GROW PLAN
Oct. 6-12, 2025
Day One
False Gospel
This is where we first see the Judaizers, a group that would continue to cause problems for Paul and the early churches. They started with some believers who still identified with the Pharisees. It may be that they had invested so much in following the dictates of the Law and the oral code of the Pharisees that they couldn’t give it up, even when they had been saved by Jesus. These people had heard and maybe seen that Gentiles were being saved by Christ and new churches were being formed in Gentile areas. They demanded that these Gentile Christians had to be circumcised and had to obey the Law of Moses. In other words, they said that in order to follow Jesus, Gentiles had to live like the Jewish people. These people valued their Jewish heritage and traditions, their status as being God’s chosen people. They didn’t believe that Gentiles could believe, worship and follow God without joining their people, their culture and their heritage. This was a false gospel. The true Gospel is that we are saved through grace by Jesus. It’s just Jesus, nothing else. We don’t have to become Jewish to follow Him. We don’t have to follow anyone else’s rules except His. When we try to add anything to the Gospel, it becomes our gospel not the Gospel of Christ. And that makes it a false gospel. A false gospel will lead us to a false god, not Jesus. These Pharisees insisted that people follow Jesus in their way, and they wanted that way forced on the new Christians.
Are you committed to following Jesus and only Jesus? Pray that the Lord would focus your life on Him.
Day Two
No Distinction
The church debated the question for quite a while before Peter rose to speak. False gospels can be attractive. They can hit us in our preconceived ideas and our prejudices, confirming our human attitudes. This false gospel made sense to some, but the debate ended when Peter presented the church with divine evidence. He pointed out how God had called him to share the Gospel with Gentiles. He said that God showed how He accepted the Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit just as He had to Jewish Christians. Peter said that God made no distinction between how He treated the Gentiles and the Jews who came to Jesus. If God didn’t make a distinction, then the Church certainly couldn’t. And Peter went further asking the Judaizers why they would want to put the yoke (the burden) of the Law on Gentiles when the Jewish people hadn’t been able to bear it. Peter points out that the Law had been unable to save them or their ancestors. Salvation didn’t come through the Law. But salvation had come “through the grace of our Lord Jesus.” Peter told the Church that Christians no longer relate to God through the Law, through the rules, sacrifices and ceremonies outlined in the Old Testament. We now relate to God through the relationship that Jesus establishes between us and God. Perhaps Peter remembered when Jesus said that His yoke is easy and His burden light. That’s because our salvation depends on the work Jesus did, not our work on obeying the Law.
Be careful that you are seeking to convert people to Jesus, not Jesus + anything else. Sometimes beliefs and opinions we have don't come from the Lord. And mixing those strong opinions with our faith can do great harm to ourselves and to others.
Day Three
Basis of Faith
Peter spoke about his experience with the Lord saving Gentiles. Then Paul and Barnabas told the church in Jerusalem about what they had seen the Lord do during their missionary trip. They saw the Lord perform signs and miracles among the Gentiles, further showing His stamp of approval on His relationship with Gentile Christians. Finally, James, the half-brother of Jesus and leader of the church in Jerusalem, spoke up. He reinforced the idea that God had shown His concern by choosing a people for Himself from the Gentiles. Then he pointed out that prophecy in Amos said this would happen. It is important to realize that Judaism was built not on philosophy or the ideas of men. It was based on God’s actions and words. It was based on the covenant that the Lord had formed with His people and His actions to free them from slavery, give them the Promised Land and make them His people. Now, James is noting that God has acted to make the Gentiles His people. Like Judaism, Christianity is based on the actions and words of God, not man’s ideas. The Lord acted to save us from our sin and reconcile us to Him. James urged the church to recognize that God had acted to make the Gentiles His, so they shouldn’t make things harder for the Gentiles by insisting that they adopt Judaism.
Is your faith based on what the Lord has done for you and what the Lord has told you in His Word?
Day Four
Supporting Brothers
The church in Jerusalem responded to the church in Antioch and the other Greek-culture churches. They sent a letter, but they also sent a personal delegation of two Jerusalem church leaders. The personal attention from church leaders added to the sense of importance with which the church dealt with this controversy. The Jerusalem church addressed the Antioch church as brothers. That was an important statement at the start. The Christians in Antioch were not potential converts or a mission field; they were brothers in Christ. The letter also acknowledged the problem that had been created. Some people, who were not sent by the apostles, had gone to Antioch and other Greek churches and troubled them. The letter then stated the apostles’ and Jerusalem church’s response. The Gentile Christians did not have to become Jewish. They did not have to obey the Old Testament law and adopt a Jewish lifestyle. But they should avoid some things that were common in Gentile culture that would hurt them spiritually, like sexual immorality. They should also avoid some things that would strain the unity between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians — eating animals sacrificed to idols and strangled animals. The church backed up this message by sending Paul and Barnabas back to Antioch accompanied by two church leaders who could tell them about the Jerusalem church’s intentions.
The church changed its attitudes to adapt to what the Lord was showing them through what He was doing. They were willing to scrap their previous attitudes and biases to conform with God’s will. How might the Lord be leading you to change your attitudes?
Day Five
Unity in Diversity
It went well in Antioch. The church there received the delegates from Jerusalem and the message from the Jewish church in the spirit in which it was intended. They were encouraged, not just by the message that the apostles and the church had sent, but by the care and respect that the church in Jerusalem had shown toward them. Up until this point, the Church had been considered a new sect of Judaism. It was treated this way by the Jewish authorities and by Rome. But at this point, it became more than a Jewish sect. It became a multicultural, multiracial people of God, and it was moving forward across the known world, bringing reconciliation with God, forgiveness of sins and eternal life to everyone without regard for race, culture or nationality. The Church will always have that nature, bridging every divide that man creates to unite people in Christ.
Thank the Lord for what He has done and ask Him to help you love all your brothers and sisters in Christ.
Day Six
Disagreement
Paul and Barnabas were ready to go out and visit the churches they had helped found, but they disagreed about John. Barnabas, John’s cousin, wanted to take him along on the trip, but Paul didn’t want to bring someone who had abandoned them on an earlier trip. This was not a doctrinal difference, it was a personal difference, and that can be harder to solve. Two men, who were both committed to the Lord, full of the Spirit, and willing to sacrifice their lives to spread the Gospel, could not agree on this matter. They probably held differing motives. Paul valued persistence and commitment to the trip and the mission, while Barnabas valued equipping others and helping them to grow. Their conflict shows that we can have personal disagreements. And when we do, it doesn’t mean that the person who disagrees with us isn’t really a brother in Christ. And our effectiveness for Christ does not reside in proving ourselves right in these personal conflicts. As Paul and Barnabas did, sometimes we just have to agree to disagree and change our actions accordingly. These two ended up splitting up and taking different journeys. Both were successful. Paul and Silas strengthened the churches. Barnabas helped John (Mark) become a church leader who wrote the Gospel of Mark.
How do you handle personal disagreements with brothers and sisters in Christ? Are you more concerned with preserving church unity or proving you’re right?