Where He Leads , I Must Go

Acts 16:6–15 ESV

And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. So, setting sail from Troas, we made a direct voyage to Samothrace, and the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city some days. And on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. And after she was baptized, and her household as well, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.” And she prevailed upon us.

What our passage may lack in the number of verses compared to some other weeks, it makes up in the number of cities and provinces or regions mentioned. There’s a lot of movement. On this map, you can hopefully see a red line, towards the middle bottom, running up and down—that was about how far west Paul and Barnabas traveled on the first missionary journey. The black line that you can see runs from the last city we heard last week, which was Lystra, and we’re going to hear how Paul traveled to the northwest about 725 miles to Philippi. On this journey we’ll hear how he went through Galatia, he was kept from going into Asia, they tried to enter Bithynia, and he was told to go to Macedonia. Those are the regions circled in red. There are other cities they came across on the way, most of those are between Asia and Macedonia.

Obviously, the borders back then are much different than they are today. Empires have risen and fallen. But this is an account of how the gospel came to the continent of Europe, and to what is currently Greece. This was a major step in the gospel going to the ends of the earth. As you see that black line of approximate travel going all the way back to where Paul started this journey, he and his colleagues were nearing 1,000 miles away from Antioch.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, a couple years ago I was at a point in my life and my ministry where I really needed a break. I needed some time to get my head back on straight and heal a bit. As some of you have learned, Christie and I lost a daughter back in December of 2017. Her name was Ellie, and she was born with spina bifida. We knew about it from the ultrasounds for about 12 or 13 weeks, and had been told she could be stillborn or would likely die soon after birth. At 34 weeks of pregnancy, Christie gave birth and we had Ellie for 4 hours. In addition to that set of circumstances, there was a lot going on in the churches I was serving, and we needed some rest.

So, we arranged last minute with my parents that we would drop the kids off in Indiana, and Christie and I would go on a short camping trip at Straits State Park on the northside of the Mackinac Bridge in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Even on short notice, we had big plans for all the sightseeing we were going to do. But in the week leading up to that trip, both our kids came down with a stomach bug, and the morning we were preparing to leave Corsica, I came down with it, too. Those aren’t the most pleasant circumstances for travel, but I was set on going on this trip.

We dropped the kids off and continued to Michigan. We stopped by Christie’s parents’ house in Holland, and then kept driving another 5 hours to the campground. I grew up with tents and spent two college summers sleeping on a pad on the ground with no shelter unless it rained; Christie grew up with a motorhome. So, our compromise was a tent and air mattress, but when we got to our site, we discovered we had left the air pump in Indiana. It was also extremely buggy, and into the overnight I continued to not feel well. That week remnants of a tropical depression were spiraling to the north just as we had here this week. The next morning I said, “Enough, let’s go back to Holland.” By that point I was absolutely miserable. I made Christie drive most, if not all, the way back down, the whole 5 or so hours that we had just driven the day before.

Apart from not receiving a call to a church that I thought I was a shoo-in for coming out of seminary, that is the closest I’ve ever felt God telling me to not be somewhere. In our case, it wasn’t that the campground or something about it was bad. It wasn’t that anything tragic ended up happening where we had planned to visit, and God was preserving our lives or safety. It wasn’t that we had inherently wicked plans and God was trying to keep us from those. I believe there is a reason for how that week went. I believe that God knew I needed rest, and I wasn’t going to rest had we followed through on our plans. While I was disappointed that things didn’t go as we had planned, I was also grateful at the end of the week.

At least in my opinion, our Scripture today is one that I want more detail, too. Sometimes we talk about the questions we’d like to ask God when we meet him if we have that ability and opportunity. This is one of those for me. Paul’s and his traveling ministry companions were planning to preach the good news, to evangelize, to build up established churches, or plant new ones in distinct areas. We can all agree that those are good things, great things; they glorify God, they further his kingdom. And yet God, to their plans, said, “No.”

We begin today by asking: what can it mean when God says no? If you like to have an idea of where the message is going, maybe you can guess the second point, which will ask: what can it mean when God says yes? Here we have, not just once, but twice: verse six, they were “kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia,” and, verse seven, “…they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they passed by Mysia...”

There are two sides that it’s important to consider. There are the missionaries and the potential recipients of their message. If most believers went to their pastor or to an elder and said, “I want to go preach or teach or share the gospel in” whatever city or place you’re feeling drawn to—that’s the kind of thing that excites us. I’d ask you to tell me more, I’d pray with you and for you, and I’d probably ask how I could help. It might seem good to both of us. Yet imagine or consider in your attempt to go, you’re certain this is what God wants, but you can’t just go or no matter what you do, there are roadblocks. Most of us would probably be discouraged. Jesus called us to go and make disciples of all nations, near and far, “God, I’m trying to be faithful. Why aren’t you clearing the way and preparing things for me? I just want others to know you.”

Thinking about the people in our passage, Paul had experienced persecution, but there was also a lot of success on the first missionary journey. Silas and Luke had been around long enough to see the growth of the church. Timothy had now seen the church outside of his hometown. All of them were committed to this trip, but this was not likely how any of them envisioned things going. For some reasons, they couldn’t get where they hope to go. What was happening?

James Boice wrote in his commentary, “When God closes doors, it is not because he has nothing for us to do. He does not want us to take a vacation. It is to keep us from getting into a work to which we are not called in order that we might be saved for a work to which we are.” We’ll get to the idea in the second half of that last sentence in a bit, but for now, hear that first part again. For these missionaries this was no for now. This was not no for good or forever. A day would come when Paul would preach in Asia. If he been able to go back and considering where he didn’t make it to, there would be others who would according to God’s will.

Briefly, regarding the potential recipients of the missionaries’ message in these closed places, those who were to respond with faith were not being neglected. No one lost their chance at salvation because God kept Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke away from them at this time. That’s difficult to affirm, and it’s not just back then. We can think of so many people and groups today who haven’t heard the good news, who haven’t received Jesus. While hearing that many have not heard may stir up in us a desire to go and preach, we must trust that God will properly guide us according to his timing if he is using us to minister to them.

There certainly are times when certain individuals are told no because of sins in their lives or ways that they would harm people. There are times when “No” from a government or a particular organization is not the same as God’s no. When it does come from God, though, while it may be discouraging, again, we have to look for where and to what God is still calling us to.

That brings us to our second question, what can it mean when God says yes? God had a specific plan for this group of missionaries. Verse 8, “During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’” Going back to Boice’s quote, the work God had saved them for because he called them to it was to preach the gospel to the Macedonians. God’s plan, as discerned by this group, was for the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ to be proclaimed in a new place. We don’t know the whole travel itinerary, whether they had planned to eventually go that way, but it’s very possible they hadn’t. But having been told no twice, they were ready to go wherever God would send them.

So, they traveled this long distance to Philippi, a prominent city. They took up their call to preach, to minister, not first in a synagogue like they usually did, but at a place assumed for prayer. Thinking about the recipients of the message, these women needed spiritual help. They needed to be nurtured more in the Lord, to grow in the knowledge of what their faith really stood on. When it comes to God saying yes—the people, the recipients here were different from those in Asia, who were different from those in Bithynia, but the message needing to be preached would not change. What God called the missionaries to do was the same wherever they went.

They were preaching that Jesus died to save people from their sins. When we use terms like the gospel or good news, when we talk about Jesus providing salvation, what we as Christians have to offer, what we have to preach, what we’ve been convinced of is that we are all sinners in need of redemption that we cannot provide ourselves. We are dead and destined for death, and there is only one way to life. As we think about all the problems that exist in this world throughout history and through day, even when we find ourselves divided over what we support or who we feel is wrong about certain things—the issues that exist in our world are because of sin. Where there is hatred, where there is fear, where there is racism, where there is rejection of all authority and faith in God and seeking hope beyond this life—the foundation is sin. There is separation between us and God. Humanity, created by God, has turned on him.

When God says yes to redemption to providing all who believe in him a way to be forgiven and reconciled to him, it is an amazing and undeserved gift. Redemption and salvation are works that God does for us and in us, but in a way he so often uses a reversal of what happened at the Fall in the Garden. There, one creature, the snake, told another Eve, and Eve told Adam, the lie that brought sin into the sinless creation. Yet now God has seen fit to call us, creatures, to tell other creatures the truth, the hope, the way to eternal life.  

We come to our final point, which in a way carries on from the second one, what is the proper response to God’s call to faith and to ministry? What an affirmation it would have been, not only that their travel plans went through this time, but also they found people who would listen to them. Things don’t stop at the riverside, but as we read in verses 14 and 15, there was openness in at least one of their hearts “to respond to Paul’s message,” and that by the Lord. Not only did Lydia listen, but “she and the members of her household were baptized.”

I know I referred to Jonah earlier in this series, but consider this a refresher because there is such a stark contrast in the response of those who are called by God and yet those who received their message, God worked in a similar way to draw them to himself. God called Jonah, maybe even more directly than how he led the missionaries in Acts, “‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” Jonah, of course, ran away from the Lord;” he tried to sail away. God’s plan was for him to do this, though. We have the great fish. We have Jonah’s compliance after a change of heart. God gave him the message to preach, the Ninevites repented, and we find in Jonah 3 verse 10, “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.” Yet Jonah was “greatly displeased and…angry…’angry enough to die’” over God’s decisions.

To be clear, when we talk about calling, we might be talking about a call or an opportunity to a particular job or a certain role that requires change. That change might mean a move away from home, from family, from where we’ve become comfortable and enjoyed being. Or it’s a move back to what is familiar, a move from what we felt God previously called us to. There are times where we may find it very easy to say yes to God’s yes or to agree, so to speak, with God’s no to our initial plans. There are also times when we are so determined for our ways against God’s yes or his no that, like Jonah, we find ourselves going through some process of being resistant and mad at God permitting or doing certain things in our lives.

Sometimes it’s not just the personal or individual calling, but God calls a congregation or a ministry to something different, to do something new, or to continue doing something a particular way when there’s a push for change. In so many situations, we think we know best. We think we know what God should do; how he should operate; what we deserve and what others deserve. Part of our calling in service to God is to listen, to listen humbly, to listen in accordance with the truth we know and find in his Word. When we make decisions and it seems like we’re on the right path, we ought also to ask God to guide us and show each step in where he is leading us.

Brothers and sisters, where he leads, I and we and all God’s people must go. Maybe it takes us longer at times to figure things out than it should. Maybe we’ve resisted changes that God has given us a glimpse of in the past. May our hesitancy not turn into ongoing disobedience and may our obedience not be primarily about pride. May our living out the calling God has given us for faith and ministry be about sharing the hope rooted in Jesus Christ alone, the only one who brings hope to a dark world. Amen.