Please see the Sermon Discussion Questions listed below. We highly encourage you to listen, think, and talk about the sermon. These are questions you can reflect on by yourself, with your family, or with your small group.

1. In our passage this week the apostles, after much debate, determined a unified course of action on how to address the issue of whether gentile converts needed to be circumcised in order to be saved. Why do you think it is so important to have multiple leaders (a plurality of elders) guiding and leading the church, especially when it comes to matters pertaining to the gospel and God’s truth?

2. Peter, Paul, Baranabas and James defended the gospel to the council at Jerusalem, speaking about what God had done and what He said. Why is it so important for the church to be led by objective truth rather than subjective feelings (a pastor’s “passion project”) or pragmatism (ie. doing whatever “works” such as dividing the church into Jews and Gentiles)?  How can we ensure our church does not move in the direction of subjective feelings or pragmatism?

3. Acts 20:29 speaks of fierce wolves who will not spare the flock and in Matthew 7:15 Jesus warns of those who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. How can you identify a wolf in sheep’s clothes?  How should the church deal with such people? 

4. In Acts 15, the apostles chose not to lay on the gentile Christians a greater burden than these requirements: that they abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality.  Why do you think these requirements were highlighted? (See 1 Corinthians 8:4-13 and 6:18-20)

5. Is the Christian life hard? Is it burdensome? What do you think Jesus meant in Matthew 11:28-29 when he said His yoke is easy, and His burden is light?

6. When the gentile Christians received the letter from the council in Jerusalem, why do you think they rejoiced and were encouraged?  How would your walk with Christ change if you had to obey the Mosaic law?  Why does the gospel lead to such great joy, even in a world filled with trials and sorrows?