Apostolic Faith Daybreak Devotional
Daybreak: Acts 15:1-35
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(soft music) Acts 15, one through 35. Devotional focus verse. But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees, which believed saying that it was needful to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses. And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter. Acts 15, five and six. A fork in the road is a metaphor or a deciding moment in life or history when a major choice of options is required. In researching the origin of that phrase, I discovered that folk wisdom suggests the metaphor comes from an ancient Russian tale. In it, a knight on horseback approached a point where the road split. He saw an inscription, "If you ride to the left, you will lose your horse. If you ride to the right, you will lose your head." Perhaps that was not a difficult decision to make, but it certainly was a potentially life-altering one. The American poet Robert Frost mused upon this idea in his well-known poem, "The Road Not Taken." It begins, two roads diverged in a yellow wood and concludes with the author stating that his choice has made all the difference. That is a life principle, isn't it? Decisions have consequences. At times, one small turning point determines the outcome. We find an example of a major fork in the road of Christian history in today's text. The leaders of the early church face the question of whether Gentile believers had to be obedient to the requirements of the Mosaic law, specifically the right of circumcision in order to be saved. Paul and his followers insisted that a person was justified by faith alone. While most of the converted Pharisees asserted God would not set aside the law in receiving a Gentile believer. While the Pharisees could not deny that Gentiles had been genuinely converted through the preaching of Peter, they found it difficult to relinquish their long-held tradition of gaining favor with God through the keeping of the law.
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