018: Jim Styles - Solving Ecclesial Problems

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   Welcome to the Good Christadelphian Talks podcast. I'm Levi. And I'm Chris. Thank you so much for joining us this week. On this podcast, we select one talk a week to help each one of us get the Bible in our daily news feed. We post at the start of each week for you to listen with a short intro beforehand to kind of set the stage for the talk you're about to hear. And now let's hear more about this week's talk. This week's talk is called Solving Ecclesial Problems by Brother Jim Stiles, who's from California, originally from Michigan. And he's speaking at the Busselton Bible School in Western Australia in 2011. Brother Jim details the principles that we need to solve the complicated ecclesial problems that come up. He mostly focuses on humility and effective communication, basically speaking to each other directly. It's a really encouraging and practical talk. I found it very useful. A lot of good reminders. Christadelphianbibletalks.com has the PowerPoint, which I would definitely suggest if you want to learn more. He kind of refers to it a couple times in the talk. I think the talk holds up just fine without it. But there's also more examples in the PowerPoint than what Brother Jim includes in his talk at the Busselton Bible School. So yeah, head to Christadelphianbibletalks.com and search for Jim Stiles or Solving Ecclesial Problems and you'll find it there. We also wanted to take this time to suggest two other podcasts. Maybe by now you've gotten accustomed to listening to pods. One is the Essential Bible Studies podcast. They have a Facebook page and as well as a website, www.essentialbiblestudies.com, or you can find it on Apple Podcasts by searching

2. 2:01

   Essential Bible Studies. The podcast is about Bible study and what makes good Bible study, and we are really enjoying it. Also, today is Monday, February 4th, and you won't be able to find it on Apple Podcasts just yet, but we are excited to finally have the Good Christadelphian Talks extended channel online in the coming days. So I gave you the timestamp, but if it's a week or two later, you should be fine if you want to find that. This podcast channel is kind of an accompaniment, accompaniment, accompaniment, accompaniment, accompaniment, you know what I mean, to our show. What it'll have is it'll have the whole series from talks where we've highlighted just a single talk. So for example, our first podcast, episode one was from Brother Bob Lloyd on Philippians, and the extended show has all of the portions of that talk on it. So we'll mention it again next week, but I'm sure you'll be able to find it before that. If you want to look up Good Christadelphian Talks extended, you can go into the rest of a series of a talk that you might particularly enjoy on this show, the main show. So in the meantime, here is Jim Stiles on solving ecclesial problems.

3. 3:13

   Well, I hope you don't think I'm going to give you all the answers for solving your ecclesial problems. I might ask you for a few on mine. Not that anybody has all the answers, and I will be the first one to admit to you that there have been ecclesial problems in my lifetime that I haven't been able to solve, nor other brothers and sisters in our area. So we've lived through some experience like I'm sure some of you have, where there's a lot of divisiveness and unrest, and it seems like the solution was like outside of our grasp of bringing everybody into a united solution. But that being said, I don't think that means that therefore, because we have a few failures once in a while in solving ecclesial problems, that therefore we just throw our hands up and just say, well, we can't solve any of them.

4. 3:58

   Instead, in my lifetime at least, I've been very thankful to look back and see that in many of the cases, God has blessed us with solutions, and we have come up with solutions that people have been able to work through and use, and hopefully that wisdom came from the Bible. That's what we found. We start looking in the Bible for examples.

5. 4:16

   I think when you go through ecclesial problems, that's what you do. When you're doing the readings for the next year, you start looking for, well, what did they do? How did they solve it? And sometimes it worked, and you can see good, positive examples of how they resolved the problem. Other times, it didn't work, and you can see good things that we shouldn't do.

6. 4:33

   And you can learn from those things, too, as you can see here in Joshua 22. So that's what we'll hopefully have a chance to look at right now. Some of the useful resources for this, myself, I really believe, is the daily readings. When you're reading the Bible over and over again, what can happen with the daily readings?

7. 4:48

   And sometimes they're not the perfect solution for everything. But by reading through the whole Bible on a periodic basis all through the year, every time you start over in January and you start again, or you start over in June with the New Testament, or July, what happens is you now have all the background of that last year, of all the problems that you experienced, all the situations God threw you into, all the issues that you were dealing with.

8. 5:14

   Now those are like in the forefront of your mind, and when you read the Bible then, and you do it again, now you have new information that you're sending alongside of the Bible, and it helps us then to constantly compare the current things that are going on in our life with Bible characters and look for solutions in the wisdom of God.

9. 5:31

   So I really think the daily readings help on that. Prayer would be another big factor in trying to solve ecclesial problems. I really believe that is a major part of it, is we go to God in prayer and we talk to Him, and we ask for wisdom, we ask for Him to get involved.

10. 5:45

    We beg for God and for Christ to send the angels and help us in our ecclesial problems because we're looking for ways to unite His family and bring them all together. The ecclesial guide, although you can look at it and say that it's definitely full of some, you know, human things that are there, it is exactly what it says.

11. 6:04

    It is a guide, and it's good sometimes to have some kind of guidance to start with, have a basis for everybody to be able to compare, and if in the end we decide as a group that we don't want to necessarily follow exactly what the guide says, that's a choice that the group can make if that helps them bring about a solution.

12. 6:23

    But in my experience, we found that the ecclesial guide has been very useful in trying to solve ecclesial situations. Not so much from the perspective that we hammer people down and we say, well, the guide says, therefore we have to do this, but more from the perspective of looking at it as a guide.

13. 6:38

    It was written to try to help us through problems. So we read it from that perspective. Here's some guidance. This is one thing we can go to to try to give us some guidance on how we might work our way through this problem, and we might veer off a little bit here and there from exactly what the guide says, but it's got a lot of wisdom in it in trying to resolve ecclesial issues.

14. 7:00

    And certainly we have around us the wisdom of the elders that we can go to. Sometimes as young people you forget about that until you run into trouble, and then all of a sudden you'll go to somebody and you'll say, well, what did you do to work this out, and how did you solve this?

15. 7:13

    Did you ever have this problem? And it's amazing how often us old people, we actually know a few things, and we can share our experiences with you and help you through those problems. So I found that very useful, too. That's one of the things I like to do at Bible schools and different gatherings we would go to.

16. 7:28

    You talk to some of the older folks and find out, well, what did you do when this arose, and how did you work your way through this problem? We used to do that a lot when we were raising children. You'd go to some of the older ones that have already been through it, and you say, well, how did you work through this, and what did you try?

17. 7:41

    Not that you have to follow exactly what they said, but you can try it and see if it works. And if it works, great. Thank God for the fact that some people have some wisdom. And certainly we need buckets and buckets full of patience. Otherwise, it just isn't going to work. That is probably one of the keys to the whole thing in solving ecclesial problems.

18. 7:59

    We've got to have some patience. You're not going to necessarily get a solution right now, today, that we just force on everybody and think that that solved the problem, and now we go on to the next thing. It isn't like that. It's not like fixing a part on a car, and your battery's dead, and all of a sudden you realize, you know, got to get the battery fixed.

19. 8:18

    And so you go out, you buy a new battery, put the new battery in, and you're all set, right? The little red car drives away. And that was simple, wasn't it? If only all the problems were like that. And some of them are a lot more complex, may involve more than one component, not just a battery, it's all this other stuff.

20. 8:35

    And we have to find a solution that works for the whole car, not just a little minor problem of having a battery fixed. So those are the kind of things we look for. Now, what really impressed me about ecclesial problems and family trouble is that I think as a younger person, I grew up always thinking, like, my focus was on the resolution that I had to make sure I got to that point over there, and we've got to get there really fast because that's the right place to be.

21. 9:01

    And I've been impressed that when you go back and look at Bible examples of this and you look back over the history of your own life, I think probably a lot of you can realize that God is really sometimes, he's a lot more concerned about how we got to the solution than the actual solution.

22. 9:19

    And that's a key item in solving ecclesial problems. If we all had that focus, I think we'd be a little more patient, a little more slow, and a little more tolerant, and we'd be always stepping back and looking at the bigger picture and trying to second guess, are we doing this the right way?

23. 9:35

    Because what we want to do is, when we look at ecclesial problems and troubles that arise, God has thrown those at us so that he can test us to find out about our single-mindedness, as James would say. Do we really believe God is in this? Or do I just have to implement my solution and force it on everybody and make sure we all do the right thing, what I consider at least to be the right thing from my perspective, and we'll just make sure we all do my way.

24. 10:02

    Now, you look at cases of that when you start looking in the Bible, and you look at the fact that, remember the story with David, when he went up to Nabal, and David wanted to get food from Nabal after they'd taken care of the sheep and all of that. If God wanted to, he could have removed Nabal right away.

25. 10:18

    He could have. I mean, when you look at what Nabal did and the way he responded to David, and he wasn't willing to help out at all with David's men, you know, David, in a sense, was justified in getting angry at him, disappointed that Nabal hadn't been willing to come through. Now, the angels that were working that situation, what they could have done is they just could have said, well, at that point, Nabal, you blew it.

26. 10:39

    You had your chance. That's it. Killed him right then. But they didn't. They waited. They waited. Eventually, they did kill Nabal. But they waited for it all to play out to see, how are we going to handle this? And they let David go through some circumstances where David was going to do some pretty nasty things.

27. 11:02

    He was going to put himself into a situation where he was going to handle it the way he had been treated by Saul. And this is our problem. And our experiences, we go back in our life and we figure, well, people treated me like this. I'm going to treat them like that. And it took the counsel of a wise woman to turn him around.

28. 11:22

    And he thanked her for that, married her in the end, and realized that, wow, God had stopped him through the angelic visitation of that woman from making a huge mistake that day. Or you look in the case of Asa, when he went after Baasha. I mean, he would have helped Asa in that case.

29. 11:41

    He would have helped him out. This was the story when, remember how the million-man army had come up against Asa from the south, from Ethiopia. And Asa had trusted in God and he did the right thing. This was our good king Asa, as the Sunday school lessons call him, for all you Sunday school teachers.

30. 11:58

    He started out as good king Asa. The problem was he didn't end up that way. So what Asa did is he trusted God in that case, single-mindedness, asked for God's help, defeated the Ethiopian army, fine. Then he gets involved with Baasha, the king of the north, a north in Israel, and realizes this is a family issue.

31. 12:15

    This is different than the Ethiopians. This is like ecclesial trouble now. It was one thing when the trouble was outside. I can deal with that. But now when the trouble is in the ecclesia, now what do we do? And so he goes at it a whole different way. Instead of going to God and talking to God, he then goes up and makes this deal with the Syrians up there and says, you come down and bother them.

32. 12:36

    And if you bother them up in the north and you get Baasha all upset, then he'll have to leave building these border towns down there and pushing his way into the southern part in Judah, which he was doing. He'll have to leave there and go out now and fight with you guys. And while he goes and does that, then I'll just destroy all the stuff he's doing down in the south.

33. 12:54

    And it worked. The plan worked. But then the prophet comes to Asa and says, you blew it. That wasn't the right way to do it. You didn't trust in God in this case at all. And if you had, I would have not only let you defeat the northern army and push Baasha back, I would have given you the Syrians too.

34. 13:11

    But because you didn't trust me and you weren't single-minded, you don't get that. And then remember what he did? Asa got all upset at the messenger, at the prophet, and beat him up and put him in prison. And then he beat up a bunch of people at that time. And then he got diseased in his foot.

35. 13:25

    And you never hear a good thing about Asa for the rest of his life. It's sad, but that's the way Asa ends up. And God could have, in this case here, he could have wiped out Jericho on the first day. So you look at how patient God is. He waits seven days, seven days for people to go through this.

36. 13:42

    Because he's looking to see how are we going to respond. You ever thought about that when ecclesial problems come up? If all the brethren and sisters, when a problem arises in an ecclesia, if our first thought could be, what is God trying to teach me? And how should I handle this so that it gets handled the right way?

37. 14:03

    Because what God's really doing is he's not so much bringing up this problem to make sure that I hammer it all out and we get to that right point over there and we stand up for the truth and whatever, we do this kind of, as we tend to see it. We're so simple-minded that way.

38. 14:17

    We want to go right to the solution. But instead, the trouble has come up because the angels know, I need to work through this. I need to go through this process and make sure that I handle it right with all the people involved because this is the training ground for the kingdom. This is really what that's all about.

39. 14:35

    And if we all approach those problems that way, I think we'd have a little gentler and kinder spirit when we came at each other and we're dealing with some of our family and ecclesial problems. Because God could, he could jump right to that solution right now, right at this moment. He could solve the problem if he wanted to.

40. 14:54

    He could. By just removing people, by giving us sicknesses, by taking away things, he could just resolve that problem so fast. But the goal isn't just to resolve the problem. The goal is to do it in such a way that we are single-minded about God's involvement, believing he's in it, and we make sure we treat people with kindness and mercy and patience and that we reflect the character of God.

41. 15:19

    So that's the key to the whole thing is believing God's in control. This isn't my problem. This isn't our problem. This is something God has given us in order for us to learn something about his character and give us an opportunity to express that character. So they give us these problems, they give us an opportunity then to end up practicing living by faith.

42. 15:38

    Now, once you go through all of that, then it becomes very clear that the ends doesn't justify the means. There's no way you can really believe that if you're single-minded and understand that this is all about how I respond to this. It's not about getting to that solution over there. We've got to get there because that's the right answer and therefore I'll do whatever it takes to get there.

43. 16:02

    That's no good. The ends is never going to justify the means because what may be more important is the means than the ends. God may care more about how we handled it than the fact that we got to the right solution in the end. Because if we get there the wrong way as Asa did with Baasha, that's no good.

44. 16:19

    It's not about beating the other guy or doing those. It's how did we go about it that God cares about so much. So what we did is going through, again, when you're going through in the readings, you start looking at cases in the Bible of where did they run into ecclesial problems and how did they resolve those problems.

45. 16:36

    So there's just some of them on the list that I'd like to look at because a lot of these are helpful for some of the things that we run into. So let's just pick up, first of all, the one about the tribes that we just read about in Joshua 22. I've always liked this one because to me this is like, this is standard Christadelphian problem.

46. 16:54

    This is like, you've got, you know, you can see how everybody gets up on there. Yeah, we're going to stand up for the truth. There's no way you're going to do this. And a lot of times in ecclesial troubles, in many times what happens is we don't know the other people. We don't know the other side very well.

47. 17:10

    And we make a lot of assumptions about why they did things. And this all comes out in this case right here. And those assumptions, we get all angry about, oh, how could they do that? And the gut reaction of the flesh is, let's get them. We're going to, you know, we're going to wipe these out, these people out.

48. 17:26

    And these stories are here because they help us understand this is the way people want to react. Now, this community in Joshua 22, what really is interesting to me is think about the background of Joshua 22. What had these people just done in Joshua 22? They had just left Egypt, wandered for 40 years, come up from the eastern side, from the side over here of the Jordan, defeated Og and Bashan.

49. 17:54

    Two and a half of the tribes had been given that land over there. But they said, even because of that, we'll still come over and help you. And they had all worked together for seven years. They had been in unity, fighting the battles of God together, taking over the land. They had done a tremendous job of working together.

50. 18:15

    And now, when they go to separate and go home, now they're starting to wonder about, well, what's going to happen after this? This is sad. After seven years of being together and working together and fighting the battles of the Lord together and watching the miracles that had happened as they won those wars, they now go and go to split up and realize, oh, when we go to split up, I'm not really sure what you're going to do in the future.

51. 18:41

    And the other side's like, I'm not really sure why you're doing this right now. And there's a lot of second guessing. And this is sad. After all this time they had spent together, you would have thought, by now they would have known each other really well and trusted each other. And really, they don't.

52. 18:56

    There's a lot of mistrust here amongst the tribes. And it just shows, this is what life is like in life. These are people. They're human problems that you get. So the problem is then that the eastern tribes, the way they decided to solve the problem is on the way home, when they're going back up here to the north and they're going to go across the Jordan here and they're ready to go home, they decided, well, you know what we really should do?

53. 19:20

    Down the line, it just may be that those guys on the western side, you guys over on the west side over there, maybe not you, but what about your kids? We know what happens. Generations go by and your kids will have kids and their kids will have kids. What if your kids, a couple generations down the line over here, what if you guys end up, your kids at least end up, not really believing that us over here, we're part of the land anymore?

54. 19:44

    What if they want to just like separate us out and we start worrying about the future like that? And so they decided they'd build this huge altar up there, build this monster altar. It really wasn't really an altar that you would use to offer sacrifices. It was a big gigantic monument. He even calls it the big giant altar that's over there.

55. 20:01

    So they build the giant altar on the western side of the Jordan with the intent, their intent is, that we're afraid that your kids and their kids or whatever will eventually not let our kids come across and worship Yahweh anymore. That's what they were afraid of. And so look at the reaction in this case of what ends up happening.

56. 20:21

    The folks on the western side, everybody over here, when they hear about this altar, imagine how the grapevine would have worked in those days. No text messaging and no Twitter stuff and all that, but instead the line comes down. Did you hear what they did? Did you hear what's going on up there?

57. 20:36

    Did you hear what they did? And you can imagine how everybody put their little spin on it about what they're doing. And their little spin was very negative. This is typical of ecclesial life. People put spins on things and when we put the spin with the negative intent, like James says, you're doing this because you're really not humble and we're stirring up strife in the ecclesia, it's really not good.

58. 21:01

    Rather than those things should not be so, but they are. You can see this back here. So they put the spin on it that those guys are building an altar up there and they're doing it. They're going to have their own altar. And then, you know what happened before. What were the two things that they used?

59. 21:15

    What were the two Bible cases? They went back, they got out their Bibles and they said, oh, we can't do this. What were the two Bible history cases they brought up? What were they? Your turn.

60. 21:30

    What were the two cases? Achan. There's one of them. Isn't that a good one? That's a good one. Remember what Achan did? You remember what Achan did? One guy and his family, they hid that stuff in the tent and all of us had to suffer for that. Now, was that true? Yeah. So they got their Bible stories.

61. 21:48

    Here we go. We got our Bible evidence for why you can't do this. What was the other one? Yeah, so what would that have been? They refer to it that way because they assume everybody knows what that is. What is that? That stuff at Peor. What happened there? What happened? That was with Balaam, remember?

62. 22:07

    Remember that story with Balaam and all the trouble he caused because he knew he couldn't curse Israel. So what he did instead is he just told Balak, he said, look, I can't curse Israel, but you know what? Just go get your girls and bring them up here and get their own God mad at them.

63. 22:21

    And when their God's mad at them, he'll destroy them instead. So what a plan. And then remember what happened where the man and the woman were in the tent and Phineas comes in. Same Phineas that's involved here. So Phineas knew this story really well and put the spear through them and killed them both.

64. 22:35

    So they've got their Bible stories ready to go. I mean, this is what happens in a collegial life. We get out the Bibles and here we go. Here's the Bible evidence for why we can't do that. So that's the reaction of the people. And it's very easy to react that way in a collegial life.

65. 22:49

    You hear the stories, you hear the spin that somebody's put on it, and we assume that we've got the right spin. What was the problem? They didn't. They didn't have the right spin on the events. I don't know what you call it over here. We call that putting a spin on it when you sort of like put your own interpretation on what somebody else is doing.

66. 23:09

    They didn't have it right. They didn't have their motives right at all. They had made huge assumptions about the motives of these people. Now look at the solution that the wise heads came to in this story. And this is good. This is a good example of what happens in a collegial life when you have spins like this take place and people start rumors and they want to get everybody all fired up.

67. 23:29

    The tendency was the natural reaction of these people that had just worked together for seven years with each other is let's grab our weapons and go kill them. That's sad, brothers and sisters. That's the way we think about each other. And we're no different. Our community has done the same kind of thing.

68. 23:47

    We don't pick up a gun and shoot the other person. No, we just disfellowship them and we kick them out or we just, I don't want anything to do with you people anymore. And we just write people off. But like James would say, it's just like committing murder and adultery. It's we're acting like the world.

69. 24:02

    And instead, what happened in this case, instead of doing that, the wise heads prevailed and instead what they did as the solution is they got leaders who could talk and they decided to discuss the problem. So they get Phineas, their high priest, and they get a representative of each of the tribes so that like we would do today where you get ecclesial representatives.

70. 24:25

    And they go up there and they talk to these people. What a great solution. Like, how could you ever think of that? Let's go talk to them and ask them, why did you do this? It seems like such a simple solution to go talk to people. But it's so much easier to get out the guns and shoot them.

71. 24:43

    I don't know why we're like that. We just, we want to get out the guns. I know you watch sometimes the kids out there with their sticks already. We got the sticks, we're ready to go, you know, do all the practicing. You know, we seem to like that kind of stuff in life.

72. 24:55

    But later, it's fun now, but later on in ecclesial life, we don't want to get out the guns and sticks and shoot our brothers and sisters. You just go talk to people. And we ask them like, why did you do that? And imagine how they would have been so surprised to find out you did it for that reason?

73. 25:12

    That's what you were thinking? You were afraid that we would like not let you come over here and worship? That's what you actually were afraid of? Man, we had it all wrong. And I don't, this is what humility does though. They had to admit, we had it wrong. We were wrong about you.

74. 25:27

    And so they ended up accepting the fact that, all right, we'll let that altar sit up there and that's okay. We can have that as a memorial and we'll all use it for the same reason now. We'll use it to try to remind everybody and our kids and our grandkids and our great grandkids that we're all in this together and the whole community can come over here and worship on the other side.

75. 25:49

    And, you know, we read that story through and you just think that's such a simple solution. But to get our brothers and sisters today sometimes in ecclesial life to just sit and talk and find out why did you do something? That's not easy to do. And what people like to do instead is just create rules and put up walls and separate and not at all look at the whys.

76. 26:07

    And it's such a simple thing to just discuss that. So I would have said that's a great example of an ecclesial problem that occurs ongoing all kinds of time in generation after generation. And you can see exactly what happened. Fears came into both sides. Both sides are afraid. They're afraid of what might come.

77. 26:26

    They're both afraid. One side's afraid that you won't let me worship God. The other side's afraid that you're going to take us away from God because they really didn't talk it out when they both wanted the same thing. All they had to do was discuss it and find out really we're on the same page.

78. 26:41

    We just didn't realize that that's how you were going to get there. Now, there's another one like that. We might just go to just to look at another one like that. And this one's in Leviticus 10. I don't know whether you've ever looked at Leviticus 10 but I find it it's a very similar situation only it isn't so much a whole ecclesial problem as much as it is more like a family problem.

79. 27:03

    So it's the same issue though where whether you're dealing with big groups or small groups you can have these areas where we don't talk we don't know why something is happening and our gut reaction is that how could you do that? And until we go talk to somebody we really don't know why because my understanding of why you did that isn't necessarily why you really did that.

80. 27:25

    And I guess the bottom line is that we have to realize about ourselves when it comes down to it. You've been through enough of these experiences over and over again. As younger people I remember thinking I knew why the other person was doing it. I figured for sure I knew why because in my limited thinking I was sure well you'd be doing it for the same reason I would be doing it.

81. 27:44

    And I know why I would be doing it for this reason therefore you must be doing it for that reason and it turned out that isn't really true. That there were a lot more things out there as possibilities than I had ever imagined. So Leviticus 10 what happens? This is where Nadab and Abihu get struck dead.

82. 28:00

    Now remember what had occurred is that you'd just gone through this period in Leviticus 8 and 9 where Moses had taken Aaron and his sons and he had separated them off away from the community in their own little area and he was consecrating them to become the high priest the priests of the nation.

83. 28:17

    So there's Aaron and his four sons Eleazar and Ithamar and Nadab and Abihu. There's only five priests for the whole nation right now. So he takes them separates them and Moses goes through the procedure of a week long procedure of consecrating them to be the priests. And then on the first day the first day that they are supposed to be operating as priests for the nation the very first day two of them come out probably drunk from what they were doing and drinking too much alcohol and they God looks at them and realizes forget it you're offering strange fire you're not following what you're supposed to do you don't take this seriously and fire comes out from God and strikes two of them dead and now we're down to three priests all we got left is Eliezer Ithamar and Aaron their dad but what had happened on that day is the very first day was a day in which they were supposed to ritualistically bear the sin of the people so the way they would do that is they would offer a goat for the people and they would offer one for themselves you know first for yourself then for the people and so there was a goat a sin offering for the nation now the rule was very clear if the most holy place is over there and Aaron is offering a goat for the people and here's the way this worked it was the law of the sin offering when you kill the goat and you took the blood from the goat if the high priest was going to take the blood from the goat

84. 29:47

    from the goat of the sin offering and he was going to actually go into the most holy place with that blood he only did that once a year but if he goes into the most holy place what was the rule about the animal what was the rule rule rule for the priest if you take the blood into the most holy place on the day of atonement what was the rule about the goat the priest what they couldn't eat it they couldn't eat it that was the rule I don't know whether you caught it it's in Hebrews 13 too where Paul uses this and he talks about we have an altar which we can eat of which the priests that were under the law have no right to eat so God set this up in the law and he had a good reason on what he said we'll look at that for a second but let's get the rule straight the rule of the goat of the sin offering it's back in Leviticus it's six or seven in there but he actually has the rule there where it states it and here's the rule was that if you're the priest and you're going to take the blood on the day of atonement you're going to take the blood into the most holy place into eternity then on that day you cannot bear the sin of the people because what God wanted to make it very clear in the law is that the Jews who read and understood the law would never think the law could save them your priest under the law will never be able

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    to take you into immortality in the presence of God and also bear your sins on the same day can't do that in the law there was going to be somebody beyond the law that would do that so this was not a day of atonement though this day right now in Leviticus 10 this is not the day of atonement so if it's not the day of atonement and the blood is not going to go into the most holy place then what were the priests supposed to do with the goat of the sin offering then they were supposed to eat it alright and when they ate the goat of the sin offering they were ritualistically bearing the sin of the people representing what Christ would do so one day you can represent Christ's work this way and on one special day of the year you can represent Christ's work that way but you as high priest under the law can never do both it's sort of like the same idea of separating king and priest out God put all these things in the law so that if a person carefully read it they would never think their law could save them it was only designed as a tutor to teach them about the work that Christ would do so what happens they get the goat going they get the goat cut open alright it's not the day in which you're supposed to go into the most holy place so some of the goat would be burned on the altar but a lot of the goat the parts of the goat were supposed to be eaten ritualistically by the priest

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    and so Aaron and his sons were supposed to eat the goat and ritualistically bear the sin of the people on the first day that they're operating as high priest for the nation and God sends out fire kills two of Aaron's sons now we're down to three we got Aaron and his two sons so two sons left and Aaron's devastated and so what happens in verse 18 look at verse 16 just skip down to verse 16 and you can see the problem so after Eliezer and after Nadab and Abihu are struck dead alright he looks around and Moses diligently made inquire about the goat of the sin offering and there it was you can see Moses going around where's the goat where's the goat Aaron where's the goat who's got the goat of the sin offering we're supposed to eat the goat that's the rule the blood didn't go into the most holy place where's the goat of the sin offering you're going to bear the sin of the people today and he's looking around like where's the goat where's the goat and he's trying to figure out where it is and he finds out oh no there it is on the altar you burned it and he's all upset because now we have an ecclesial problem it's more like a family problem somebody didn't follow the rules so he realizes he gets angry at the end of verse 16 there he was angry with Eliezer and Ithamar the sons of Aaron who were left saying why have you not eaten the sin offering in a holy place since it is most holy and God has given it

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    to you to bear the guilt of the congregation and to make atonement for them before the Lord this is how this law works don't you get it he's already trained them he's tried to educate them on how to be priests for this nation and Moses is getting all upset about the fact you didn't follow the rules and he's right they didn't follow the rules see its blood was not brought inside the holy place indeed you should have eaten it in a holy place as I commanded now that rule is back in chapter 6 at verse 30 if you ever want to look it up it's also in chapter 8 I think the key one is in chapter 8 at verse 15 if you're making any notes there and you want to go back and check it out but that was the rule is that if the blood doesn't go into the into the tabernacle and it doesn't get sprinkled on the mercy seat then the high priest was to ritualistically bear the sin of the people as I have commanded so there's the problem and Moses gets all upset but look at how it's resolved Aaron comes forward and Aaron says to Moses he doesn't come in and just say he doesn't come in on his high horse and try to solve this problem he comes in in humility and he says look at Moses this day they've offered their sin offering and their burnt offering before the Lord and such things have befallen me he's talking about the death of his two sons my own two sons we couldn't even raise them in such a way

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    that they followed this procedure on very one first day they couldn't do it properly and God has struck them dead if I had eaten the sin offering today would it have been accepted in the sight of the Lord that's a good response and so what Aaron had decided he had humbled himself to the point where he realized I couldn't even get my two boys to do this properly we couldn't work this out on the very first day burn the goat burn it there's no way we're going to ritualistically bear the sin of this people today there's no way that God's going to accept my family today and my family as priests when he's already struck two of them dead and so when Moses heard that he was content and he realized that wow that's a good spirit I understand what you did so although he got angry with Eliezer and Ithabari he's probably angry at Aaron as well when Aaron finally talked to him and they talked the issue out and he realized why Aaron had done this then wow you know that I hadn't thought of that that was new information of a perspective that Moses didn't have because Moses' focus was so much on following the rules let's do the rules I know what the rules are we've got to do the rules right and he hadn't really thought about the emotional impact of all of what had happened on these people and this is what can happen very easily in a collegial life because we have rule people and then we have folks who are the feelings people and it's good when you can talk it out

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    and try to figure out why somebody's doing what they're doing don't just assume they're doing it because of why I would have done it but they might have had a different component and in this case Aaron was just so emotionally distraught in this case of losing his two sons he realized there's no way God was going to accept them today so I think that's a nice practical one there when you look at that solution there I don't know if you've ever seen that before but it's very similar to the one with the folks in the Joshua 22 case only this is more on just three people we've got even two we've got Moses and Aaron involved but it shows the same spirit where you're willing to talk to people and solve the problem by talking to them instead of just wiping them out and so on now I don't know if you've got any other ones there I've always thought that the Jerusalem conference one I've been impressed at that one in Acts 15 so I put them all up there if you get the power points you can look at them all we won't have time to look at them all today but the one in Acts 15 I think this one's good because this one fits ecclesial life today when you start looking at well how do we solve problems in the ecclesia when problems arise so Acts 15 everybody knows this is a good Sunday school lesson we've got the Gentiles coming in so now we have new cultural groups coming into the truth that don't worship God the way we're used

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    to worshiping God they don't dress the same they don't eat the same food they don't sing the same way they don't talk the same way they may not even use the same names they don't even have the same name for God that we have we have Yahweh our God and they refer to him probably differently so you have all these groups that are coming together and the feeling amongst the Jews was that these guys that you're bringing in right now they're like a bunch of barbarians Paul they're wild people compared to what we're used to with our nice system of law and how we worshipped our God you have all these wild people coming into the community they don't look like they don't fit the way that we're used to and so there was this huge dilemma developing as Paul went and took the gospel out to the Gentiles because now you've got Gentiles and Jews coming together and you're trying to figure out what do we do how do we merge these groups so that we can still attain to God's standards so we hold the critical standards of God but we don't make people follow all the customs and stuff that I'm used to that make me feel good how do we do this in such a way that we can bring these groups together so I think the solution that they came to was good in Acts 15 they got the ecclesial representatives together which is what we would do today they got reps coming from all the different ecclesias and they brought them into Jerusalem this was how they were going to try

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    to resolve this so that's what you see in Acts 15 that it all developed as a result of verse 1 that certain men had come down from Judea and taught the brethren unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses you cannot be saved and when that happened they realized we have got to resolve this because now you're asking Gentiles to do things that Paul would know we cannot require of the Gentiles we can't put up with this idea anymore that you've got to be circumcised in order to be saved now if you want to get circumcised and you want to circumcise your kids and you want to be circumcised that's fine you go ahead and be circumcised but you can't impose that on everybody in the community so that's what they did they got together and a bunch of people showed up in verse 2 there they got Paul and Barnabas to go down and certain others of them to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question so they gathered together and they brought all these people together and there were some in verse 5 some of the sect of the Pharisees who believed rose up saying it's necessary to circumcise them and command them to keep the law of Moses so you not only had believers that were Jews that were in this community you also had some of the extreme sects of the Pharisees in the community at this point that had come in and you could see why they were causing problems in the community they were still trying to hang on to their way

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    of worshipping God their ritualistic system of keeping the law and circumcision was the big example and so they would try to force people to be circumcised so what is the solution well they get together and what do they do alright so the solution is you hold the big conference and in verse 7 Peter gets up and talks to them and Peter recounts to them how God was choosing the Gentiles and that Peter was told you don't make a distinction anymore between the Jew and the Gentile and that the Holy Spirit has indicated this so Peter tries to bring his piece of the solution in here of what he had known that God made no distinction you can't have this prejudice anymore about these Gentiles because the solution is in verse 9 they're purified their hearts by faith so why do you test God putting a yoke on these people that we and our fathers we really couldn't live this thing anyways why would you want to put this on them and so and then you've got not only Peter but you've got Paul all the multitude kept silent in verse 12 and they listened to Barnabas and Paul declaring how miracles and wonders God had worked through them amongst the Gentiles so their solution was to have different people give their ideas they brought the group together and they gave their testimony about how God had worked through them and I think what they did is they tried to clearly make it a case of where this isn't just Peter saying here's what I think and Paul doesn't just come in and say here's what

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    I think they both came in and said look at what God has done through the spirit look at what he has chosen how can we resist this and then James gets up in verse 13 because James had the respect of everybody and James puts it all together and good old James he doesn't just go based on past experience and all that because he knows these Jews they're not going to be happy with just trusting Paul and trusting Peter James says the Bible says so James has got his Bible out he's going to have his Bible passage ready to go so James quotes from the prophets in verses 15 16 17 about rebuilding the tabernacle of David and says look at if the prediction was all along that the tabernacle of David will be rebuilt in the kingdom age and the Gentiles will come in God must have wanted the Gentiles he wants them in the kingdom maybe it's starting now and so that's what they decided that's how they brought them all together so what they did then the solution was to write the letter so they sent a letter out to all the ecclesias now when they wrote this letter when you look at the solution that they came up with does the solution involve the fact that well we don't want to upset the Jews and we don't want to upset the party of the Pharisees so we better mandate circumcision is that how they solved it no so they were willing to draw a line on circumcision because they realized we can't require circumcision if we do then people are still going to think

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    that we're being saved by this law and this is a big issue this is a monster issue that we have to make sure everybody is clear on by works of law no flesh will be justified we're justified by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ so we can't put circumcision in the letter we can't do that Paul just you know he had already said in Galatians 2 he withstood Peter face to face we are not going to require circumcision this was Paul's gospel to the Gentiles this was Paul's whole life in the truth we're not going to go back to circumcision and works of law saving us we can't do that so we can't give them that piece we can't do that but what can we give them well we can give them when they write the letter in verse 25 all right because well actually in verse 24 I think it's nice to notice that they realized that this had actually all started because of the grapevine rumors had come out people were showing up saying hey down in Jerusalem James thinks that you should all be circumcised and so in the letter they clarified the fact that in verse 24 since you have heard from some that went out from us and have troubled you with words unsettling your soul saying you must be circumcised and keep the law to whom we gave no such commandment so they first of all clarified an issue and said wait a minute we never said that so you put first of all you straighten out the facts and you try to get the facts right and then

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    they said all right it seemed good to us in verse 25 with the others and with our beloved Barnabas and Paul so they bring in the names so you realize they're involved in this they're on board with this too that look at men who risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and we're going to send these guys out but here's the result that we're not going to put on you in verse 28 any greater burden than necessary so we're going to try to lower this to the minimum requirements but here's what we need in order to bring unity can you just abstain from the things offered to idols now is that something that they really had to do was that really a requirement that the Gentiles not eat food offered to idols or did they now have the freedom to do that what was it what do you think yeah they had the freedom to do that they could have so this was now a compromise this is interesting this is examples of compromises in the truth when people say to us sometimes you should never compromise that isn't true they did compromise they gave up a freedom that they should have been able to have and they were asking the Gentiles to give up this freedom so we're going to ask you guys for our sake to please make sure that you don't eat things offered to idols stay away from blood don't eat the stuff that's strangled with blood because in the Jewish mind this was so ingrained in them that this was evil and wrong if they were doing this

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    they thought they were sinning so for our sake then will you please stay away from these things stay away from strangled and from sexual immorality now that one was fine and you can imagine they threw that in there just to assure the Jews that these people that are coming in they're not wild they're not living immoral lives so you throw in some things that we need to have and you throw in a few other things that well these are like little bonus items to make sure can you please do this for us because it's so upsetting to the folks back there and that you keep yourselves from these things you'll do well farewell and they sent a letter out now I find that's a great example brothers and sisters of looking at the concept that yeah it's okay sometimes to do some compromising it's okay to give in on some of those issues where we give up some of the freedoms that maybe we should have for the sake of the unity of the group but what you don't do is you don't give in on critical first principle issues and that's what happened here they wouldn't give those Jews oh no we're not going to give you circumcision because if you get circumcision you're going to still think circumcision sort of represented all of that salvation by work system and they held their line and said we can't give you that and Paul made that very clear he would not give in on that we are not going to go back to circumcision but there are some other things that we can give in on

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    we can compromise on those and that was really a good spirit to have where you're trying to bring unity in a group and solving ecclesial problems this was what arranging brethren have to do or what parents have to do with their children you have to look at the issues and wait them out and try to figure out which are the key ones and which are the ones that you can afford to give in on and it's okay to make compromises at times and you do that for a while now there's no evidence though that this was was continued on for hundreds of years or something like that this was a momentary situation solution to a problem they were experiencing right at that time and so the solution was can we all agree to make some compromises we're not going to give in on the key issues we're not going to we're going to hold true to the fact that we're saved by grace by faith and God not by works but we'll we'll give you these other things because for years we realized you guys have you've all thought this was was bad and this was wicked and it brings up all these things in your mind about your sinning so we won't eat those things and we'll do that for you so that's a good solution I think really when you look at what they were willing to do right there and it gives us some guidelines at least as to how we go about it so that was their solution in the end the things strangled and the things from blood and even

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    the things polluted by idols in terms of if it was just food or whatever you could see where they didn't really have to give them those but they wanted to make sure that you didn't think about these Gentiles as being barbarians so we'll give in on those issues and we'll make sure you realize we are legitimate believers we really do want to be part of the community and that was the way they solved that problem now you know you can go on and look at a bunch more if you pull off the powerpoint at some point you want to look at them or what I think is really fun to do for yourself is just keep listening to your bible as you're doing the readings and you start and you're doing the readings at home just look for how people solve problems what did they do how did they resolve those problems and if we understand what they did to resolve their problems I think that will help us in resolving ours sometimes they had good solutions sometimes they didn't and if we had time to look at the one with the tribe remember in the case with the Levite and his concubine you know what happened with that one when they cut up the concubine and sent it out all over the community he just riled everybody all up got their emotions all going their blood was boiled let's kill them all and they went after that tribe and they nearly wiped out a tribe in Israel because people got all emotionally generated and that sometimes happens in our community people they want to get the

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    emotions stirred they try to present it in the worst possible case so he takes his concubine chops her up into pieces and sends her up all over all that does is get people's emotions all fired up and they're not using their Bibles they're not thinking anymore not praying about it they're just emotionally driven we don't want to react like that that's an example of what not to do in ecclesial life because they nearly wiped out the whole tribe of the Benjaminites in that case and then they had to come up with their little schemes to try to figure out some way where they can legally come up with a way for those Benjaminites to find some wives but we don't want to sin while we're doing it so we just sort of won't notice what you're doing and we'll give you the idea ahead of time and tell you how we'll set it up that's the kind of goofy stuff that goes on in ecclesial life sometimes that whole situation and the judges is crazy but that would be an example of what you don't want to do in that case both sides messed up and they came up with terrible solutions and that's a warning we don't want to be like that so hopefully what we'll do then brothers and sisters in our future is that what we want to do in solving our problems is we want to aim at some of the positive things let's make an effort to communicate about our problems I think that's that's one that we can all do you can learn that from these cases here you communicate

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     let's pray to God and ask for his help in finding solutions I mean this is what we want to do we take the problem to God we don't just think right away I've got to work it out I've got to solve it I've got to get to that point right away or we're all sinners you take it to God and let and help and ask God to help us find a solution and don't always assume the worst of everybody else talk to them our natural tendency for some reason is that if there's any kind of rivalry involved at all we tend to assume the worst of each other I'm not quite sure why that is but that seems to be the human spirit sometimes with people that are like on the other side if our if our child does one thing we think oh they must have a good reason if somebody else's child does it we think oh they must have a bad reason and I don't we're like that it's it's terrible at least we need to know that's how we are and then we can help respond the right way make sure we pull out our Bibles and use them for guidance that's why these stories are here so that we can learn what to do and what not to do and I think the old golden rule of if we just treat other people the way we would want to be treated I mean it goes a long way if they do you love your neighbor as yourself and so when you find yourself into a collegial troubles put yourself on the other

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     side for a minute and then look at it from their perspective and find out well what would you want done what would you want those the other side to do if you were over here and it helps us respond in a much better way to those people a way of helping them and it is okay to compromise on non-essential issues don't let anybody ever tell you that all compromise is wrong you can see that in Acts 15 that's not true there are times we can give in on the non-essentials and be willing to extend God's mercy to others I mean you'll see that all over in Bible cases where they found good solutions it usually involves in some way extending God's mercy to other people and be careful that you don't overreact to other people's mistakes you know because what can do is make worse mistakes ourselves that's what happened with that story with the Benjaminites they overreacted got all emotionally charged up and then they themselves made mistakes because they weren't really thinking with their heads on they weren't thinking along the lines of the Bible at all and make sure we're willing to listen to brothers and sisters who try to come up to with godly solutions that's what we really want to do is ask each other talk to each other and see what do you think we should do and what would what would you think that God would have us do in this situation and hopefully we'll be a lot better off and the other thing you can do is look at the concept though of accepting the decisions of

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     the elders that one actually came out of the idea of the Gibeonites it would have been very easy for the community to get upset with the elders and override them on their decision about the Gibeonites but they didn't they decided in the end all right we made a mistake we blew it we'll make the most of the situation you want to make the covenant with the Gibeonites we'll respect it we'll follow through on it and they did they accepted that and I think that's the probably the right way to do it I put that in there about unless it would destroy one of God's flock because if you ever go back and look at the list Saul and Jonathan that's a good example of where you don't want to necessarily do what the elders said remember that the time that Saul made the oath and he's for that anybody that eats anything today you're going to die and Jonathan comes along doesn't know about the oath eats the honey God blesses him and Saul's ready to just say kill him and all the people ransomed Jonathan from his dad in that case because they realize you're off your rocker on this there's no way we're going to kill this man God just used him to work out a great salvation in the community how in the world can you sit on your legalistic rule of your law that you made Saul and let this man die and there are some times where it's possible I guess that elders could get that far off the track and you might have to intervene but you know hopefully that's a

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     rare case when you have somebody like a Saul so we didn't get very far but maybe that will help you at least on looking at solving some ecclesial issues I think the main thing is to approach it slowly calmly with prayer talking to people don't get all riled up on the emotions and let's look for a solution that involves a way of a pathway where we don't sin along the pathway just to get to the end result and hopefully we'll have a lot more peaceful solutions that way thanks thank you for listening to the good Christadelphian talks podcast please subscribe for new episodes and leave a review in apple podcasts whichever service you use to help people find the show when they search for it if you enjoyed this talk share it on social media so other people can hear it too for show notes and links to the talk you just listened to visit our show page at anchor.fm slash gct we encourage everyone to share their thoughts on the talk from this week with everyone on Facebook or Instagram where we are at good Christadelphian talks or on Twitter where we are at gct underscore podcast if you know a great talk we want to know about it too send a suggestion to good Christadelphian talks at gmail.com or message us on social media thank you for listening God bless and talk to you next week

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     you