How god leads us | Sunday Sermon

Well, this uh passage that we're in today is um really um I it's like an I it's like a travel passage, okay?

And so it's like an itinerary almost.

I feel like when a lot of people read it, they might just kind of breeze right past it.

Because as you're reading this, it's kind of like okay, they went there, they went there, they tried to go here, they turned around, they went back this way.

And so I think, you know, most of the time we would kind of skim past something like that.

Right?

But there's I think there's more to it that the Holy Spirit wants us to see today, and so we're gonna talk about that.

But uh, what I like about it is how it talks about how much they walked.

Because yesterday we went to Disneyland, and I just want to give you some, take some guesses about how many miles you think we walked.

Bazillion, about ten.

Twenty, a bazillion, ten, seven, eight.

Ice cream for the right.

What's that?

Do we get ice cream for the rightness?

No, you do not.

You have to memorize a verse for that, Debbie.

No cheating.

The right answer is 915.

No, I'm just kidding.

It was like almost 15 miles we ended up walking between going back and forth to parks and just walking all over the place.

And but you know, my wife is amazing with the lightning lane, and so she's like on that thing, you know, walking, leading us around by the lightning lane and getting us on to all the rides, so we hardly had to wait.

It was a really great day, but I'll tell you what, when I got home, my feet were like just kicking.

I felt like they're they cut open and bleeding, or what's going on?

When I think about that, we walked like 15 miles.

Paul and Silas walked like 800 miles in this passage, okay?

But I want to give you a little context so as we go into it, you kind of understand what's happening, you know what's going on in the story.

If you remember in Acts 13, um, Paul and Barnabas had been in the city of Antioch, and Luke had told us that there were prophets in the city.

Okay?

And so the prophets were prophesying, they're worshiping, they're praying together, and the Holy Spirit says, Set apart from me Barnabas and Paul for the work that I'm going to show you.

Okay, and so they did that, they set them aside and they're praying, they're fasting, and they start to get some direction for what the Lord wants to do.

So they lay hands on them, they commission them to the first missionary journey.

And so Paul and Barnabas had left and sailed to Cyprus, and they evangelized through the island of Cyprus, and they sailed north across the Mediterranean into Pamphylia, and they profit, they they evangelized all the way up into Pisidian Antioch and Iconium and Lystra and Derby and all these cities in southern Galatia, and then they had worked their way all the way back around and sailed home.

So they had come back to Antioch and told them all the wonderful things that God had done on their missionary journey.

And then in the last uh chapter that we were in, it talked about how there was this controversy that arose between like how does a Gentile person get saved, right?

What does it take for them to get saved?

They got to become Jewish, like what happens, you know?

So they had this council, and at this point in the story, Paul and Barnabas have come back to Antioch.

So they're back in their home church now, okay, and they're just doing their thing.

And one day, Paul says to Barnabas, he says, you know what?

Why don't we go back to all those places, all those brothers that we preach to, all those cities where we preach the word and just see how they're doing?

And Barnabas was like, this is a great idea.

Yeah, let's do this.

And let's take John Mark with us.

John Mark was his young nephew or cousin, okay?

And so he wanted to bring him with him, but the problem was they had taken him with them on the first missionary journey and he bailed.

And so they they were, Paul was not so excited about that.

I don't think we should take this kid.

I don't think he's ready.

I don't think he's mature.

I don't think he's gonna last.

I think we should leave him here, man.

Let's just go.

Well, Barnabas didn't like that, so they had this sharp disagreement, and what ends up happening is Barnabas takes uh John Mark and he sails to Cyprus.

He's like, I'll just handle Cyprus, you go to Galatia, right?

So Paul picks Silas and they start evangelizing.

And that's part of the passage that um Linda read to us this morning.

And so Paul and Silas are evangelizing through, there we go, they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.

So they they start walking through these areas, they're going to the churches, they're delivering to them the letter that the Jerusalem church had given them about the Gentile Jewish thing, okay, and they're strengthening the churches.

And finally, they get uh they walk past Tarsus, which is Paul's hometown, they walk up the Cilician gates, and I want to remind you that at this point, Paul and Silas had crossed three mountain passes, okay?

So they walked to two mountain passes close to Antioch, they'd walked hundreds of miles, then walk through Tarsus, they go up a third mountain pass, and they get up to this plateau, and that's the area where those cities are that they had evangelized the first time.

And so, what I want to do before we get into the passage, actually, is I want to talk about the difference between the motivation for their first missionary journey and the motivation for the second missionary journey.

Because what this is showing us is the different ways that God leads us.

And that's something that is important to us, right?

Sometimes we're wondering like, what do I need to do to figure out what God's plan is for my life?

Like, what should I do?

Should I turn left or right?

What should I do?

I don't know how to do this.

Do I sit and meditate, like with my legs crossed?

Do I need to do that home thing?

Like, what do I gotta do?

I think Jim Carrey in one of those movies, he did hum little, something like that.

Maybe we do it that way.

But in this passage, we see two different ways that the Holy Spirit leads us.

In the first one, we saw it was prophetic, right?

So they're worshiping together, the Holy Spirit just says through the prophets, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul, and they're praying and they're fasting, they lay hands on them, and they commission them and they go, and it's this very supernatural thing.

The second time, Paul just saw something needed to be done and he did it.

And I think the point is that God doesn't always lead us the way that we think.

I think all the time we're always expecting that first one, huh?

We're always expecting that he's gonna give us the plan.

Okay, God, you give me the full plan for the next 30 years, and I'm just gonna implement it.

But that's not the way he normally does things.

And so they go on this missionary journey, led by the fact that Paul just knows he needs to go back to these churches, he needs to strengthen these places, these brothers, these churches he planted.

And so they go through, they're strengthening the churches, they get all the way back up to the plateau, they get to Derby and to Lystra.

And while they're in Lystra, the city where Paul was stoned, he meets a young man named Timothy.

And it says 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 that the churches were strengthened in faith.

Okay, and so what that means at the end of that verse right there, that was the end of what they had planned to do.

They get to Derby, they get to Lystra, they meet Timothy.

Paul's like, I'm gonna take this kid with me, I want to disciple him, I think he's a good kid.

So they finish those cities, they go to Iconium, they strengthen them, they go to Spicidian Antioch, and boom, journey's done.

They've completed the mission.

They've come and they've finished everything that they had come to do.

And so now at this point, I think it was probably something like, okay, that was cool.

Now what?

Because I don't, I'm not really ready to go home yet.

Like, I still got energy.

I've only gone on five rides, and I got like a whole day ahead of me, and my wife's got the lightning pass.

Like, I'm gonna go on a hundred rides today.

They got energy, they want to keep going.

And so Paul begins to make his own plans.

But what we're seeing in the passage that we're reading is that God had other plans.

So in verse 6, it says they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.

Now, if you were looking at a map right now, you would see where they were standing, okay?

And you would look, Paul's standing up on this plateau, and he's probably looking, you know, west.

And he's thinking, okay, if I just walk southwest, I'm gonna run into the Lycus Valley.

And there I'm gonna find Colossae and Laodicea and Heropolis.

And if I go another hundred miles, I'm gonna hit Ephesus.

And Ephesus, I mean, how amazing, guys, would it be?

Just evangelize Ephesus, like one of the great cities of the Roman Empire.

Let's go to Ephesus.

But it seems like what happened is they started making the journey.

The Holy Spirit said, no, I don't want you to speak the word in that area.

And so then they're thinking, okay, so it's not southwest.

Well, what about north?

Maybe we'll walk north, you know, and so they start going north.

They probably could have gone about a hundred miles.

I was reading the scholars are saying that they might have the point where they turned around might have been the city called Daryllium, because there was like a crossroads right there.

And so you kind of get to this city, and it's a made major like transportation hub right here, and you could sort of either go, you know, like west, northwest, or you could go northeast from that city.

And so right there it says he attempted to turn to Bithynia, but the spirit of Jesus did not allow them.

And that's got to be frustrating, right?

How would you feel if you walked a hundred miles north and you're giving, okay, let's go evangelize them.

We're gonna go to the city of Nicaea, right?

Let's go see them.

And then the Holy Spirit's like, nope, I don't want you to do that either.

And so in verse 7 it says, when they had come up to Micah, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them, and so passing by Micah, they went down to Troaz.

So they're standing there at that crossroads and they're thinking, okay, I can't go southwest, I can't go north.

So we've got to figure this out.

Like, what does God want us to do?

He can't want us to go home, right?

But it says passing by Micah, they came to Troaz.

And it sounds like, oh, they just walked down the road a little while and they came to Troaz.

No, that was 250 to 400 miles, depending on which roads they took to get there.

And so they make this massive journey and they sort of kind of skirted between the areas where the Holy Spirit told them not to go, and they got to the city of Troaz.

Troaz is the city that's in the area where ancient Troy was.

Remember that story of the Trojan horse?

Has anybody seen the movie Odyssey?

We went and saw that this week.

It was awesome.

That was a good movie.

And so they they're like ping pong balls.

I'm picturing as I'm reading this.

I'm like, they're like ping pong balls.

They're like bouncing this way and that way and north and south across to Asia Minor.

And the question when we look at this is what went wrong?

Like, did the Apostle Paul just like get it wrong?

The Apostle Paul, the guy that wrote like two-thirds of the New Testament, was he just wrong?

Could he not hear what the Holy Spirit was saying?

Did he need to stop and meditate?

The answer is he didn't do anything wrong.

He just wanted to preach the gospel.

He wasn't wrong for wanting to preach the gospel.

He wasn't wrong for making a plan.

He was thinking strategically and taking the gospel to Asia Minor and going to Ephesus was a great idea.

Going to Bithynia was a great idea.

It just wasn't the plan that God had.

And I think sometimes we assume that if we try to do something and a door closes, then we must have done something wrong.

But Paul hadn't done anything wrong.

His heart was right, his ideas were good.

The thing is, God could just see something that Paul couldn't see.

Proverbs 16 says, The heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.

There's been times in my life when I've had those kind of clear vision, you know, moments where it's like, okay, I can see this in my mind.

I know what I'm supposed to do right now.

One of those times was when I left vocational ministry for a while and I wanted to relaunch the business like full out.

Okay.

And I'd always, I've had my business since I was 19 years old.

So I started it very young, but when I was young, the first thing I knew how to do was graphics.

Okay?

I would go to find an old RV with shabby graphics looking all run down, and I'd go, I could make that look new.

And then I would just make it look new.

I'd take all the graphics off, polish it, make it look good again.

Over the time I learned how to do roofing, I learned how to do other things, but I was always best at, most comfortable with in the beginning, the graphics.

And so, but I had this thought as I was getting ready to launch.

Like, what if I made it all about the roofing and made the graphics the side thing, you know?

And I had never done that before, but I was thinking, like, you know, if I do that, then what I could do is I could take people, men who are mechanically inclined, I can train them how to do this, and then I can just be free to run my business.

I can be free to grow it, I can be free to market it and advertise it.

And I could just see it in my mind.

I could see myself becoming the place.

When somebody thinks, like, hey, I need to get my roof worked on my RV, I know the place to go.

I could just see that.

And so I just did it.

I made a website, I made a brochure, I started advertising, I answered the phone, I started booking jobs.

And so there was this moment of clarity that I had.

But there were also many times when I felt a little lost.

And there were a few times when I felt a lot lost, and I didn't always have every answer.

I didn't always feel like I had some spirit-led answer.

There's a lot of times when I just had to try stuff, just to take some chances, like renting a space.

That was a big deal.

I had to commit that I'm gonna pay this much every month to rent this space, and then we grew and I needed more space.

And then we grew more, and I'm like, man, I gotta rent a whole building.

Now I'm looking at committing, signing a five-year lease where I have to pay$100,000 plus per year in lease.

Like, what if it doesn't happen?

But I had to just step out and do it.

It just was the next logical step: hiring employees, purchasing really expensive equipment.

And every step I moved, step by step, the Lord led me, the Lord established me.

I think sometimes we think that we can't make a move unless God gives us the full vision.

And there's once in a while that God actually does that.

But more often than not, God just asks us to be faithful with the thing we already know to do, the thing that he already put in front of us, to trust that as we begin to just take that step to do what he already told us to do, that he's gonna lead us, he's gonna steer our course.

And so Paul making plans wasn't contrary to trusting God.

It's good to make plans, it's good to strategize, it's good to move forward in our limited vision as long as we stay open as he directs and establishes our steps.

And so Paul's a plan again, original plan.

Let's go to let's go into Asia.

Spirit says no.

But you know what?

God wasn't opposed to Paul evangelizing Asia.

There's later on in the book of Acts, he's gonna spend three years there, and at one point in Acts 19, he's gonna say, all of Asia heard the word of the Lord.

And so looking back, God's answer was no, not like no, I don't want you to ever go speak to those people in Asia Minor.

I don't even want them to hear my gospel, I don't want to know them, I don't want them to be saved.

Like that wasn't what he was saying.

He was just saying, not yet.

I got something else for you to do first.

You know, if I was Paul and I had walked hundreds and hundreds of miles, tried to go west, the door was closed, tried to go north, walked a hundred miles north, and the door was closed.

I had to walk all the way back that same hundred miles and then start walking and go another 250 or 400 miles.

Like if I was trying to do all this stuff, I might have given up.

I might have just thought, you know what, maybe I just need to regroup.

Maybe we just go back to Antioch, we'll pray about it, spend some time in the spirit, try to figure out the plan.

But Paul didn't do that.

He just kept moving.

He didn't sit down and meditate.

He just kept the trusting that as he continued trying to do what God had told him to do.

Do you know where he told him to do that?

Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all the things I've commanded you.

It's like we've got a standing order, guys.

We have a standing order, like to do this.

You need to do this.

Like it says to do this, and yet a lot of times we just don't think to do that, right?

We're like, I think I need to hear a word from the Lord.

Hold on.

Let me let me just get in position here, and then maybe I can hear a word from the Lord.

No, he already gave you the word, okay?

It says, go.

Go make disciples.

In order to make disciples, you first have to be a disciple, which means you probably should be becoming disciple.

You should be growing in your faith, you should be maturing.

Go, he says, go into all the world and make disciples.

And so that's the standing order.

The question we need to ask ourselves is, are we doing that?

Paul was.

And he wasn't waiting for a second word.

He wasn't waiting for a second command.

Some kind of, you know, oh, hold on, God, I think I'm hearing something.

No, no, I already gave it to you, Paul.

And so in verse 8, it says, Passing by Micah, they went down to Troaz, 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 to Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

And so he finally comes to the city of Troaz and a vision appears to him.

This Macedonia man saying, Come help us.

And notice it says immediately.

See, they're finally getting some clarity now, aren't they?

As they walk in faith, as they do the things that he already commanded them to do, as they do this, now he begins to get a little bit of clarity.

And it says they immediately sought passage.

They sought passage on a ship to go over to Macedonia.

So notice the pattern here.

The impetus for this second journey was not some supernatural word.

It was Paul just knowing what needed to be done and going to do it.

And then he gets to the end of that and he wants to continue.

And so he takes one faith-filled step and God gives him some direction.

He takes another faith-filled step and God redirects him, doesn't he?

But that redirection doesn't mean no, stop, I don't want you doing anything.

It's just redirecting him.

He's guiding him.

How many know that you can't actually steer a ship unless it's moving?

My parents used to have a boat, right?

If you take that thing off the thing and you turn the motor off and you just want to like get it into the slip, well, you can't get it into the slip unless you stick that thing in the water and move it.

Because that thing is what's going to steer it.

If you sit still, never do anything in your life, and you're like, I'm just waiting for God to steer my life and guide me.

Well, maybe it should start moving.

And so he takes a faith-filled step and God directs him.

He takes another one and God redirects him and he takes another one and God begins to give him clarity.

And the application for us is that you don't need to know the end of the journey just to take a step, do you?

Just take the step.

Trust that he's going to lead you.

And verse 11 so setting sail from Troaz, 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.

So Paul still doesn't have the whole plan, but he knows that God's leading him.

And so he takes the next step and he travels from Troaz and he travels across, and there's this giant mountain island.

It's a 5,000-foot-tall mountain in the middle of this area of the Aegean Sea, okay?

So he travels there.

The next day they get to Neapolis, that's the port.

They walk 10 miles inland on the Via Ignatia, I think it's called, and they get to the city of Philippi.

And so this is where we begin to see why God's plan was better than Paul's.

Paul hadn't had a bad plan.

Paul's thinking big picture.

You know, he's like, I'm going to evangelize areas, I'm going to go reach people groups.

I'm going to change cultures.

I'm going to go in and bring the gospel to continents.

But when Paul arrives, there's not even a synagogue in Philippi for him to go to.

You know, a lot of scholars say back in the day, if you if you didn't have ten Jewish adult men in a city, you didn't have a synagogue.

And so if this is true, there's not even ten Jewish men for him to go do what he normally does.

You would go to the synagogue, reason with the Jews there, show them the prophecies, show them the law, show them how Christ is the fulfillment of all that stuff, right?

And so Paul might have been thinking in that moment, just for a brief second, this this can't be the plan, can it?

Really?

You want me to pass up Ephesus for this?

This is the reason I came 800 miles.

But God had his own plan, and it was better than Paul's.

Because God knew the people that were waiting at the end of this journey.

In the vision, Paul had seen a man from Macedonia, but who he actually met were a group of women that were just praying by the river.

In verse 13, 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.

And 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.

And so Paul sits down beside the river, beside this little group of women praying, and he begins just sharing the gospel with them.

And one of those women was Lydia.

She was a businesswoman.

She was from a place called Thyatira.

They were known for their dyes there.

And she was a specialist in purple dye.

And so she probably, as a businesswoman, was a woman of means.

She was selling something that was costly and expensive.

It also says she was a worshiper of God, but she wasn't Jewish.

When it says she was a worshiper of God, what this likely means is she was a Gentile that worshipped the God of Israel, but she hadn't met her Savior yet.

And so as Paul preaches the word to her, Luke tells us that the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.

Okay.

This is for bonus points.

I'm gonna ask a question.

Who opened Lydia's heart?

Yeah.

The Lord, right?

The Lord opened Lydia's heart.

So it wasn't Paul's eloquence, although I'm sure he was a wonderful preacher.

It wasn't his sales pitch, it wasn't his charming personality, although I'm sure he was very charming.

This is the same principle that we're seeing all along.

Paul showed up, he brought what he had, and he did what he could do, and God opened her heart.

And so Lydia believes she's baptized, it says her whole household is baptized, and with that, this with this woman's conversion, the the Philippian church is born.

See, Paul couldn't see Lydia from back in Antioch, could he?

But but God could.

And he sent him 800 miles to meet her.

And it's it's funny how in life we we so often can't see what God's doing in the moment, can we?

It's hard to see what you have until much later.

I think that's true of kids.

It's like you're just as busy in the hustle and the bustle, and you it's hard to appreciate what you have when they're little and they're cute and they love you and they want to be around you, and then they get older and they can't stand you, and you're like, I just want the little one back.

But it's hard to realize what God's doing in the moment.

We can't see the reason for why God allows certain things to come to pass in our lives.

Oftentimes not until far later, when we can see the whole picture.

Paul had no way of knowing what this church would mean to him or how God was going to use these people in his own life and ministry.

But years later, as he's sitting in a Roman prison cell awaiting trial by the Roman emperor, he writes a letter to them.

He says, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you, making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

And we just read about that first day, right now.

The day Lydia was saved.

And toward the end of his letter, he wrote, And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only.

Even in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs once and again.

See what Paul couldn't possibly have seen from that road outside of Posidian Antioch, or when he was forced to turn around at Bithynia, or as he traveled hundreds and hundreds of miles around Mycia to Troaz, is that is what Philippi would become to him, like a spiritual family.

One of Paul's most faithful missionary partners, supporting him with their love, supporting him with their prayers, supporting him with missionaries, funding his mission.

And when he was sitting in a Roman prison cell to send Epaphras with a gift of love to care for his needs while he was there.

And it even says in the letter, Epaphras almost died on his journey to get it to him.

And so he comes to love these people deeply, and they love him.

In fact, the letter to the Philippians is one of the most tender-hearted, just joy-filled letters that we can find in the New Testament.

Some of them are like get your stuff together.

Not Philippians.

See, God knew what he was doing, didn't he?

You can speak, church.

Did God know what he was doing?

He did.

See, he wasn't trying to keep the gospel from Ephesus.

Paul eventually got there.

He wasn't trying to sabotage all of Paul's plans.

God could just see further than Paul.

And so he was steering Paul towards something that Paul couldn't see, but that he knew that Paul and the Philippians both need.

And guess what?

God can see further than you, too.

And maybe you feel like Paul.

Maybe you feel like a ping-pong ball that's being bounced around.

And everything you try feels like it doesn't work out.

Every plan you make falls apart.

Maybe you take a step and you get turned back or you see a great opportunity, and then the door closes on you, and maybe you're wondering like, did I misunderstand God?

Am I doing something wrong?

But maybe you just need to take a note out of Paul's book.

Maybe you just need to pray.

Maybe you need to use some wisdom and make the best plan you can.

Maybe you need to do what God puts right in front of you, that thing he already told you to do, the thing you already know that you're supposed to do it, and you just haven't stepped out and done it yet.

Maybe you just need to take one faith-filled step and watch for his direction and then take one more, and then stay open and willing to be redirected by the Lord as he guides your steps.

Because the heart of a man plans his way, but it's the Lord that establishes his steps.

Amen.

Amen.

Father, we love you and we thank you for your word.

We thank you, Lord, that we can find hidden gems and passages that maybe don't look like much.

But Father, in the name of Jesus, I just pray that this word would sink deeply into our hearts and souls.

I pray, Father, that if there's any here who do not know you, that I pray in the name of Jesus that you would awaken them by the power of your Holy Spirit, that you would draw them to yourself, that you would make them sons or daughters.

And God, I pray in Jesus' name, Father, that this morning you would give us faith to just believe, to trust you, to continue taking step after step when everything around us might even feel like it's falling apart, when it feels like nothing's working, when it feels like I don't even know what to do next, Father.

I pray that you'd give us faith to just continue taking one more step, knowing, Lord, that you have us, that not death or life or any powers in heaven or on earth or under the earth can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

We trust you.

And we thank you.

And we ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.