Christ is Life Podcast

Now last week, we looked at the majority of chapter 15. And if you were here, you know that we said it is one of the most important sections, one of the most critical sections in the entire Book of Acts, or really, maybe even the entire New Testament. And you'll remember, if you were here, that the big thing that was at stake was the gospel. What is the true gospel message. There was this disagreement.
Some were saying, it's Jesus
plus circumcision plus
obeying the law of Moses, and that equals salvation. That's how you'll know you're saved for sure. And others were saying, no, no, no, no, it's the faith in Jesus plus nothing that equals salvation. And that is what Paul and Peter and Barnabas and James the church of Jerusalem affirmed. That was the message that was being preached, and that is what they affirmed. And so Luke tells us that, and then he tells us that they, Paul and Barnabas, go back to the church at Antioch, which is where they were, and they had gone to Jerusalem for this, this council and and this disagreement and discussions and and they share that news with the church at Antioch, and they're encouraged and they're excited, and yes, this is the true gospel message. And they stay there, and they continue to disciple them and encourage them and support them. And now, beginning in verse 36 is where Luke picks up and tells us what happens next in Antioch. It says, sometime later, Paul and Barnabas, sometime later, Paul said to Barnabas, let us go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing now. Now, what is it that Paul is talking about when he says, Let us go back and visit all the believers in the towns where we preach the Word of God. Well, that was his, his first missionary journey, their first one. If you've been here, you know, we read about that in last few chapters before chapter 15, and it was this journey where they preached the good news of Jesus, and people came to know him, and churches were planted, and major life transforming. Things were happening, and now they're going, what if we go
back like I wonder how they're doing.
I mean, things were really happening in their lives, and so let's go. Let's let's see how they're doing. Let's encourage them. Let's support them, let's continue to disciple them.
But there arose a problem,
and we see that next verse 37 Barnabas wanted to
take John, also called Mark, with
him, but Paul did not think it wise to take him because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. They had
such a sharp
disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and left commended by the believers to the grace of the Lord. So, so what do we have going on here? If you were here when you remember the first maybe you remember the first missionary journey. John Mark went with them at first, and after they got to the island of Cyprus, he left. He deserted them, right, right here, is what he said. And he went back all right? And so now you've got Barnabas, who's John Mark's cousin. He's the son of encouragement. He's a people person. He's going, we should give him another chance. And Paul's going, Hey, man, this dude deserted us, and I love him, and God's got something for him. But we can't have people flaking out on us whenever there's suffering and real things involved. And you go, well, who's right? Maybe both of them in some way, right? You're dealing with people with two different personalities, a people person, the Spirit working in them. Saying grace means we offer people a second chance and and Paul's going,
Yeah, but that second chance doesn't always
have to mean what they were in before it could be that God's got something else, because the track record shows us that maybe this isn't the best thing for us. And so there is a disagreement. We can't really say who's right or who's wrong, but what we do know is that the Holy Spirit can work even in and through conflict, in the things that go on in our lives. In this way, we don't just go, oh, the Lord's not in it. In some way, we have already seen that happen when the church faced persecution and scattered
and all the things that God did through persecution.
And so what we see now is that okay, they were planning on going back on another missionary journey. And how many do we have now? Two. So we're doubling the places that they can go, the number of people that they can check
in on, and the number of people that can hear
the gospel and and we're inviting more people into God's kingdom work. It was just going to be Paul and Barnabas, but now Silas. Silas was a guy who was involved in God's work, kind of regionally, and now he gets the opportunity to go on global mission trip and impact people in that way. And John Mark is getting a chance to get back into ministry.
No doubt he might have been feeling some
guilt or or shame for
the choice that he made in that way.
And now God's inviting him back into it, even if it wasn't with them in still a different way. And so this is a really great thing to see, even though we had some conflict, verse 41 says he referring to Paul,
went through Syria and Cilicia
strengthening the church. Churches what they said they were going to do, Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer, but whose father was a Greek. The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. Paul wanted to take him along the journey. So he circumcised him because the Jews who lived in that area for they all knew that his father was a Greek Okay, so, so one of the things that we know about Timothy, and it doesn't mention it here, is that Timothy was young. We see this in a number of places. Paul writes a letter to him later on. It says, Don't let anybody look down on you because you're young, but set
an example on them for them
in your faith and purity and a number of things in that passage, and she goes, Well, how young was he? Well, we don't know for sure, but most biblical commentator scholars will guesstimate that he was between 16 and
24 years old.
Now what I want to highlight here, because we just read it, and this just kind of happened, and we move on. Some of you are 16 years old sitting in this audience right now, in those of you who are not, most of you who are not, had been that age at one point in time, can you imagine the Apostle Paul coming to your town? You being 16 years old? In Him, the apostle Paul saying, I see potential in you. I see the Holy Spirit doing
something powerfully in you. As a matter
of fact, the people in your community speak very
well and highly of how the Spirit is working in you, and I am so
impressed by that that I think the Lord
is leading me to take
you, a 16 year
old, with me, on this global
missionary journey, because you have the same Holy Spirit, not a junior Holy Spirit living in you I have in me. Imagine that what, what that must have done and said and spoken to Timothy, whoa, the apostle Paul values me like I can be a part of God's Kingdom work in this way, as someone that is
so young and so so this
is the first thing we've just got to highlight. I mean, we've already seen him pull in Silas. We've pulled back John Mark from a mistake that he had made.
And now young Timothy,
you even get to be included in God's work in here. Now, one of the things that we also need to address is this whole circumcision thing.
Because some of you, that's the first thing
you thought of, like, okay, like,
didn't we just deal with this in Acts chapter 15 earlier? It's Jesus plus nothing, not Jesus plus circumcision and and, yes, that is the truth. He he didn't circumcise him to make him become a Christian. It wasn't a requirement. What we see is the same thing that we talked about last week, where
Paul knows that they're going to be ministering to
Jewish people in these areas. He knows that it could be a barrier to people even being opening to listening to them, If this isn't something that's happened in their lives. And so does
Timothy have freedom to not be circumcised?
Absolutely, he didn't have
to be. But he says, I choose to forego
that freedom that I have in Christ
for the sake of the Gospel, so
that more people could come to know Him, and that's what we see going on here. As they traveled verse four from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and the elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. That was the council. It's nothing but Jesus. Now, there are some smart things to avoid, and in your freedom, it would be wise to do this in a Jewish and Gentile fellowship.
All the things we talked about last week.
If you weren't here, go watch that sermon, because we cover it in detail. But they relayed all of those messages to them, and then, as a result, verse five, so the churches were strengthened. That's what they said they were going to do. They were strengthening the churches in faith, but look, they also grew daily in numbers, just important and really quickly to go okay, their their goal was to go back and strengthen the churches and check on them. But that's never
what the Spirit just does.
There's always an in inner community aspect of discipleship and the things that he's doing to strengthen and grow us. But then there's a scattering and ascending out to people in the community
who don't yet know Jesus, to share the
gospel with them, to bring them into that same community and fellowship and discipleship that we're entering as well. And that's what we see happening here, and as we talk about life in the Spirit today, that's the kind of thing we've got to be open to as well. We cannot have this mentality to go, boy, I just love my Sunday school class, and I love coming and getting fed
by the word and just growing in the Lord
Yes, yes, and amen. Those are good, and we want to keep doing those things, but we can't do that in neglect that God sends us out to grow in numbers, to share the gospel with others and invite them into it. And we also don't just go, run out and share without the expense of being involved in community.
It's a both. And so we look
for the Spirit to be leading
us in this particular way. Verse six, Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the. Word in the province of Asia, that's Asia Minor is what we're really referring to here.
When they came to the
border of Mysia, they tried
to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to, and so they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. Now this is really, I think, really important for us to see, because I have people who come to me or will I'll be around people in every single time I'm talking, every single time something negative happens in their lives and they're kept from doing something they felt they should be doing. The first words out of their mouths are Satan.
I hate our enemy.
He's always at work trying to steal,
kill and destroy and keep us from doing all
of the good things that the Lord has called
us to. And that is certainly true the majority of times, Satan is at work in a number of those things. But what we see here is that this actually says that when they came to the border, they tried to enter, but the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, would not allow them to what are we talking about here? We're not talking about bad things, something they shouldn't have been doing. Jesus met with them in Matthew 28 and said, go make disciples of all nations. And what are they trying to do?
Go make disciples of all nations.
And yet God is the one shutting the door in their face.
How do we explain that
God sits in the chair? We don't. He sees things
from a different perspective. I don't
know but, but he's the
one who's at work. He has a heart
for them, but we've
got to trust that. Okay, every
door that's shut. Here's my point, when we have the mentality that it's every time, 100% of the time, Satan who is blocking us from doing the good things we know Jesus would normally call us to go do and we have the mentality that's always him, and it could never
be the Holy Spirit. Then what are we going
to do in those situations?
It's Satan. So I'm just going to bulldoze my way through it and do it anyway, because I know it's something that God calls me to really, maybe not. Maybe the Lord's the one
shutting that door, and we've got to
prayerfully consider that before him
and know, okay, he's doing it for a reason, and he's going to work it out in some other way with us or with them, or whatever it is that he is trying to do. But I think this is so important for us to recognize whenever we're reading through God's word and how it applies to us.
Luke goes on, it says, during the
night, Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him come over to Macedonia and help us. And after Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. Couple of things I want you to see out of these two verses.
First, the Holy Spirit shut the door.
You can't go here. Well, I thought that was our plan. We had it all planned out,
and the doors keep being shut, and we don't really know
what to do. Well, God provides, he gives a vision in this way and a sense of what it is that he's doing. But what I want you to see is that after Paul sees this vision, he doesn't just wake up the next morning, or, I don't know if it's a dream. I'm saying that it could have just have just been a vision he had in the middle of the day or something in his mind. I don't know how it went, but he doesn't just run to his companions, the leadership team, and go, this is what we're doing. How do we know that? What are we talking about here? Well, look what he says after that. Says after Paul had seen the vision. We got ready at once, leaving for Macedonia? What concluding? We concluded? So in other words, Paul says, Hey, I feel like the Lord's given me this vision, like, where I'm seeing this guy from Macedonia, like saying we should come over and help them. And so I'm trying to process is that what we're doing or not you feel the same way. And the Holy Spirit, they
collaborated together and says, Yeah, we concluded
that that was what the Spirit was doing. Why is that important? Because I've seen people in their own lives. Maybe I've done it in my past. Maybe you've done it in yours at some time, who have made sinful choices in their lives and used the language like, you know, I just, I really feel like God was leading me to or in the moment, I feel like God's leading me to do X, Y or Z. That doesn't really line up with scripture at all, but they're saying that it
was the Lord that was leading them
to do that particular thing. And so it's either
that they're completely missing
what it is that the Lord is saying in that, or they know it, but their flesh wants it so bad that we're just going to use the language that it's God. But what we know is that if, if we don't just act in our own power, if what
we see Paul going. Well, I'm getting a sense that
maybe this is it. But he goes to a team of people
and asks them what they think, then maybe that's something that's smart for us to do as well, to have godly people in your life, Godly counsel that you can go to someone in your Sunday school class, someone that you know is a mature believer, and just go, man, can we eat meat for coffee? I'm getting a sense that this is the direction that God's leading me in, or what I should be doing in this. And so, so how do you think that lines up with scripture? What do you what do you think about that? And what does that say to you, and allow the Holy Spirit to genuinely speak through them, to go, yeah, that's an open door. I really want to confirm that and see that that's what God is doing. Or, you know what? I don't really think that's God showing you to take that step.
And here's why. And we're open
to those kind of things. And so when we talk about life in the Spirit, again, we are not talking about just some lone ranger thing where we're just always doing things on our own. We bring godly people
into it and ask them to speak into it.
We ask the Holy Spirit to speak
through them to us as well.
Here's here's the other big thing that I need you to see right here,
all up until this point. If you read the pronouns that were acts
one all the way through
16, before we
get to verse 10, it was always they Paul and Barnabas and Silas, and they went to different places. And here, the pronoun
changes to us, and
it's going to begin to say we.
Now let's pretend that you are the one who's writing a story down, and someone else you had the information from, and you're always writing about they did this, they did that, and then you begin to use the word us, or we. Then what does that mean? You began to be included in the story with them, in those situations and circumstances in the same is true here. Dr Luke is the one who is responsible for the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts here. And what we see is
that all the way up until this point
throughout Acts, Luke hasn't been there.
He's getting this firsthand knowledge from Paul and Peter and the others that he came in contact with later, and now, Luke evidently, was maybe either a doctor in troads or came to know Jesus in one of his first missionary journeys, and had a relationship and met up with him here. We don't really know exactly how it worked, but at some point in time, Luke's just a doctor going about his own business, maybe trying to make a buck or two and retire early because he's got a great career path. And all of a sudden he finds out the truth about Jesus. He responds in faith, becomes a new creation in Christ. And look what he says here. After this vision, we concluded that God had called us Luke, including himself, to do what, to preach the gospel to the people in Macedonia. He didn't say that he had called, you know, Paul and Silas and Timothy to preach the gospel. Called us me. I was just a doctor, just physically, medically, helping people. And now I've got this calling on my life to share this message with people that could transform and change their lives forever.
And he's a part of it, so much so
that we're reading the words that he wrote down 2000 years ago and learning the truth about God and the early church. Amazing. What do we learn from that? Well, well, if that happens to Luke in his normal career, that he was just really driven in and all about, and what it is that he thought life was all about, and all of a sudden, God just slapped him and made him do a 180 to go, I'm inviting you into something even bigger and greater and grander than what you think life is all about, then he
can and will do the same thing with you
and with me. Maybe you're making your career.
It's what it's all about.
He's going, well, I want to invite you to something much bigger and greater that's going to make an impact on a lot more people and be celebrated in all of eternity. And you might get to be a part of that.
It's amazing. The things that we're
seeing and the people that God is inviting into things that will transform and change history forever. There were just normal people trying to make things happen and work in their day and age, just like you are today, that we miss in all the details because we're just reading a lot of
times really quickly.
Verse 11 says from Troas, we put out to the sea and sailed straight for Samothrace, and the next day, we went on to Neapolis. From there, we traveled to Philippi, a Roman colony in the leading city of that district of Macedonia, where they saw the division. And we stayed there several days. Philippi, you may sound familiar to you. It's a Philip Philippians is a book in your New Testament and and that was a letter written to the church at Philippi after it was established. And right
now you're getting to read about
how it was established, how that church came to be in the first place, before the letter was ever written back
to them in that way,
verse 13, on the Sabbath, we went out. Outside the city of Philippi, Macedonia, outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the woman who the women who had gathered there, and one of those listening was a woman from the city of
Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer
in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the message. The first thing I want you to see right here is where she's from. She's from the city of Thyatira.
Guess where the city of Thyatira is?
Asia Minor, the same place
that the Holy Spirit told Paul that he was forbidden to go the place that he had shut the door to. You're not the one or right now that's going to share the gospel. I've got plans for you to go to Europe and spread the gospel there, but he grabs a hold of Lydia's heart. She's from there. No doubt. She probably went back and forth as a business woman, and we'll talk about that in just a moment. And so evidently, God had plans to say, Hey, I'm gonna change her life. I'm gonna send someone that people already know in that area back to that area. They'll see how much her life has been transformed and changed. They'll listen to her. They'll put their faith and trust in them, and then that gospel will begin to spread in and through that way, through just a normal person who was trying to make $1 or two, all the way up until this point in her
life, and God gets a hold of her
in this way, we see, and I referenced it already, that she was a dealer in purple cloth. Well, Thyatira was where you could find that purple dye, and it was rare and it was in high demand. It was a luxury item. It was something that people with money wanted to have, and being in low demand, in high demand and lower supply, then that meant they could charge an exorbitant amount for that. And so now, no doubt, not only was Lydia a businesswoman, she was probably a very rich business woman, had a lot of money and resources. And what we saw happen at the end was that the Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message. What message, 10 steps on how to become a better you. That's not what we're talking about here. Paul's message of salvation, the gospel, the good news of Jesus that he left the glory and riches of heaven
to come here out of his love for you,
to die on a cross for your sins and receive the wrath of God in your place, so that you could be forgiven and you could receive salvation as a gift, responding by faith. And that's exactly what happened. He opened her heart through the Spirit, to see that truth in his love for her and changed her life. And now immediately, in the last verse we're going to look at today, we see
her just like we did
Silas and John Mark and and Timothy and all of these others
invited Luke into the
Kingdom work. Now she's going to be a
part of it when she when Lydia and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us into her home, if you consider me a believer in the Lord, she
said, Come and stay at my house.
And she persuaded us. So what do we gather happened from the summary of what it is that Luke is saying here,
Lydia hears
the gospel message from Paul. She responds in faith,
becomes a new creation. In Christ, she goes
back home to all those living in her household. Who's that? Well, any other potential family members that lived there,
if she's rich, which she probably
is, she owns a home and a large home, then there were servants there. Maybe it's people that were involved in the business, and she ran it out of her home in some way. And so there's a number of people sphere of influence, kind of people. She says, Hey, Jesus Christ, changed my life. All my sins are forgiven. I have eternal life in him, and the same can be true for you. And they say yes to that. And we want to know Jesus. And they respond in faith, they all get baptized to show that all their sins have been washed away. They become new creations. In Christ, the old them is dead, buried and gone. They've been raised up to someone new. And so we see her reaching, first and foremost, all the people around her, all the people
within her sphere of influence, are
getting saved as a result of her life being changed. But then she says, You know what, I've got a lot of resources. And you know what I'm learning now that I'm learning about God and Jesus and my new salvation and being part of his family, that that my stuff isn't really my stuff, it's him that provided those things for me. And so you know what? I want to be involved in his kingdom work.
And so what if I take my
resources and the things that he's blessed me with and offer them to you to be able to use as well? And so that's exactly what happened. Remember, the early church didn't have a worship center and a place like this that they. Gathered in they
gathered in homes.
Lydia is a business person trying to make money. Jesus changes her life, and she is responsible for hosting the church at Philippi
in her home,
all the lives, all the people that were getting saved in this area, invited into God's kingdom work a part of her Jesus inviting her into his kingdom work through the resources that she had and the relationships that she was
building with others, and
so we see just so
much here. I mean, how, how many people have we
already highlighted whose
lives have been changed and invited into God's kingdom work? Let's just review. John Mark. He made a mistake. Oh man, the guilt and the shame that he must have been feeling. God said, I'm not done with you. I'm inviting you into a whole new journey. Silas, who's part of something small, and
that God was doing and saying, I want to use you
in something huge all the way across the world. Timothy, just a young teenager, probably, who's trying to understand who this Jesus guy is in the Spirit, and what this means for him. And the apostle Paul, is going, you're invited to come with me to do big time, huge ministry, kingdom, eternal things. Luke, a doctor who's just trying to help people make a lot of money, whatever the situation is, his life is transformed and changed, and now he's invited to share the gospel and write scripture that we're reading about today in Lydia, a business woman who's just going along with her duties, and Jesus changes her life and invites her to start a church in her area. And so many people came to know Jesus and their lives were changed. What are we seeing today? Life in the spirit means that he is inviting you in some way, just like all these other ways and various things that we saw in their lives today, to be a part of his advancement of the gospel.
Specifically, if maybe
you find yourself in a John Mark situation,
you tried to step out, you started going where God wanted you to go, and trusting in Him
in those ways, and you messed up and you made a
mistake, and now you're like, feeling the guilt, you're feeling the shame, you're feeling like, well, I don't even know if I can do it anymore, or if people will let me, or I should just sit on the sidelines. And you see that what happened in somebody else? He called him back into it, and today he's calling you back off of the sidelines, going, Yes, you messed up. You were guilty of that, but I paid the price for that at the cross, and I'm in the business of reconciling and redeeming even mistakes in people's lives, and I've got a great plan for you to be a part of my kingdom work. And so welcome back in, and let's get after it and quit allowing Satan to whip you around. Maybe you find yourself in the situation of someone
like Luke, right?
It's all about your career, and it's all about the things that you've been doing. And the LORD, wow, he transformed and changed his life to maybe he continued to practice, but use his skills and all the things that he had learned in a different way, and
approach it with a gospel mindset
to be able to transform and change people's lives in and through him. Maybe you're Timothy, maybe, maybe you're the young person that's here today, the young teenager or college student. You're going, I mean, what does God really have for me? And you're going, Gosh, there was a teenager that the apostle Paul saw potential in and invited him into Kingdom work in that way.
And so even at my age, I can be
a part of big, huge, Kingdom minded things that the God of the universe is doing in and through me.
And so I want to say yes to whatever
it is that has for me, who's even
young and in this place. Or maybe you're, you're, you're Lydia, and
you're a business woman, or you have people
around your household and a number of sphere of influence. And you hear him saying, You know what, I see the way that God used Lydia to impact the people in her home and and the people that may have been part of her her business, that were there and and the servants, then the people that were like, you go, Oh, well, I have people in my home. I've got a guy that mows my yard. I've got somebody that comes over and cleans my house. I've got someone that cuts my hair on a regular basis. I've got neighbors who don't know Jesus and
and he used Lydia
for everybody in her household and
sphere of influence to come to know Him. So what if he wants to do the same in and through me? And I've been making it all about me, and so this could be what he's inviting you into, the same way that he invited her. The point is, is that God reveals the truth
about His grace and His mercy
your sinfulness, that you need a Savior, and that when you say yes to Him, He provides you with every spiritual blessing there is to have, so that you're free from having to chase after the things that you. Already have met in Christ, and now you're just open to be available for what he wants to do in and through you. And so what? What does that look like in your life? Listen to him today, trust Him and respond in faith the same way that we see all of these people responding in faith today. Let's pray.