Transcription
Good morning everyone. I am absolutely honored to be here this morning. Like Elijah said, my wife and I helped launch Vicksburg. They're listening in right now. So, can we give it up for our family over in Vicksburg right now? [cheering and applause] Yeah, man. The people over in Vicksburg will always have a place in my heart. Vicksburg, I love you guys. Thanks for tuning in today.
And I want to start today with something that's probably kind of old. Um, I realized that I don't know how old it actually is because I'm 32 now and I think I'm old. Um, I had a birthday last week and I realized that I am now like all three of the big bad things that you don't want to be. I am old, and I'm bald, and I'm fat, you know? So, like, it's a part of it, but, you know, here we are and I'm still the one here and you're listening to me. So, you know, it's fine. It's fine.
But, you know, as far as old things go, does anybody remember TomTom Navigators? Somebody does. Thank goodness somebody remembers TomTom Navigators. Some of you have never even heard of TomTom Navigators. I remember being like, I was a kid and we were going on baseball tournaments and like somebody had a TomTom Navigator. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Like this thing would tell them where to go. You guys remember when GPS systems were awful and they would like, they would send you into like a cornfield, right? Like I grew up in a tiny town called Mantachie, Mississippi. And it, at the time, it was population 700, right? Now it's population like 1100. So, like, hey, they're growing. You know, they're almost doubled. But anyway, but at that time, people would, friends would try to come over to my house or whatever, and they'd type my address into a little TomTom navigator and it would try to take them into the Tennessee River. And it, it was crazy. Like there, they had to climb this really steep hill and at the very top of the hill, it just dropped straight off the big cliff and at the bottom of the cliff was the Tom Bigby Waterways, the Tennessee River. And if they didn't stop in time, they were just like, they were going in, right? Right. And like, of course, I'm getting phone calls from all my friends like, "Dude, I don't even know what's going on right now. Like, this is obviously not your house." I'm like, "Yeah, okay. Back up. Go past the chicken store and I'll be in my front yard waving at you." And of course, they knew what that meant because small town, right? There's only one four-way stop. There's only one chicken store. It was a gas station that we called the chicken store. And they literally changed their name to the chicken store about 10 years ago, which is crazy. Anyway, but of course, they pass my house and, you know, like waving at them by, okay, because they're not paying attention.
Anyway, but GPS systems used to be awful. Now, luckily, they're they're less awful. They're actually pretty incredible. My wife and I just took our family to the mountains last week, 460 miles one direction to the mountains in North Georgia and our new to us 2009 minivan with a questionable transmission and who knows about their brakes. So, we're going straight uphill, straight downhill, around the curves at all times, right? It doesn't matter like mid-hill, top of the hill, bottom of the hill, there were curves. And at every one of the curves, the annoying part is at every one of the curves, there was another road that goes in a different direction, right? So like the whole time you're driving 30 miles an hour because you're worried about your transmission and you're like, "Do I go left or right?" Luckily, I had my Apple Maps, right? Better than TomTom Navigators. And I was able to get there and it was so cool to be able to trust that.
And honestly, like I, you know, this is a little, you know, this is the personal part about me. I'm a total control freak. Can anybody my control freaks in the house? Come on, say something. Okay, we're not. That's fine. Okay, it's just me, guys. It's just me. I'm the only one. So, I'm a total control freak. I want to be in control. And luckily for me, maps make me feel like I'm in control because I get to set the destination, right? Other than that, following things that are outside of myself is just hard. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't like it. I don't like following other people. I just like, I'm a drummer and I've always have been and I've always wanted, like literally, I've always like marched to the beat of my own drum. It's the thing that the people have said about me forever. So either way, that happened. But I struggled to follow something outside of myself. And and that's really what I want to talk about today. I had to learn how to do that.
And the question, because we're in this series, the Holy Spirit, we're almost done, by the way. There's only like a couple weeks left. Um, the question that I want to pose is, how do you follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit? How do you follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit? Because it's, it's not always as easy as it sounds. It's not something that always makes a lot of sense in the moment, right? Sometimes following the Holy Spirit feels like you just, you come to something and you get stuck, or maybe the spirit says, "Go do that," and you're like, "I really don't know about that." Right? How do you follow the Holy Spirit, especially when when life gets hard and and and you're going through this stuff? How do you follow the Holy Spirit when your marriage is falling apart? How do you follow the Holy Spirit when you want to get married and you've dated every single person on planet Earth and nobody's right for you, right? How do you, how do you follow the Holy Spirit when you've dated zero people on planet Earth because nobody's right for you? Right? How do you follow the Holy Spirit when you hate your job and your boss is out to get you and you really don't like the person next door and their breathing just gets on your nerves, right? Like I don't know that from experience, right? So like, how do you follow the Holy Spirit when when your bank account is zeroed out and you don't know what you're going to eat next week because you don't get paid next week, right? How do you follow the Holy Spirit when you realize you're not going to be able to retire? How do you follow the Holy Spirit when you go to the doctor and the diagnosis that the doctor gives you is not exactly what you were expecting or planning for? How do you follow the Holy Spirit when you're trying to grow a family and month after month after month, there's no positive pregnancy test? How do you follow the Holy Spirit when you do get a positive pregnancy test but there's a miscarriage? Sometimes it's really hard to follow the spirit. Sometimes it doesn't make a lot of sense. Sometimes you ask, "Why did you bring me here?"
Luckily, this is this is not a problem that's new. Luckily, Paul went through this and we get to learn from it. So, I'd like to open up our our Bibles, our words to chapter 13 of Acts. If you have your Bibles, chapter 13 of Acts, we're going to be reading there. I just want to set the stage real quick in Acts. In chapter 13, we're sitting in Antioch, which is uh, one of the first churches that came about. It's pretty close to Jerusalem. Antioch, funny enough, was the place where the word Christian was coined. So, they were the first Christians out there. We get to say our names come from from this place. And they're sitting in Antioch. It's Paul and Barnabas. Uh, we'll, we'll see the name Saul. Saul is Paul. Um, we'll see these guys all gathered together in a place here. And Acts 13:2-4, it says this: "While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.' Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off. So being sent by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia and from there they sailed to Cyprus."
All right. So the story starts with worship and with fasting. This is absolutely essential. It starts with worship and fasting. What they're doing here is seeking God together. They're they're worshiping, fasting, seeking God. And then the spirit spoke, "Set apart for me, Barnabas and Saul or Paul, for the work to which I have called them." And then what did they do after that? They kept praying and they kept fasting. And then they laid their hands on Barnabas and Saul to pray for them even more to make sure that they were just so full of the Holy Spirit before they sent them off. And then they sent them off like the spirit said. And uh, the first thing that we can learn from about the spirit in this in this text is that the spirit leads people who are seeking. The spirit leads people who are seeking. Those who are listening and obeying and worshiping. What does it mean to worship? Romans 12 says that to to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. This is your spiritual worship. This is what they were doing. They were presenting their bodies as living sacrifices, saying, "God, take me. I'm here for you. Whatever you desire, I'm here for it." That's what they were saying. And having been sent by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia. And their mission really began there. Now, why did they go down to Seleucia? Seleucia was a port city near Antioch. It was literally the closest place to them that would be able to take them anywhere quickly. That's why they went there, right? Paul is like, "I just got called by the Holy Spirit to go do something. I'm just gonna go." And so he goes to Seleucia and he's like, "I'm going out."
After this, the story continues. We get Paul's first missionary journey in the next chapters and he preaches the gospel. He plants churches. He does miracles. He almost dies a couple of times, which is wild. He comes back to Jerusalem. They have a big fight in Jerusalem about some stuff, circumcision. Anyway, uh, they come to a conclusion there and then they decide, you know what? We've got this news. We're in unison now. We're going to go spread this across to all of the churches around. And this is where we find ourselves. All right, Paul and Barnabas, they kind of split somewhere in there. And then Paul picks up Silas and Timothy and a couple other guys. And they're going and this is where we find ourselves in chapter 16. Now, so in your Bibles, Acts chapter 16, verses 6 and 7. This is where we're going to be probably for the for the majority of the day here. It says this: "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 to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them."
Now, here's what just happened. We read these two verses in about five seconds, but what really happened is that they didn't take this trip in about five seconds. Okay? They just passed several nations. All right? Um, this is what I would like to call in this moment right now, I'm just making this up, is an ancient travel montage, right? Like y'all know in the movies like somebody's traveling the globe and there's an airplane going, right? And like the little dots behind them showing you that they traveled the world in 30 seconds, right? That's what just happened here, right? In just two verses, they traveled a whole lot of miles. Uh, as a matter of fact, they traveled about 1300 miles from Jerusalem to Troas, which is where we're going to be in just a second. And for your perspective here, 1300 miles from here is Boston, Massachusetts. Okay? So like they traveled to Boston, Massachusetts on foot over the Appalachians wearing sandals. Like that's that's what's happening here, right? It took a long time, right? They passed through Asia and Asia is the size of about South Carolina. So they passed, they passed by South Carolina and they go up into Bithynia and they're like, "Okay, Bithynia is about the size of Massachusetts." And so they're passing through Massachusetts, right? So that's that's what just happened in these couple of verses right here. And they passed through Phrygian Galatia and they were forbidden to speak in Asia. And Asia here wasn't again wasn't the continent. It was a Roman province about the size of South Carolina. It's full of people, full of false gods. And here you have Paul who is ready to preach the gospel. He's rearing to go. He says, "I'm going to go preach the gospel to these people who are worshiping false gods." And the spirit of God says, "No." Okay. Okay, so I'm going to keep going. So he goes to Bithynia. Bithynia is a region full of people, full of false gods. And here's Paul who's rearing to preach the gospel. And he's saying, "I see these people who are worshiping false gods. I'm going to go preach the gospel to them." The Spirit of Jesus says, "No."
Okay. As I was reading through this, one of the things that that occurred to me is that is that Paul didn't know where he was going, right? If he knew where he was going, he wouldn't have stopped into Asia and been redirected. If he knew where he was going, he wouldn't have stopped in Bithynia and been redirected. He would have gone exactly where he wanted to go. He didn't know where he was going, but he kept going. And that's good. And and I want to say this, that not knowing where you're going is actually the norm in the Bible. It's the norm. Uh, Abraham in in Genesis chapter 12 was called by God, "Uproot your life. Leave your father's house and go this direction until I tell you to stop. I've got a land for you. It's over here, but you're going to have to trust me." Right? Hebrews tells the story again, Hebrews 11, it says, "And Abraham got up and he went, not knowing where he was going." Right? Uh, Philip in Acts chapter 8, told by the spirit, "Go south down this road." Period. Philip goes south down the road. Didn't know where he was going. Didn't know if he was supposed to speak to somebody. Didn't know if he was going to walk forever into the ocean or something. Like, what's going on here? Didn't know where he was going. The interesting thing here is that both of these guys, and in both of these stories, millions of lives were changed because these guys went not knowing where they were going. Abraham fathered Israel, which was the nation that bore Jesus, who changed the world. Philip met an Ethiopian eunuch, shared the gospel with him. The Ethiopian eunuch decided to follow Jesus. He was baptized, probably took the gospel to Ethiopia and started the church there and changed millions of lives since then.
And then there's me, right? Couple weeks ago, I'm laid in bed. It's Sunday morning. It's early. It was like way early. And I'm pretty sure God punched me in the face and said, "Wake up." So, I wake up and I just get this sense when I wake up, "Get up and go." Okay, I'm going. I'm blurry. I'm I'm tired. Earlier than I normally would get up on a Sunday. And I I get dressed. I get in my car. I'm out of gas. So like, "All right, God. I got to go get some gas." And I'm off to the gas station. It's right next to my house. Pull in. I'm like, "All right, I'm getting some gas." And I get this sense, "Not here." Okay. I keep going. So I'm like, "God, I'm out of gas here." All right. So I keep going. Pull into another gas station. Got, I'm pretty sure I got a sense, "Not here." Okay. God, I'm out of gas. You got to help me out. And I get this kind of image in my head. Here's a gas station. And it's like all the way almost to church. And I'm just like, "God, you're gonna have to get me there because I'm out of gas." So, I keep going. I get there and I'm like, I'm expecting somebody to be there and they're going to need the gospel preached to them real bad. And I'm like, I pull into the parking lot. There's nobody there. I'm pumping my gas. There's still nobody there. I'm like, it's the cashier. So, I go in, I get my little protein shake because I'm like working out now and everything. I get my protein shake. I put it on the counter. I'm like, "What's up, guy?" Obviously, not that guy. So, I leave. I go out to my car. And, you know, here I am. I'm like, "God, what's the deal?" Right? Maybe it was God that called me and and said, "Go do those things." Maybe it was myself. I don't know. Maybe it was God and he had a plan. He maybe just maybe he just needed somebody to look good at that gas station while other people were driving by. I don't know, right? Maybe he just wanted to know if I would be responsive.
Yesterday, literally yesterday, I was sitting at a coffee shop and I was getting some work done. I was working on the sermon and everything and there's this guy behind me and Molly, my wife, calls. She's like, "Hey, go get me lunch." Like, "Okay, I'll go get you some lunch." So, I'm packing everything up and I just get this sense I need to talk to this guy behind me. I'm like, "God, I really got to poop and I really don't want to. So, like, can we not?" And he's like, "Go talk to this guy." I'm like, "Okay." So, I get up and I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I don't know what I'm going to say. I don't I don't talk to strangers very often, right? My mom told me that and I just obeyed, right? So, I get up and I went with the classic one-liner. My favorite my favorite way to introduce myself is, "Have we met?" And of course, we haven't met. I've never seen the guy in my life. So, you know, we start the conversation. It's good. I was like, "Yeah." Like, I was just finishing up a sermon. The guy goes, just like straight the words out of his mouth, "We're like, 'I've got questions about the Bible.'" Okay. Like, I got to poo, but I'll wait. Like, we're good. And so I talked to this guy. I got to pray for him. I got to I got to invite him to church. I got to hear some of his life story and be with him in the moment. And it was such an incredible opportunity. It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't listened to what I'm pretty sure was the spirit prompting me to do that. And I didn't know what I was doing.
And here's what we can pull out of this section right here: You don't have to know where you're going, but you got to keep going. You don't have to know where you're going, but you have to keep going. So, let's keep going. And chapter 16:8 and 9, it says this: "So passing by Mysia they came to Bithynia. Tried to go into Bithynia. Spirit said no. So they passed by Mysia and they went down to Troas. And in 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.'"
Now this is very interesting. You don't see this in the text. You got to understand the geography of the place. Here's what just happened. Paul and his and his companions, they tried to turn left into Asia. The spirit said no. Okay. They tried to turn right into Bithynia. The spirit says no. They're being funneled into this place into Troas. Troas is a geographical dead end. When they get to Troas, it says, "come down to Troas." That's because it's a port city on the Aegean Sea. So they come all the way to this place and the spirit literally led them 1300 miles later to a dead end. Nowhere else to go. Am I going to go backwards because I just came from there, right? Where am I going to go?
And we understand dead ends. Every single one of us understands dead ends. We we've talked about this already today. How do you follow the spirit when life gets hard? When relationships are challenging and family members are far away from me and I I want to connect but it's not working. How do I how do I get through work and and my finances are struggling or my health or I'm trying to grow my family? Whatever it is, whatever it is, dead ends are always challenging. But I'd like to say this, and we see this here in the text: What feels like a dead end now is often a launching point for God. What feels like a dead end now is often a launching point for God.
The story continues. A vision appeared to Paul in the night, a man from Macedonia, saying, "Come over here to Macedonia and help us." This was the launching point for Paul. And I want to say this, God was not confused by Paul's dead end. What Paul would have perceived as a dead end, God's not worried about. He can see past that dead end. He can see past your dead end, your challenge, your suffering. And I'm not saying that God brings you to every dead end that you're ever going to come to. He's not going to. He's not the one that causes all of the bad things in your life. Most of the time, those things are self-inflicted, right? We live in a a world full of sin and challenge and it it's part of life here on earth. But God's not confused by your hardships. He's not confused by the places that you're stuck in. He can see past all of those things. What feels like a dead end right now is often a launching point.
We see that Paul and his company immediately sought to go into Macedonia, which is where they were called to. And we come to verse 10, which is the last verse we're going to look at today. It says, "And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go out into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them."
Now, the word "concluding" is the word in the Greek, right? Somebody says, >> "It's okay. I can't say it either." Uh, but what it means is put it together. They put together. They knit together. They pieced it together. What did they piece together? They pieced together that God had called them to preach the gospel. Now, here's here's the interesting part. In this passage that we've read in chapter 16, we see all three persons of the Trinity at each stop. In verse six, the Holy Spirit is the one that withholds them from Asia, that stops them from going into Asia. The next verse, verse seven, the Spirit of Jesus is the one that keeps them from going into Bithynia. Now, this this phrase "Spirit of Jesus" is the only time in the entire Bible that this that the phrase "Spirit of Jesus" appears. Why is that? The author is trying to tell us something here. It is saying this: The Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus are one. And we come together that they've now they've knitted together. They've concluded in verse 10 only in hindsight that God had called them. The Spirit of God has been funneling them to this place as a launching pad to go forward. God has called them to go to Macedonia. We see Father, Son, and Spirit all here moving Paul towards his calling. And they immediately sought to go. They heard and they obeyed.
Here's what we can pull out of this: The Holy Spirit will always guide you into your calling. We've seen this in the past sermons. The spirit doesn't work without Jesus. That Jesus doesn't do anything without the will of the Father. They are all three in unison. They are all three together working to bring us to our calling. The Holy Spirit will always guide you into your calling. And that's how the spirit works, right? This is how he guided Paul. This is how Paul followed the spirit.
But what I want to do is make sure that we, every single one of us, have at least one thing to walk away with this week. I've got five application points. If you're a note-taker, feel free to take all of these notes. Uh, there are five points here. If if you're not a note-taker, pick one. Pick one this week and follow it this week.
The first application that we can pull out of this this passage and and this story is to seek God. It's the very first thing that happened in Acts 13. They were seeking God first. Before they were called, before anything else, they were seeking God. Paul himself was a devout Jew. In Philippians, Paul basically says, "I'm the most Jewish Jew of all Jews." Like, actually, he said that. He prayed multiple times a day. He fasted multiple times a week. He had memorized a lot of scripture from the Old Testament, which is what they would have memorized back in that day. Long before this story here in Acts, Paul had built a life of seeking God around himself. He built it into his own life. Start with seeking God. Seek God before you try to seek any other answers. So that's one.
The second application is listen and obey. Listen and obey. Before you can hear the spirit, you got to be positioned to hear from the spirit. You do that by seeking and listening. But you can't be guided if you're not listening to your guide. You can't be guided if you're not going to obey what your guide tells you to do. So listen and obey in that order, repeatedly, every single day. And here's the thing that's easy to miss is one of the reasons I brought up the scale of this journey. 1300 miles. Paul didn't didn't just like walk up to a door that was open to all of Asia and just like knock on that door, right? He walked through South Carolina, right? It's an everyday thing. It's it's a daily thing. It took days, weeks, maybe months to walk through this place, listening to the spirit every single day, saying, "You're not going to speak here. You're not going to speak here." And he said, "Okay, I'm going to keep going." Same in Bithynia. He didn't just like knock on a door to Bithynia one time. It was a daily ongoing thing, listening and obeying. So seek God, listen and obey.
The third thing: When you don't know where to go, go anywhere. When you don't know where to go, go anywhere. You may have heard this phrase, "You can't steer a parked car," right? You can't be guided if you're going to plant your feet and not move at all. If you don't know where you're going, go anywhere. We see Paul do this. Paul attempted to go into Asia. He attempted to go into Bithynia. He attempted all of these things. He didn't know where he was going, but he went somewhere and he let the spirit guide him. So, if you don't know where you're going, go somewhere. Let the spirit guide you from there. You don't need certainty before you move. As a matter of fact, it's normal just to move without that certainty. So, we seek God, listen, and obey. When you don't know where to go, go anywhere.
The fourth thing is don't follow alone. This whole story all the way from Acts 13-16 was was in community, right? They were at the church in Antioch. Paul was surrounded by a group of guys when he went off into his missionary journeys. He didn't go by himself. He went with others every single time. He had Barnabas and Silas and Timothy and Luke and all these other guys around him as he was going. The word "concluding" is a plural word. It doesn't mean that Paul concluded that God had called him. It means "they" concluded, right? They all concluded together what God was doing. Community matters. Discerning the spirit's direction isn't just a private exercise. You need people around you who are listening to God. You don't need people around you who are going to tell you what you want to hear. You want people around you who are going to pray with you, to walk with you through it, to fast with you, to to hunger with you, whatever it is, to help you discern what the spirit is saying to you.
And the fifth thing, the very last one: Serve on the way. Serve on the way. As Paul was on his way to Macedonia from Antioch, he stopped many times, right? He was taking what they had talked about in Jerusalem. He was taking that to the churches. So he was stopping at churches, talking to those people. He had stopped in Galatia and started a church over there. He had, you know, spread the gospel everywhere he went. I hear this all the time. People waiting for God to to tell me, you know, "I want Eddie to go here and I need to do this thing and be very specific." That's not it. That's not how it works. We see Paul live his life this way. Wherever God or wherever you are right now is where God has you right now. So serve on the way. So whatever your calling is in your life, serve on the way.
The story continues. Here's what happened when Paul sailed to Macedonia and stepped off the boat. He walked up to a group of women and one of the ladies there was named Lydia, and she was the first Christian convert in Europe. And Paul continued, he ended up in jail and his jailer ended up coming to Jesus and getting baptized. Eventually, Paul planted a church called Philippi. We get the book Philippians from this from this church. And the gospel spread all throughout Europe starting there. And Europe became the cradle of Western Christianity as we know it right now. And we can trace our lineage, every single one of us, back to these moments through time and people and the spirit working through other people and God working through nations together. Now we are here. We today in this moment are feeling the fruit of what happened over 2,000 years ago because a few guys [snorts] listened to the guidance of the spirit and they said, "Okay, I'm going." This is the power of the spirit. This is the possibility of what the spirit can do in your life if you will just follow.
One of the things you'll realize, it's it's not about me. You know, your life may change. It may not, but as you follow the spirit, other people's lives will change. The world could literally change because you spoke to one person. That's how this works. And Paul was sent to preach the gospel. He didn't always know where he was going, but he always went.
This is the gospel that he preached: That Jesus came to this earth. He lived the lives that we are living right now. He was tempted in the ways that we are tempted. But he was fully God and fully man. He didn't sin against God the way that we've sinned against God. And because God is an infinite God, it the only justification for that is infinite punishment. And even though Jesus didn't do anything wrong, he didn't hurt anyone. He didn't he didn't deserve to die, but he did. He took on our sin. He took on our punishment, and he died so that we could be redeemed back to God. He rose from the grave three days later, and praise God, we get to rise with him as long as we believe in him. But the story doesn't stop there. He went back to be with the Father and he sent his spirit to be a guide for us.
Listen, I just want to say you have an opportunity right now to partner with God and his mission to redeem all of mankind back to himself through the guidance of the spirit. If you need guidance in your life right now, you need a relationship with the one who sent the spirit, Jesus. We're going to pray a prayer here in a minute. And if you feel an inkling or a pull to pray this prayer to enter into a relationship with Jesus, I would highly encourage it. We're going to pray this together. I just want to encourage everyone else that's here. If you have a relationship with Jesus, would you pray this prayer with us? You can repeat after me. If you'll stand, we'll pray. Let's bow our heads.
Repeat after me:
Lord, I believe >> that Jesus Christ >> Jesus Christ >> is the savior of the world. >> That he gave his life >> He gave his life >> to forgive my sin. and was raised from the grave. >> Raised from the grave >> that I may have life. >> I may have life. >> I receive your grace. >> Receive your grace >> by faith. >> Come into my life. >> I will follow you. >> Follow you. >> Amen.