Acts 15:12-21
12 Everyone listened quietly as Barnabas and Paul told about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.
13 When they had finished, James stood and said, “Brothers, listen to me. 14 Peter has told you about the time God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for himself. 15 And this conversion of Gentiles is exactly what the prophets predicted. As it is written:
16 ‘Afterward I will return
and restore the fallen house of David.
I will rebuild its ruins
and restore it,
17 so that the rest of humanity might seek the Lord,
including the Gentiles—
all those I have called to be mine.
The Lord has spoken—
18 he who made these things known so long ago.’
19 “And so my judgment is that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. 20 Instead, we should write and tell them to abstain from eating food offered to idols, from sexual immorality, from eating the meat of strangled animals, and from consuming blood. 21 For these laws of Moses have been preached in Jewish synagogues in every city on every Sabbath for many generations.”
If you are reading this, chances are you have a relationship with the Lord. If you belong to Jesus, you are His child. That means that we are related as brothers or sisters in Christ. Isn’t that wonderfully strange? We may not even know each other but I am your brother. And as your brother I want to encourage you.
In the scripture passage presented today we see how the early church wanted to encourage new believers by teaching them how they should live. Fulfilling their role in the body of Christ, the council needed to give the Gentile converts instructions on how to begin their new lives. Early in this chapter the council put much thought into how they would raise these baby Believers. They decided that they would write a letter giving them instructions on what sins they should abstain from and then “stop troubling the Gentiles who turn to God” (v.19). They decided on a short list of things they should go without: meat sacrificed to idols, sexual immorality, and consuming the blood and meat of strangled animals. This may seem like a strange list of directions today, but these were topics that were taken very seriously by the early Jewish converts.
In your family, do you have anyone that gives good advice or encourages you to improve as a person? Are there things that you would have appreciated to hear from an older brother or sister? If you could write a letter and send it back in time, what advice would you give yourself? Pray that God would use you to encourage a new Believer. Be a good brother or sister and look out for your siblings.
Youth Department