Sermon Manuscript

Video:  “Everyday Mission - Bumper” - 0:28]

Two brothers named Max and Sam found a giant cookie.  “I’ll split it”, said Max.  So he broke it into two pieces - a huge piece and a tiny piece.  “I’ll take the big one”, Max said.  “That’s not fair!” said Sam.  “It is fair”, Max argued.  “I did the work.”  Dad overheard them and said, “OK.  Here’s the fairness rule:  One person cuts, the other person chooses.”  Max’s eyes got wide.  He looked at the giant piece and the tiny piece.  Then he carefully broke the big piece again until both pieces were the same.  Sam smiled and picked one.  Dad laughed and said, “Funny how fairness gets easier when you don’t get to choose first!”

The truth is that life is not fair.  Am I right?  William Goldman, a former American novelist and screenwriter said, “Life isn’t fair.  Anybody who says that it is is selling something.”  I would agree!  Johnny Carson, the famous late-night talk show host of the Tonight Show, once said, “If life were fair then Elvis would be alive and all of the impersonators would be dead.”  Also a good point!  Someone also once said that “Everyone wants fairness until it’s time to split the last donut!”  Also true.  Life is not fair.  It’s not fair for you and it’s not fair for me.

It’s not fair when you study hard for a test and don’t get a good grade.  It’s not fair when you work hard on a project and don’t get the credit.  It’s not hard when you are passed over for a promotion despite your strong performance.  It’s not fair when you face health issues after taking care of yourself and eating right while others do the opposite and seem fine.  It’s not fair when you save your whole life preparing for retirement and someone else wastes their money and then wins the lottery or is given an incredible inheritance.  It’s not fair when you are judged by rumors or criticized for something you didn’t do.  It’s not fair when someone breaks a major rule and is not punished and you break a minor rule and are.  

Life is not fair.  We see this over and over and over again.  We even see this in the Bible.  Joseph was treated unfairly by his brothers and sold into slavery despite doing nothing wrong.  Job was innocent and yet lost his health, wealth, and children.  David was nearly killed by Saul many times because of jealousy.  Daniel was treated unfairly and put into a lion’s den to die.  Jesus was falsely accused, sentenced to a crime He never committed, and crucified.  Paul was imprisoned, beaten, shipwrecked, stoned, and nearly killed countless times for proclaiming the Good News of the Gospel.  Time after time we see even in the Bible that life is not fair.

Life is not fair.  It is not fair to you and it is not fair to me.  And sometimes we can even feel that God does not treat us fairly.  Because God didn’t reward us for our efforts or God didn’t pay us back for the time we gave to Him.  God didn’t fix our family like we felt like He should or bless us financially for giving to Him so faithfully.  God didn’t treat us the way we should be treated.  Have you ever felt that way?  I know I have.

But what if I told you that there is an area of your life in which God does not want to treat you fairly?  What if I told you that in that area of your life you do not want to be treated fairly too?  And what if I also told you that in this specific area of your life God’s “unfairness” is actually the greatest gift you could ever receive?  Would you want to know what that is and how it works?

Because today we’re going to take a deep dive into this topic of fairness.  And I have a simple goal for all of us.  My hope and my prayer is that by the time we get to the end of our time in God’s Word that you will come to the same conclusion I have.  “God is not always fair and I am so thankful that He is!”  That’s what I want all of us to be able to say together as a church family.

Let’s get started.  If you have your Bibles, turn with me now to the book of Acts chapter 15.  Today we’re going to be covering verses 1-35 but focusing primarily upon just a few of the key verses found within this text.  As always, if you would like to follow along with us online you can do so by using our app.  It’s called Church Center.  And if you open it up and click on Sunday Services followed by Message Notes you will find everything you need this morning.

Last week we began a series of messages called Everyday Mission where together we’re learning how to live each day on mission.  We want to recognize that every day God gives us the breath of life we have an opportunity.  Every day we wake up and go through the routines of life, we have an opportunity.  An opportunity to make a difference and impact our world for Jesus by learning how to live each day on mission.  That’s our focus within this series.

And we begin by saying that we need to have a mission mindset.  We learned last week in Acts 14 how Paul and Barnabas went on a missionary journey and every day they lived knowing that they could make a difference for Jesus.  They had a mission mindset.  And we want to have the same.  We want to pursue the lost in prayer, intentionally share our faith, be willing to experience rejection, and report to other believers what we learned.  And by doing that we can live differently.  We can live with a mission mindset.

But after Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch they experienced a major problem.  Acts chapter 15 begins by explaining that there was a group of men who came from Jerusalem who began teaching to the Gentiles that “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses you cannot be saved.”  So they were telling these new believers who were Gentiles that they needed to go through the same procedure that all Jewish men go through by removing flesh from “a very delicate part of the male anatomy”!  Are you with me?  And this led to a huge debate.  Because it dealt with their salvation.  And it was so heated that they decided to send Paul and Barnabas and some of the others to Jerusalem to speak to them about this issue.  “Is it true that a person must be circumcised to be saved?”  And beginning in verse 4 we read what happened when they arrived.  At first they welcomed Paul and Barnabas and celebrated what God had done on their first missionary journey.  But then the issue of circumcision came up and they began to discuss the matter.  Verse 6 says:

6 The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. 7 And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. 8 And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, 9 and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. 10 Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? 11 But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.” 12 And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

Alright.  So notice “who’s who in the zoo” here.  Notice who’s present at this meeting.  We have the apostles.  These are the people with the highest spiritual gift in the local church and the elders.  These are the people with the highest spiritual position in the local church.  And so this is an elite group.  The elite of the elite.  And they are all gathered to discuss this matter.

Finally, Peter stands up and speaks.  And notice what he says.  He says, “Brothers, you know what happened to me.  You know that in the early days of the church God made a choice that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the Gospel and believe.”  Stop for a second.  What’s he talking about here?  Well, if you scan back in your Bibles to Acts chapter 10 you will read the story of how God first began to save the Gentiles through Peter.  It started with a Roman centurion named Cornelius.  A man Peter had been told to visit and when he did God brought the Holy Spirit upon both Cornelius and his household.  It was a miraculous event which paralleled Pentecost.  At Pentecost God gave the Holy Spirit to the Jews in order that they would be saved.  At Cornelius’ home God gave the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles in order that they would be saved.  In fact, in Acts 11 Peter goes to Jerusalem to report to the church what had happened and tells them that the Holy Spirit came upon them even before they were baptized.  The only time in which this ever happens.  But it took place in order to show Peter, a Jew, that God was saving Gentiles.  That’s what Peter is reminding them of here.  He says, “Do you remember what God did before?  Through my words?  And how He gave to them the Holy Spirit just as He did to us?  He cleansed their hearts just as He did to us so that now there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles.  All of us are saved by faith.  Faith in Jesus.”  Then in verse 10 he gets to the point.  And he says, “Therefore” or “Here’s my conclusion”.  “Therefore, if God has already accepted them through faith and given to them His Spirit, why are you asking them to do what we could never do?  Why are you asking them to obey the Law of Moses perfectly when no Jew has ever done so?  That is a yoke or a burden that is being placed upon them that we could never handle ourselves.  Neither could our forefathers.”  

And then he said this in verse 11.  Check this out.  He said, “But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus just as they will.”  And everybody who heard Peter’s words were silent.  They were speechless.  They were unable to question Peter.  They were unable to argue with him.  They were unable to contradict him.  They knew he was right!  And they had nothing to say!  So Paul and Barnabas began to share about all that God had done.  And after they spoke James spoke.  James was the brother of Jesus, the leader of the church in Jerusalem, and the person who had the most authority.  And in verse 13 we read:

13 After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brothers, listen to me. 14 Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. 15 And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written, 16 “ ‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, 17  that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things 18 known from of old.’ 19 Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, 20 but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. 21 For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.”

And that’s exactly what they do.  Because in verses 22-35 they write a letter asking the Gentiles to abstain from eating certain foods which are not sinful but which are offensive to their Jewish brothers and sisters.  And they tell them to not commit sexual immorality.  Nothing is said about circumcision.  Nothing is said about keeping the law of Moses.  Nothing is said about any of it.  Their letter was short, simple, and to the point.  And they sent Paul, Barnabas, and two guys named Judas and Silas, who were prophets, to deliver the decision.  And as you can imagine the Gentiles who received the message celebrated!  They were greatly encouraged.

And while I think there’s a lot we can learn from this story, the key that I want us to focus upon is the issue at hand.  Because while there are many things we can debate about within Christianity our salvation is worth debating.  It’s worth wrestling with and it’s worth coming to conclusions upon.  And that’s what’s going on here.  What’s at stake is the heart of our salvation.  Because the charge being made is that “Unless you’re circumcised and follow the Law of Moses you cannot be saved.”  In other words, they were teaching you cannot be a follower of Jesus unless you first are a follower of Moses and the Law.  You must first become a Jew and then you can become a Christian.  And that led to a huge debate between two ways a person can be saved.

So before we go any further I want us to understand this further.  Several weeks ago in our Wednesday noon Bible Study we talked about this very issue.  We’ve been studying the topic of Theology and reading a book called The Faith Once For All by Jack Cottrell.  Jack Cottrell was a college professor of mine years ago.  But in chapter 16 called “Salvation:  By Law or by Grace?” Cottrell described to us that there are actually two competing systems of salvation.  The first is the Law.  The Law System says, “Keep the commandments, escape the penalty.  Break the commandments, suffer the penalty.”  So if a person were to know God’s Law and keep it perfectly they would not need Jesus.  They could be saved by perfectly obeying God’s Law.  The problem, of course, is that no one can do this.  And no one ever has done this.  That’s true.  The Bible confirms this.  However, possibility and reality are two different things.  It is possible to be saved through perfect obedience.  It’s possible but the reality is that no one has done it and no one will do it.  As a result, God has created a second system of salvation:  Grace.  And the Grace System says this, “Keep the commandments, suffer the penalty.  Break the commandments, escape the penalty.”

Now if you’re still with me this is where you should be saying to yourself, “Wait.  What?”  Because the Law System makes sense.  Keep the rules, escape.  Break the rules, get punished.  Those are the laws that we live by everywhere.  Break the rules at school, at work, at home, or in society and you get punished.  But keep the rules and get punished?  Break the rules and escape the penalty?  That doesn’t make sense!  That’s not right!  That’s not fair!!!

And you would be right.  It’s not fair.  And that’s precisely the point.  Because grace is not fair!  Grace is getting rewarded when you should be punished!  It’s getting a pat on your back when you should be spanked on your bottom!  Right?  It’s not fair and that’s the point!  When it comes to our salvation you have two options.  You can ask God to treat you “fairly” and if you are found to have broken His Law He will sentence you and condemn you and punish you for all eternity!  OR you can accept His grace, His “favor bestowed with wrath is owed”, and receive salvation and eternal security despite the fact that you don’t deserve it and it’s not fair that you receive it!  You don’t want God to be fair when it comes to your salvation!!!!  You don’t want God to be fair when it comes to your spiritual life!  You don’t want God to be fair when it comes to your escape from eternal punishment in Hell and your deliverance from death and your hope for heaven!  You want Him to be unfair!  And to give you grace!!!  Does that make sense?

Because if so it gives us a glimpse into the absolutely amazing grace that God has given to us through His Son Jesus!  When you sing, “Amazing Grace!  How sweet the song that saved a wretch like me!” you need to feel it!  You need to understand it!  You need to know that God’s grace is the greatest gift that God has ever given because He is giving to us exactly what we do not deserve and what we have not earned and what is not fair!  Grace is not fair!  And praise the Lord that it is not!  Because fairness is what we all long for in life.  But it’s not what we need in death.  We want God to be unfair with us and that’s exactly what He has done in Jesus.

And that’s exactly what Peter said.  Peter said, “But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus.”  And that’s why Paul later wrote in Ephesians 2:8-9 that:

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

We are saved by grace through faith.  And because we are saved in this way it is a gift of God.  The greatest gift.  A gift we cannot earn and we do not deserve.  A gift that is not fair.  Because life is not fair.  And our salvation is not fair.  But, wow, are we glad it’s not!  Thank you Jesus!  Because when it comes to our salvation we do not want fairness.  We want grace.

And that was the point found in several of Jesus’ most difficult parables.  Do you remember the story of the vineyard workers that Jesus taught in Matthew 20:1-16?  Where Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who had a vineyard so he sent out laborers at different times of the day.  Some worked the whole day.  Others just part of the day.  But in the end they all got paid the same.  One denarius.  And then some complained.  They said, “Hey, that isn’t fair.  Why did all the workers get paid the same wage?  Even though some worked a full day and others only part of the day?  And the master said, “Am I not allowed to do what I want?  Can I not be generous?”  That was a picture of grace.  The grace of God that has been given to us.  It’s not “fair” but all received the same reward or Eternal Life.  

And then there was the parable of the Dishonest Manager in Luke 16.  This one was really difficult because Jesus said there was a rich man who had a manager.  And charges were brought against him that he was wasting the rich man’s money.  So he said, “Turn in the account of your management for you can no longer be manager.”  So the man went out to each of the rich man’s clients and said, “Hey, how much do you owe?  100?  Write 50.  100?  Write 80.”  And then when the rich man found out he praised the shrewd manager for doing that which was dishonest.  And Jesus said, “The sons of this world are more shrewd than the sons of light.”  That was also a picture of grace.  The grace that God wants us to offer to others.  God wants us to offer grace to others on behalf of Him.  It’s not “fair” to give people something they don’t deserve but it shows the grace of God and God is pleased with that.

I want to encourage you to take time today to read those two parables through the lens of grace.  I promise you it will change the way you see those truths and help you to understand what are two of the most difficult parables that Jesus ever taught.

But what does all of this mean for us?  What do we do with the grace of God?  Well, I believe that we learn some important truths from Peter’s words to the Jerusalem Council that we need to share with others and I want to address them quickly.  First of all, God’s grace is available to everyone.  When Peter reminded his listeners of how God had begun to save the Gentiles through his words to Cornelius and his household that’s why that story was so important.  It was the first time the Gentiles were receiving the grace of God just as the Jews had.  We need to remember that truth and speak it to others.  “God’s grace is available to you.  You are never too far gone from it.  God’s grace is available if you want to receive it.”  Second, God’s grace is confirmed by the Holy Spirit.  What stood out to Peter on the day he spoke to Cornelius and his household was that the Holy Spirit came upon the Gentiles just as He can come upon the Jews.  In a miraculous way.  And that was necessary to help a guy like Peter understand that God was saving all people.  The same is true for us.  When the Holy Spirit is evident in a person’s life that is proof that God’s grace has been given to them.  So when we see a person living for Jesus and producing the “fruit of the Spirit” we need to point that out and help them to see that “God’s grace has been given to you.  I can see it.  Because the Holy Spirit is at work within your life.”  And third and finally, God’s grace is the foundation of our salvation.  We are not saved by works or deeds but by grace.  Peter told the council that “we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”  Grace is always the sure foundation.  We don’t trust in what we know or what we’ve done.  We trust in what God has offered to us and we have received in Jesus.  God’s grace.  God’s amazing grace!

These are three truths Peter teaches us that we need to know and share to people we know and love if we want to learn how to live on mission.  We need to tell people, “God’s grace is available to you.  It’s available to everyone.  God’s grace is confirmed by the Holy Spirit that is given to you in Jesus.  And God’s grace, His amazing grace, is always, always, always the sure foundation of our salvation.  It’s not something that’s earned, attained, or merited.  And it’s amazing.  It’s truly amazing.  But it’s not fair.  Because life is not fair.

Life is a lot like the game of baseball.  Ben Zobrist is a former Major League Baseball player who played for several teams but retired from the Cubs in 2020.  And within an interview with Collin Hansel from The Gospel Coalition, Collin said at one point, “You played well, you got promoted fairly quickly, but baseball is fundamentally a failure game.”  Zobrist then responded by saying this.  He said, “It’s funny.  I listen to those interviews after people win the Super Bowl or World Series… and sometimes I’m like, we’re missing it.  If we are believers and we’re telling people, look, you work hard and do it as unto the Lord he’s going to bless you and you’re going to be successful, that’s not what this life is about…  I hear people use Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” as their pump-up verse that’s gonna allow them to do things on the field they’ve never done before… When you really look at that passage, the Apostle Paul is saying, ‘I can even do jail, and misery, and weakness, through Christ who strengthens me.’ For me, I have realized the truth, when I fail I need to give God glory just as much as when I succeed.  If through that people can see that my hope is not in success or failure, it’s in him, then so be it.  Let that be for God’s glory.”

Do you hear what he’s saying?  He’s saying that baseball is a lot like life.  It’s set up for failure.  Baseball is fundamentally a failure game.  The average baseball team in the Majors wins about 50% of the time.  The best hitters in the world bat at 300 or 400 meaning that they don’t hit the ball 6 or 7 out of every 10 times at bat.  And the best pitchers can pitch a perfect game into the 9th inning only to watch a batter hit a home run to lose 1-0.  Baseball is not fair.  And neither is life.  Life is not fair.  But fortunately neither is the Gospel.  And neither is grace.

And Ben Zobrist is right.  Because what this world needs to hear is not that following Jesus will enable them to be successful or to have a perfect life but that when we follow Jesus even our failures can be used for God’s glory.  Because they will teach people about His amazing grace.

The bottom line this morning is this…

Share the good news that even when we fail we win because of God’s grace.

Because of God’s amazing grace!

[Prayer:  For God to help us to celebrate His grace given in Jesus.]

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