The Trojan Horse – Acts 15:1-2

I don’t think that Satan will ever destroy Calvary Independent Baptist Church. It’s not because we have the promise of God any more than did the churches at Ephesus or Antioch. And it’s not because we are a better church than any of those of which we read in the Bible. I don’t think that Satan will ever destroy this church, because he probable will never have to. Our church, like the church in Troy – called Troas in the Bible – has a Trojan Horse already within its walls. YOU are that Trojan Horse, and so am I. Inside of us, we all carry a deadly disease – sin. It’s not that we mean to bring our city or our church down, But without constant care and observation, the Greeks inside us might escape, Open the gates and invite an army of devastating problems to come right in. As it appears to me, this is the second time that one of the Lord’s early churches came perilously close to disaster because of serious internal problems. Satan had tried persecution to destroy those churches, but it had only strengthened and propagated them. He stirred up the hatred of his slaves against the saints of God, but that was powerless against God’s love. I don’t know how much the Devil had to do with the earlier famine, but it helped to unite the saints of God around the world. Neither the Jewish leadership, nor the Roman government could stop the progress of the Kingdom of God. Even the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the first church, didn’t slow the work of God. In chapter 5 we studied the sinful problems of Ananias and Sapphira. Here was an example of a Trojan Horse type of problem in the Jerusalem church. Their lies and attempted fraud could have spread and wrecked havoc, But the Lord revealed the problem to Peter and it was quickly quashed. Unfortunately, two people lost their lives over it. In this chapter the problem was more theological, but it was also potentially more destructive. Eternally destructive, because this was an attack against the gospel which was being preached by the pastors and missionaries of the church in Antioch. Some men came down from Jerusalem, apparently UNAPPROVED by the Apostles. As I said on Sunday, I think that I understand from where they were coming, and I don’t mean from Jerusalem. They had apparently been raised as Pharisees. From the time of their birth they had observed with their parents, dozens and dozens of the rites and ceremonies of Israel and the Pharisees. For example, they had been taught that circumcision was not an option. They reached back to dozens of scriptures – like that of Exodus 12: “And the LORD said unto Moses and Aaron, This is the ordinance of the passover: There shall no stranger eat thereof: But every man’s servant that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof. When a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the land: for no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof. One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you.” These people who were PROBABLY true saints of God, although we can’t be absolutely sure of that – These people took some scriptures which applied to the nation of Israel, Tried to force them into a Christian context, And to force them onto Christians being saved out of Heathenism. And by the way, this forcing of Israel into the context of a church, has been hurting Christianity ever since. The promises of God made to Israel, belong to Israel, and don’t necessarily belong to us. And certainly the rites and ceremonies of Israel don’t directly apply to us either. Baptism, for example, is not the Christianized form of circumcision the way that the Protestants teach. One of the differences between the churches in Jerusalem and Antioch was the nature of their memberships. The first of the Lord’s churches was almost entirely Hebrew, with just a smattering of previous proselytes. But the church in Antioch was primarily made up of proselytes, And Hellenists – Jews thoroughly imbued with Greek culture, And with more and more Gentiles saved by the grace of God, who had not first proselytized to Judaism. Up there in Jerusalem, or down there in Jerusalem depending on your point of view, the subject of Gentile converts was not a prominent issue, although there were people who had strong opinions. Peter and the other Apostles were probably not doing any teaching or preaching on the subject, because it didn’t directly relate to that church. I would venture to guess that the church was not taught very much about this subject, And yet some of the members took it upon themselves to go up to Antioch to straighten out the brethren. Just a couple of comments about this: They apparently had no authority from the Apostles to do what they were doing. As we shall see later in this chapter, when Paul, Barnabas, Titus and others made the trip to Jerusalem to meet with Peter, James and the other leaders, The Apostles agreed with Paul, and not with these people causing the trouble. And secondly, the members and the church in Jerusalem generally speaking had no authority over any other sovereign church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Just because you or I don’t like what is being taught or being practiced in another church, doesn’t give us the right or obligation to rebuke and correct that church. At the very least it shouldn’t have been done the way that it was done. Those Judeans had no business going directly to the membership of Antioch. They MIGHT have been justified if they had gone to the pastors of Antioch, or to Paul and Barnabas, But to attack the leadership of that church, by publically preaching a conflicting doctrine, Or by privately going from house to house without the leadership of church knowing or approving was Biblically criminal. They were UNAPPROVED by the Apostles or the church in Jerusalem. And they were UNTAUGHT in the truth. At one point, Paul could very easily have been one of the men causing the trouble. He was raised with the same theological and social background, but something had made him different. In addition to the traditions of the elders, and a thorough education in the Old Testament scriptures, Paul had been taught by God that the Gentiles would be saved apart from the Hebrew customs. Furthermore, he had seen the power of God working among the Galls of Galatia. So he KNEW that God was saving the Gentiles, contrary to what the visitors were teaching. I can’t blame the “certain men which came down from Judea” that they didn’t know more than they knew. I blame them only for their unwise impetuosity, their self-righteousness and their opinion of self-rightness. But the fact of the matter is that, while being yet untaught, they were trying to teach others. They were spiritual babes trying to correct some of the most mature and well-taught saints of their day. This is not a practice that died out in the first century. In fact it happens all the time, and there have been attempts to practice it here. One of my joys as your pastor is the knowledge that most of the members of this church are reasonably well-taught in Bible doctrine. I’m not claiming responsibility for this knowledge, because I basically found it here when I arrived. Down through the years, there have been Charismatics, Arminians, Ecumenists and others who have desired to join with us but who didn’t stay long because they couldn’t garner support from you against me. I have commended you before other pastors in this regard, and I have praised God for you. That doesn’t mean that you are theologically perfect and that we both don’t have more to learn. But what a blessing it is when the people of God are beyond the babes-in-Christ stage. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that we can say that about the Judean brethren of Acts 15. They were untaught in the truth about the salvation of the Gentile brethren. Whether or not they ever accepted and learned that truth is something that we may never know. At least initially, they were UNMOVED. “When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.” We don’t know how quickly it was discovered that the door to the Trojan Horse had been opened. These Judaizers may have been in the church for months teaching their heresy before being discovered. But then again it may have only been a week or two. When Paul and Barnabas heard about what they were teaching, the two missionaries confronted them. And they had “no small dissension and disputation with them.” The words “with them” speak about FACE-TO-FACE CONFRONTATION. And the words “dissension and disputation” suggest to me that this was NOT A FRIENDLY MEETING. It was heated and tempers flared. Luke hasn’t told us exactly how the meeting, or meetings, went. But I would guess that Paul began by telling these men about his conversion. He probably told them what the Lord had told Ananias down there in Damascus: “Go thy way (Ananias), for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel.” He most likely then told him about that period he spent with the Lord in Arabia. He didn’t learn his doctrine at the feet of the Apostles or the pastors at Damascus. He was a very special student in the seminary of the Lord. There he attended classes on Ecclesiology, Eschatology and also in Soteriology. From the lips of the Lord, Paul learned the Doctrine of the church, of future things and about salvation. Then Paul described how the Lord saved Sergius Paulus, and others during his missionary enterprise. He spoke about the healing of the Gentile cripple, And how the Lord had even saved Lycaonians apart from any of the rites and ceremonies of Israel. If those men were listening then, I’m sure that they had the opportunity for an ear-full. But it appears that they were unmoved by the facts or the arguments. That is an assumption on my part, but I think that it’s reasonable. It is POSSIBLE that Paul convinced these men, But he realized that there were probably many more where they came from, And he knew that he needed to nip this in the bud by going to talk to the Apostles in Jerusalem. It’s possible that these Judeans were taught and received the truth, but the scriptures don’t suggest it. And so I think that they were UNMOVED. And the last thing is perhaps the most serious: they were possibly even UNSAVED. I’ve always wondered about and stumbled over something about those people’s theology. If they were telling these Gentiles that “except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved,” And since they had not yet been circumcised, does that mean that in the minds of these Judeans, those people were yet unsaved? If so, didn’t that mean to them that repentance and faith were NOT evidences of salvation? Did they believe that when people repented and trusted Christ they were not saved? Or if those believers could later add circumcision, did they believe that salvation was some sort of process? Did they believe that these Gentile believers could go back and fix their faulty salvation by submitting to this Hebrew rite? We don’t have time to have an in-depth study of the Book of Galatians right now, But I hope that you are aware that most of that book is a discussion of this question. And Paul calls the gospel which these Judeans were preaching “another gospel of a different kind.” As far as he was concerned it was a false gospel, a Satanic gospel, which condemned the souls of men. To ADD anything to salvation by God’s pure grace is a theological DIS-grace. To DO anything in order to be saved is to make salvation dependent upon the deeds of men. To DO anything in order to be saved is to make God a servant to the actions and whims of men. In the Book of Romans Paul wrote: “For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” I am not in a position to judge the spiritual condition of those men who came down from Judea. I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt and to call them untaught babes in Christ. But I could very well be wrong about this. These men may be typical of the thousands of people in God’s churches, who are not truly born again. If they refused to listen to Paul and learn what he was telling them; If they read and rejected the message of the Book of Galatians, Then I would be forced to conclude that they really were Satanic Trojan Horses. As far as I know, neither George Barna, nor George Gallop have ever done a study of this: But I think that if the truth were known, we find that 90% of the problems which have hurt God’s true churches down through the centuries, were caused by church members who were not true saints of God. I heard just yesterday of a situation affecting, and possibly hurting, three pastor-friends of mine which has been caused by a member of one of those churches who MAY not be a regenerated man. Only God knows for sure how many similar cases there have been like that.