Invest & Invite - Our Call to Obey (Pastor Cameron)

Well, thank you guys so much for coming on another Sunday as we continue on with Invest and Invite, our sermon series.

We've been going for a year, almost feels strong through Acts.

And so we're going to find our ways to Acts 21 today.

So if you want to go ahead and open up your Bible, you can.

You might be a little confused though, and you might be wondering, that's not Pastor Matt.

Is he sick?

Is he under the weather?

Did he just feel like not coming in today?

None of those.

He's currently with a group from our church who've been serving Center Point Church up in New Jersey, along with my parents and a few other families within the church.

And they should be arriving home today, at least my dad is, and my mom, at midnight.

So be praying for them as they fly back, uh, that they have safe travels, and we will see him next week.

He'll be preaching next week, and then he'll be out the next, and Joe will be preaching.

Um, but this is the perfect Sunday since my dad's not here to talk about some family drama we've been having.

Um and it is, it flares up every time we go on vacation together.

It's like our family splits into two sides, okay?

One half of us likes puzzles, and the other half cannot think of another better form of torture than doing a puzzle, okay?

And so, of course, me and my mom on the right side of the argument, which is that we love doing puzzles.

We could sit down for hours and just focus in on that.

But as for Allie and my dad, they make fun of us.

You know, why would you do something so boring?

And you might be thinking, like, why would you embarrass them today?

Well, one, they're not in the service.

But two, is they need to repent.

And I've gone to them and they won't repent, so I'm coming to you as the church saying, help me, help me, you know.

Um, but regardless if you like puzzles or not, there's a proper way to solve a puzzle.

Unless you're a madman and all you do is just dump out the pieces.

There should be a strategy involved, okay?

It should be you flip every puzzle piece over so you know what you're working with, okay?

And as you flip them over, you start to separate the pieces.

Maybe it's the edges or the corners, maybe it's based off color, all right?

But here's the most important part about solving a puzzle it's putting the box with the whole image somewhere where everybody can see.

So if you're zooming in, working on just one part of the puzzle, you can take a second, step back and say, there's a bigger picture at play.

We're not just building a horse, we're building a farm, you know?

And so that's kind of how I felt as I was studying Acts 21 the past few weeks, is that as I was zooming in on Acts 21, I felt like I needed a bigger picture for us to understand as a church what Paul's being called to.

So we're gonna be in Acts 19, 20, and 21.

But I also felt like we needed to zoom back a little bit for us to understand what the Bible might be declaring is true, that if we can really believe it with our whole hearts, we might realize that even though Paul might have a specific call we're gonna study today, that we all have calls upon our lives as well.

So we're gonna start with one biblical truth, move to another, and then we'll make our way to Acts.

Okay, I promise we're gonna get there.

And so we'll start with a biblical truth number one, if you're taking notes.

I know we don't have bulletins today, but, or you can make a mental note of this.

But biblical truth number one I want us to discuss today is God is actively moving around us.

God is actively moving around us.

We see that through the entire Bible from the beginning to the end.

If we start with the acts of God in the Old Testament, like Him creating everything around us, Him forming it, Him filling it, or if that's a little bit further, where we see Him actively in the world by sending a flood to judge sin.

Or if it's to save His people Israel through an Exodus, through ten plagues, um, and splitting the Red Sea in Egypt, or if that's even further in the Old Testament, as you enter into the prophets and you see God exiling his people from the promised land because they wouldn't obey him.

And I know that's just a short list, but all of us have Bible stories that probably come to mind where we think about God moving, if that's through a burning bush, if that's through pillars of cloud and pillars of fire.

And we see that continue in the New Testament.

It's just through Jesus.

We see him acting in the world around him, if that's healing people who have illnesses that they can't heal themselves from, or if that's through miracles, or if that's through exercising demons, or two of the biggest pillars in our faith, we see that through his crucifixion and his resurrection, that because of God's intercession on our behalf in history, Jesus took our sins upon the cross.

And then through his death, took them away, but then his resurrection showed that he had defeated sin and death by doing so.

And then in the book of Acts, which is the stories after the gospel, we see the Acts of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is an interesting person of the Trinity, and it's because it's mentioned nearly 60 times just in the book of Acts alone.

Many people consider it to be the main character of Acts.

And these are just ten common verbs that are associated with the Holy Spirit.

It empowers, it speaks, it fills, it witnesses, it decides, it forbids.

All the point is that the Holy Spirit is not a thing, it's a person that is actively moving in the world around us.

But what about now?

See, from the beginning of Scripture to the end, there's still 2,000 years of church history missing, right?

Um, and I want to challenge you with this verse.

I've been trying to memorize the past few weeks, and it's from 1 Corinthians 6, 19 through 20.

And it says, Don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who God has given you, whom you have from God.

Sorry.

I've obviously I need to keep trying to memorize it.

I'm a little jumbled up with it.

But I love this part.

You are not your own, for you were bought at a price.

That the same Holy Spirit that's been moving in the book of Acts is the same Holy Spirit who is moving today.

Which means there has never been a time on earth that God has not been moving, including now.

It reminds me of this quote that when we were studying experiencing God a few years ago, Henry Blackaby said.

He said, God is always at work around you.

Watch to see where God is working and join him in his work.

If God has been moving for all time, then he is moving right now in Oconee County, and he's moving right now in your job or your neighborhood.

And I think many times we can think or we don't reflect enough on the question, are we living like God is working around us?

Because maybe the ordinary moments that we would consider just being stuck in traffic or being stuck in a public slime with a very talkative bagger, or you know, the list goes on and on and on of like you get stuck in these situations and they're like, God, are you punishing me?

No, maybe he's opening up a door for you.

That maybe if God is really working around you, he's closing doors, opening doors, introducing new neighbors into your neighborhood, stirring up a desire within you to move jobs, like all those things that you might be feeling might be God pushing you, might be God speaking to you because God is actively moving around us.

All right?

Now to point number two God is speaking to and prompting us.

Okay?

So just like he's actively moving around us, he's speaking to and he's prompting us.

We see that in the Old Testament, where God speaks creation into existence.

Or he makes verbal covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or he talks to Moses through the burning bush and gives the Mosaic law so we understand what it looks like to be righteous and realize we can't be.

Um, if that's through the Psalms that William read earlier, where we see David in a very desperate situation and he's speaking to God, and God is attempting to speak to him through writing of the Psalms.

Or if that's through the prophets, where God speaks to them, even though the message they are to bring is not an easy one to bring, but they are supposed to speak on his behalf.

God is speaking and prompting all throughout the Old Testament.

And he does the same thing through Jesus in the New Testament and the Gospels.

We see that in the Sermon on the Mount, the beginning of Matthew.

We see that through his talks with Nicodemus in the book of John, we see that through every parable, every prophecy, every command, and even in his final Last Supper dialogues with his disciples.

Jesus is always speaking and prompting people on earth.

And then we see it through the Holy Spirit.

Out of those ten verbs that are some of the most common uses or verbs associated with the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, we see words like speaks, directs, decides, forbids, constraints.

All pointing to that the Holy Spirit is prompting the early church.

Like they can't do anything without the Holy Spirit giving guidance, speaking into it.

Or if they do, they don't have much confidence in it.

So they need the Holy Spirit.

So who does the Holy Spirit prompt today?

Um I'm gonna use my first analogy this morning, all right?

Anybody ever seen this picture before of the dream team?

Yeah, yeah.

It doesn't matter what student tells you that LeBron James is the best basketball player on the planet, they are wrong.

It is Michael Jordan, but that is not today's sermon, okay?

But, right?

The U.S.

lost in the Olympics, they didn't get gold, so they decided we're gonna put together the greatest basketball team of all time to compete in the Olympics, and they dominated, all right?

And it had Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson all on that team.

Why bring up the dream team?

When Cameron was younger, and I used to think, who in the church is being prompted by the Holy Spirit?

Who is leading because God is putting them into leadership?

I thought of three main people.

I thought of the pastor of my church, I thought of my Sunday school teacher, and I thought about missionaries.

Which hopefully they are.

But if 1 Corinthians 6 that we talked about earlier says that your body, everyone who is a believer, our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom is in you and whom you have from God.

That means ordinary believers in Jesus, like you and me, are also prompted and spoken to by the Holy Spirit.

It is not a moment or a idea that is reserved from super holy people that you would consider in your life.

If you are a believer in Jesus, the Holy Spirit is moving around us and speaking to us.

So are we as a church positioning ourselves to hear from the Holy Spirit?

Are you in your Bible regularly so that you can discern what is the voice of the world and what is the voice of God?

Are you setting time aside in your life to pray, not just to bring all of your requests that you want God to answer, but instead leaving room for him to speak to you?

Are we living in such a hurry that we are strangling our lives so that we really can't hear from God?

Like if the Lord is actively working and speaking to us, we have to create room for that.

That's because he is speaking and prompting us.

Now, we will turn to Acts 19, 20, and 21.

And we're gonna talk about when God is prompting, we typically call that a call.

Now, in Scripture, there are a lot of calls that we're gonna study, and we're gonna study a specific one for Paul.

But if you are a believer in Jesus in the room, we all have universal calls that God has given us.

Maybe it comes to mind the Great Commission in Matthew 28, where Jesus says to his disciples, including us today, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything that I've commanded you.

That is our job, that is our role, our responsibility as Christians is to make more disciples in him.

Or maybe it's a universal call like we see in Ephesians 4, where Paul is challenging the Church of Ephesus, also can be challenging us now, that he urges them to walk worthy of the call that they have received.

That if the gospel really has changed our lives, our lives should be different.

The way we talk, the way we think, the way we walk should all reflect a higher calling on our life than what the world offers.

But as we jump into Acts 19, 20 and 21, especially 1921, we get the first time Paul ever mentions that he was resolved by the Spirit to go to Jerusalem and to see Rome as well.

It's the first time in the book of Acts that Paul ever mentions this location for him to go to.

But before we get too far into Acts, I do want to talk about something that I feel like all believers maybe struggle with, and it's that we can find ourselves in judging a call's importance.

Um again, younger Cameron growing up in Bleckley County, Georgia, I thought there there were only two calls that were truly like the greatest calls that you could receive from God, and that was to be a call to ministry or a call to the mission field.

I still believe that they're amazing calls.

Um but when we only say that's the greatest and everything else is underneath, then when God calls us to welcome a new neighbor into our neighborhood, we don't feel like that might be as important as another call.

Or a call to pray for a friend.

Like if the Holy Spirit is welling that up inside you, you should do it.

Or if that is to have a hard conversation with someone, like if the Holy Spirit is prompting and speaking to you, it's an important call.

Because any call from God is important, no matter how big or small we think it is.

So as we turn to Acts 19, 20, and 21, I want us to talk about a specific call that Paul has on his life, a personal call.

And as we look at how he obeyed that call and how he persevered in that call, I want to challenge you.

If you feel like the Holy Spirit has been prompting you to say something, to do something, to change your vocation, to go into ministry, to start fostering, whatever it is, that these are tips or things that we can learn from Paul that maybe can help you stand firm in what God is calling you to do.

So Paul is being called to Jerusalem.

We just read it in Acts 19, 21.

Paul resolved.

The Greek word for resolve there means that it was put.

So the Holy Spirit put this desire within Paul to go to Jerusalem and to see Rome as well.

Okay?

So first idea about a call, first teaching point, an incomplete call is still a call.

An incomplete call is still a call.

I'm not sure what grade it was, but I do remember it happened at Blackley County, probably middle school.

But I had an English teacher teach me six important questions, and those were who, what, when, where, why, and how.

And that if you learned to master those questions and ask them well, that you can gain a lot of clarity in life.

If that is through books that you read or having really good connections and conversations with other people, or even knowing God's call on your life.

But we do need to understand something about God, which is that He He isn't always the clearest and revealed the most.

So again, in Acts 10, Acts 19, verse 21, Paul resolved by the Spirit to go to Jerusalem to see Rome as well.

Acts 19:21

Only two of those questions were answered.

Who is to go?

Paul.

Where is he to go?

Jerusalem and possibly Rome.

What's he gonna do there?

He doesn't know.

When's he supposed to go?

He doesn't know.

Why is he supposed to go there?

He doesn't know.

How's he gonna go?

He doesn't know.

God gave him two details out of this out of the six.

And then we head into Acts 20, verses 22 through 23.

Acts 20:22–23

And this is the second time Paul mentions his call.

Just a note from Acts 19, 21 to these verses that we're reading right now, Paul has traveled a thousand miles by feet or by sea.

So he's had several months to listen to God to see if God's gonna reveal anything else to him about his call.

And he said, I'm on the way to Jerusalem.

The Holy Spirit warns me that chains and afflictions are waiting for me.

So after those months of waiting and asking God, can you reveal more to me about this call?

God answers one more question.

Who is to go?

Paul.

Where is he to go?

Jerusalem.

How is it gonna go?

Poorly.

You know, that's all he gets.

He doesn't know what he's supposed to do there, when he's supposed to go, and why.

And I love the middle part of that verse in Acts 20, because he says, I'm on the way, not knowing what I will encounter there.

Like Paul's even saying, I'm gonna be obedient, but I don't have the whole picture.

And Paul, or God did not give Paul all the details to his calls, and God will not give us all the details to our calls either.

And that's a hard reality because for me, just speaking for Pastor Cameron, I really like to be in control, at least to know what's going on.

Um but here's the thing our longing for control and God not always being complete in what he tells us to do is not an excuse to not obey his calls on our life.

Sometimes we can let our control or we can let wanting more details make us drag our feet when it comes to be obedience to God.

And that is not fair of him or us to him.

Because every call is an opportunity for us to prove who our faith is in.

Is our faith in us and our ability?

Is our faith really, if our call is hard, to trust God and that he will get us there?

And even though we might not know all the details, we know that he's calling us to something for our good.

So are you resisting God's call in your life in any way because it is incomplete?

Because an incomplete call is still a call.

Now, to teaching point number two about calls, uh, we must obey God when he demands it of us.

We are finally in Acts 21, okay?

We've made it.

Um, and from the first three verses of Acts 21, we see Paul beelining it from uh Miltus all the way uh to Tyre in three verses.

He goes from Kaz to Rhodes to Petara to Phoenicia to Cyprus to Syria and to sorry into Tyre.

Um you might can't see the map behind me, I know, but I've tried to give you guys a good map.

There are two stars on that map.

So right on the middle of that pink area of Asia is where Paul starts Acts 21.

And in three verses is recorded now, he's at the bottom right in the yellow.

And he's less than a hundred miles from Jerusalem at the point of Acts 21.

And something interesting starts to happen as he gets closer to Jerusalem.

Everybody tells him not to go.

Uh it says in Acts 21, verse 4, we sought out the disciples, and through the spirit they told Paul not to go to Jerusalem, which is kind of interesting, right?

Acts 21:4

So they're telling him not to go to Jerusalem through the Spirit, but through the Spirit, a few chapters earlier, God is saying, You need to go to Jerusalem.

And then we get introduced to a man named Agabas, cool baby name, if you're trying to consider those, um, who took Paul's uh belt and tied up his hands and his feet, and he says, through the Holy Spirit, that this Jew is gonna be handed over to the Gentiles and bound.

And of course, when Paul's travel companions and the disciples of that city hear that, they plead with Paul not to go to Jerusalem.

So it's really interesting.

Paul is just miles away from Jerusalem, and everybody's saying, Are you sure you want to go?

Like, I think it's gonna be a really rough time.

Like, are you sure God has called you to this?

And I love what Paul says.

For I'm ready.

For Paul, it was like he was waiting his whole life for that moment.

I'm ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He was ready.

So are we ready?

Are you ready to obey God as soon as he promised you?

Or is there something hesitating your steps?

I can find myself in that boat too.

And it reminds me of this quote from C.S.

Lewis that I love.

If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort, the answer is, I am.

To know God is to know that our obedience is due to Him.

Another way of putting it is that anytime we have difficulty obeying God because of things that are hesitating us, we need to look to the cross.

Because when we look to the cross and we see the Son of God obedient to the point of death to cover our sins, who are we to withhold anything from him?

If we truly experience the love of God and the grace and the mercy and the patience that God provides to the cross, it is unjust for us to not obey God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

We must obey God when He demands it of us.

And now for teaching point number three To follow God's calls, we may endure hardship and affliction.

To follow God's calls, we may endure hardship or affliction.

Towards the middle of Acts 21 and verse 13, Paul reaches Jerusalem and they welcome him warmly.

And then that's about as good as it gets.

After that, it goes just as everybody has been prophesying.

Uh he gets misrepresented quickly into Acts 21 and verse 21.

The believers of Jesus that are in Jerusalem start to tell him that other people in the city have been informed about him and that he has been telling people to abandon Moses and to abandon the customs that they have as Jews, which is not what Paul has been preaching.

Paul has high respect for the customs of the Jewish faith.

He just doesn't put his worth in that.

It is in Jesus and what he did upon the cross.

So they come up with this really good idea for him to head into the city to maybe tame the Jews that are there.

So they send him in with a group of people to purify himself by taking a vow.

So he shaves his head and he goes into the city for seven days, purifying himself.

And on day seven, of course, you can probably feel like it's about to happen, uh, they gather a crowd around and they say, This is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against our people, our law, and this place.

Immediately, when they have a chance to talk to Paul, they mislabel him that he is against us.

Paul is not against them.

Paul loves them.

But for him to be obedient to his call and to teach the things that he's been called to teach, many people believe he is against them.

And then they begin to slander him.

They say that he took a Greek into the temple and defiled the holy place.

But look at what's bolded towards the end of that verse.

They supposed.

Paul never took a Greek into the temple, but they had their minds made up that he was their enemy.

And they would do anything to get him arrested, even if that meant lied.

And so he was harmed.

They dragged him to the temple, they locked the doors, and they tried to kill him.

But luckily there was a Roman commander there who took him into his custody and put him in chains and arrested him.

And this is the final verse that we're going to study in Acts 21 today.

Verse 36.

And what happens in that verse is as Paul is being dragged out from the people who were trying to kill him, this is what they have to say to him at the end.

Get rid of him.

Paul knew that his conclusion here in Jerusalem was going to be hard.

That was going to be really difficult.

It didn't mean it made it any easier to endure it.

He knew God had a purpose for him there.

But honestly, in these verses, we don't really see any good fruit coming about.

It just seems like punishment or discipline.

But that's the thing.

Obeying God's call may cost us something.

Like if we as a church are really to be obedient to what God has called us to do, it might mean that we have some different friendships afterwards.

Or that we have to move jobs.

Or that we have to have hard conversations with people that we love that have hurt us.

And that is hard.

And there are many seasons of my life I look back on and I go, it was difficult, but that was the cost of obeying what God has called me to do.

And maybe you have those moments too that you think of.

But it reminds me of what Jesus said in Luke 14, because Jesus said following him is costly.

He said, Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be his disciple.

That in order for us to truly follow what Jesus might have in store for us in life, we have to die to ourself.

And I don't know anybody on this world that wants to die to themselves.

But I love what Jesus says here at the end of these verses.

He said, Doesn't someone who thinks about building a tower calculate the cost?

To see if he has enough to complete it.

Jesus then, when he was talking to his disciples, is trying to give them a chance to wrestle with, if I'm going to follow you, it is going to cost me something.

And am I willing to pay the cost?

Am I willing to follow you even if I lose things along the way?

To follow God's call, we may endure hardship and affliction.

But to follow him is costly.

But so is to follow this world.

So I want to wrap up with this final question, and then we'll head into another song of worship and things.

But it is this what is God calling you to do?

Like I said earlier, I truly believe that God is actively moving around us and speaking to us.

And if that is true and you are a believer in the room, I really believe that God is trying to speak and prompt you.

And maybe you're in the room and you don't have a relationship with Jesus, but maybe through hearing of what Jesus had to go through on the cross to pay for your sins, there's something within you that goes, Man, I really do think I want to follow him.

And if that is you, maybe what God is calling you to do is to walk the aisle today or to find someone that you know that is a believer in Christ and to ask them questions and begin to dive deeper into what your heart is feeling.

Or maybe you're someone who has followed Jesus or you've been in the church, but you really haven't set time aside to hear from God.

Or maybe you aren't in the word regularly, but you want God to speak into your life because you want to have a deeper purpose.

Well, maybe the Sunday is a great day for you to begin setting up a time of prayer in your life every day.

Or maybe it's to begin reading the word for yourself.

Or maybe you're in the room and you know what God is calling you to, but you just don't want to obey him because it's costly or it's incomplete or it might be difficult.

And I want to encourage you that this is the place where you should talk to people about your cause.

We are all trying to follow Jesus in this room.

And following Jesus is hard sometimes.

And that's why God gave us the church in the first place.

Not for you to walk life alone, but for you to walk it with people who can love you and care for you and speak encouragement into you, even when what God is calling you to do is difficult.

So wherever God is trying to meet you this morning when it comes to what He's called you to do, I encourage you to respond.

If that is to send a text to someone that you need to have a conversation with, if that is to begin putting together a LinkedIn profile, because you know God's calling you to a different job in life.

Whatever it is that God is calling you to do, we need to obey him.

So let me pray for us and we'll head into a time of reflection and song.

Lord, I thank you so much for today.

For the songs that we sang, for the prayers that we prayed, for the scripture that we've studied.

I'm so thankful, Lord, that you are not a passive God or God who just put this world into motion and then forgot about it or doesn't care about it, but Lord, that you are actively moving and speaking to your people.

And Lord, I pray for us as a church that we are obedient to when you call us.

If that means there is difficulty, if that means we can't be in control, but we know, Lord, that what you have in store for us is better than anything that we could draft up in our minds.

So I pray for this final song, and as we conclude worship today, and I pray for the rest of this week for us to be obedient to any prompting, something in our mind that we might consider small or something big.

May we trust you.

And it's your name we pray.

Amen.