Acts 16:6-10
Amen. You can be seated. Please
turn in your copy of God’s word to Acts chapter 16, verses six
through 10. As you’re making your way there,
I believe this is our maybe our second or third Sunday back in
the book of Acts. And there’s always this dilemma
that preachers face. Do I preach little sections and
uncover more or big sections and get through it faster? And
so I’ve been burdened with that lately. I think I’m going to
err on the side of littler sections, but I want to remind us as we
prepare to read where we are. So remember Paul was converted
by the risen Christ on the Damascus road. He spent some time in Arabia
where in some way, shape or form, God filled him up with good things
that he might preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. Uh,
we saw him go on his first missionary journey where, uh, the church
at Antioch in Syria laid hands on him and others prayed for
them. They sent them across, uh, the Mediterranean sea, uh,
to the Island of Cyprus or Crete or Crete, I believe it was. They
then went across to the mainland, um, to Asia minor and they preached
at the churches of Galatia. And then they circled back, sailed
back and landed back in Antioch. They had to go to Jerusalem and
get word from the church there. What do we tell Gentiles? Do
they need to be circumcised or not? So now on their second missionary
journey, they’re leaving Antioch near Israel, near Syria. Again,
they’re leaving. And instead of sailing across
the island and over to the mainland, they’re taking the land route
up the East coast of the Mediterranean sea over West. And they’re going
to make it all the way over to Macedonia. where God, the Holy
Spirit is calling them to serve others. So the little maps in
the back of your Bible can be helpful. Now, if it’s like my
map in the back of my Bible, not helpful, the colors of the
routes are too close. I should write a letter of complaint.
But anyway, look at those maps, you’ll see the routes he took
and it’s always going over, doubling back, going over, doubling back.
So anyway, before we read God’s word, let’s do pray together.
Our Lord, we thank you for telling us in your word, who you are
and what you have done. And in today’s passage, you tell
us what you have done to take the seeds of the gospel to Europe. Lord, so many of us are from
European descent. And when the gospel came to America,
as did our ancestors, it’s trickled down into our minds and our hearts. And so we can’t help but love
you and praise you when we read a passage like today, to think
of how the gospel came to our ancestors. We were not left without
witness of who you are and what you’ve done. So help us now as
we read your word to stand in awe of what it is, the very word
of God, but to stand in awe in that you came to us, our people.
You came to us and our ancestors and you saved us. And by your
grace, we’ve received the gospel of the Lord Jesus. So bless us
now by your word and spirit, we pray in Jesus name, amen.
Acts chapter 16, verses six through 10, it says, and they, that’s
Paul, Silas, and Timothy, 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. Amen. The word of the living God. When
I was a kid, our family camped our way places. I remember going
to Sears over at Holly Hill Mall, and we bought an eight-man tent.
We bought a Coleman camp stove. We bought a Coleman lantern.
We bought the tanks of whatever kind of fuel that was you put
in them. We bought sleeping bags. We bought
a giant duffel bag in which we could hang our groceries up in
a tree to keep bears from eating them. Our family did not stay
in a hotel unless someone else was paying for it. Very often,
Dad would get called in the summers to go preach at conferences of
sorts, and they would put us up once we got there. But we
would drive to Michigan and New York, and we camped our way there. Later in life, the girls in the
family vetoed camping. They called it the C word. And
so the boys did the camping. And then we graduated from tent
camping to my grandfather had bought an RV. We would take it to places. That
was back when gas was $0.69 a gallon. You wouldn’t drive one of these
things, these places, these days. But we would prepare for these
summer trips a little differently than we might today. There was
no MapQuest. That’s old now, isn’t it? There
was no such thing as Google Maps. There was no such thing as an
iPhone and the GPSs we might have in our cars. So in order
to plan our trip, we would get out the Atlas at the kitchen
table. And we would, if we were taking the grandparents’ RV,
get the Good Sam Camping Club guide to campgrounds so we knew
where the good ones were, where the clean ones were. And so we
would sit at the table, we would look at our destination, and
we would figure out how we’re going to get there. Where are
we gonna stop? Where are we gonna stay? Is this
a place where we might see other things along the way? We would
camp our way to these destinations. I will tell you, I’ve had a conversion.
I prefer to Hampton Inn my way, places. It’s a little more comfortable. But you get on these trips and
sometimes there are detours. Sometimes there are stops, there
are road closings, there’s engine trouble, there’s a medical emergency,
you’re needed back home, or you run out of funds for travel. And so all sorts of roadblocks
can come our way. And that’s what happens in our
passage today in the life of Paul and Silas and Timothy. And before we press on into the
passage, I want you to lay your eyes on Verse 10, it says, when
Paul had seen the vision immediately, we sought to go into Macedonia.
I don’t know if you connect to the change in pronouns. If you
look back up at verse six, it says, and they went through the
region of Phrygia. I want to point out something
to you before we press into this story and the transition of the
pronoun they to we, who is writing the book of Acts? It’s Luke. He wrote Luke and Acts to Theophilus. And in this place, we pick up
another servant of God, and this is Luke. And he begins to narrate,
we sought to go into Macedonian, concluding God has called us
to preach. So you’ll notice a little change
in the perspective of the story. Now, as we make our way through
this passage and as we look at the divine guidance that God
gives to his servants who are on these missionary journeys,
I want us to take notice of several divine provisions of God. There’s a divine calling. There’s
a divine errand. There’s a divine message and
then there’s a divine guidance. And I want us to look at each
of these four things and see how God is moving his apostles,
his ministers to Jew and Gentile across the globe and into Europe. First, let’s think of God’s divine
calling of these men. Our passage begins with Paul
and Silas and Timothy. It will end with the addition
of Luke. the physician. But there was a divine calling
on these three men. Paul and Silas and Timothy were
called by God to go into the world and preach the gospel.
One of the things we’ll notice as we make our way through this
passage is that they skip over what’s called Asia. Now, that’s
not Asia, our continent. You know, you have to learn our
seven continents. when you’re in grade school. This is Asia,
a region that is somewhere north of the Mediterranean Sea. But
they skip over Asia, and if you look on your map of the apostles’
missionary journeys, you’ll see it includes some really important
cities where there were some named letters or books of the
Bible. For example, one, Ephesus. on
this divine errand, this divine journey, they skip over this
area, they’re gonna come back to it. But when they do come
back to it, they minister there, Paul writes a letter to the Ephesians,
and in this letter to the Ephesians, where Timothy is going to be
the pastor for a time, he says to the Ephesian church that the
risen Christ has given to his church apostles, prophets, and
evangelists. And so as we think about the
divine calling of Paul and Silas and Timothy, and how later when
they minister among the Ephesian church, they echo in the letter
to the Ephesians, they echo in that letter that we now have,
Jesus’ mission of this divine calling these men are now on.
The risen and exalted Christ raised up apostles. He raised up prophets and he
raised up evangelists that they might go from Jerusalem through
Judea, through Samaria and to the ends of the earth. They’re
going to end up all the way over on the continent of Europe. By the end of our passage, there
is this divine calling. These men have been set apart
by the church at Antioch. and sent to do mission work.
They have been called by God through the church at Antioch,
where hands were laid on them to go across the sea, to go across
the lands and to preach and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. That
is their divine calling. Now I want to say one more thing
about their divine calling, not just their task, their calling
for what their hands are to do, but these were men who were converted.
You don’t have a divine calling unless you have a divine conversion.
And these men, we think of Saul’s conversion on the Damascus road.
We read of Timothy’s testimony when Paul writes to him in second
Timothy, these men were brought to faith in Jesus, nurtured in
faith by their family, by the scripture and by God himself. And now they’re on this divine
journey, this divine errand. And we’ll think of that in just
a moment. But I want to say one thing to each of us, to all of
us, to each of us as individuals, to all of us collectively as
a church. If God has converted you to faith
in Jesus Christ, and if he has done it, he has a place for you
to serve, to serve within the body of Christ. But also as you
go into the world week by week, into your neighborhood, your
marketplace, your sphere of influence, You may think maybe particularly
some of you who are a little bit older, God has done using
me. No, you, you, you have a calling.
You can pray. Uh, you, you go to the doctor’s
office, you can speak to the nurse, you can speak to the doctor,
you can show them what faith looks like in old age. Faith
looks like when you’re sick, there are all kinds of things
you can show. Each of us has a conversion and a calling, and
we all have these divine errands that God has sent us on. That’s
the second thing I want us to see after the divine calling
of Paul and Silas and Timothy is the divine Aaron that they
are on. I think of that, um, the famous
story of Vince Lombardi, the football coach, uh, at the Green
Bay Packers every summer, you know, he took the group of professional
athletes and he held up a football, gentlemen, this is a football.
And he went through the basics, the X’s and O’s of the game. And after several failing seasons,
with that speech and that simple reminder of what football is,
they were the most effective team for several seasons, winning
championships and doing quite well. And I think from time to
time is we Christians, how do I say this kindly and
something I can say in church, we tacky up the church. We fill
it so full of stuff that Jesus didn’t command. And we think
it’s powerful. We think it’s effective. And
to say it theologically, we have lost confidence in the word and
in the sacraments, and we’ve lost confidence in prayer and
in fellowship and in worship. And so we dream up stuff that
we think will help bring people to Jesus Christ. And it can happen
in the field of missions as well. We can clutter up our church
activities, our missions activities, with things that we call church,
things we call missions. And I think sometimes we need
a football speech, or in this case, we need a, this is a missionary
journey speech. And it’s good to be reminded
of Acts chapter one and two, where the risen and exalted Christ
said to his gathered apostles in the upper room, all authority
in heaven and on earth has been given to me. And I therefore
now bestow it on you. Go therefore into all the world,
preaching the gospel, baptizing and making disciples. It’s pretty
simple, isn’t it? Three things, go and as you go,
make disciples, baptize, teach them all that I have commanded
you. And so these men are on this
divine errand of the risen and exalted Lord. They’re going across
the lands, across the seas to baptize, to make disciples and
to teach all that Christ has commanded. Preach the gospel,
that’s it. That’s the divine errand. That’s
the divine errand of the church. That’s the divine errand of missionaries.
And in some sense, that’s the divine errand of each of us as
we are sent out into the world every week. Preach the gospel. Tell a dark and dying world,
a crooked and depraved generation, that there is a savior who can
rescue you from your sins and the darkness. And so as we think
of the divine calling of these men, the divine errand they’re
on, the missionary journey, we should also think of their divine
message. Their divine message is nothing
other than the scripture. It’s the gospel, it’s the message
of hope and salvation. This past week, our ladies Bible
study that meets on Wednesday mornings, studied chapter two
of the confession of faith, I’m sorry, chapter one of the confession
of faith, which talks about God’s holy word. And we asked ourselves
the question, why does the confession of faith start with the Bible
and not God? Shouldn’t it start with God who
is the author of the Bible? And the answer is it starts with
the Bible because we cannot properly know God if we don’t have an
understanding of the scriptures. And so the chapter of our confession
of faith speaks of the authority of the scriptures. the purpose
of the scriptures, what they can do, what they will do, what
their divine errand accomplishes. And then it can, in chapter two,
tell us about who God is and what God has done. And so the
divine message of the scripture, the divine message of the scripture
is the good news that God who made the world and everything
in it. That God who is holy and cannot overlook sin has sent
his son into the world to pay for sins. Just a little ago,
we sang, Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder. We’re all familiar
with John Newton. He wrote Amazing Grace. Well,
he also wrote that hymn that we sang. And it says something
about grace and justice meeting at the cross. And that’s the
message of the gospel. God must, because he is a God
of justice, he must see sins paid for, but he’s also a God
of grace. And he laid those sins, our sins on Jesus at the cross. And so the divine message of
salvation is the good news that is the gospel. And when we think
of preaching the word, when we think of telling the word, when
we think of church and preaching or you and evangelism or missionaries
and gospel, gospel work in faraway places, we have to think of how
the Bible does two things. And I think of this every Sunday.
Sometimes it comes out in the prayer before we read the Bible.
The Bible does two things. It convinces and converts sinners. and it comforts and builds up
saints. And so every time we read the
Bible, think about how that passage convinced and converted you to
be a Christian, right? But also think about how it comforts
and builds you up in your faith. Think about how preaching convinces
and converts sinners, it comforts and builds up Christians. Think
about when you evangelize or when you’re out and about in
the doctor’s office. If a person sitting next to you says they’re
a Christian, use the scripture to comfort and build them up.
If they’re not a Christian, use it to convince and convert them
to faith in Jesus Christ. That’s the divine message that
these men are preaching on their divine errand, their missionary
journey, because God has divinely called them, not only through
their conversion, but through their call to gospel ministry.
And so this divine message must do its work. It must go among
the churches of these missionary journeys. Understand they’re
circling back. They’re going back through the
churches where they had been before. They’re comforting and
building them up. Maybe there’s new faces or those
in the church who aren’t yet converted. They’re convincing
and converting them to salvation through faith in Jesus. They’re
fixing what’s broken. You know, Paul wrote 13 letters
to the churches. Well, he wrote 10 to the churches.
Three were to Timothy and Titus. Well, actually four because Philemon
got one too. So we got nine, nine, you know, the Corinthians
got some letters, the Ephesians got some letters, the Philippians,
the Colossians, on and on. And what was he doing when he
wrote those letters? He was comforting and building
up the saints, but he was correcting heresy and he was correcting
things that if they continued would produce rot. and the foundation
of the church and their churches would collapse. Why does he go
back and visit? Because he wants to strengthen
them. He wants to shore them up. He wants the divine message
to be of great use. And so one of the things we ought
to pray for as we think of our church, our preaching, our evangelism
and the missionaries we support. We ought to pray that the divine
message does its work. It comforts and builds up saints.
It convinces and converts sinners to salvation through faith in
Jesus Christ. The last section we want to think
of in this passage. is really the big theme of the
passage and it’s divine guidance. It’s divine guidance. These men
who are fulfilling their divine calling, they’re on their divine
errand, they are giving the divine message of the gospel need God’s
guidance and God provides it to them. They’re on this missionary
journey to circle back through the churches of Galatia and preach
through them and strengthen them to comfort and build them up
in their most holy faith. And remember, there has been
a separation. Remember, it was gonna be Paul and Barnabas and
John Mark and Silas all going together from Antioch. Well,
Paul and Barnabas, remember, got into it. Paul says, I’m not
taking John Mark. He deserted us on the first journey.
For whatever reason, he deserted them. Paul gets it in his head,
gets it in his heart. Not going to go with him again.
Now, remember, if you fast forward in the Bible, Paul wants John
Mark to come be with him. He’s of great use. There’s some
reconciliation. That’s wonderful. But what is
divine guidance do here? It sends Silas and Paul off one
way and Barnabas and John Mark back to the island of Crete.
We never hear of Barnabas ever again. John Mark, we do. We hear
of him because Paul wants him, but also he writes the gospel
of Mark. But on this journey here, Paul
and Silas, and they pick up Timothy along the way, go about their
ministry. And I can’t help but think, maybe
it crosses your mind, of the divine goddess. God, why did
you separate us? Why did Barnabas and I have to
get into it? And maybe Barnabas, why did Paul
and I have to get into it? We were so good together. That
first missionary journey was wonderful. It was great. And
you know, sometimes we get ourselves into these life situations. Maybe it’s not a missionary journey.
Maybe it’s not church work. But for you, and here it is,
the beginning of a new year, it’s 2023. And you say, here’s
the year in front of me. I’m going to go these places.
I’m going to do these things. This is my financial picture.
This is my business picture. This is my, we’re all into diets
and routines now. This is the way it’s going to
be. And your heart says no. or your
body gives out, or there’s a detour along the way, one of your loved
ones gets sick, or the financial markets crash and you’ve got
to delay five years till you can retire, or travel is shut
down and so you won’t be going here or there. You see what I’m
saying is sometimes in life, we have the best laid plans.
We’ve sat at the table, we’ve gotten out our Atlas, And we’ve
said, we will go here. We will go there. We will do
this and we will do that. That’s what happened with the
apostle Paul. And all of a sudden he split with his most trusted
companion Barnabas. But as he thinks one night, this
is just some sanctified thinking here. Don’t you know, he thanks
the Lord, Lord, if Barnabas and I had not separated. And if I
was stuck on the Island of Crete, I never would have met Timothy.
I never would have picked up Luke as will happen at the end
of our passage. Brothers and sisters, the encouragement
here, the thing we need to hear and know and learn and believe
and watch for is the providence of God, the divine guidance of
God. We make the best well-laid plans
and we tie them up with a bow and we say, this is the way it’s
going to be. I mean, we take our Christmas
card picture in January and we go ahead and say, this is what
it’s gonna look like in December when I mail it. We like to lay
it out, don’t we? And we like to tell God it’d
be great if he allowed it. But what does he do for our growth
and grace? What does he do for our sanctification? What does
he do for his own ends, his own glory? Sometimes he changes our
plans. Sometimes he throws a wrench
in the mix. Sometimes he shakes our health
or even takes it away from us. Last Sunday night, we studied
the passage in James. We need to learn to say, if the
good Lord is willing, we will do this or we will do that. Paul and his companions receive
divine guidance. And I can tell you, we’ve just
said a thing or two about maybe how this plays out in our personal
lives. We’ve said a thing or two about how this plays out
in Paul’s missionary journeys. It can be the same way in the
church. I remember back in 2019, we had
a congregational get together of some sorts and maybe September
of 19. And we said, we want to, we want to have a five year plan.
And so in 2020, that was year one. Well, what happened in March
of 2020? And one of our goals was to grow. One of our goals
was to reach a certain attendance and membership level. Well, that’s
not gonna happen when there’s three years of COVID. And so
what do we do as elders? We give it to the Lord. We planned,
we prayed, we trusted, but you’re gonna have to do the work. Put
this into my life, my ministry life. I remember being in my
first church, serving as an assistant pastor, and there six, seven,
eight years, and the economy tanked. I don’t want to leave. I like my house. I don’t want
to go. And I remember a lady in the church saying to me, see
it as an adventure. You will meet people that you
never would have met if you stayed put. You will have experiences.
And that’s how we need to see God’s divine guidance. He has
a plan and it is tied up neatly with a bow. Ours never are. And so we trust. The Holy Spirit. We trust the Spirit of Jesus,
our passage tells us. And this Spirit of Jesus said
to Paul, no to Asia, no to the black seaports. Now I want y’all
to think about this for a moment. Y’all eat at the Greek restaurant.
Sometimes they play the beautiful blue seas on the TV and the little
music, the stringed instrument. And you look at all those things
while you’re eating your chicken and pita and you think someday,
This is where Paul was going to get the minister. It was along
the Black Sea, those blue seas. And not that he was wanting,
you know, a seaport ministry. He saw everything as an opportunity.
No, you’re going to you’re going to go across to Macedonia. And
so in a vision of the night. After the spirit of Jesus, after
the Holy Spirit had kept him from going to these places in
a vision of the night, a man says, come over to Macedonia
and help. And our passage says Paul was
persuaded and he concluded, and Luke tells us, as he’s now included
in this, God has called us to preach to the Macedonians. God
has called us to Europe. And as I said earlier in the
prayer before the message, we ought to particularly be thankful.
Most of us are, well, we’re European, right? We came to America, our
families did at some place in time, but the gospel came with
us. Do you trust and divide guidance?
Do you make your plans and say, okay, Lord, if it’s your will,
we’ll do this or that. And I can, I can handle the bumps.
If you bring them, I can handle the engine breakdown, the heart
breakdown, the financial breakdown. I can handle whatever. may not
be in my plans, but as in your plans. I am open, I am willing,
I am submissive, and yes, I will even be content. And even if
I have to see the reasons sometime later in life, Lord, I will trust
you. That’s what Paul had to do, but
brothers and sisters, it brought the gospel seeds into the dirt
of Europe. and we ought to see God’s wonderful
hand and give him praise. Let’s do pray together. Our Lord,
we thank you that in your wisdom, which is infinite, your wisdom,
which is eternal, your wisdom, which is unchangeable, you saw
fit to guide your servants on their divine errand, through
their divine calling, on their divine task, you sought to bring
them to Europe. They had to pass by good ministry,
and it made no sense, but Lord, all things make sense when we
trust you and you show us later, so help us to rest in you and
to rest in your ways. Lord, we fret, we wring our hands,
we tap our foots, and we want it the way we want it now, but
only you have that prerogative, only you have that right, so
help us to submit to your will and your ways. This we ask in
the name of Christ our Savior, amen.