The Church at Work - Acts 15v36 - 16v15

This autumn we're preaching our way through the Book of Acts, this wonderful story of the growing early church, and it's an unfinished story.

It's a story where we all find our place.

So, with our Bibles open, let me pray.

Almighty God, Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have made it possible for people like us to know you and be known by you.

We thank you and praise you for the Lord Jesus Christ.

We thank you and praise you for the people that He is building, for His church, of which we are a part.

Show us wonderful things this morning about yourself, about your church, that we might learn more and more what it is to be laborers in your harvest field.

For Jesus' namesake.

Amen.

Amen.

So Bibles open, please.

Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

I'm going to start reading at verse 35.

Let's listen to the word of God.

But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, teaching and preaching the word of the Lord with many others also.

And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord and see how they are.

Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark, but Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.

And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other.

Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus.

But Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord.

And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.

Paul came also to Derby and to Lystra.

A disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek.

He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium.

Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.

As they went on their way through the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem.

So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily.

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 Missa, 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 worshipper 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.

There is circumcision, there is a vision sent by God, there's a conversion on the spot, there's an immediate baptism.

A gospel adventure story.

What is the God who authored this, though?

What is he saying to us?

It is not simply a story to be enjoyed.

It is the word of God to be received.

Think for a moment about the characters in the story.

Who do we read about?

There is Paul and Barnabas and Silas and Timothy.

They show to us the relentless passion and the sheer hard work of forming disciples and strengthening churches.

There is Luke, the author of Acts.

He makes his first appearance.

There is the very first we here as Luke joins the teen.

Maybe he was a native of Troas.

And there is this woman, Lydia, the first convert in Europe.

But who else is here?

Who else unmistakably is recorded in these verses?

It's the one true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

He is here.

And he is at work.

He is powerful.

He is shaping events.

He is transforming hearts.

Now, in these verses, there is plenty that is not normal.

There is plenty that is not typical about the life and the growth of Jesus' church.

But actually, this amazing gospel adventure story really is entirely typical of the normal and never-ending story of church growth and Christian mission.

And that's where we find our place.

That's where we are called to play our part.

So what do we see here?

We see a church, a church being formed, whose members and leaders labour and struggle.

And we see from them, don't we, that being a church member, being a Christian, it is not a hobby, it's not a part-time activity.

And there is a God, the Lord of the church, who supernaturally grips the church and changes hearts and grants new desires and empowers his church's work, who enables painful sacrifice.

Here is the God who is absolutely worth it and who is absolutely with his church.

So in this passage, really, there are two dimensions.

There is the church and there is the Lord of the Church.

The work of the church and there is the work of the Lord in the church.

So two headings.

Let's learn first from the church at work.

Chapter 15, verse 36.

A new journey begins.

And it begins with Paul's desire to go back to all of those towns where he preached the word and to see how they're doing.

All the towns, the churches, from his first journey.

We read about that in chapter 13, chapter 14, starting in Syrian Antioch, Cyprus, then over to what we would call Turkey, Persidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derby.

And Paul says he wants to go around again and see how they are.

Just notice Paul's love for the church, his desire to strengthen them.

He wants to teach them.

Chapter 16, verse 4, he wants to pass on to them that wonderful and wise decision of the Jerusalem Council.

Notice from Paul, this is the opposite of hit and run evangelism.

His aim actually is not converts, it is disciples who live life together in churches.

Men and women, boys and girls who are taught and baptized and led into obedience together in local churches.

Now, there is the first dimension of the church at work, and it's wonderful.

The next bit, seemingly less so.

Expect disagreements.

That's what we read about, don't we, in chapter 15 and verse 37.

Now, this is not the first row in this chapter.

Remember back in the start of chapter 15, the Jerusalem Council, this great and terrible argument over how you are saved.

How do you get right with the God who made you?

And there was this massive difference of opinion.

And the conclusion, there is one acceptable answer only.

We are saved by Christ, through grace, by faith alone.

This is a different sort of row.

This is a legitimate difference of opinion.

It's okay to have such disagreements as this.

Dare I say it, we should even expect them.

So, verse 37.

Barnabas, he wants to take with them on the next journey this man, John Mark.

Paul thinks that is a lousy idea because John Mark is not reliable.

He had abandoned them.

He had left the first missionary journey in Pamphylia.

See that back in chapter 13.

Maybe he was scared, we do not know.

Paul thought it was desertion.

He left us.

And so there is a difference of opinion, Paul v.

Barnabas.

And the word in the Greek paroxysm, it is not a little disagreement, it is a vast and probably painful row.

And it leads to a literal parting of ways.

Paul and Barnabas, they cannot agree, so they agree to disagree, and they go in different directions.

Now, this kind of thing, it does actually happen today.

It happens in the church with strong-minded, determined Christians who are working together and a matter of opinion comes up.

It's not a doctrinal thing, and they clash and there's a disagreement on what is best to do.

Might happen among missionaries or church planters in an alien culture.

What's the best strategy?

Who's best to lead the work?

Might happen even among elders in a church or among church members.

It does happen.

Sounds depressing, but we also want to be realistic.

In the cause of Christ, that's what we're reading about here, aren't we?

The cause of Christ, making disciples, strengthening churches, it's the most important thing that is happening on the planet.

There will be sharp disagreements.

And when they're handled in a godly way, honest and straightforward, amicable, generous, we know we're not saying we're not brothers in Christ, but on this we just can't work together.

It's actually okay.

And the Lord can bring good from it.

And so Barnabas and Mark, they go to Cyprus, Paul and Silas go in the other direction.

And there's no judgment on it.

There's no kind of comment passed in the text of Scripture.

We're just told what's happened, but the result is more disciple making, more church strengthening, and that is a good thing.

There is not one mission team, there is two.

And as for Paul and John Mark, wonderfully, that's not the end of the story.

If you fast forward to the end of Paul's life, he is pretty much abandoned.

He's pretty much on his own in Rome.

Let me read about it in 2 Timothy 4.

He says, Get Mark, bring him with you, because he's useful to me.

That's wonderful, isn't it?

Useless.

Abandoned us.

But now he's useful, restored and useful.

Then, what happens next?

Well, then we follow Paul and Silas.

We kind of they retrace their steps and we meet this younger man, chapter 16, verse 1, called Timothy.

And we're told about his family situation.

His mother was a Jewish background believer, been raised in the Christian faith by mum, Eunice, by grandma, Lois, told their names elsewhere.

Now the father, Timothy's father, we don't know if he became a Christian, but ethnically he was a Greek.

And that little detail is so important.

And what happens next shows another facet of life in the growing church.

I've summed it up like this: remove obstacles where you can.

So, Timothy, the Christians at Lystra and Iconium, they speak well of him, and Paul wants to take him along as a co-worker.

But his background is a problem.

His father was a Greek, not a Jew.

Timothy was not circumcised.

And he would have been regarded by the Jews as a kind of half-breed, strange to our ears, isn't it?

But as a kind of unclean person, an unacceptable person.

And that's a problem because wherever Paul went seeking to share the gospel, the place he went first was to the synagogue, to the Jewish people, and then on to the Gentiles.

And here's the principle.

Paul wants to make it as easy as possible for people to hear the gospel.

Paul wants to make it as easy as possible for people to hear the gospel.

So he does something astonishing if you know the Apostle Paul.

He gets Timothy circumcised.

Now the Apostle Paul he hated the idea that our works save us.

Hated that idea, because it's a lie.

He hated the idea that our works keep us right with God.

He hated the idea that a Gentile Christian needed to get circumcised in order to be saved.

Now that was a massive deal in the first years of the New Testament church.

But that's not what this is about.

This is not circumcision to be saved.

It's about making it easier, not harder, for people in that culture even to listen to the gospel.

So this extraordinary thing that they do, it shows a particular kind of heart, doesn't it?

A love for the Lord and a love for people who do not yet know Jesus.

It's the kind of heart that made Hudson Taylor back in the 19th century go to mainland China and to the astonishment of his well-heeled middle-class friends back at home to dress and live like a Chinaman, you know, a mid-19th century Chinaman, so that the people around him would listen more readily.

It's the kind of heart that makes people go across the world and learn languages so they can share the gospel in people's mother tongues.

It's a serious sacrifice.

Last week at Presbytery, we heard from a young American who came to London four years ago to learn Farsi.

So he can share the gospel with Iranians.

Much easier, much less inconvenient.

How wonderful he is now leading a far si language ministry in West London.

Wonder if any of us have ever thought of it.

Is there a way that I could make it easier for someone else to hear about Jesus?

Move to another place, learn a language, costly sacrifice for the growth of the church.

And the point here is that stumbling blocks, where possible, where godly, should be removed.

Now, in these chapters, one other thing you cannot miss is the sheer hard toil of Paul and his friends.

The business of strengthening churches, making disciples.

Just consider what Paul's life was like.

The Boffins reckon that this second missionary journey, probably just over 3,000 miles, maybe 100 travelling days, just getting from one place to another, must have cost a fortune.

The business of sending church planters, establishing churches, expanding the work.

And that's not even mentioning things like endurance and afflictions and hardship, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riot, labours, sleepless nights, hunger, dishonour, slander, lies, being sorrowful yet rejoicing, poor yet making many rich, having nothing, yet possessing everything.

That's how Paul summed up his life and his ministry.

2 Corinthians 6.

It's toil.

Do you notice of Paul how he doesn't sit back passively?

He doesn't hang around waiting for direct guidance from the Lord.

He's never passive.

He just presses on.

Let's return, let's visit.

He departs, he goes, he chooses companions, he works.

You could say of Paul, I think, that he constantly deploys sanctified common sense, chooses places to go that he reckons would be a good place to go with the gospel.

Like in the Roman province of Asia, seemed a good move.

It's good to plan, to pray about it, to give it a go and work really hard to make it happen.

But running alongside all of that toil, the activity, the endeavour, the cost, the sacrifice, running alongside it and underneath it and above it and around it and controlling it and shaping it and energizing it, well, is the good and the sovereign God who is at work.

And it's really wonderful that these things go together: the active church and the sovereign working God.

And that encourages us, secondly, to trust the God who is at work.

Pick the story up in chapter 16 and verse 6.

So Paul and Powell, they go through Phrygia and Galatia.

They want to go west into Asia, but they can't.

So they try to go north to Bithynia.

But now the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.

You see, it runs along our with our previous point, doesn't it?

The active church going about the Lord's business, but there is a sovereign God, a powerful God, who is at work.

The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.

That's a helpful comment from Proverbs, really, and what's going on here.

Proverbs 16, 9.

We plan, and that's right.

We try to do things for the Lord, what seems wise, but we submit to the fact that God is God and we are not.

He closes doors and he opens doors.

Now, here in this passage specifically, he closed two doors for ministry.

We don't know how he did it.

No one knows.

So no preacher, no commentator knows.

Was it direct verbal communication?

We don't know.

Was this Paul interpreting events?

Every time we try to speak the word of God in that place, our efforts just crumbled into dust.

We don't know.

But what they do is they go down to Troas or Troy, verse 9.

And then verse 10.

There's this vision.

And when Paul had seen the vision, they sought to go on to Macedonia.

They concluded, God wants us to go there and preach to them.

So do you see the Holy Spirit has blocked them going west, the Spirit of Jesus has blocked them going north, and so they now come to Europe.

Two doors closed, and a third door opened wide.

Now, some of this here is utterly remarkable.

It's not normal.

You know, God, for example, communicating through a vision.

It is not normal to be expected or sought.

But there is something else here which is utterly normal.

We work, we labor, we plan, but we've got a God who is sovereign.

He is in charge wonderfully and mercifully.

He wants us to plan and pray and use holy common sense in our decision making.

He wants us to get input from others, older Christians, as we plan for next steps, be wise, work hard, but we are not on our own in it all.

And we're not in charge.

And that is a joy and relief.

It is very easy for the Lord to close doors that he wants closed.

It is very easy.

For the Lord to open doors that He wants opened.

It's not always easy with us, for us to live with His decisions.

For us, it can be a very painful thing when our plans don't work out.

Maybe it's personal plans for a job or a relationship or a house.

Maybe it's plans in Christian ministry.

It seems wise, it seems good to us, but the Lord renders it impossible.

That is, he shuts the door, and we have to trust him with it.

That he's good and wise and strong.

He loves me.

He's committed to his church.

And yet he chooses to close doors.

But he also opens doors.

Close door, open door.

It is up to him.

Let me give you an example from the life of our church.

It's one of those examples that on the face of it feels like a big example, but when you stop and think about it, it's quite trivial, but it does show the sovereign hand of the Lord.

Five years ago, we tried to buy the old Methodist church.

Some of you know that.

They sold it to the Muslims instead.

The folk who sold it, they will be held accountable for that wicked decision.

But God is sovereign.

He was not thwarted.

He is sovereign.

He shut the door, quite literally.

A few years later, we try to buy the old URC chapel.

And they sell it to us.

And we work hard for funds and permissions and builders and so on.

But God is the sovereign one.

He opened the door, quite literally.

And here is the challenge.

On the day that he shuts the door, on the day that he says no, uh, maybe it's a door of mission, maybe it's a door for church strengthening, and that closes.

He is no less committed to you and to me and to his church, even in the door closing moments.

He loves us, he knows what he's doing, than in those moments when he opens the door.

And we go in and get on.

And so we trust him.

We trust him when the doors are closed, we trust him when the doors are open.

And we crack on with following Jesus.

And from our end, we do our bit, we pray, we work hard, we plan.

Back in Acts 16.

There's this dream or this vision.

The team set off to Macedonia and they get to Philippi, and that's where Luke joins the gang.

And at Philippi, from verse 11 down to verse 40, we've got these three incidents where the gospel comes to people and the gospel absolutely transforms people.

Today we're just looking at the first of those.

What happens to Lydia?

And here we are shown the God who opens hearts.

Lydia, verse 14.

She deals in purple.

It's a lucrative business.

I guess it's like a, I don't know, a diamond dealer or a bitcoin merchant today.

And on the Sabbath, seemingly there is no synagogue, but there is a place where the Jews go to pray.

And here is Lydia.

She is not Jewish, she's heard of the one true God.

In some way, she is attached to the Jewish people.

She's a God-fearer.

And Paul comes down and he sits at the riverside with this group of women, and you can imagine him introducing himself and then starting to share the gospel.

Let me tell you about this Jesus who made you.

You belong to him.

You've sinned against him.

He is the promised one, the promised God and Savior of the Old Testament scriptures.

Repent, turn to him, trust in him.

And in verse 14, we read what I reckon is one of the most encouraging sentences in the whole Bible.

The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.

The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.

Here is how someone becomes a Christian.

Here is how anyone becomes a Christian.

Paul speaks.

Lydia pays attention, she listens.

But here is the thing.

How does she listen?

We are entirely deaf to the gospel.

The good news of Jesus is life-giving.

It is necessary, but we are deaf, we are blind, we hate the gospel, which is why the first bit of that sentence is so precious.

The Lord opened her heart.

When someone becomes a Christian, it is because the Lord opens his heart, her heart.

And this is what gives to the church and to the Christian hope and courage.

What do you pray for the folk in your life who don't yet know Jesus?

Family, colleagues, friends.

Pray for the Lord to open their hearts.

You could be the Apostle Paul.

Just think of the Apostle Paul's learning and skill and courage, his authority.

But without the Lord's work, his labours at that riverside, his labors in all of his ministry were entirely useless.

Here is how the Lord likes to work, and I hope this encourages us with the Lydia's in our lives.

We share Christ, people listen, and when he wills it, the Lord opens hearts.

This is a great passage for a baptism Sunday.

Lydia professed faith and she was baptized.

She didn't need to be a perfect Christian, there is no such thing.

Very simply, Christian people are baptized people.

In fact, she and all her household, presumably that means her children, maybe her servants.

The Lord is in the business of claiming for himself whole households.

Well, here in God's word, here is the church at work.

That's where we find our place, don't we, as labourers in the harvest field, different jobs to play, but as fellow workers in the cause of the church.

And here is the Lord of the church, always with and in and around and under and above the labours of his people, always at work for our encouragement and our joy.

Let's bow our heads.

I'm going to pray.

Let's pray.

Father in heaven, we thank you for the church that you are building.

Thank you that she has been bought with the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and she is dear and precious to you.

Thank you for giving your people, giving us not only to the Lord Jesus, but also to each other and giving us work to do.

As the different people that we are, men and women, boys and girls, would you give us a love for the church and a love for the lost?

Pray that we would be people who dedicate our lives to the sharing of the gospel, the strengthening of the church, the building up of the body of Christ.

Pray that in it we would be faithful and wise and bold.

And we bless you, Heavenly Father, for your presence with us, the empowering that you give to the church.

We feel weak.

We look around at ourselves and we feel small and weak and useless.

But we thank you that you, the great God of the universe, you are in charge of all things.

Thank you that we can trust you with our plans.

We know that you open and close doors as you see fit.

And we bless you that you wonderfully transform hearts.

So would you hearten us through this, we pray?

And as we come now to see the gospel in something visible in the water of baptism, we pray too that you would exalt yourself, show to us the wonder of the gospel, assure our hearts, and challenge us with all you want us to be and to do.

For Jesus' name's sake.

Amen.