Life of Paul Part 29 - Letting God Lead

Good morning, everybody.

Hey, how are you? Thanks for being here today. Hey, we're going to study the Bible today. So let's take a copy of the Bible.

I hope you brought one. Let's open it together to the book of Acts chapter 16. Acts chapter 16.

And we're going to be continuing today in our study on the life of the great man, the Apostle Paul. I want to take a little survey, okay? And this is kind of a raise your hand sort of survey. How many of you guys here took English in your life? Did you read in high school?

Raise your hand. Well, of course you did. Now, do you remember some of that incredibly awful nasty stuff they made you read in high school English? Like Beowulf. You all remember that?

I'm 40 years later. I'm still trying to figure out what Beowulf has to do with anything that deals with real life. You remember the Canterbury Tales? Oh, they were terrible. You remember Shakespeare?

Anything and everything. I could never figure out what in the world was going on with that guy. I'm talking about the Great Gatsby. Was that terrible or what? And all I can say about all that stuff is thank God for Cliff Notes, if you understand what I'm saying.

I don't know how I would have made it without it. Well, there was one thing they made me read in high school that actually I kind of liked. It was called The Iliad by Homer. And you remember the story. Paris, this guy was a prince at Troy, came over to Greece and stole away this princess.

Her name was Helen. And he took her back to Troy. Well, the whole Greek army mobilized to go and get her back. And they went over there and they fought battle after battle after battle. And they could never break into the city of Troy.

And so they came up with an ingenious strategy. One day when the Trojans woke up, they saw this huge wooden horse out in front of the gate. They thought the gods had left his horse for him. And so they went down and very excitedly rolled the horse inside the city gates.

Of course, what they didn't know is that inside the belly of this thing, it was hollowed out. And it was a Greek commando unit inside the belly of this thing. Well, when nightfall came, the Greeks left themselves out, opened the city gates. The whole Greek army rushed in.

The city fell. You know the end of the story. Now, the reason I bring all that up, which you might be curious to know what this has to do with anything, the reason I bring all that up is because today as we trace the journeying of the Apostle Paul, we're going to actually find the Apostle Paul standing 10 miles from where the Trojan horse stood centuries before him. And at this spot, God is going to speak to the Apostle Paul. God is going to challenge the Apostle Paul with a mission that Paul is going to accept. And the whole history of the world is going to change because of this. So we want to talk about that. And then we want to come back and ask the question, well, what difference does this make to you and me in our world today?

So let's look together. A little bit of background before we dig into Acts 16. Remember, the Apostle Paul is now on what we call his second missionary journey. He's put together a new team, himself, Silas and Timothy. And they started out just to go around and revisit all of the cities that Paul and Barnabas had gone to on the first missionary journey.

That's all they planned to do when they started. So let's pick up chapter 16, verse six. And Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia. Let's show you a map and make sure we all know what's going on. Here's Galatia.

Here's Phrygia in the central part of Turkey. And here are all of those cities, Derby, Lystra, Iconium and Pisidian Antioch, where Paul and Barnabas had been on their first journey. And what verse six tells us is they completed their mission.

They revisited these cities. But then something very important happens. The Apostle Paul decides that instead of calling it a day and heading for home, that God instead wants him to keep going, that God wants him to break some new ground for Jesus Christ. And so he looks at the map and he says, well, gosh, where would I go from here? I'm sitting here in Pisidian Antioch. Where would be the most logical, the most reasonable place to go next?

Well, he says, I know where I should go. I should go to Ephesus. Ephesus was in the Roman province of Asia.

The Roman province of Asia was the largest, most civilized and most influential province in the Eastern Roman Empire. Ephesus was the capital of this province from which the entire province could be affected for Jesus Christ. And it's clear that's where Paul planned to go next. But look at the end of the verse. Verse six goes on to say, but the Holy Spirit prevented, literally forbid them to preach the word in the province of Asia. You say, well, Lon, why in the world would God forbid Paul to go into the most strategic city in the Eastern Roman Empire and tell people about Jesus Christ so they could have eternal life?

Well, the answer is, I don't know. It makes no logical sense. And I'm sure that's exactly what Paul thought at that point. This makes no logical sense, but that's what God had told him.

So that's what he did. He's in Pisidian Antioch. He can't go southeast. He's our Paul's already been there. God's forbidden him to go west and preach in the province of Asia. So the only place Paul can go is north. And as he starts heading north, suddenly it hits him and he goes, Now I see what God's up to.

I got it now. God didn't want me to go into Asia because God wanted to take me north here into Bithynia. Bithynia was a very highly populated province just on the southern shores of the Black Sea.

Many important cities here, including the city of Nicaea, where a very important church council would be held in a couple hundred years. And Paul said, Wow, there's a huge Jewish population there, too. God obviously is driving me north into Bithynia.

Okay, it makes sense now. So he headed north, verse seven. But when they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter this province of Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus wouldn't allow them to. Now, in contrast to Asia, where God had simply said to Paul, Don't preach here in Bithynia, he says, You can't even go in there.

You can't even step foot into that province. You say, Well, Lon, I thought God was a loving God. How in the world is it a loving God to forbid all these people in Asia and forbid all these people in Bithynia to hear about Jesus Christ and get eternal life? I mean, why would God keep these people from hearing?

Well, the answer is he didn't. Peter, when he writes in First Peter, Chapter one, he addresses his letter to God's people scattered throughout Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia. There were a lot of believers in Asia and Bithynia by the time Peter wrote his letter.

And Paul, at the end of his second missionary journey, as we're going to see, is allowed by God to go to Ephesus to spend two years in Ephesus and to see the entire province of Asia reach. Now, we don't know who went to Bithynia, but somebody went and preached in Bithynia because by the time Peter writes, there are believers there. As a matter of fact, we have letters from Pliny the Younger, who was the governor of Bithynia between 111 and 113 AD. He wrote to Emperor Trajan, the emperor of the Roman Empire, complaining that there were too many Christians in Bithynia.

And could he kill a few? And the emperor writes back and says, Help yourself. And so there was a huge martyrdom in Bithynia in the beginning of the second century. So we know there was a huge number of believers there. The point is, friends, God made sure the people in Asia and the people in Bithynia heard the message of Jesus Christ, but just not through Paul at this moment.

And so what happens? Verse 8, So they passed by Missia, the Bible says, and they went down to Troas. Here's Paul. He's stuck here in the city of Dorelium, right on the border between Asia and Bithynia. He can't go southeast. He's already been there and preached. He's been forbidden to go southwest into Ephesus and Asia. He's been forbidden to go north into Bithynia, so Paul does the only thing he can do. He goes straight west through Missia over to this city of Troas on the Aegean Sea.

This is where the Trojan horse stood, 10 miles from here centuries before. And while he's here, he has to be thoroughly confused. I mean, here he is in this city. He doesn't know why he's here. He has no idea where he's supposed to go. He has no idea what he's supposed to do next.

And would you notice that Troas is in the Roman province of Asia. So God's already told him he's not allowed to preach there. So he's sitting in this city. He can't preach. He doesn't know what's going on. You think Paul was just a little confused?

I think he was. Verse 9. And during the night, Paul had a vision. You say, what night? Well, we don't know.

Some night. Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, come over to Macedonia and help us. Now, when you read commentaries, you find scholars argue for paragraph after paragraph about how did Paul know this man in his dream was a Macedonian? Was the guy wearing some distinctive clothing that made it clear he was a Macedonian? Did he speak some distinctive dialect that made it clear he was a Macedonian? Did he look physically in some way that made it clear he was a Macedonian?

Did he have a sign around his neck? I am a Macedonian. And they argue about this.

Folks, I don't really think this is rocket science. If you have a dream and a guy stands up in your dream and says, come over to Macedonia and help us, well, where do you think he's from? I mean, come on now. He's obviously from Macedonia. And so Paul says, all right, now I understand. Now I see what God's doing. He wouldn't let me go into Ephesus and he wouldn't let me go into Asia and he wouldn't let me go into Bithynia. And he got me here to Troas having no idea what in the world I was doing because the whole time God's plan was for me to go to Europe.

And if I had gone into Asia, if I had gone into Bithynia, it would have slowed me down from the real plan God had for me in this team, which was to get to Europe. Now, let me tell you about Macedonia. Alexander the Great was from Macedonia.

His father, Philip of Macedon, is the man after whom the province is named, Macedonia. And all up to this point, remember, the message of Jesus Christ has been limited to the Middle East, to the eastern outskirts of the Roman Empire. But now, with them about to cross into Europe, Paul and his team is about to take the message of Jesus Christ right into the heart and the soul of the Roman Empire. And friends, by doing this, they're going to change the history of the world that you and I live in today. This would not be the world it is if the apostle Paul had not agreed to do this.

We'll come back and talk more about that in the weeks to come. The Bible says, verse 10, After Paul had seen this vision, immediately we got ready to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the good news to them. And the year, it was 50 AD, probably November to December 50 AD, the apostle Paul has been a follower of Jesus Christ for 17 years. And to this man and his team, God entrusts the responsibility of taking the message of Jesus Christ into the heart and soul of the Roman Empire. Now, just before we stop here, one other thing I'd like to point out, notice in verse 10 that it says, And immediately we got ready to leave for Macedonia. If you go back and look, you'll find this is the first time in the narrative of the book of Acts that the word we is used.

Up to this point, it's been they, they, they, they, they. Suddenly, it's we. And what this means is that the author of the book of Acts, Luke, suddenly joins the team here in Troas so that when Paul set out for Macedonia, Luke starts saying we because now he's with them. What do we know about this guy, Luke? Well, we know he was a doctor. Colossians chapter 4 tells us that he was a physician, and he was obviously practicing medicine there in Troas when Paul showed up. Now, was he already a follower of Christ when Paul got there? We don't know. Did he walk into Starbucks one day to get a cup of coffee and Paul was there and he struck up a conversation and he came to Christ?

We don't know. But what we do know is when Paul left Troas and set off for Europe, Luke was with him over his doctor shingle. He hung a little sign that said, gone preaching, and he never came back to doctrine again. Now, you know, doctrine is a wonderful thing. Being a doctor is an incredible way to serve humanity. But Luke had found something that gave him more fulfillment than doctrine, which was serving the living God. And, folks, this is a wonderful insight into the life of Luke here, that no matter what we're doing, no matter how valuable it is for the people in our world, it will never compare to the fulfillment that you and I get from serving the living God in our lives. Now, it doesn't mean we have to resign from our job and go off to the mission field. It just means in one form or another, the time and the energy we invest in serving the living God will bring a joy to our life that no form of human endeavor will ever bring.

And that's what Luke learned. That's why he stopped doctrine and went to go serve God with Paul. And if you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus in a real and personal way, may I say you may be doing some wonderful things with your life, but you're still missing the highest purpose for being alive. The highest purpose for being alive is to serve the living God, to advance the kingdom of God, and to get the fulfillment and the satisfaction that comes from being part of that wonderful endeavor.

Hey, God wants to raise your fulfillment in life to a whole different level, and He'll do it if you'll just give Jesus Christ a chance in your life. Something to think about. Well, let's stop here. We'll come back next week to see what happens when they go to Europe, but we have a really important question we need to ask, and you all know what our question is, so are you ready? You ready? All right, here we go. Ready?

One, two, three. So what? Right. You say, Lon, so what?

Say, Trojan horse, I love the story. Big deal. What difference does any of this make to my life? Oh, I think there's a huge lesson in the events that we've just gone over for your life and my life today, and as I was studying it this week, I got to thinking as I was watching God lead Paul, and Paul had no idea where God was taking him, I thought to myself this week, you know, isn't it good that so many times God doesn't tell us ahead of time where He's taking us? Isn't it good that so many times God doesn't let us in on what He's got ahead for us before it happens? I mean, if God had told me 15 years ago that He was going to send a disabled little girl, a severely disabled little girl into my life, friends, I got to tell you, I would have frozen up with fear and doubt and uncertainty and would probably never have been able to go on and deal with it. If God had told me 10 years ago that we'd be in the middle of a $90 million building program here, I'd have quit. I'd have said, what?

$90 million? What, are you nuts? I'm not a good enough leader to lead a church through something like that. If God had told you 10 years ago a lot of the things that He was going to take you through over the last 10 years where He's gotten you through, you'd have frozen up in fear and been so intimidated when He told you that you'd have wanted to back out before you even gave God a chance to see what He wanted to do in your life. Friends, same thing happened here with the Apostle Paul. I believe that if God had told the Apostle Paul and his little team down in Lystra or down in Derby, hey, guys, guess what? We're going to Europe.

Yeah, we are, all three of you guys. And you're going to preach your hearts out and they're going to try to kill you, stone you, hang you. They're going to run you out of town, try to tar and feather you.

You're going to preach with the best philosophers in Athens. You're going to spar with them. You're not going to have any place to live. You're not going to know where your food's coming from. But don't worry, fellas, it's going to be perfectly all right.

I think that little team would have frozen right up in fear and there's no way in the world they were ready to take that on. So guess what? God didn't tell them. He just said, Paul, follow me. I'll show you where we're going when I'm ready.

Just follow me. And by the time they got to Troas, God had worked in their lives and prepared them. So when he said we're going to Europe, now they were ready to go. Think what happened with Paul. God led Paul in a direction that Paul didn't understand. He led him down a path that he didn't like.

He led him to a place where he had no desire to be. He led him in a way that defied all of Paul's human logic. And he led Paul in this chapter without the courtesy of any explanation along the way.

Never told Paul what was going on. And, folks, when it was all over, Paul was right where God had planned for him to be all along. There was never a moment of doubt about God's choices being right. There was never a moment when Paul's ultimate destination was in any doubt. There was never a moment when God's plan for Paul's life was in the slightest jeopardy. God had this thing completely under control the whole time. It's just that Paul had no idea what was going on.

No idea at all. You know, the same thing happened to Moses. Remember how Moses and the Israelites were led by the pillar of fire? And the pillar of fire led them right down to the Red Sea. They had the Red Sea in front of them and the hills on one side, the hills on the other side. You remember that?

Now, tactically, this was a really terrible position to be in. And when Pharaoh, as a matter of fact, arrived with his chariots on the hill overlooking the Israelite position, remember what he said? He said the God of Moses is a very poor general to leave him no retreat.

He said, where is that in the Bible? Well, it isn't exactly. That's what Eulbrenner said in the movie. But, but, but that's exactly right. And don't you think Moses down there looking at these chariots, seeing mountains on one side, mountains on the other side and the Red Sea in front of him, don't you think it occurred to him and those Israelites, God, what are you doing? This is completely illogical.

We're going to get completely killed. Why would you lead us down here? What kind of mistake is this?

But you know what? After the Red Sea had opened and they'd all walked through and the chariots were all gone, it didn't look like such a big mistake anymore, did it? Now, friends, did that come as a surprise to God that he was going to open the Red Sea? No, I think it came as a big surprise to Moses and those people. I don't think it was a surprise to God at all.

And here's the point. The point is that the Apostle Paul, did he understand everything that God was doing in his life before he had this vision at Troas? Answer no. Moses and the Israelites, did they understand exactly how God was leading them before God opened the Red Sea? Answer no. And will you and I always understand everything God is doing as he leads us along?

Friends, the answer is no. God often leads us as his children down roads we don't like and don't understand. God often leads us to places where we don't want to go. God often drives us onward like he drove Paul onward in this chapter, even though we're in the dark and we're confused, but you know what? We can have the same confidence that Paul had. We can have the same confidence that Moses had. The confidence, number one, that God is in absolute control at all times. The confidence, number two, that God never makes a mistake. God never says, oops, ever. Number three, the confidence that God is always working a plan for our good, for his glory, even if we can't see it or understand it right now, which means that what God's asking from us is simply that we trust him and that we follow his leading. I love the old hymn.

It says, my Lord knows the way through the wilderness. All I have to do is what? Understand it all? No. Be able to figure it all out? No. Be able to diagram it on a piece of paper and explain it to people? No.

Be able to completely look down the road and figure out where this is all going? No. All I need to do is be in control? No.

All I need to do is what? Follow. That's all Paul did. All Paul did was follow. That's all Moses did.

Moses just followed. And friends, that's all God's asking you and me to do. He's not asking you to understand everything he's doing in your life because you guess what? He's not going to give you the courtesy of always telling you what he's doing in your life. He didn't give that courtesy to Paul. He didn't give that courtesy to Moses. And he's probably not going to give it much to you and me. But he does give us the assurance that he's in control.

He makes no mistakes. And if we follow him, we'll never be sorry. You know, we sang earlier in this service a wonderful hymn.

To God be the glory, great things he has done. So love to the world that he sent us his son by Fanny Crosby. Now, you know, Fanny Crosby was born 1820 in upstate New York. And when she was six months old, she had an eye inflammation and the local doctor was out of town. So they called on this quack physician in town who misdiagnosed her, mistreated her, scarred her corneas for life. And for the next 95 years, Fanny Crosby was completely blind. She had a godly grandmother named Eunice. And when it became obvious that her granddaughter was going to be blind the rest of her life, Eunice made up her mind that her granddaughter was not going to be a helpless invalid. And so she spent every day with little Fanny reading to her, describing to her in picturesque language all of the things around her, the birds, the trees, the clouds, the flowers that Fanny couldn't see, and building a biblical worldview into this little girl. Fanny's grandmother told her over and over again, God makes no mistakes. Fanny would often ask, Grandma, why did God let me go blind? And she would always repeat her mantra, Fanny, God makes no mistakes.

Now to us, looking at someone who mistreated and misdiagnosed this poor little girl and caused her to go blind for the next 95 years of her life, we would say that was a horrible mistake. Well, Fanny's grandmother said no, it wasn't. And she said, Fanny, God has a plan that's bigger and better than anything you can understand right now, sweetheart.

And I don't know what it is and you don't know what it is. But God makes no mistakes, Fanny, just trust him. Well, Fanny Crosby believed her grandmother. And you know what she found? She found that because she couldn't see, because she wasn't distracted by the world around her of sight, that she began to develop an uncanny, unbelievable spiritual connection to the living God in the darkness of her life. That solitude and that darkness created an environment where she connected with God in a very special way. And so Fanny Crosby began to write hymns about her walk with God and her experiences with God. In fact, she wrote a lot of hymns. In fact, she wrote over 9,000 hymns Fanny Crosby did, more than anyone in the history of the Christian church has ever written.

You know many of them. Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. She wrote that.

All the way my Savior leads me. She wrote, rescue the perishing, pass me not, O gentle Savior, close to thee, near the cross, redeemed how I love to proclaim it. All of these, Fanny Crosby wrote. And reflecting back on her blindness in the last year of her life, she said this. In fact, this was said at her last public appearance.

She died several weeks afterwards. And I quote, she said, I believe that the greatest blessing the Lord ever bestowed on me was when he permitted my external vision to be closed. For by being shut out of the world because of my blindness, I have been shut in with my Lord. The loss of sight has been low loss to me, for in making me blind, look at this, God prepared me for the real work for which he created me. If I hadn't been blind, I couldn't have written these hymns. That was the real work God had for me. Then she said, we all have sorrows and disappointments, but if we commend them to God, they will all result in good. We must trust God's way as best, even when we don't understand it.

For his leading is far better than any we could ever conceive for ourselves. Did God make a mistake with Fanny Crosby? No, he didn't, friends. No, he didn't. Did God make a mistake with Moses? No. Did he make a mistake with the Apostle Paul?

No. And some of us as we sit here today, we have incredible anxiety in our life. Some of us even have anger in our life because we want to know what's going on. And what God is doing in our life makes no sense. And some of the ways God has led us, we can't figure it out. It seems illogical. It seems unfair. And we reach out and we go, God, why won't you explain to me what you're doing? And God won't.

We're mad about that. We don't like not to be in control. Could I say something to you today, friends? It encourages me because I have those same struggles. It encourages me to know the Apostle Paul one day was right where I was, right where you are. It encourages me to know that Moses at some points in his life was right where we are. It encourages me to know that Fanny Crosby asked the very same questions. And it encourages me to know that in every single instance, God made no mistake. Not with Moses, not with Paul, not with Fanny Crosby.

And could I tell you he's not making a mistake with you? But I don't understand it. Well, so what? Well, it makes no sense to me. Well, so what? Oh, well, it seems I would like to know where God's taken me.

Well, too bad. God's not going to honor that necessarily. He didn't honor it with Moses. He didn't honor it with Fanny Crosby. He didn't honor it with Paul.

Why should he honor it necessarily with you? Friends, it's actually a blessing. You probably don't know. But here's what you can know. You can know, and so can I, that God's in absolute control. You can know, and so can I, that God makes no mistakes. You can know, and so can I, that God is preparing us so that when he gets us where he's trying to take us, we'll be ready to obey God at that point. And you know what?

That's all you and I really need to know. Our Lord knows the way through the wilderness. All we need to do is what? Follow.

Just trust him and follow. If you're here today and, man, you just torqued up with anger, frustration, and anxiety, my invitation to you is to just bring it to the foot of the cross and leave it there. Let God worry about the way through the wilderness. That's his job. All you and I have to worry about, friends, is following.

That's a real easy job description. You know that? And God will exchange all that anger and anxiety for the peace of God if you'll just be willing to follow. May God help us do that.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, you know the truth about us. We are people who are consumed with wanting to be in control. We want to know what's going on, where we're going, how it's happening, why this has taken place, where it's all leading. And yet when we walk with you as we saw today in Paul's life, in Moses' life, in Fanny Crosby's life, you don't often tell us that information for our own good. Now, Lord, my prayer today is that you would take me and every one of us here who's struggling with areas of our life that don't seem to make any sense right now and that you would take away the anxiety, the anger, and the fear and replace them with the sweet peace of God, the sweet peace of God that comes from knowing that our Lord knows the way through the wilderness.

That's not our job. The sweet peace of God that comes from simply trusting and following. Lord, help us make that transition here today because we encountered your Word and we encountered your Spirit. Change our very lives. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.