Going to Rome God's Way - Life of Paul Part 66

Hey, we're glad you're here today. Welcome to all you guys down in overflow. Why don't you take a Bible if you brought one, open it to Romans chapter 15, the letter Paul wrote the church of Rome.

We're going to be coming to Romans 15 in a moment. But you know, it was really a great plan. The year was 1980, April to be exact. And six months before in November of 1979, militants in Iran had overrun the American embassy and taken 54 embassy workers hostage. And Jimmy Carter, who was then our president, okayed, authorized a daring plan. Eight helicopters were to take off from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf carrying Delta Force commandos. They were to land at a rendezvous point right outside Tehran. The commandos were to go in, grab the hostages, bring them out to the rendezvous point where C-130 transports would be waiting for them, and they would whisk away the hostages. It would be done covertly. It would be done quickly.

It would be done with no loss of American lives. And probably would have delivered the 1980 presidential election into the hands of Mr. Carter. But things didn't go exactly the way he planned. Two of the helicopters got into a sandstorm and never made it to the rendezvous point. A third helicopter developed hydraulic problems and had to turn back to the carrier. And the commander of the mission decided with only five helicopters he didn't have enough troops to pull it off. And so he decided they would simply quietly withdraw and come back another day. But as one of the helicopters was leaving to return and one of the transports was leaving, they collided at the rendezvous point, bursting into flames, filling the desert with light, killing eight Americans.

The Iranians immediately split up all the hostages and moved them to different locations all over the country, making the rescue effort impossible. And seven months later, Jimmy Carter lost the 1980 presidential election. Now I'm sure Mr. Carter must have had many a night where he lay in bed and wondered how in the world could such a great plan that had been so carefully worked out with such attention to detail, how in the world it could have failed so dismally.

But it reminds us of the words of the Scottish poet Robert Burns who said, the best laid plans of mice and men go oft astray. Now this is what we want to talk about today. We want to talk about, as followers of Jesus Christ, what it means to have a biblical world view about making plans and more importantly, what it means to have a biblical world view when God decides to alter the plans that we had made for our life. That's what we're going to talk about growing out of an incident in the life of the apostle Paul.

A little bit of background before we dig in. Remember Paul is finishing up two and a half years in Ephesus as part of his third missionary journey. And Paul, thanks to his direct ministry, Paul has succeeded in saturating the entire northeastern Roman Empire with the message of Jesus Christ. He says, Romans 15 verse 19, so from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the message of Jesus Christ. Let's show you a map.

Illyricum is up on the top left of our little ellipse. Jerusalem is down on the bottom right and everything you see in your red ellipse is the area that Paul had personally taken the message of Christ to and saturated with the message of Christ. Today these would be the countries of Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo, that entire area Paul had saturated for Jesus Christ. Now he said, verse 23, now that my work in these regions is done, I intend to go to Spain and I hope to see you in passing there in Rome and be helped by you on my journey. Now remember Paul's view of himself is that he was a pioneering missionary. The apostle Paul loved to go to places that nobody else had ever been with the message of Christ and let's show you a map of the Roman Empire, Paul's day. Spain was the far western extreme of the Roman Empire, totally uncivilized, totally unevangelized and Paul said, that's perfect for me, that's perfect for me.

So I'm going there and I'll stop by and see you guys in Rome on the way. Now before Paul went to Spain, however, he was going to go to Jerusalem. Look at verse 25. He says, now however, I am on my way to Jerusalem in order to serve the believers there. For the churches of Macedonia and Dicaiah have been pleased to collect an offering for the poor believers in Jerusalem.

So after I have completed this task and made sure that they have received this gift, I will go to Spain and visit you guys in Rome on the way. Remember we said last week that the believers who lived in Jerusalem at this time were mostly poor. They were poor because the Jewish community in Jerusalem boycotted their businesses as a way of punishing them for their faith in Jesus as Messiah and Paul believed that the Gentile churches that he had started had a responsibility to help their Jewish brothers there in Jerusalem.

He says, Romans 15, 27, indeed these churches owe it to their Jewish brothers for if the Gentiles have shared in the Jewish people's spiritual blessings, meaning the Messiah and the Word of God, then they, the Gentiles, are obligated to share their material blessings with their Jewish brothers. And the churches Paul's are talking about here, let's show you a map, are those churches up? He says in Macedonia, that's the orange section of your map, the cities of Philippi, Thessalonica and Berea, churches he all started on his second missionary journey. And then Achaea, the blue section of your map, and that is the church of Corinth primarily, which he also started on his second missionary journey. And so here was Paul's plan.

He had a plan very carefully thought out for the next 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 years of his life. And it went like this, number one, he says I'm going to leave Ephesus and I'm going to go back to the churches that I started in Greece. Number two, I'm going to collect an offering from them for the poor believers at Jerusalem. Number three, I'm going to take this offering to Jerusalem and I'm going to personally deliver it to the church there. Number four, then I'm going to leave Jerusalem and I'm going to head off to go preach in Spain.

And number five, on the way to Spain, I'm going to stop in Rome and visit with the church that's there. Now this was a very well thought out plan. It was a very logically consistent plan. It was a very Christ honoring plan. The only problem with his plan is it didn't happen.

And let me show you why. The beginning of the plan worked. Paul took up his offering. He went to Jerusalem with it. But you know, we need to remember not everybody in Jerusalem was excited about seeing Paul. As a matter of fact, most of the city of Jerusalem hated Paul because of his ministry among the Gentiles. So while he was in town, the Jerusalem believers there suggested a strategy to Paul to try to soften, you know, these negative feelings.

They said, Acts 21, our countrymen have been informed, Paul, that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from the Old Testament law. They will certainly hear that you've arrived in town. So here's what we suggest you do. We have four men among us who are finishing their Nazarite vow. When you finished your Nazarite vow, you shaved your head.

So they said, here's what we want you to do. Go into the temple in Jerusalem and pay the expenses for them to shave their heads. In this way, everyone in Jerusalem will know that there's no truth to these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the Old Testament law. And so in an attempt to be conciliatory, the apostle Paul said, okay, I'll do that. So he goes down to the temple with these four guys and everything's going fine, except that some Jewish people from Greece, you know, from Thessalonica and Philippi, where he's been preaching, are there visiting the temple. They recognize Paul and they say, this is the guy.

Here he is. He's the one that's starting all the trouble around the world and this enormous riot breaks out in the temple, aimed at Paul, and he would have been killed. There's no doubt, except the Roman army comes blowing into the temple and arrests him. And that's the only thing that kept Paul from getting killed by this mob. Now, we'll talk more about that when we get to Acts 21. But the important point for our consideration today is to see here that this riot put into motion a chain of events that radically altered Paul's plans, his plans for Spain, his plans for Rome, his plans for everything.

Let me show you what happened. Because of this riot, number one, Paul was arrested and taken to Roman army headquarters in Caesarea, about 30 miles north of modern-day Tel Aviv. When he was taken there, number two, he was examined by the Roman governor, Felix. Number three, Felix refused to decide Paul's case one way or the other. And so, number four, Paul was kept in prison, in chains, for two years in Caesarea.

He just sat there. When the new governor came to replace Felix, a guy named Festus showed up. The Jewish people said to Festus, why don't you send Paul back to Jerusalem and let us try him there in Jerusalem? But secretly, they planned to ambush Paul and kill him on the way. And Paul found out about it and went, oh my gosh, this is going from bad to worse here. So he did what every Roman citizen had the right to do, number six, he appealed his case directly to the Caesar, directly to Emperor Nero in Rome.

Every Roman citizen had that right. Paul used it. And number seven and finally, what this meant, is bound in chains and under military guard, they sent Paul off to Rome to stand trial before Caesar himself. Now, along the way, he was shipwrecked. He was bitten by a poisonous snake. He was stranded on the island of Malta for three months. And when he finally did arrive in Rome, he got there chained up.

He was under house arrest for more than two years, chained to a Roman soldier 24 hours a day, every day for two years, while he awaited his audience with the Caesar. This is where the book of Acts ends, with Paul in chains in Rome and Spain just a pipe dream. And you talk about God radically changing your plans, folks.

I mean, this is a radical change in the plans Paul had. And this is as far as we want to go in the passage today because we have a question it's time to ask. And you all know our question, don't you? I know I brought it on you quickly, but you're ready. I know you're ready. And so here we go.

One, two, three. So what? Right.

You say, Lon, so what? Say that, you know, I feel bad for the man, you know, and the worst part of the whole story is getting bit by that snake. Well, I agree with that. Strand me on Malta, shipwreck me, but don't get a poisonous snake anywhere near me. You know what I'm saying?

I hate snakes. Well, anyway, that's got nothing to do with anything. But anyway, the point is, the point is, yes, this has something to do with your life because, folks, every one of us has had happened to us what happened to the Apostle Paul. Every one of us has had our plans for life very carefully mapped out and every one of us at certain points has watched as God allowed those plans to be radically changed. Some of us, for example, planned to be married at this point in our life. But we're not.

We're single. Some of us had planned to live in a happy family all of our days and then divorce struck our home. Some of us planned to get that new job or that new promotion, but we didn't get it. Some of us planned to work at the same company our entire career and then they downsized us and they threw us out of there. Some of us planned to travel and do things in our later years in life and then our health broke or we planned to do some great things with our spouse at this point in our life and then the Lord took her or him. Some of us planned to be financially secure by this point in our life and then the Nasdaq went south and here we are. You know, some of us planned to go to a certain college and they wrote us a nice little letter and said, no thanks, we don't want you.

Some of us planned to make a ball team or a cheerleading squad and we got cut. Some of us had great futures all planned out for our children, but let's be honest, they're really struggling today academically, emotionally, spiritually. And some of us here are like Brendan and me where God sent a child into our life with profound disabilities and we're never going to see that child reach the dreams and the plans that we originally had for her. Folks, the issue here is not whether God sometimes alters our plans.

He does and sometimes radically so. The issue is how does God want us to respond to that? How does God want us to look at that? What is the world view that God wants us to bring to that situation? And that's what I want to talk to you about today because the apostle Paul models it for us.

You know, there's a verse in the Bible that says this, Proverbs 16, 9. The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. And what the Bible is telling us here is that as followers of Jesus Christ, even though we have maybe have mapped out our lives with great precision just like Paul had done, the Bible's telling us that the actual path that God uses to get us where he wants us to go, when he wants us to be there, is often very different than the plan we mapped out originally for ourselves. And yet the Bible says that even though God may change our plan, he is still directing our steps all the way in spite of the unexpected turns, making absolutely sure we get where we need to go, when we need to go there, in just the way we need to get there. This is the promise of God to us.

Now let me just say, if you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus in a real and personal way, that this is one of the wonderful things you get when you come into a relationship with Christ. Do you get eternal life? Yes. Do you get a secure place in heaven? Yes. Do you get a relationship with the living God?

Yes. But one of the other things you get is you get someone who guides your steps through the maze of life in a way better than you could ever guide your own way through. Life is confusing and how can anyone figure out all the twists and the turns left to ourselves? The wonderful thing about walking with Jesus is you don't have to. He's already got that all taken care of for you. So if you're here and you've never given your life to Jesus and you're having trouble working through the maze of life, I've got great news for you.

You can have someone do it for you if you'll come to him. Now, for those of us who are followers of Christ, I want you to watch as Paul models this worldview for us. He says when he finally arrives in Rome, he's three years later than he planned. He's in chains, which he didn't plan. He's in jail, which he didn't plan.

And Spain is not anywhere on the horizon. When he finally gets there and he's going to spend two more years in jail, here's what he writes to the Philippians. He said, Philippians chapter 1, Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me, the riot, getting arrested, Felix leaving me in jail, the shipwreck, the whole thing, the whole Megillah, I want you to know what has happened to me has actually turned out for the greater progress of the kingdom of God. You say, Lon, how in the world can he say that? I mean, how in the world can being in jail and being shipwrecked and being bit by a stupid snake turn out for the greater advancement of the kingdom of God?

Well, wait a minute. Because of the way God took his circumstances, he got to share Jesus Christ with King Agrippa. That never would have happened, Acts chapter 26. Well, according to Paul's plan, he got to share Jesus Christ with two Roman governors of Palestine, Felix and Thestas.

That never would have happened if he had followed his original plan. He got to share Jesus Christ with the whole island of Malta, because after the snake bit him and he didn't die, the whole island showed up to say, What in the world are you? And he got to share Christ with the whole island.

He wasn't planning to go to Malta. He's going to get the chance to go in and share Jesus Christ with the emperor of Rome. There's an audience he would never have gotten according to his original plan. And finally, he says in Philippians 1 that he has had the opportunity to share Christ with the entire Praetorian Guard. Now, the Praetorian Guard was the elite bodyguard of Caesar himself. They were the ones who were guarding Paul. And remember I said, Paul spent two years chained to a Roman soldier under house arrest, and the Praetorian Guard were the guys who did this. So every eight hours, a new member of the Praetorian Guard came in and spent eight hours chained to the Apostle Paul. Now, if you're an unbeliever, can you imagine being chained to the Apostle Paul for eight hours? I guarantee you the whole Praetorian Guard heard about Jesus Christ. And most of them came to Christ, Paul says in Philippians chapter 1. He wouldn't have had that opportunity if it had gone the way he had originally planned. Paul looks back and what he says to the Philippians is, Hey guys, I ended up going to Rome, but I ended up going God's way, not my way.

And you know what? Looking back, I can see that God's way was better than my way. Hey, the same thing happened to Adoniram Judson, famous missionary. 1811, he left the United States. He had a very carefully worked out plan. He was going to India to work in Calcutta with William Carey, the father of modern missions.

He had it all worked out. He and his wife Anne, when they arrived in Calcutta, there was a problem. You see, India was run by the British East India Company, and they had had to let William Carey in because he was a British citizen. But they didn't want American missionaries in India and they refused to let Adoniram Judson in. And suddenly there he was with his great plan, but it wasn't going to work.

So here's what he did. He said, God, I'm convinced you call me somewhere in Southeast Asia to share Jesus, so I'm just going to get on the ship and we're going to ride around Southeast Asia and the first country that lets me off and lets me preach, that's where I'm going. And the first country to let him off was Burma. He spent 35 years as the first missionary and at that time the only missionary during those 35 years to the country of Burma. When he died in 1853, he had led over 7,000 Burmese people to Christ.

He had established 53 self-supporting churches. He had single-handedly translated the entire Bible into the Burmese language, which is the copy of the Bible they still use today. He met a man in Rangoon and led him to Christ from the Karen tribe, who took the message back to the Karen tribe.

And today, there are 150 years later, there are over 100,000 Karen tribespeople who are believers in Jesus Christ with Christian schools and self-supporting churches who send missionaries to the rest of Southeast Asia. Hey, did God know what he was doing with Adoniram Judson? He sure did. Yeah, his plan took a little wiggle, but the wiggle was all part of God's wiggling plan and got him right where he was supposed to be. And you see, friends, this is the world view of a true man or a woman of God. Yes, they make plans, but they make their plans and they don't set their plans in concrete. They set their plans in marshmallow because they understand something, they believe something. They believe Jeremiah 29-11, I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord.

Plans for good and not for evil to give you a future and a hope. Real men and women of God believe that God has a specific divine plan for their life and that every wiggle, every turn, every twist, every unexpected thing that happens is all part of God getting us to his perfect plan for our life. And these people also believe Isaiah 55, that God's ways are above our ways and God's thoughts are above our thoughts and that God's plans are above our plans and that God has a better way of getting us where we need to go, when we need to go there than we could ever plan out for ourself and they're okay with that. They're at peace with that. So when God sends a curve in the road, it's all right because his ways are higher than ours.

We trust him. Friends, this is the kind of person God wants you to be. This is the kind of worldview God wants you to have if you're a follower of Christ, a person who when God decides to direct your path a little differently than you had planned, you don't resist it, you don't resent it, you don't rebel against it. Instead, you submit to the loving and wise hand of your Heavenly Father because you're confident of something. You're confident that when the dust finally clears, you'll look back like the apostle Paul and say, the things that have happened to me have actually turned out for the greater progress of the kingdom of God and they've also turned out for my best interest as well. Now to do this, you got to know how to walk by faith. You can't do this any other way. Friends, this is walking by faith. Walking by faith means trusting God even when we don't understand what he's doing, even when we don't understand why the path didn't go in the way we planned it out and this is what God calls us to do.

He says in the Bible we're to walk by faith, not by sight. You know, back a couple years ago, Time Magazine chose a man of the century for the 20th century. I think he actually called it a person of the century, but they chose a man and the man that they chose was Albert Einstein and as soon as I saw that issue of Time Magazine, I remember saying to Brenda, my wife, this is a gross injustice because Albert Einstein, I'm sure he was a nice guy, I never met him, but he's not the one that should have won this.

Without a doubt, hands down, no contest, Winston Churchill should have won man of the century because Winston Churchill, I'm sure you understand, is the man who almost single-handedly preserved democracy and freedom in the entire Western world. If it hadn't been for Winston Churchill, most of us in America very likely would be speaking a different language than English today. Winston Churchill, let me tell you a little bit about his career though. He had a long and distinguished career, but he had a career with more twists and turns in it than anything you ever saw, folks. You know, he began his service to England in 1895 under Queen Victoria as a lieutenant in the British Army.

He ended his career in the 1950s as a member of parliament under Queen Victoria's great-great-granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II. That's how long a career he had, but it took some turns. During World War I, Churchill served as the first Lord of the Admiralty and as such, he ordered the disastrous British attack on the Dardanelles at Gallipoli. It was a disaster. It was a slaughter. It was the worst defeat in the history of the British Army, and as a result, he had to resign in disgrace, and he told friends November 1915, I am finished. I am finished.

I am finished forever, he said. Well, he did bounce back a little bit, and after a while, he became Secretary of War under a new administration. Then he became Colonial Secretary. In 1922, he was running for reelection as Colonial Secretary when he had an attack of appendicitis in the middle of the election. He had to go into the hospital, have surgery. He couldn't campaign, so he lost the election, and he said afterwards, and I quote, he said, I found myself without an office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix, end of quote.

Gotta love him. Well, once again, he was out. Back then in 1924, he was offered a cabinet post under a new government, but that party was voted out the next year, and so for the next 10 or 12 years, Winston Churchill was out of public life. He was convinced his career was over. He was a has-been. He was washed up.

He went back to his country estate and did what he loved to do, and that was paint landscapes, and so he spent his time painting. And then as Hitler began to rise, Winston Churchill was the lone voice, as many of you remember in England, saying, don't appease this man. Don't give him what he wants. This guy wants war.

He's trouble. Nobody listened to him until finally when Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began, King George VI called Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill was 66 years old and said to him, I want you to come back, I want you to be prime minister of England, replacing Neville Chamberlain, and it was his grit and his personal determination, that's all, friends, that stopped Adolf Hitler in his tracks and that turned the tide of World War II. When he came back to be prime minister, something he'd always dreamed of doing but never thought it would come this way, here's what he said looking back on his life. He said, and I quote, looking back on all the twists and turns, he said, I felt as if I were walking with destiny and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. Now, what was Winston Churchill really saying? What he was saying was that God's plan for his life had been perfect all along, that God had done a better job of preparing Winston Churchill for the challenges in front of him than he could have ever done preparing himself, that God had done a better job leading Winston's life than he could have ever done for himself.

And listen, folks, if Winston Churchill, who was a nominal believer at best, could see this, then I'm here to say as active and devoted followers of Jesus Christ, we need to be able to see this too. We need to be able to say, you know what, God does a better job of leading my life than I can ever do and so what if it twists in a way I didn't plan? And so what if it turns in a way I didn't plan?

If I thought I was good enough and smart enough and new enough to plan my whole life, I wouldn't need a Savior. So let God take it where he needs to take it. Remember, the mind of man plans his way. That's all right, but the Lord directs his steps and, folks, you don't want it any other way. You don't want it any other way. And let me just say in closing, it doesn't take anybody special to look back like Winston Churchill did and say, oh, man, I can really see now how God did all this.

Anybody can do that. The real secret here is to be able to look forward. When God's sending you twists and turns that you didn't expect and that you don't understand and that you can't fit together, the real mark of a man or a woman of God is being able to look forward and say, I may not understand it and I may not know where it's going and I may not be able to figure it out, but you know what, I've seen how God's always been perfect in the past and I'm going to trust him to be perfect in the future. He's the same God in the future as he was in the past. Now, those are the people God's looking for and those are the people God wants you to be. May God help you be that kind of person, let's pray. With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, I'd like to give you just a moment, if you need it, to talk to God because I can't help but believe that there are a lot of us here today who have some things in our life right now that we just don't flat understand, that make no sense to us. And if you're a normal human being, you've probably resisted these things, resented these things, accused God over these things, accused God of letting you down.

Friends, I'm here to challenge you to draw on the example of the Apostle Paul and Judson and Churchill and don't do that. Ask God to forgive you for that attitude and ask him to help you trust him because he's directing your steps and you're willing to have peace about that. So just take a moment, if you need to, and talk to the Lord. Lord Jesus, you know we're all just human and when stuff happens that we weren't planning on or that really breaks up the dreams and the plans we've had for life, it's really hard.

And our first reaction is usually not a very good one. Lord, forgive us for that. Grant that we could be the kind of man or woman of God who can look forward and walk by faith the way Paul did, the way Judson did. Lord, grant that we might be able to see through the lens of faith, trusting you even when we don't understand because we have your promise that you are directing our steps. Lord Jesus, grant that no matter what twist and turn comes, we're able to say that we're going to trust you and that we know one day we'll be able to say that these things have worked out for my interest and the advancement of the kingdom of God. You knew what you were doing all the time. So use the word of God to encourage our hearts today, Father, and to change our whole worldview. And we ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.