Who Is Welcome to Worship with You on Sundays?

By Tim Hallman,
Acts 15

Before Paul came on the scene, most of the Christians were Jews. Peter and John, along with James the brother of Jesus, gave leadership to the new Christian movement there in Jerusalem. In fact, the Christians were considered a sect of Judaism. The new Christians still worshipped in the Temple, attended the synagogues, observed the Feast days, offered sacrifices and prayers as required, and still considered Torah to be authoritative. The big difference was the belief that Jesus was the Messiah promised by the LORD, he was the promised King of Israel, the Son of Man, the Son of God. Everything was now being filtered through what their understanding of their Lord Jesus Christ.

But once Paul came on the scene, he started missionary journeys that eventually resulted in many Gentiles becoming Christians. It started with the God-fearers, those Gentile men and women who observed the Jewish customs and worshipped the God of Israel, but who had not been circumcised. They gathered at the synagogues for the Torah readings, and they responded to Paul's preaching the gospel. These Gentiles were then influential in other non-God-fearing Gentiles coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Within a decade, there were more Gentile Christians then Jewish Christians.

Tensions rose as the Jewish Christians wrestled with how to accept the Gentile Christians. There were Christians, particularly some of the born-again Pharisees, who were convinced that Gentiles needed to be circumcised in order to be fully Christian. This kind of thinking reveals how fundamentally linked was their understanding of Jesus and Jewishness and Torah. Jesus had said that he didn't come to abolish Torah, but to fulfill it.

In Acts 15 a council is convened in Jerusalem to determine what to do with these boiling tensions. Do the Gentiles need to be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses (Torah) in order to be considered Christians? (This assumes that Christianity was the fulfillment of Judaism... that it is Judaism plus belief in Christ as Lord). Torah was a boundary marker for who was an Israelite. If you observed Torah, you were understood to be a child of Abraham, one of the elected citizens of Israel, included in God's promise of blessing. And circumcision was the physical marker of your inclusion in this ethnic and religious community.

Peter gets up to speak, a full-blooded Jew, observer of Torah, first disciple of Jesus, leader of the apostles. He shares his story of how God taught him to welcome the Gentiles as they are - and to not require circumcision of the body. Gentiles don't need to become Israelites in order to be Christians, he learned; the gift of the Holy Spirit is the new sign of welcome. God revealed a new chapter in his plans for how people enter into community with him. Jesus is now the way, not the Temple, not the Torah, not the Feasts, not circumcision.


Paul and Barnabas go on to show that through them God produced many signs and wonders amongst the Gentiles - proof that God accepted them and welcomed them into the community of believers. God welcomes those who believe in Jesus - regardless of their ethnicity. And then James gives the final word.  He quotes from the Prophets, showing how the plan included Gentiles all along. No one quite expected God to work like this, but the evidence was in and how could they argue with it? The new Christian movement was to make no distinction between color of the skin, accent of the tongue, or tribal affiliation.

This was a really big step forward for the early church. It was not the easiest thing to let someone who is not like you worship next to you. To know that your ethnicity was dominant, that it was the one with religious power - and to know that you are now going to become a minority and you no longer hold that same influence... that is a humiliating situation.

And yet Peter and Paul and James and others were full of grace as they acknowledged the new reality. Paul was called by God to bring the good news to the Gentiles, those pagan tribes that occupied the WHOLE world. Everyone was welcome, anyone who believed in Jesus was embraced. That was a very good part of the good news.

Who lives around you that is not like you? Are they welcome to worship with you on Sundays? Even if they dress different? What if they smell or sound different? What if they make you feel uncomfortable? You can appreciate the leap of faith the Christian Jews made in welcoming the Christian Gentiles. And now we Christian Gentiles must keep the welcoming arms wide to all those Pagan Gentiles who are seeking God.

We who do the welcoming bear the burden of sacrificing our preferences in order to help others experience the acceptance of God.


God changes hearts, but he uses our arms for welcoming. 

How God Uses You

By Tim Hallman
Acts 14:27-28

On arrival, they got the church together and reported on their trip, telling in detail how God had used them to throw the door of faith wide open so people of all nations could come streaming in. Then they settled down for a long, leisurely visit with the disciples.

How does God use you? Are there moments where you are aware of when God is using you? Do you look back and ever have "aha!" moments of when you now perceive that God had used you for his work?

Having read through the first half of the book of Acts, it has surely become clear that when God uses a man or woman, there is a certain amount of unpredictability as to what the outcomes will be. This chapter is one more example of how being a disciple of Jesus, of letting God work through you, produces unexpected results.

It's to be expected that there will be opposition to the gospel of God, and that there will be welcome acceptance of the good news from Jesus. But which individuals who will oppose or accept is always a surprise. Sometimes it is the wealthy who accept and the zealous crowds who oppose, sometimes it is the women who accept and it is the men who oppose - or it could be the other way around. Sometimes the opposition gets violent, the threats get murderous.

When Paul and Barnabas scoot out of Iconium to avoid getting beat up, they end up in Lystra - a town of non-Jews, a village of pagans who worship the local deities and the Greek gods/goddesses. Before the apostles get preaching, they meet a lame man at the city gate. Paul discerns his readiness to be healed, his willingness to believe the good news of Jesus. The lame man is set free from his infirmity, he hops up and skips on home.

The crowd, however, responds in a very unexpected way: they proclaim Paul and Barnabas to be Hermes and Zeus! It's all that the two apostles can do to stop the pagan festival and sacrificial feast in their honor. Paul's preaching gets the priests to cease their preparations of the oxen, but then some zealous Jews show up from Iconium. They get the stirred up crowd even more stirred up! Instead of a celebration of Zeus coming down to them, the pagan villagers stone Paul and leave him for dead!

What a turn of events! As Paul prayed his way through the stoning, as he absorbed the blows and struggled to remain conscious, he must have wondered: is this how God uses me? Yes; yes it is. Barnabas waits till the crowds dissipate, and then drags his pal out of the rubble. They get out of town, get Paul patched up - and then they head back to Lystra and Iconium and the other villages to encourage the disciples there! And yes, this is how God used Paul - the hobbling, scarface apostle announcing the reign of God the peacemaker:

After proclaiming the Message in Derbe and establishing a strong core of disciples, they retraced their steps to Lystra, then Iconium, and then Antioch, putting muscle and sinew in the lives of the disciples, urging them to stick with what they had begun to believe and not quit, making it clear to them that it wouldn't be easy: "Anyone signing up for the kingdom of God has to go through plenty of hard times."

How does God use you?

You are not Paul. Nor Barnabas. You are you. And if you've signed up for the kingdom of God, then you are under the rule of God. And you are instructed to love God and love your neighbor. And that is enough to get you in trouble like Paul. This presumes, of course, that you love from the depths of your being, that your generosity is sacrificial, that you do not play favorites with the rich or poor, and that you speak the truth as a gift of kindness.

How does God use you?

The hardships you endure as a result of your submission to loving God and loving neighbor will give you ample opportunity to encourage those who try to love but are burdened with timidity, anxiety, and a pre-occupation with their self. Your love of God and love of neighbor will bring you suffering - if you seek to love in the name of Jesus. And this is how God uses you.

How does God use you?

You Won't Believe...

By Tim Hallman
Acts 13:36-41

If you go to church, you learn that there are several names that can get hung around your neck. Most famous is the name of Christian. Lately the word has been Jesus-follower. There's disciple and brother/sister in the Lord. Some might throw in holy-roller and hypocrite! Another common one is believer. It's a crucial one, even a central one. At a very deep level, it's the core.

It's one thing to say you believe in God, it's another thing to say you believe in God. I didn't just write the same thing twice. The first statement focuses on God's existence: do I believe God exists? Yes - you and 80% of other Americans. The second statement is about trustworthiness, credibility, reliablity - do I believe in God, that he will prove himself capable and true?

Lots of people easily share that they believe in God. But what you believe gets expressed in your attitudes and actions. Plenty of people believe in God, but their also quite bitter towards him. They believe in God's existence, but they don't believe in God's capability. God has proven to be disappointing to them, rather useless when it comes to stopping the terrors of our existence.

But what about those people that believe in God, those who believe in God's ability to overcome evil with good? They believe that love is the greatest of all, that death of the seed leads to birth of the flower? What about those people who believe in God's existence, but even deeper than that, believe in God's great capacity to heal, restore, inspire and welcome? You rarely see what God is able to do if you don't first believe in him.

For the first century citizens of Israel, those loyal Jews in exile under the Roman Empire, they were having a very difficult time believing in God. They accepted the existence of God, but they were stumbling - they just couldn't believe in God resurrecting Jesus from the grave. If Jesus was crucified, why would God resurrect him? Jesus died under a curse, how could God vindicate him? Unless...unless what Jesus said about life and love, about God and goodness was true...

Here's how Paul puts it in one of his speeches to some Jewish thinkers wrestling with their belief in God:

King David, of course, having completed the work God set out for him, has been in the grave, dust and ashes, a long time now. But the One God raised up—no dust and ashes for him!

I want you to know, my very dear friends, that it is on account of this resurrected Jesus that the forgiveness of your sins can be promised. He accomplishes, in those who believe, everything that the Law of Moses could never make good on.

But everyone who believes in this raised-up Jesus is declared good and right and whole before God.

Don't take this lightly. You don't want the prophet's sermon to describe you:
'Watch out, cynics;
Look hard—watch your world fall to pieces.
I'm doing something right before your eyes
That you won't believe, though it's staring you in the face.'
~ Acts 13v36-41

There are many people I care about who really, profoundly wrestle with believing in God. At some level, they are unsure of God's existence. Science is such a powerful force for discerning reality, and God just can't seem to be seen through the telescope or the microscope. But again, for these men and women I care about, they have too few people in their life who really believe in God. How can these agnostic and atheist friends of mine believe in the credibility and capability of God if they are devoid of anyone who bears the fruit of that kind of faith?

I know too many Christians who confess Christ as Lord with their lips, but then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. The most common denial is not just the abuse of chemicals, emotions, bodies,  possessions;  but the quiet, disturbing despair of fumbling their problems and sorrows. They drown in worry, they agonize over their unhealable, unseeable wounds. You doubt that God is good, that he will be with you and lead you through the ache. We believe in God, but we won't believe in God.

You believe in God?


Why won't you believe in God?



O Lord, I believe! Help me in my unbelief...