The Power of the Lord
Notes
Transcript
This morning, I want you to be made aware of the grace of God; how he has showered you with love and blessing and, most of all, grace. There is one, very tangible way God is showing you grace this morning: the sermon I had planned to preach turned into two sermons and instead of preaching for 50 minutes, I’m only going to preach for 25.
This is God’s grace shown to you. As the Psalmist says: Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!
If you have your Bibles (and I hope you do) please turn with me to Acts 15-16. If you’re able and willing, please stand with me for the reading of God’s Holy Word. Acts 15, beginning with verse 36:
36 Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.” 37 Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, 38 but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. 39 They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, 40 but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the believers to the grace of the Lord. 41 He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.
1 Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer but whose father was a Greek. 2 The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. 3 Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. 4 As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. 5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.
6 Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. 7 When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. 8 So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. 9 During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 10 After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.
May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!
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These verses mark the beginning of Paul’s second missionary journey (Acts 15-18). It starts with conflict; the Bible is unflinchingly honest in this way. It doesn’t edit the ugly bits. It’s not polished and photoshopped for easier consumption. It’s real. It’s honest. It paints a realistic picture. This is what happened. It’s recorded. Read it.
We need the full story, warts and all. We need to see that the early church and her members and missionaries aren’t perfect. Not even close. The early church isn’t perfect, and neither is this local church. Your pastor and elders aren’t perfect, but then again neither were Paul and Barnabas, Peter or James, or any of the rest.
The church is woefully imperfect and will be until Jesus returns and sets the world at rights. There is One who is perfect—the Triune God: Father, Son, Spirit. The sooner we remember that, the better off we’ll be.
As we look here at Acts 15-16, we see division and disagreement; ministry partnerships broken and begun; conflict and cooperation; doors shut and opportunities opened.
Through all of this
The Lord Leads His People
The Lord Leads His People
This is our great comfort—that the Lord leads His people. If we didn’t have this truth on which to hang our hats, we’d be pretty bummed out by the verses we just read.
We take no satisfaction from the fact that Paul and Barnabas have such a sharp disagreement that they parted company.
No one likes to see this, especially not between two incredible Christian leaders like Paul and Barnabas. Paul—the great missionary and evangelist, author of all those letters in the NT—and Barnabas, the great encourager and friend? This is really sad news. This does not make for pleasant reading.
And it’s certainly not prescriptive. Don’t read this and think, “Well, if I don’t like that person or that pastor, I can part company and everything will be just fine. Just look at Paul and Barnabas!”
This does not excuse or justify sharp disagreements among us today. Not all Christian arguments are justified; in fact, few are. This text does not give us a license to complain or murmur or quarrel with our brothers and sisters in Christ. These are sinful behaviors:
10 And do not grumble, as some of them did—and were killed by the destroying angel.
14 Do everything without grumbling or arguing,
In a way, it’s good this account is here for us, because many people dream of the perfect church, the perfect ministry. We idealize and idolize a scenario that will never be.
Many people bounce from church to church, hoping to find something that doesn’t exist. Truth is: we will all encounter relational challenges as we seek to do God’s work, so we need to deal humbly and graciously with one another.
This situation between Paul and Barnabas is not a model to follow. It happened, but we don’t celebrate it or copy it.
Our comfort and our hope is that the Lord will lead His people where He wants them, using even unpleasant and unfortunate scenarios to accomplish His purposes, working all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.
We understand the reality of the situation. There are no super-Christians, not even the greatest missionary of all time is free of contention. There’s no perfect ministry. There are, even in Paul’s life, relational challenges. Paul is human. Barnabas is human. They are mere men, not angels.
Barnabas wants to take his cousin, John Mark. Paul doesn’t want to take John Mark because of what happened on their last journey. John Mark left them and returned to Jerusalem. We don’t know why exactly, but there was apparently some conflict. Luke records it as desertion, a discontinuation of the work.
So Paul and Barnabas part company. Neither Paul or Barnabas is fully in the right, nor is either fully wrong. They are both to blame in some form or another.
We don’t get to decide who was right and who was wrong. We just know there’s conflict, a sharp disagreement, and they parted company.
And this we know: both Paul and Barnabas were wounded by this split. Barnabas lost the companionship of the most powerful missionary in history and Paul lost the friendship of a man to whom he was greatly indebted.
Do you think this is an issue for the Lord? Do you think this took God by surprise? Was God left wringing His hands, wondering what He was going to do now that Paul and Barnabas had split?
No, No! The Lord leads His people, even through difficulty. Through the pain and conflict, the gospel marches on.
F.F. Bruce puts it like this: “The present disagreement was overruled for good: instead of one missionary or pastoral expedition, there were two. Barnabas took Mark and went back to Cyprus to continue the evangelization there; Paul visited the young churches of Anatolia.”
God is at work throughout the conflict and division. Hear that! God is at work (He’s always working. “God is doing 10,000 things in your life at once and you might be aware of 3 of them”).
God uses this division for greater missionary effectiveness. Paul and Silas take the northern route; Barnabas and Mark sweep south.
[MAP]
As the Lord led, Paul returned to some of the towns he had ministered to on his first missionary journey.
Because of Paul’s earlier ministry, there were a number of Christians in each place. It’s likely that this disciple named Timothy as well as his mother and grandmother had been led to Christ during Paul’s first visit in Lystra.
Timothy’s father was Greek and his mom was Jewish. By Jewish law, the child of a Gentile father and Jewish mother was considered Jewish.
For Timothy to join Paul on his mission, Timothy needed to be circumcised—not to be saved (that’s by faith through grace), but for greater usefulness in Jewish places.
People in the area knew Timothy and knew his family background. For Paul to be able to say, “He’s been circumcised” would be immensely helpful, especially in the synagogues and in their ministry to the Jewish population.
We never want to put a stumbling block in the way of the gospel, so Timothy undergoes painful surgery (the kind of surgery they perform when you’re a baby so you have no memory of it). Timothy is circumcised for the sake of gospel witness and ministry.
So Paul and Silas and Timothy travel from town to town, preaching Jesus, preaching grace, conveying the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem.
The result of this is seen in verse 5—a status update on the early church growing spiritually and numerically.
5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.
Paul & Company travel throughout the region. And then we read this odd happening. They are kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia.
We don’t know how the Holy Spirit communicated with them exactly—a vision, an uneasiness, lack of peace; maybe sickness or other obstacles. We don’t know. All we know is they were blocked from going.
God may prevent us from doing certain things and going certain places in any manner of ways. It happened, and it happens (if we have eyes to see and ears to hear).
A lot of people say in reference to this: “God closed the door for them.”
Any time someone talks about a closed door, I think, “Can’t you just open the door back up? That’s how doors work!”
This, for Paul and his companions, isn’t a closed door. It’s a brick wall, a mile wide and fifty stories tall. It’s a no-go. God is hindering them, keeping them from going to Asia and Bithynia. God’s will is for them to head elsewhere.
You see, God always has something better planned for us than we would plan for ourselves.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say the single-most common question anyone asks a pastor has to do with God’s will for their life. I hear it often. I’ve asked it myself, many times and in many instances.
In very general terms, the answer for what God’s will is for your life is: to make you more and more like Jesus. To conform you to the image of the Lord. God’s will is that you would love God and enjoy Him forever. That is God’s general will for your life.
When it comes to specifics, it takes a while to learn what God is doing and where He’s leading.
We can convince ourselves that the Lord is leading us in a certain direction when He’s not.
We will learn—through time in the Bible and time with other believers—to recognize providential leading and hindrances: God’s hand guiding and directing us, preventing us and keeping us, leading us for His glory and our good.
This is why we need the church. This is why we need discipleship.
As church leadership, we’ve been seeking the Lord’s direction for us as a church body. We have been praying for God to guide us, and I’d ask that you do the same.
We don’t want to be mere spectators. We want to do more than one hour of worship on Sunday. We want to follow hard after God and know Him more and more.
We want for spectators to become disciples, and for disciples to become disciple-makers. Our prayer is for RHCC to be full of disciples who make more disciples.
Coming soon, there will be opportunities for you—members and attenders—to dive-in, get more connected; more opportunities for you to grow in your knowledge of God and relationship to Him.
Start praying, now.
Start thinking about what time you’re going to set aside to deepen your walk with Him.
Nothing—and I mean NOTHING—matters more than your relationship with the Lord. He must be first.
Paul and Silas and Timothy understand God is leading them, even when it’s not where they would go themselves.
We must learn to trust God’s leading and know—without a doubt—His way is best.
And here’s the beautiful thing about Paul and his buddies: they seem to trust and not fight against the Lord’s leading.
It sure reads like Paul and Silas had decided to go to Asia, and yet, at the prompting of the Spirit, they head on. They change course. And then, the Spirit of Jesus doesn’t allow them to enter Bithynia.
So, onward they go, as the Lord leads them.
Paul has a vision of a man begging for help—“Come to Macedonia and help us!”—shares it with Silas and Timothy (and Luke who has joined the team and is writing; hence, the “we” statements), and they all agree that God was leading them to take the gospel to the Macedonians.
And so, all four men—Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Dr. Luke—set out to cross the Aegean to engage people in Macedonia (to us, this is present-day Europe). The Lord leads them to take the Good News to people who need to hear about Jesus.
There’s much detail we don’t know in these verses. Several things are left unclear for us. We know little about the geography, about exactly how the “doors” were closed, about the nature of the vision Paul had.
These verses are a little unclear at points, and these verses would be no one’s favorite verses in Acts—conflict and circumcision and closed doors would make for the worst 3-point sermon, albeit with alliterated points.
For all we don’t know and don’t like about these verses, we know this and this is clear: the Lord is leading His people (these four missionaries), and powerfully.
The Triune God (Holy Spirit in verse 6, Spirit of Jesus in verse 7, God the Father in verse 10) is leading them.
Like these missionaries, we must trust the Lord will lead us. When we are ready to go and when we are directionless, God will lead us—restraining us at times, prompting us at others. Sometimes God will prevent us from doing and going; other times, with a swift kick to the seat of the pants, He will push us out of the nest ever so lovingly and forcefully.
The Lord Himself leads us and guides us. His leading is personal, at times being clarified as we gather with our brothers and sisters and study His Word together, seeking His will alongside other godly Christians.
Paul and Silas and Timothy were crystal clear on God’s will for them: they were to go and share the gospel. They didn’t know when and where exactly, but they went, depending upon the Triune God to lead them.
As missionary David Livingstone said: “Without Christ, not one step. With Him, anywhere!”
The “where” matters very little when you realize that God is with us, leading us along.
Paul and his team have had what would appear to most to be a haphazard journey—head toward this region…Nope…go to this town…Nope…over here? Not so much. “Come to Macedonia!” Okay...
They’ve seemingly wandered about, but they are about to enjoy some unforgettable days of ministering in Philippi.
There, in Philippi (as we’ll see next week), they endured different kinds of trials, but did so with the confidence that they were in the right place—just exactly where the Lord wanted them, precisely where He led them.
We are separated by many years and several thousand miles from the events of these verses. Paul and Silas and Timothy and Luke are long gone to be with the Lord. We are not in their situation. But we serve the very same God. The Holy Spirit is still leading and guiding. Jesus, who promised to be with us to the very end of the age, is with us.
It’s a different time and different circumstances, but the very same God. He is present and He is powerful and He will lead His people.
The Lord Leads His People
The Lord Leads His People
A Scottish churchman wrote these words, celebrating and seeking the Lord’s leading. Would these words be our prayer:
Thy way, not mine, O Lord,
however dark it be;
lead me by thine own hand,
choose out the path for me.
Smooth let it be or rough,
it will be still the best;
winding or straight, it leads
right onward to thy rest.
I dare not choose my lot;
I would not if I might:
choose thou for me, my God,
so shall I walk aright.
Take thou my cup, and it
with joy or sorrow fill,
as best to thee may seem;
choose thou my good and ill.
Choose thou for me my friends,
my sickness or my health;
choose thou my cares for me,
my poverty or wealth.
Not mine, not mine, the choice
in things or great or small;
be thou my guide, my strength,
my wisdom, and my all.
