Two of the most powerful rivers in the world – the Thompson and the Fraser – meet and join in British Columbia. The train from Vancouver to Banff runs along the ridge high above the exact spot where they merge and you can look down and watch them join. The actual term is “confluence” when two bodies of water meet – like the tip of South America or Africa. What’s unique about these two rivers is one is salt and the other fresh water. One is clear and the other filled with brown sediment it has carried along its course – which makes their meeting a place of invisible but dangerous turbulence. While everything appears to be a smooth transition on the surface, beneath the water there are extraordinary cross currents and treacherous battles between the two streams.

That image describes the confluence that is recorded in this chapter. It is not just Paul’s coming to Jerusalem. It is the confluence of two great streams – the fresh water of Gentile believers with the old and sediment laden stream of the Law – and the resulting turbulence that defines the remaining years of Paul’s life and ministry. Nothing is the same after this.

You might say there are two great streams of confluence in this passage we’ll look at this morning.

First, the conflict between accommodation and confrontation.

Second, the conflict between conformation and transformation.

Accommodation and Confrontation

This is a complicated situation. It would be easier if one group was clearly wrong or at least wrongly motivated – but they are not. Everyone, one way or another, is trying to do the right thing…and that’s what creates the turbulence. It’s like many of the choices in our lives. It’s not clear good versus evil. It’s two goods creating confusion. Paul wants desperately to relieve the Church at Jerusalem with the offering from the Gentile churches as well as to create peace between them. The Council is determined to maintain the traditions and customs of their beliefs. New believers are looking for clear definition about what is required and what is not. Who is in and who is out? There is even disagreement about Paul’s intention to go to Jerusalem in the first place.

Paul says he is compelled by the Holy Spirit and in a hurry to reach Jerusalem by the Day of Pentecost – the celebration that has become like our July 4th. It marked the giving of the Holy Spirit and the first preaching of the Gospel. It was the first day of the Church. Even though he was warned in every city by the Holy Spirit he would face prison and hardship that did not matter to him. He was compelled. But what about his friends who “through the Spirit” urged him not to go on to Jerusalem? What about his travel companions and prophets who “through the Spirit” pleaded with him not to keep going? Were they wrong? Were they right? Was the Spirit double-minded and contradictory? That’s part of the conflict here. My own interpretation is both were motivated by the Spirit even though they had different conclusions. I wish we had the same attitude in some of our discussions. It’s not good and evil or wrong and right. It is God’s way of teaching. In John 14 Jesus says the Advocate will come and will teach us all things. I don’t think the Advocate teaches by dictates or simple answers. I think the Holy Spirit teaches in a way that makes us struggle with complexity and ambiguity and different interpretations – not easy answers. It is God’s way of bringing us to maturity. Both Paul and his friends were guided by the Holy Spirit and came to different conclusions but it did not end in their splitting or recriminations and accusations. Both, in the end, say, “The Lord’s will be done.”

That doesn’t mean Paul did not make a mistake in going. It’s a disservice to Paul and to us to make Paul into a perfect man or to assume all of his decisions were correct. G. Campbell Morgan believes Paul made the greatest mistake of his ministry on this occasion. In his being anxious to bring peace and relief he traded his belief in the obsolescence of the law. In his heartfelt desire to reach the Jews for Christ he compromised what he had preached. “The teaching of this incident is that love must ever be loyal to truth. To sacrifice a principle for a moment in the hope of gaining an opportunity to establish it afterwards, is always to fail.”

Certainly, Paul was caught in the dilemma of being all things to all men. How far do you go before you lose sight of the non-negotiables? Paul was an innovator and not a rebel. His gospel was not a reaction to the Law or to Jerusalem leadership. It was a new way of understanding how we are reconciled to God and bring down the barriers between us at the same time. While he preached grace alone for salvation he also taught accommodation for the weaker brothers. Romans 14 reads “One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God….Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way…Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil…Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification…So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God.”

Look at Romans 15: “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.”

Look at 1 Corinthians 8: “Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak…so this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.”

While I think Paul saw the leaders of the church in Jerusalem as people whose favor he wanted to have, I think he also saw them as the weaker brothers and was torn between offending them and confronting them. He wanted to prove the success of the gospel to the Gentiles that they had at first resisted and about even now were suspicious. Yes, they greeted him warmly and praised God but they still had serious questions. I cannot find a single instance where he did the same or was as reluctant to challenge. Regardless of what he says in Galatians, I think they intimidated him. I think he wanted their endorsement and for them to accept him as an equal – as an apostle of Jesus. But I think he also wanted to keep from closing the door on their relationship with the Gentile church.

“Then they said to Paul: “You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law. They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs. What shall we do? They will certainly hear that you have come, so do what we tell you. There are four men with us who have made a vow. Take these men, join in their purification rites and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads shaved. Then everyone will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law. As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.”

Paul was not accused of heresy. He was accused of apostasy and the difference is important. Heresy is false teaching and false doctrine. Apostasy is to abandon not only what you believed but to become a traitor to those who believed in you, to sell out, to betray. It is to turn your back on your own people. We can tolerate a heretic but we kill traitors. The great danger is when national identity is the same as religious belief. That is when heretics who can be tolerated become traitors who must be purged. They have become the enemy within.

Think about it this way.

Paul was accused of abandoning the distinctives of Judaism and encouraging Gentiles to identify themselves as part of the chosen people – those who had been grafted in. While we don’t have religious identity issues as deep, we do have national and political identity issues. What would our response be to someone who says:

You can be an American and:

Not salute the flag

Not speak English

Not pay taxes

Not change citizenship status

Not defend the country

Draw social security

Pray for our enemies

Call our enemies Americans

Choose to live outside the country with foreigners

Start fights and riots with Americans in other countries

Expose Americans to persecution and physical harm

…and still claim his rights as an American.

And then imagine this same person returning home with some money from his friends and several people from another country claiming to be Americans on July 4 – our most sacred day – and riding on a float singing “God Bless America”. How would we respond? That’s exactly how the Jews felt about Paul. He was something far worse than a false teacher. Judaism had a long history of doctrinal differences and even heretical teachers who were tolerated. Paul was a traitor. He was an apostate. He was not attacked for false beliefs but for treason.

I think Paul could have defended himself as a heretic but he felt he had to prove he was not an apostate by going along with the elders. It wasn’t politics or even cowardice on his part. It was his deepest desire to reach his own people with the Gospel…and to prove himself to the elders at the same time. Romans 9 says, “I speak the truth in Christ – I am not lying, my conscience affirms it in the Holy Spirit – I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could with that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel.”

That said in his defense, I think it is still the case that he accommodated the Council instead of confronting it. What had he said in other places concerning customs and traditions? What had he said about living in obedience to the law? It’s all in Galatians.

Galatians 2: “When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group…When they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?”

Galatians 3: “Did you receive the Spirit by observing the Law?” “Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.”

The pressure of the senior partners in their boardroom is hard to understand until you have been there. They know what is best. They don’t directly accuse but they imply. “We don’t question you but others do. Is it really worth causing trouble for? You can be a bit different and still belong to the inner ring and you will get the one thing you lack – the respect due an apostle. You will be one of us.” It is what C.S. Lewis called the desire to be part of the Inner Ring. “I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside.”

Paul underestimated the power of the Inner Ring of Jerusalem to shape him – and so do we at times. There are people and customs who wield the same power in our lives. Nothing is ever said but everyone knows who is in and who is out.

Conformation verses Transformation

The Council was impressed with the thousands of Jews becoming believers and being zealous for the law. They were eagerly and completely conformed to the Law and the unique identity that distinguished them from the Gentiles. They were even more exclusive than before.

The men of the Council were impressed more by renaming and perfecting people than redeeming them. They wanted to preserve and perpetuate the old form. They were very successful at the wrong thing and their success blinded them to their growing failure and eventual disappearance. In fact, why are they invisible when Paul is being attacked later by the whole city? Why did the Romans have to save him? Where was the Council then? But, why would they want to save him? They were busy improving the old and making converts to what was passing away. I’ve always liked the way Nicolo Machiavelli puts it: “It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things; for the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order.”

I think this quote sums it up well. “The last phase of a mature form is always characterized by a spurt of growth and then decline.” The Church at Jerusalem was too quick to be enthusiastic about the thousands of believers who fell in with the old and failed to accept the new. In fact, such a success proved to be fatal.

The temptation is always wanting to stop and settle down. To find the form that makes us most comfortable and become a part of Jerusalem and the inner ring. The alternative is discomfort and staying on the growing edge – to mutate and grow.

How do we handle accommodation? Not the everyday compromises necessary in life but the forks in the road where the decision matters.

Six things might help:

First, it’s not who is right but what is right. You have to choose principles over personalities. I read a frightening quote about the corporate culture of Amazon this week. “Company veterans often say the genius of Amazon is the way it drives them to drive themselves. “If you’re a good Amazonian, you become an Amabot,” said one employee, using a term that means you have become at one with the system.”

Second, develop a close circle of advisors. The young disciples had Barnabas. Paul – even when he disagreed – had close friends who spoke to him honestly. He never fired the people who challenged him.

Third, don’t speculate on the consequences of a right decision. Accept the possibility of the very worst. Paul was ready to die. Sometimes we are even surprised by the good things that come out of accepting the worst. I have been reading “Patriot” by Alexi Navalny, the Russian dissident who was jailed numerous times and eventually poisoned on Putin’s orders. Everyone was surprised and dismayed by his decision to return to Russia after his recovery. Like Paul’s friends, they tried to make him change his mind because they knew what was waiting for him – certain imprisonment and likely death. But, here is what he writes:

“I have my country and my convictions. And I don’t want to renounce either my country or my convictions. And I cannot betray either the first or the second. If your convictions are worth anything, you should be ready to stand up for them. And, if necessary, make some sacrifices. And if you’re not ready, then you have no convictions at all. You just think you do. But those are not convictions and principles – just thoughts in your head.”

What are the chances that I’ll survive this morning? I don’t know; six out of ten? Eight out of ten? Maybe even ten out of ten? It’s not that I’m trying not to think about it, closing my eyes and pretending the danger doesn’t exist. But one day I simply made the decision not to be afraid. I weighed everything up, understood where I stand – and let it go.

Fourth, don’t try to protect what is not yours. Paul was anxious to preserve the integrity of his message to the Gentiles but not alienate the Council and it caused him to disrupt everything around him.

Fifth, don’t confuse temporary success with blessing. Thousands of new believers chained to the law doomed the church at Jerusalem.

Sixth, never underestimate the power of a “Jerusalem” in your life. We all have one. We all have a group or a tradition or set of expectations from which we need approval and it controls us. We may deny or resent it but it is there so we need to establish our identity in something other than the esteem and acceptance of others.

“The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow.” That is what C.S. Lewis wrote and then went on to say that there is something even better than belonging to the Inner Ring and that is finding your place inside a group of people who value each other for what they contribute and not what they believe they control. It will be a sense of belonging to people who have committed themselves to genuine friendship and, in the words of Paul, have made it their ambition to lead quiet and productive lives that win the respect of outsiders. In the end it is what Aristotle called true friendship and what we call fellowship. It is not exclusive or secretive. It is not based on status or social standing. It is, as Paul says in Ephesians, one body joined and held together by every supporting ligament that grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Why do you tolerate these lies? Why do you look the other way? I’m sorry if I’m dragging you into a philosophical discussion but life is too short to look the other way. A blink of an eye and I’m almost 40. Another blink and I’ll be looking after my grandchildren. Another blink and I’ll be on my deathbed, surrounded by relatives who’ll be thinking “Get on with it – we need the inheritance”.

For all of us, the moment will come when we will realise that none of the things we achieved by looking the other way and keeping quiet mattered. The only moments that matter in life are the moments when we’re doing the right thing. When we don’t have to look the other way, when we can raise our eyes from the floor and look each other in the eye. Nothing else matters.