The Church’s Role in God’s Plan

Uh we're in a series of messages we're calling cover to cover.

We've been since January 5th, I believe we've been uh in the Bible.

We're going all the way through.

So we took about 11 weeks and we looked into the Old Testament.

Uh we took some time to talk about how to read the Bible, to look at the literary elements, the historical elements that ultimately lead us to uh better theology.

And so we took some time with that, and then we uh started really in Genesis 1 and 2 and 3, looking in the Garden of Eden, uh looking at ultimately what we can take from that story that it's um uh that God's love for humanity started at the very beginning.

Um, you know, we think about Easter is coming up, you think about the cross, and we think about you think about the cross, you think about God's love.

But God's love did not start at the cross.

God's love started in the garden.

It was fulfilled on the cross, but it started in the garden.

We see it all the way back when God created uh human beings in his image, and he put them in an ecosystem, in a world where they could use their gifts and they could use their abilities and they could have a free will uh to live the lives that God has given them.

And so we talked about it's God's intent for people to live in right relationship with him, right relationship with ourselves, and right relationship with each other and the world around us.

And so that's what was established in the garden.

But of course they have free will, which means you can do whatever you want to do, you can make decisions, and it's only a matter of time.

You have free will, you start making decisions, those decisions clash into each other.

And we see in the the the Adam and Eve story that um, you know, there's they sin, they they they disobey God.

And, you know, it's not like the worst sins you've ever seen.

It wasn't like the you know the epitome of wickedness, uh, but it was disobedience.

They disobeyed something God had told them to do.

And even you see, they were uh confused at one point.

In fact, it says that Eve uh wanted to be more wise, she wanted to be wiser, and so she wanted a good thing, but she went about it the wrong way.

And that's part of just being a human being.

Sometimes you know you're doing wrong, sometimes you don't, but you end up with the collateral damage of your decisions.

And so it's really the meta-narrative of the whole Bible that unfolds in Genesis 1, 2, and 3, which is God create creation, then we have uh fall and flesh, uh, we have redemption, and then we have restoration, which means there's new opportunity that God gives.

And so their decision cost them the garden, but ultimately God opened up a new door, a new opportunity.

They had a family, they moved forward.

And so uh we when we look in Genesis, you see that as humanity expands and grows in number, uh, so does the chaos, and so does the collateral damage of flesh and fall.

And so we looked a few weeks ago at how uh God does what we might call a greenfield project.

Basically, it'd be like this if you had a business and you loved the business and you love the employ the employees, the people that work for you, you care about the people, but the business has become chaotic, it's in disarray.

Uh it's maybe even uh picked up some toxic cultural traits and and you go, you know what, I'm not gonna demolish this business.

I'm not gonna sell this business, I'm gonna keep it, but I want to I want to hit the reset button.

And so instead of destroying it, you take a handful of people and you go, I'm gonna take a hundred people and we're gonna go into a new place and we're gonna we're gonna establish new buildings, new work environment.

I'm gonna say, forget everything you do, we're gonna re-onboard everybody for a year on mission and vision and values and culture and all the important things.

And I don't want you to be, I don't you want you to even talk to the other employees because uh there's a reason this thing's chaotic over here.

So for a season of time, I'm gonna set you apart.

And eventually, once we get the hang of what I'm trying to teach you, and once you really catch the vision and values, I'm gonna send you back into the business because I want the whole business to operate this way.

So that's kind of what God does with Abraham.

He sets them apart.

He says, I'm gonna make a great nation out of you.

I'm gonna bless those who bless you, I'm gonna curse those who curse you.

For a season you'll be set apart, but one day I'm gonna send you back into.

And so he gives them law and gives them land, sets up things like the temple and the tabernacle and the priesthood and the uh kings and priests and everything, um, the prophets, to ultimately lead people in the way that God had intended.

And yet we looked at it over the last number of weeks, and it just sort of wasn't working.

You you would have at times things would go well, and then flesh and fall would take over, and so it's just a lot of missteps.

And yet in the Old Testament, you start to see this prophetic hope.

You have these prophets that are ultimately saying, look, God's not giving up on humans, and eventually uh there will be a new king and a new kingdom, and this kingdom will not pass away.

So God not only makes a covenant with Abraham about the nation, he makes a covenant with Moses and says, I'm gonna make you a kingdom of priests.

He makes a covenant with King David and says, Through your line will come a king and a kingdom that won't pass away.

So they're looking forward to this, and of course, we started looking last week at the gospels, the the Yuan Gileon, the new king in the new kingdom.

That's what gospel means good news, but that was a term in that day that would be described to the, you know, big news, new king, new kingdom is here.

And that's what Jesus, when he starts talking about the kingdom of God, I came to fulfill what God's always intended to do.

Uh, and today what we're gonna do is we're gonna look into the book of Acts.

All right.

Um, okay, Acts was written by Luke.

So you think about Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Luke, the same guy who wrote Luke, wrote the book of Acts.

Luke was not an eyewitness in Acts, he was actually like a documentarian.

He went and he was a physician, he was a uh somebody that would have been uh really good at research, note-taking, accuracy.

Um, he's the most historically accurate of the gospel writers.

Uh, but he went and interviewed people and pulled together all these eyewitness accounts.

But you're gonna see actually in Acts that he talks a lot about we.

So actually, uh Luke was present for he was an eyewitness to some of the events of the book of Acts.

But look at this.

Go ahead and put up Luke 1, 3 and 4 and Acts 1, 1 uh next to each other.

It says in Luke 1, 3 and 4, he says, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things that you've been taught.

So he mentions this guy, Theophilus, and of course you'll notice in Acts 1.1, he says, in my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach.

So he mentions Theophilus.

Well, who is that?

Um the short answer is we're not totally sure.

No nobody knows exactly who Theophilus was.

Theophilus may have been a real person, right?

Theophilus, the name means friend of God.

That's what it means, friend of God.

So there may have been this actual guy named Theophilus, it's a Greek name.

He may have been a patron, he may have been somebody who said, you know what, I'm going to fund Luke's research and his work because I think this needs to be documented and written down.

This is the second half of the first century, so you're talking about the destruction of the temple, you're talking about persecution from Nero.

And so the you know, the early church or the um the Jesus movement is under threat.

Okay, was this just is this something we should perpetuate and keep going, or is this something that just needs to die here?

And so Theophilus may have been somebody who said, I we we need to get this in writing, we need to preserve this.

Uh also Theophilus could have been uh sort of a moniker for just the kingdom of God or church communities.

Like, hey, if you're a friend of God, okay, this addressed to you.

Either way, it doesn't totally matter.

It's just that uh that's who he's writing it to.

And it's the naming of Theophilus helps us understand both books were written by Luke.

Most people think they were probably separated later.

He may have written it all at one time and then separated them into two books.

Acts means the Acts of the Apostles.

All right, Acts of the Apostles is the full name.

Um, okay, so I'm gonna give you a verse.

We're gonna start with a key verse, and then we're gonna kind of look at an outline, and uh we'll go from there.

So I'm gonna start with maybe the key verse in the book of Acts.

Although there's a bunch, but uh Acts 1.8.

This is Jesus before he ascends to heaven, so it's at the end of his physical life.

He says, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.

Now he's speaking to his apostles, the apostles who are gonna do these acts.

He says, You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

All right, let's deal with the second half of that verse first, and then we'll move to the first verse.

So he says, uh he says, You'll be my witnesses, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth.

Now think of that now.

If you're a first century Jewish audience, this is going to ring a bell with the Abrahamic covenant.

I'm setting you apart for a season to do something so that then I can bless the world through you, setting you apart to one day then send you out.

And so this here is a signal.

Uh, Luke is saying that Jesus is telling them, now is the time to go from set apart from the world to sent into the world.

Um He's gonna go, uh let me give you the outline real quick.

Go ahead and bring bring this up.

Just for your, you might want to, if you're wanting to remember this, screenshot it or something.

Um okay, so in the book of Acts, there's two, okay, the main character, make no mistake about it, the main character of Acts is Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

They're the main character, they're the ones that carry the whole book.

But you're gonna have two apostles that are really gonna be the character that the plot sort of follows.

So at the beginning is the apostle Peter, and so through Peter, the gospel begins in Jerusalem.

Uh, the good news spreads throughout Judea and Samaria, and then the good news spreads to the Gentiles in chapter 12.

From there, the storyline's gonna start following the Apostle Paul.

And from through the Apostle Paul, he's going to go on three missionary journeys to spread the gospel throughout the Mediterranean rim into Asia and Europe, and eventually, just like Jesus went on trial, and the gospel went out through Jesus on trial, the Apostle Paul will have to go on trial, and that his trial will lead him to Rome and to stand in front of King Agrippa.

And it's ultimately through his imprisonment, through his trial, that now the gospel will go to the Roman Empire.

And of course, the Roman Empire isn't just about Rome, it's now the ends of the earth.

So the way it gets to the ends of the earth, okay, will actually be through Paul going on trial.

So let's go back to Acts 1.8, right?

So we we we see the relationship between what we would call the Great Commission to go Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth.

But it says before, you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.

Um, okay, so what Paul's gonna do, I'm sorry, Luke is gonna do in the first few chapters of Acts, is he's going to do a really good job of connecting the events of the early church back to the Old Testament for a very important reason.

The people he's writing to are questioning, okay, is should we be sticking with this?

Is this movement really of God?

Is following Jesus, is this like the thing, or is this something that's just going to fizzle out?

And to a lot of them, the idea of a new covenant that Jesus fulfills the Torah, fulfills the law, or that people are the temple, and so the physical temple and the physical law, and a lot of these things that we've held to for thousands of years, there is this is a turning point.

This is a breakthrough moment.

This is something different is happening here.

That's going to hit you at a deep level of disorientation.

You're like, wait a second.

I mean, it's hard to pivot like that.

I mean, think about this.

Like, even in our lives, like stuff we've just been doing for a while.

Have you ever, I mean, just had someone like, why are we doing this?

You're like, well, because we've always done it.

You know, and we haven't even been doing it that long.

It might have been 10 years, 20 years.

Imagine thousands of years of looking at the Torah, 613 laws, and looking at the temple, these things we we don't even question if this is right.

We don't even question, we know this is from God, to then go and start rethinking this stuff and to to look at what does it mean for Christ to be the fulfillment and what is this new covenant?

We got these Abraham, Moses, and uh David covenants.

This is a tough, tough thing to do.

And so what uh Luke does is he he connects all of this stuff while so that because they're feeling they're feeling like they're dishonoring the Old Testament, he's gonna go, no, no, look, let me show it to you in the Old Testament and then find your you are here.

Okay?

All right, so so here we go.

The first is when he says, You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.

All right, that is um that is part of the prophetic hope of the Old Testament.

I'll just give you a few quick excerpts.

Uh, Isaiah 32, 15 says, Till the Spirit is poured out on us from on high.

Ezekiel 36, 26 and 27 says, I'll give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.

I will remove from you a heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Joel 2, 28 and 29, afterward I will pour out my spirit on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions, even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days.

So to the recipient of the book of Acts, they thought that the Holy Spirit of God only filled prophets, priests, and kings.

And he says, No, look now, the prophets have been hoping for a day where that spirit that filled prophets, priests, and kings will fulfill all the maidservants and the manservants, and every man, every woman will be available, broaden it out to instead of the select few roles, that he'll put his spirit into all people.

And so again, what Luke's doing is he's going, This is where we're at.

You are here.

Um in Acts 1.9, it talks about the ascension, and it puts, you know, essentially Jesus in the clouds.

And again, that's an allusion back to Daniel 7, 13, where it talks about Jesus, the Son of Man, being in the clouds, and he's the one whose kingdom will not pass away.

So again, it's imagery that they were familiar with that connected Jesus as the Messiah.

Uh in Acts 2, Jesus sends them to Jerusalem and he says, Listen, here's your next step.

Go to Jerusalem and wait.

Wait on the promise.

And what's the promise?

The promise is the spirit, what Jesus said, I'm gonna send my spirit and it'll empower you.

So they go to wait, and in this moment, as they're praying, it says that you know, wind and fire filled the room essentially, as they prayed, and it said tongues of fire were settling on their heads.

Okay, now Luke is using imagery from the Old Testament related to the tabernacle and the temple.

So the tabernacle was the portable temple when they were nomads in the wilderness, when they would set up camp, they would set up a portable temple in the middle and then uh set the tents up all around the tabernacle.

When they took the promised land, they then built a temple, a physical structure.

What is that?

That's the presence of God.

In the Holy of Holies is the Spirit of God, the presence of God.

Now look at this.

In the tabernacle imagery, we go back to Exodus 40, 38, and it says that the cloud of the Lord hovered over the tabernacle during the day, and at night fire glowed inside the cloud.

So the whole family of Israel could see it.

That was in the tabernacle.

In the temple, in 2 Chronicles 7:1, it said, When Solomon finished praying at the dedication of the temple, fire flashed down from heaven and burned up the burnt offerings and sacrifices, and the glorious presence of the Lord filled the temple.

2 Chronicles 7:1

Alright?

So the imagery of the tongues of fire would take them mentally to the temple in the tabernacle that God's presence was there, the glorious presence of God represented through fire.

So now now look what he's doing.

You have in their minds the presence of God is in the temple, and now what he's demonstrating in Acts 2 is the new temple.

That we are the temple.

This is where both Peter and Paul will say later, don't you know you are the temple?

You are a royal priesthood.

And so now the transition from that the temple's the holy place to where you are the holy place, and so so this is again within the new covenant.

And so now what's really cool, now that you know that, when you watch what they do next, is they start to instinctively, organically, through the power of the Holy Spirit, perform the functions of the priesthood and the temple in the world.

So if we go back to when we were in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, we looked at the four responsibilities of the priest.

So go ahead and bring that up.

Four responsibilities of the priest, again, this is a refresher, to put God's character on display, number one.

Number two, to help people navigate atonement when flesh gets in the way.

Number three, to intercede for others, which doesn't just mean to pray for them, but to help bridge the gap between them and God.

And then number four is to facilitate resource distribution.

So after they are uh empowered through the Holy Spirit, look what they do instinctively.

It says in verse 45, they sold property and possessions to give to everyone who had need.

That's what the temple was supposed to do.

You bring your offering to the temple, the temple distributes, but they started to look and go, we are the temple.

I see a need, let's take care of it.

Um it says in chapter 4, 32 through 35, all the believers were one in heart and mind.

No one claimed that any of their possessions were their own, but they shared everything they had.

With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God's grace was so powerfully at work in all of them that there were no needy persons among them.

Alright, it says in chapter 2 that God was adding to their number daily.

They were bridging the gap, they were putting God's character on display, they were helping people connect to God, find an atonement, and it says, um, from time to time, those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales, and put it at the disciples' feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

So what you're gonna see here is pretty quickly you have the formal temple and priesthood, and then you have now the spirit-empowered temple of the people of God, and they now clash.

There is now conflict.

The first opposition to the Jesus movement is the temple.

It's the formal temple, it's the formal priesthood.

And Peter now is again, he's kind of the main character of the apostles that steps in and actually quite courageously is willing to speak against the status quo and ultimately literally take physical beatings.

Um, Peter and John heal a man who is blind, and they go, How did you do that?

They say, You really want to know?

They said, Yeah.

He said, Well, the Jesus of Nazareth, the one that you guys killed, he's the one that empowered us to do that.

And so, again, what do you have?

You have now this Holy Spirit-empowered temple of people in conflict with the old system and structure, and so it becomes so violent that that's what drives them out into Samaria, into Judea, and ultimately eventually to the ends of the earth.

Peter's an interesting guy to follow in the story because we obviously know his he had a close relationship with Jesus.

He's a fun guy to read through the Gospels and then into Acts because you see his his slow but sure maturation.

And you see that Peter, again, uh you got to tip your cap to somebody who's willing to go stand up to the status quo, willing to stand up to their own tribe, willing to go stand up to their own temple, the people that had accepted them, and now they're gonna stand up and say, this is wrong.

And he was willing to stand for that and do and literally physically be flogged and beaten, and and and they commanded him, don't speak any more in the name of Jesus, or worse will happen.

And he kept doing it.

He just, I mean, tremendously courageous.

But what you're gonna see is really three kinds of opposition in Acts.

One is opposition from the temple, second is opposition internally with the apostles themselves, and then the third will be from the Greco-Roman world.

And it's in Acts 10 that we're gonna see Peter deal with his personal internal conflict.

And so while he was willing to stand up at the temple, look what happens in Acts 10, verse 9.

Acts 10:9

It says Peter went up on the flat roof to pray.

It was about noon, and he was hungry.

But while a meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance and he saw the sky open, and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners.

So he's he's seeing a vision or a dream of some kind.

And it said, In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds.

And then a voice said to him, Peter, uh get up, Peter, kill and eat them.

No, Lord, he declared.

Alright, so Peter has been a law-abiding citizen.

He's been doing his best to do what he understands God wants, which is to live strictly according to obedience to the Torah.

When we talked about the law a few weeks ago, we looked at three different kinds of law.

You had the civic or judicial law, you had the moral law, and then you had the ceremonial law.

And within the ceremonial law, the ceremonial law was designed to set people apart, to set them apart.

And some of it's weird.

It's like you can't wear clothes with two fabrics sewn together, you two different fabrics, or you can't plant a couple, you know, different seeds in the same garden.

And it's got all the stuff that you read it, you're like, that's why, weird, whatever.

Well, what God is ultimately doing is saying, in this greenfield project, I'm setting you apart, and I don't want you to look like the world.

I don't want you to sound like the world.

I don't want you to uh dress like the world, eat like the world because I don't want you to think like the world.

And so these separations, circumcision was another one.

I want you to be different.

And by doing that, I'm setting you apart, and I want you to remember that.

So they become so used to that.

So now he has this vision of all these animals that the law has said not to eat.

And he's a voice that says, kill and eat.

And it's God's voice.

And he knows it's God's voice because he calls him Lord.

But he says no.

No, Lord.

What a testament of how anchored we can be in our mindset.

Like, how, like, what in your life would you be so dogmatic about that if an audible voice from heaven gave you instructions, you'd say, I'm good.

No, Lord.

I mean, it is a vivid story because it shows how we can have shut cases in our minds.

We can, I'm not even asking the question, I'm no longer curious.

And so you have now this voice from heaven, and Peter is so entrenched in his way of thinking, he tells God no.

He says, I've never eaten anything that our Jewish customs have declared impure and unclean.

But the voice spoke again.

How many of you are thankful for a God who will repeat himself to give you a second chance?

In fact, we're gonna see he gives more than a second chance, but some of this stuff you got to give yourself a little bit of grace, man, because we do stuff because we've always done it.

Thousands of years of precedent of behaviors and habits and things that we have just claimed to be true.

We do we don't even question it.

And so now uh he says, no, but the voice spoke again.

Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.

Verse 16 the same vision repeated three times.

So God is giving them repeated chances, understanding that sometimes something, when it hits you the first time, you you you rebel against it, you push it away, you you're you're objecting.

I'm objecting to this.

This can't be right, that can't be right.

And so it just hits you in a place you're not even curious.

And so three times it's repeated, okay, and it says that the repeated three times, and then the sheet was suddenly pulled up to heaven.

Verse 17, Peter was very perplexed.

The language in the Greek is that he was uh troubled, he was in doubt.

Uh this this this was that he was at a loss, is the way it would be defined.

In other words, it'd be like, I can't reconcile this.

This makes no sense.

I don't understand this.

How could this be?

We have God's law in black and white, and I've done this all my life.

I don't want to eat reptiles, man.

I mean, I heard I've I've had gator, by the way.

It's not, is gator a reptile?

Is it?

It's not bad.

I've had it in Louisiana, it's pretty good.

But uh other than that, I'm not into it, I don't really want to eat reptiles, but reptiles, birds, he it's not it, but but it's not about the food.

It's about people.

And so he's he's going, I don't want to do this.

How can this?

He's perplexed.

He's at a loss, he can't make it make sense.

Now look at this, verse 17.

Make sure that's up.

Peter was very perplexed.

Now look, look what's next.

This is this is great.

What could the vision mean?

So he goes from objection to introducing a question, curiosity.

Most people, many people don't do that.

When I'm perplexed, I just stop.

I'm not curious, I don't want to know the answer.

I don't like this.

It's different than how I was raised, it's different than what I believe, it's different than what I've always done.

I'm too old to be going to new territory.

Okay?

Period.

I'm done.

Peter opens the question.

What?

What could this mean?

Throughout the book of Acts, you're gonna see people who have no desire to be a part of anything new God's doing.

And one of the things we learned from Acts is this the kingdom of God and the gospel of Jesus are God's idea.

So they're gonna happen.

With or without you, with or without me.

Nobody could stop it.

The temple couldn't stop it, disobedient disciples couldn't stop it, King Agrippa couldn't stop it, the Greco-Roman Empire couldn't stop it.

There's no empire, there's no king, there's nobody that's going to stop God from doing his will.

And so many people, once they were introduced with what God was doing, stopped at perplexity.

I don't get it, and I don't want to get it.

But Peter, to his credit, it's about time Peter got some kudos because that guy gets beat down all the time.

Every sermon you've ever heard of Peter, he's the butt of the joke, right?

But here's Peter going, you know what?

I'm perplexed, but I'm gonna become curious.

What could the vision mean?

And it says just then, men uh sent by Cornelius.

So Cornelius was introduced early in chapter 10, and he is a Gentile, and so this intersection between the life of Peter and Cornelius is gonna be catalytic for the gospel going to the Gentiles.

So these men sent by Cornelius found Simon's house being Peter.

Standing outside the gate, they asked if a man named Simon Peter was staying there, verse 19, look at this.

Meanwhile, as Peter was puzzling over the vision, now in the literary uh form of the Greek here, it goes from perplexed, which is I don't know and I don't want to know, to now it talks uh uses puzzling over the vision, and the word here talks about pondering, reflecting.

So uh most of us don't go from perplexed to softening that quickly, but it's just it's showing a progression of Peter going from being objecting to this to now being open and going, like, I don't know what it means, but I'm trying to figure it out.

I'm wrestling with this, I'm I'm thinking about it, I'm turning it over in my mind.

And so as he's puzzling over the vision, the Holy Spirit said to him, Three men have come looking for you.

Get up, go downstairs, and go with them without hesitation.

Don't worry, for I have sent them.

Verse 21.

So Peter went down.

Obedience.

So the same progression we see from Peter, which is going from objection to openness to obedience, still seems to be the same progression for disciples following the will of God, following the voice of Jesus.

Often God will introduce something that I want to say no to.

No, Lord, I have never done that before.

No, Lord, I'm unfamiliar with that territory.

No, Lord, I feel like I'm too old to be learning new stuff.

And didn't you know, Lord, you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

And he puts it in front of you, and you have a decision.

Am I going to go from objection to openness?

If you go from objection to openness and then from openness to obedience, you see God was able to use Peter in a powerful way.

You know, the same sort of thing happens to the Apostle Paul.

In fact, in chapter 9, we see the famous story of Paul in the Damascus road.

So if you're not familiar with the story, Paul is like on the opposite end of the spectrum as Peter.

So Peter is taking this Jesus movement, you know, as fast as he can.

Paul is the opposite.

He thinks that the Jesus movement is heresy.

He thinks the Jesus movement is against God.

And he's so convinced he's right, he's willing to kill for it.

He's being violent about it.

He's going, I need to extinguish everybody who is in this Jesus movement.

It needs to die, and I'm going to be a part of helping execute that.

And so he's going what he thinks is a thousand miles an hour in the right direction, and he has this defining moment, right?

He sees the light, he realizes I couldn't have been more wrong.

Some of you maybe had an experience like that.

Like you had a season of your life, you knew the answer.

You knew where you were going, you knew how you were going to get there, you knew you were right, nobody could talk you out of it.

And something, maybe it was a traumatic experience, maybe it was something outside your power.

At some point, you went to your knees, man.

You fell hard, and you had this moment where I can either die right here, I can keep going in the wrong direction, or I can repent and do an about face, a 180, and that's what Paul does in chapter 9.

He he turns on a dime.

Once he had saw the light, he repented and he started following.

And so when you that story's told in chapter 9, but chapter 26, we have a little golden nugget.

Chapter 26, Paul's standing before King Agrippa, and he's giving his testimony of what happened in chapter 9.

And he says, uh, in chapter 26, verse 14, he's saying, you know, I saw the light, and we all, I was with some people, and we all fell to the ground.

He said, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?

Of course, Saul thought, I'm persecuting them for you.

And he goes, No, you couldn't be more wrong.

It's me you're persecuting.

Now look at this.

He's and he he identified this as the voice of Jesus.

He said, the voice said, Is it hard for you to kick against the it is hard for you to kick against the goads?

It is hard for you to kick against the goads, which is like, what the heck does that mean?

Right?

That's not a term we use, that's not a phrase we use at all.

But that was a phrase very familiar to them.

So what a goad was was like a cattle prod.

So if you're a farmer and you wanted to plow land, you have an ox, and the way you get that ox on track and make that ox go where you want it to go is you use a goad.

So we might use it like, hey, so-and-so was goading this person or that person, you know, you're prodding them, it's annoying, or you know, you're trying to get them to do something instigating or whatever.

But but in that context, it was how do you get the ox to go where you want it to go?

The farmer has a mission.

The farmer has a plan, a vision.

This is what we need to do.

We have work to do.

And I'm gonna, this ox and I are gonna do this together, but I see where we're supposed to go.

And if the ox is going off course, one end of the goad was blunt, and so they would, you know, kind of just guide it.

But you would have some ox, oxen, that were stubborn.

They don't want to go where you're trying to get them to go, and so they would kick against the goad.

And so one end of the uh goad was blunt and the other end was sharp.

And so if you if you don't want to go with the blunt end, we'll go with the sharp end.

Eventually, you're gonna go where I want you to go.

And so God is saying, right, to to Paul, why are you kicking against where I'm trying to take you?

I I've got a plan and I'm inviting you in.

I made you for a purpose, man.

We're gonna do something great together.

Why are you fighting me?

Why don't you trust me that I'm if I'm if I'm nudging you, it's in the right direction.

It may not be where you want to go, but it's where I want you to go.

Are you going to go where you want to go and kick against the goat, or are you going to follow my nudging and my direction?

And so you have these two people, Peter and Paul.

Paul's main mission was to the temple, and he or sorry, Peter's main mission was to the temple and had tremendous opposition.

Paul would be a missionary, really, to the Gentiles in this missionary, missionary journey.

And what we're gonna look at starting next week, we're gonna look at the epistles or the letters.

Paul plants all these churches, and they all have the same challenging question that we have.

They're going, okay, hold on a second.

So if I'm called at one point to be set apart from the world, and now I'm sent into the world, and Jesus came to fulfill the law, not abolish the law, and we're supposed to go into the world, what are the areas where we all need to be aligned as kingdom citizens, brothers and sisters?

We all need to agree on these things, and we need to do these things, and we need to hold each other accountable to these things.

And then what are the things that it's okay for us to be different?

And they really weren't sure about that.

You're gonna see in Acts 15 if you go read through it.

Acts 15, they have a whole council.

They bat this around.

They're talking about what are the things we have these Gentiles, they come in different cultures.

We are we gonna make them obey the 613 laws?

If we're gonna make them obey any, which ones do they do?

What is permission to be in the kingdom?

What are the things we all need to agree on?

And then what are the areas it's okay if we're different?

And so you're gonna see the Apostle Paul contextually will interact, will write letters to, will address issues that really focus on that.

Each of these places going, how do we create a diverse, inclusive, loving environment built on the law of love and the power of love, and yet we make sure that it's just not like anything goes.

At some point, we have to have some regulation, we have to have some things we agree to.

And so next week we're gonna start looking at some of these patterns and some of the steep learning curve that Paul had to kind of lead them through.

Um, and that's really what the epistles are designed to deliver to us.

All right, let's let's go ahead and close in prayer.

Lord, we come to you in Jesus' name, Lord.

As we look at chapters nine and ten of Acts, and we see these two prominent characters in the Bible, Peter and Paul, both of them coming to a place where they were being asked to do something way outside their comfort zone.

Totally understandable the resistance that would be happening on every level, spiritually, cognitively, emotionally, to go, wait, you're asking me to change my thinking now to truly feel the responsibility to get it right.

Like, am I rushing into this or is this is this really you, God?

And so, Lord, I pray that you would help us as a community, as a church, and as individuals, as we look into what you're up to in this world and what you've invited us into in our own acts of the apostles, to be receptive to your direction, to not respond to your voice with no Lord, I have never.

To not kick against the goads, but to allow you to guide us on the path that you want us to be on.

Lord, I pray two things.

One, I pray for us as a congregation, as a community, as the body of Christ, to create a church and a sub-community that really reflects the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Help us to figure this out in the same way, we have the same questions they did.

So help us to navigate this as a community, that this church would feel and would be and would function the way that you would have us to do it.

And Lord, I pray secondly for each individual that's here that goes into individual relationships and families situations.

And Lord, often we find ourselves in that position where it's, well, what what are you asking me to rethink?

What do you need me to reopen?

Lord, what are you asking me to go from objection to openness to obedience?

What does that look like?

And so I pray, God, that for each receptive open heart that you would give guidance on a personal level.

We love you, we thank you and praise you in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.