FREEDOM OF FAITH Acts 15:1 While Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch, some men from Judea arrived and began to teach the believers that unless they adhered to the ancient Jewish custom of circumcision, they could not be saved. Paul and Barnabas argued and discussed this with them at length, and finally the believers sent them to Jerusalem, accompanied by some local men, to talk to the apostles and elders there about this question. 4. Arriving in Jerusalem, they met with the church leaders and ...
FREEDOM OF FAITH
Acts 15:1 While Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch, some men from Judea arrived and began to teach the believers that unless they adhered to the ancient Jewish custom of circumcision, they could not be saved. Paul and Barnabas argued and discussed this with them at length, and finally the believers sent them to Jerusalem, accompanied by some local men, to talk to the apostles and elders there about this question. 4. Arriving in Jerusalem, they met with the church leaders and Paul and Barnabas reported on what God had been doing through their ministry. But then some of the men who had been Pharisees before their conversion declared that all Gentile converts must be circumcised and be required to follow all the Jewish customs and ceremonies.
This was a history changing moment – The first great Church Reformation - from one Covenant to another. The biggest issue for the Jewish Christians was that Gentile Christians should get circumcised, as that was the seal of the Hebrew Covenant through Abraham - but the sign and seal of the New Covenant through Jesus was the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of liberty and freedom (Ephesians 1:13).
6. So the apostles and church elders set a further meeting to decide this question. After long discussion, Peter stood and addressed them: “Brothers, you all know that God chose me from among you long ago to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles so that they also could believe. God, who knows men’s hearts, confirmed the fact that he accepts Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he gave him to us. He made no distinction between them and us - he purified their hearts through faith, just as he did ours. And now are you going to correct God by burdening the Gentiles with a yoke that neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? Don’t you believe that we are all saved the same way, by the grace of the Lord Jesus?
There was no further discussion, and everyone now listened as Barnabas and Paul told them about the miracles God had done through them among the Gentiles, and when they had finished, James took the floor. “Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. Peter has told you about the time God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people called by his name (Christians). And this fact of Gentile conversion agrees with what the prophets predicted from the prophet Amos:
‘I will return and will rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will set it up; so that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, all the Gentiles who are called by My name (Christians), says the LORD who does all these things.'
God had told Amos in his day that because of Israel’s rejection of God they would be judged and here James is likening Israel’s rejection in the days of Amos to Israel’s rejection of Jesus at the current time and he is saying that the rebuilding of the Tabernacle of David signifies the rest of mankind being now invited to become God’s people in the earth.
Gentiles were coming into God’s new Spiritual House of the Church – a new temple or tabernacle, and the Church would soon become a totally Gentile Church for a determined period of history, as quoted by Jesus ‘until the times of the Gentiles is fulfilled’ (Luke 21:24 – in troubled times), and also quoted by Paul ‘My brothers I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery: a partial blindness has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And then all Israel will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, (Romans 11:25)
Israel is back in their physical territory today (in ongoing conflict) but they await God’s time to be brought into his spiritual territory of faith. We are in the same waiting time now, but it is for God’s final number of Gentiles to be saved. Only God knows that time.
When we read of how the Tabernacle of David was set up in First Chronicles Chapter fifteen, it was simply a tent on top of Mount Zion and it became the dwelling place for the Ark of the Covenant, which had always represented God’s abiding presence among the nation of Israel. The Ark of the Covenant was first fashioned in the wilderness at God’s command and was placed in the Most Holy Place in the Tabernacle of Moses. However, when Israel sought to presumptuously use the ark to their own ends by taking the ark into battle, they soon learned that they had violated God’s order concerning the holiness of God’s presence, and the ark was lost to the Philistines and the glory departed from Israel. (1 Sam 4). Saul then became king and had ignored the ark all through the time of his reign. (1 Chronicles 13:2-3).
The Philistines, enemies of God, found that the ark brought judgements upon them and not blessing. They cast off the ark and sent it to the people of Beth-shemesh, and further judgement came upon the people there. The ark was then discarded at Kiriath-jearin, where it remained for 20 years. (1 Sam 5 - 8). After this time, David prayed that he might find place for the ark I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the LORD, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.” (Psalm 132:4)
“And David gathered all Israel together in Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the Lord unto his place, a tent on Mt Zion, which he had prepared for it. “So the leaders of Israel took the Ark to Jerusalem with shouts of joy, the blowing of horns and trumpets, the crashing of cymbals, and loud playing on the harps and zithers. But as the Ark arrived in Jerusalem, David’s wife Michal, the daughter of King Saul, felt a contempt for David as she watched from the window and saw him dancing like crazy (1 Chron 15:1). Michal rebuked David for this and he said ‘I did this before The Lord who chose me above your father (Saul) and I was celebrating before the Lord’. Michal was judged by God for this.
The ministry of praise and worship at this time was released in a measure never before seen in Israel. It was at this time that most of the Psalms were written, from which we sing many songs of praise and worship. David took the holiest of all things - the ark of the covenant, the presence of God in the Holy Place of the tabernacle of Moses, into his Tabernacle/tent on top of Mt Zion.
This means that the tabernacle of David was a temporary dwelling place for God until another dwelling place was fully prepared – the temple of Solomon. There would be no going back to the Tabernacle of Moses from the tabernacle of David. So when James quoted Amos saying that the Christian Church would now rebuild the Tabernacle of David he was prophesying that a new era of time had now begun for the Church to express the freedom of faith that flow from the indwelling presence of The Lord.
We are now in that era as the church that is purposed to live with a conscious sense of the presence of God expressing the freedom and liberty of the spirit like David did. We remain in this expression of the freedom of faith until we dwell together in the new eternal Tabernacle of God in Heaven. ‘And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people…for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. (Revelation 21:3,22)
Paul tells us that we are the Church of Mt. Zion where David’s tabernacle dwelt. He tells us that we are not at Mt. Sinai which speaks of the Law and blood sacrifices. Paul is saying that this Church is a Heavenly Church on earth living in the power of God’s Spirit and in communion with the saints in Heaven. But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the gathering of enumerable celebrating angels; and to the church of the Firstborn enrolled in Heaven - So see to it that you obey him who is speaking to you from Heaven. (Hebrews 12:22)
Many Protestant churches say the Apostles' Creed, saying that they believe in the communion of saints, which is understood to mean the whole community of faithful followers of Christ, living and dead, past, present and future.
The spiritual dwelling place of God in the earth is his church who live by faith. We are no longer bound to the traditions and rituals of man but released into the freedom of the Spirit (some Christians appear to think that embracing Jewish culture and tradition makes them more like Jesus – not so), and even though there can be outward Christian practises, these practices are not holy of themselves. These practices can only describe the work of God within our hearts of faith, like baptism and Communion where we bring to remembrance our oneness of a shared life with Jesus, and life-giving works of faith -like worship and prayer and the teaching of the word and our discipleship of following Jesus as the church of the firstborn, which is why Paul goes on to say.
‘So see to it that you obey him who is speaking to you from Heaven. (Hebrews 12:25)
This encourages us to know that Heaven is always waiting to speak to earth, and no person can speak to us from Heaven other than Jesus. So let us expect to hear him speaking to us in our daily lives. That is why the Holy Spirit was sent, to tell us what Jesus is saying to us.
