The last two verses of chapter 14 are happy verses.  Paul and Barnabas returned from their first missionary journey and reported all the great things the Lord had done through them. Listen:

Acts 14:27-28  On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.  And they stayed there a long time with the disciples.

But the happy time didn’t last long enough.  That seems to be the nature of things.  There are happy times and there are not so happy times and it seems the happy times are never long enough. The first verse of chapter 15 ends the happy times.  But… it is in these not so happy times that we learn a lesson that is more valuable than all the happy time verses in Acts put together. 

Acts 15:1-2  Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: "Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved."  This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question.

Unlike us, Luke has a way on understating the crisis.  I suspect this was really big.  Jewish Christians from around Jerusalem were going to Barnabas and Paul’s new Gentile converts and telling them they had to become Jews in order to be Christians.  This is big!  So when Luke says, “This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them.”  We might say, “No kidding?”  If Gentiles had to follow the Law of Moses to be followers of Jesus, then Christianity becomes something all together different!”  Paul knew this would be a show-stopper for the spread of the Good News across the Roman Empire.  So, they went to Jerusalem for a showdown.

Acts 15:3-5  The church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the brothers very glad. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them. Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, "The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses."

Before we hammer these Pharisee/Christians, let’s stop and think about what they are advocating and what they are not. 
-They were not saying the Gentiles should be excluded.  They had worked through that one and now understood that the Gospel was for everyone.  That’s good.
-After all who invented circumcision and the Ten Commandments?  God did. What they were advocating was a God-thing.
-How long had the Law of Moses been around? 1500 years, give or take a couple hundred.  All they wanted was the Gentiles to join them in their covenant relationship with Yahweh.  And the sign of the covenant was circumcision!  They had been God’s chosen people for a long time. It only seemed right that they follow the same rules as everybody else. They didn’t want to exclude them.  They wanted to include them in all the blessings of the Torah.  
-What would have been so bad for the Gentiles to have followed the Law?  Is resting on the Sabbath and not eating BLT’s all that bad?
-These Pharisee/Christians were only attempting to follow what God wanted them to do. 

Would it have been so bad? Well, let’s see how the church resolves this problem.  Let’s see what their conclusion was and then let’s see if we can learn the lesson that is more valuable than all the “happy verses” in Acts put together. 

Acts 15:6-11  The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: "Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith.  Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?  No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are."

Peter offers an amazing insight into what it means to be a Christian.  Christianity is not some form of Judaism.   When the Spirit filled Cornelius and his Gentile friends and they began to speak in tongues, everything changed.  The point was, not only were the Gentiles included into Christianity, they were purified by faith apart from keeping laws.  Instead of the act of circumcision, they were saved by the grace of Jesus!  This is a fundamental shift.  No longer are people made right with God by offering sacrifices, or going to the Temple, or priests mediating for them, or following laws or obeying the Ten Commandments or not eating shrimp.  We are made right with God by faith in the grace of God through the cross!  We enter covenant relationship with God by faith in the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ. 

Peter argued making Gentiles follow the law would be silly!  They already were in relationship with Yahweh.  For us that is a better lesson than all the happy verses.  Then Paul makes his argument. 

Acts 15:12  The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them.

Paul gets up and tells them of Gentiles lining up to hear about Jesus. He tells them of thousands who have been baptized into Jesus.  He tells them story after story of the Holy Spirit filling Gentiles and doing wondrous things in the Gentiles.  His argument is this.  If the Holy Spirit is filling Gentiles, who have never been circumcised, why should they be now?

This too is a fundamental shift from the Old Law.  The Holy Spirit is given to dwell in all who believe.  The Spirit is not just given to prophets, or judges, or kings, or heroes, like in the Old Book.  But now everyone becomes heroes because we all receive the Spirit.  We have God dwelling within us.   We meet him here.  Why then should those who have God, within them, follow the Law in some attempt to get God’s approval?   The demonstration of the Spirit within us is better news than any happy verses!  One more person needed to speak. 

Acts 15:13-19  When they finished, James spoke up: "Brothers, listen to me.  Simon has described to us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles a people for himself. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:  'After this I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things that have been known for ages.’ It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.”

James has a theological and a practical argument.  The Old Scriptures have foretold that this would happen. When the kingdom of David’s fallen tent is restored the Gentiles would be able to seek the Lord.  This is what the Old book predicted.  

Then James makes another remarkable shift from the Old to the New. “It is my judgment that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles to become Christians.”  This is really good news.  It is easy to become a Christian. 
-You don’t have to be born into a certain ethnic family to be included as God’s people.
-You don’t have to jump through all kinds of legalist hoops to be qualified.
-You don’t have to pass a test to prove your worthiness.
-You don’t have to go through some sort of difficult initiation process.
-You don’t have to memorize a long list of requirements.
-You don’t have to be good to be become a Christian; that comes later. 

Faith in the crucified and resurrected Jesus and baptism into his name places you into this chosen relationship with God!  And that really is amazingly good news!    

If we stopped there it would be good enough; faith, Spirit, easy. But, the chapter goes on a bit further. They decide to write a letter to the Gentile Christians.  This letter told them they didn’t have to do the Law of Moses to be Christians but there was an odd request; actually four odd requests in this letter. 

Acts 15:23-29   With them they sent the following letter:
The apostles and elders, your brothers,
To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia:

Greetings. 
 We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said.  So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul-- men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing.  It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements:  You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.
Farewell. 

After telling them they don’t have to do the Law, why then do they instruct them to avoid these four things: food offered to idols, blood, strangled animals and immorality?  Instead of going through all the details about what these are, let me just give you the bottom line.  All four of these things are associated with pagan temple worship.  Food sacrifices, blood, strangling animals and temple prostitution all happened in pagan worship.  I think the bottom line was something like this.  You are Christians because of your faith in Jesus and we won’t impose the Law of Moses on you, but you can’t be a Christian and be involved in pagan worship. 

Paul, in writing about the Jerusalem Decision in his letter to the Galatians captures the flavor of this and really tells us what it means to be a Christian.

Galatians 5:1-6  It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.  Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.  But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

We have freedom in Christ.  We don’t follow a bunch of rules. But all we do is expressed through love.
-Love for God: How could you hurt him in pagan worship?
-Love for Others: How could you do anything that would hurt or discourage a brother?
-Love for Self: How could you pollute yourself with immorality? We give our lives in holiness to the one who gave his life for us!    

What is the lesson that is better than the happy verses?  We don’t live by law or rules or regulations.  Rather, we live in God’s grace.  We are led by His Spirit. We live in simple freedom.  We do everything in love!  And that is the lesson we learn from Acts 15.