, just coasting on the interstate until I could pull over and my car had overheated.

I didn't know what was going on, but something had broken blown out and it was very, very bad. I should have paid attention to that warning light. One of the big warning lights on the dashboard of our spiritual health has to do with the degree to which we are listening to God's word. Now, you might be continuing to listen to God's word to some degree. You might be still checking off those daily Bible readings.

You might be, for me, still preparing sermons and lessons. You, you might be preparing for VBS this week. You might be still leading and participating in family worship. You might even find questions that you're intellectually curious. Well, that's fascinating.

Let's learn more about that kind of a thing. All of those are good things to do. But you might notice that that warning light doesn't quite go out on your dash if you're not really listening to God's word as the word from the Lord is God speaking to you, and as the word about the Lord continuing to draw your eyes to Jesus Christ seated in heaven. When that warning light is on your dash, don't ignore it, don't turn from it. Pay attention, pull over, figure out what you need to do or you will do lasting damage to your soul and to those around you.

What this should look like. On the other hand, when I'm in a spiritually very good place, I'm desperate for the word of the Lord. I want to open the Bible. I want to draw from it. I want to hear God's word.

I want him to personally shepherd me in the issues that I am facing today. And as I read, the Word grabs my attention, it forces me to reread it. Not just to ask an intellectually curious question question, but to search through. What does this have to say? Do I need to repent?

Is there an area I'm challenged to grow in? Am I being convicted about something that has had a long standing place in my life or in my heart? It prompts me to worship. It leads me to rejoice in the Lord, to love him more. And so I want to ask, look at the dash in your heart of your spiritual condition.

Are there warning lights that have been flashing? The bad ones? Are you not paying attention to those? And if the word of the Lord is not capturing your heart, don't make excuses. Don't just dismiss that.

Oh, that's just legalism. I'm fine. No, no, I'm calling you back to the heart of the Gospel. Repent from your inattentiveness to God's word. Turn from whatever is capturing your heart.

Turn to the Lord. Ask him to help you as you seek him personally in His Word. Well, let's continue because we need the rest of what this word from the Lord is teaching to us about Paul and Barnabas and the disagreement they have as they try to accomplish this godly goal of overseeing the churches under their care. So second, we come to a section, godly Disagreement in verse 37 after this discussion of this godly goal to make sure that things are continuing to go well in the spiritual dashboards of these churches. In verse 37, we read now, Barnabas wanted to take with him John called Mark.

2. Godly Disagreement (Acts 15:37-41)

Now this Mark is the same Mark who wrote the Gospel of Mark. We've met him a couple of times so far. But I want to start by asking, why does Barnabas hold this opinion? Why does he want to take John Mark with him? I think there are probably many reasons and the commentators point to this.

First of all, if you look at Colossians 4, 10, that's buried in the greetings, sort of the deep tracks of the Scriptures, if you look at that, you'll notice that Barnabas is actually the cousin of John Mark, they're actually personally related. So there's probably a deep sense of loyalty there. Probably deeper than Paul personally felt toward John Mark. But second, it was Barnabas character that had led him to be the first to vouch for Paul when Paul had first converted the faith in Christ. Early after his conversion, the whole church in Jerusalem is very concerned about this man who had been persecuting the church.

And Barnabas was the first to come to Paul's defense, the first to speak up for him. In fact, in Acts 4, verse 36, the name Barnabas is a name that means son of encouragement. This is just his character. This is just who he is. This is just his outlook on how ministry should be done in the life of the church.

But in verse 36 we read but Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work. Now Paul also has legitimate reasons for his opinion. It was a simple question of wisdom to Paul. Was it wise to depend upon someone who had abandoned them? Now, if you don't remember this story, it's only told in just a passing reference.

Back In Acts chapter 13, verse 13, we simply read that Mark left and we're not told why. Luke is very good in his storytelling where he just drops seeds and you don't really know the full impact of them until later. We read that Mark left. We didn't know why. Maybe he was on an errand, maybe he went home, had an emergency to go back to.

We had no idea. And we still don't know the details. But we know that whatever happened, Paul believed that it was not appropriate for John Mark to leave under those circumstances. And they're about to go on another leg of this missionary journey and Paul simply believes it's not wise when they will need to depend upon their co workers to have a co worker who has already proven himself to be unreliable, not trustworthy. Now we see again that there's a disagreement here.

But it wasn't just a mild theoretical agreement or disagreement. In verse 39 we read and there arose a sharp disagreement. That's a good translation. It's a word that can describe, as one commentator puts it, anger, irritation, exasperation in disagreement. But it can also be used in a different sense.

In Hebrews 10:24, this is the word when the author of Hebrews urges us to not stop from stimulating or stirring one another up to good deeds and to love. But it's also used as the word to describe Paul when he is provoked from seeing idols It's a word that describes God's own wrath. In other words, this is a sharp disagreement. They were deeply divided over this question, not about their common confession, but about practice, about wisdom for ministry. Well, how did they resolve this?

Again, in verse 39, Luke records this very matter of factly, so that they separated from Barnabas, took Mark with him, and sailed away to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord. Now, and he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. So different regions they went to. Now, what should we make of this?

Is unity damaged or destroyed here? Well, I don't think we're meant to ignore or to not feel some sadness or disappointment over this situation. Disagreements are always disappointing. But Luke also does not tell us or suggest that this was a sinful division. It's tragic, but it doesn't seem to be selfish or immoral.

Luke presents both sides, presents both sides as reasonable as understandable.

But what we don't see is that they don't repudiate each other on the way out the door. They don't, you know, pronounce each other as anathema. They just separate and get on with the work. They just do so separately. It's very interesting then to think about the fruit that grows from this.

For Mark, this was an opportunity for him to regain trust. He had abandoned the mission, and now this is his opportunity to regain some of the trust that he had lost. If eventually the trust is regained to such an extent that even Paul counts him as reconciled to himself. You can read about that in Colossians 4:10. And by the end of Paul's life, one of the last things that Paul writes in 2nd Timothy 4:11 is a request for Mark to come to him.

Because Paul recognizes Mark's usefulness in ministry, this became a proving ground, if not at the moment, with Paul, it became a proving ground where Mark rose to the challenge. For Silas, this became an opportunity for this young minister in the Gospel to continue missions, work alongside the great apostle Paul. And he grew through this. And you we're going to read about a number of his exploits and his adventures and his travels and the ministry that he's doing alongside Paul. But through this process, as these two groups divide and conquer, go back to the original godly goal.

The godly goal was to oversee all these churches they had planted. And as we see these regions that they split up to cover, we see that that in fact happens. All of the churches are covered, but all of the churches are covered in less time because they are doing it separately. They divided the labor. They do not separate as enemies, where one has to follow the other to say, oh, Barnabas and Mark came through here.

They weren't doing what's the right thing. They've departed from this. I'm going to go and check up on you myself. And overshadow their work, fix whatever they did wrong. No, they're not enemies.

They're not opponents. They're fellow laborers in Christ's kingdom. So what happens that from this disagreement, the workers and the teams actually multiply and they're able to do more work and cover more ground because they are separated? This is a separation, but it's not a division. That's very important.

Division in the church is very bad. Schism is very bad. Separation is necessary as the church grows and multiplies and as disagreements grow and we have to go separate ways and our convictions before the Lord. And we see an example and model of how to do this in a godly way here. So how do we apply this?

Well, we should first of all recognize that disagreements are a part of life. You don't have to spend too much time in the church to know that disagreements are always going to be a part of life in the church. Different kinds of. Of disagreements, though, are where we have to pay attention and sort of divide up. What kind of a disagreement are we talking about when there are serious doctrinal disagreements?

We need to submit, to consult and to submit to the council, the whole counsel of God for his church laid down for us in the Word of God. And we saw an example of that kind of disagreement arising in the early church. Earlier in this chapter, in chapter 15, again, some were teaching that unless you are circumcised, you cannot be saved. Gentiles. But they went back to the Scriptures.

They looked at the way the Holy Spirit was working and interpreted the Holy Spirit's works in light of the Holy Spirit's word. And they determined what was true. Now, this initial counsel of what is required for. For us, for our salvation. The core truths that all Christians must believe, we could talk about as our creedal beliefs.

The doctrines that all Christians everywhere must confess. These regard core truths about the Trinity, one God and three persons. The core truths about Christ, Christ being true God and true man, true natures existing in one person, and the core truths about the Gospel. The Gospel that justification is by faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone. These are the truths that Christians everywhere must believe, must be depending upon in order to be saved.

That's that creedal top tier level. And we cannot join arms with churches that do not share in these creedal truths. But on other doctrinal points, there are disagreements that sometimes we have to look to other churches and say we're separated here. Even if we acknowledge an ongoing unity, we're all holding together these creedal truths. But we look at you over there and you're doing something different from us.

We have our biblical reasons for doing things. You point to your own reasons from the Scriptures. We disagree on the interpretation, and yet each of us is holding to those core creedal truths. There's the creedal level, but then there's the second tier confessional level doctrine that individual churches confess. For example, should infants be baptized?

Now to this I declare from the Scriptures an absolute yes. The Scriptures command us to baptize our covenant children. And if you have questions about that or you disagree with me on that, fantastic. Tonight is the night. You should be at the evening service because in the Heidelberg Catechism when we are dealing with confessional truths, we're going to talk about infant baptism.

Please come tonight. And if you still have questions, schedule time to talk to me. I wasn't always convinced of this, but I love to talk from the Scriptures about why the Scriptures connect, command us to do this. But not all biblical creedily oriented churches agree with that. Or for example, what is the Lord's Supper?

Now again, continue coming to the evening services because we're going to talk about that in the coming weeks in our Heidelberg Catechism series. What about the organization of church government? What about certain requirements in worship? There are sister denominations that believe you can only sing psalms and only sing them without any form of instrument accompaniment. We don't agree with that, and yet we see ourselves as united with those churches.

These are important things. We can't really join organizationally because we have such different beliefs on these matters. And yet we recognize that we share common creedal confession. And so this is that confessional level. The doctrine the individual churches confess.

The Lutherans confess one thing. The Baptists confess something different. We Reformed and Presbyterian confess something distinct. We are separated in the spirit of Paul and Barnabas, and yet we are united as brothers in the Lord. But beyond this, and this affects even life in this particular church, believers are going to disagree.

If you don't know of disagreements in the church, I'd invite you to the fellowship time that we have after church. Just talk to other people for a little while. It won't take you long to find some disagreements that you may have but now you have some tools to navigate those. So praise the Lord. This is wonderful.

Keep talking to each other. These are convictional matters. How should you vote on a particular issue or politician? How should you educate your children? Now, certainly there are some binding biblical principles, certainly in the political landscape today.

Abortion is evil. Sexual immorality that is promoted is an abomination before God. In terms of education, parents have an obligation to raise their own children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. But within those binding principles, there are a lot of disagreements. And rather than telling you how to do all of these things from the pulpit, we acknowledge this Christian freedom as we all pursue our convictions.

I had a good conversation this week with someone about the decisions of the Jerusalem council from Acts 15 and these questions of food sacrificed to idols, which was some of their instructions. How does that relate to first Corinthians 8:10. And then there's also a discussion about Jewish ceremonial law and whether that's the only required to eat certain things or to observe certain days in Romans 14. And if you look at all of those three passages, you recognize that some things are entirely immoral. There is a fixed moral law.

And eating food sacrifice to idols falls outside of that. Those idolatrous, you cannot do that. But there are other things that are left to the conscience of the individual. What about food that had been sacrificed to idols but now is sold in the meat market? Paul says fine, what about eating kosher food?

Do Jews need to do this again? That's left to the conscience of those individuals. In still other things, we must care for the convictions of others, not despising or looking down on the convictions of others, while yet honoring the freedom that each of us has in these areas as we relate to our common Lord individually. What this is teaching us is that some kinds of separation are okay. I had a fiery seminary professor, a man who was himself an Anglican, not the Church of England Anglican Church, but he was a part of the Anglican Church of North America.

Pretty godly domination under the bishop in an African sea. And this man, Lyle Dorsett, I love this man. He would often talk about how we were all different regiments of the same army. That those who confessed a common Lord Jesus Christ, how we're operating as different regiments and yet in Christ's kingdom we're all in the same army, the Lamb's Army. And so we should seek to attain a unity within different kinds of separation that we face.

I want to think also maybe this would be help you as an analogy, as an illustration. Look around the room at the different families. Now, I find it a fascinating thing that one of the foundational building blocks of society are the individual families. God established marriage as the one flesh covenant between one man and one woman for life. And children are brought into that equation.

And God says that those families are separate and distinct. And in fact, it is a deep violation of God's law to interfere with marriage laws by adultery. And yet we also see that though we are separated as individual families, in this church, we are united together organizationally we're separated, and yet we are part of one local church. As you think about that, that might help to explain how different denominations and different churches we can be organizationally separated and yet we can have a unity together in the Lord in spite of and even through disagreement, even in your families, I'm sure you from time to time have these disagreements. You're still united as one with family.

Well, through all of this, in the common unity we have in the faith of Christ, and even through disagreements, Jesus Christ, we are called to proclaim. Proclaim this word about the Lord. Proclaim this word from the Lord as he is exalted both here and around the world, as all of us, as different regiments of the same army, are called upon to spread this gospel to the ends the earth. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Let's pray as we go to the Lord and ask for him to work and labor in these areas. Pray with me, Father. We pray for the unity that we have in the faith. And we pray that you would watch over us as we operate and serve in these areas. And we pray that you would lead us to spread this gospel to to the ends of the earth.

We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

other sermons in this series

Jul 12

2026

"Godly Accommodation" (Acts 16:1-5)

Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: Acts 16:1–5 Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church

Jun 28

2026

"Godly Authority" (Acts 15:22-35)

Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: Acts 15:22–35 Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church

Jun 21

2026

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

Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: Acts 15:1–21 Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church