How God Leads Series

Last Sunday, someone told me they saw me run a red light earlier in the week. Apparently, he was driving behind me and witnessed my traffic transgression. I didn’t really know what to say so I deflected and mumbled something about how people drive too fast today.

Before I went to bed that night, I looked outside and noticed one of our neighbors had left their garage door open. Wanting to be a good neighbor, I contacted them to let them know. I was secretly a bit smug about my final good deed of the day until I woke up the next morning only to see a text from the same neighbors, which came after I had gone to bed, letting me know our garage door was open. I ran to the back room and checked. Sure enough, I had left the door open all night.

Like me, do you get tired of your transgressions? Ever become unhinged by your own hypocrisy? Do you sometimes wonder if your imperfections are keeping you from living out God’s purposes?

I have always found great comfort in the doctrine of God’s providence. Here’s a helpful definition from Got Questions: “Divine providence is the governance of God by which He, with wisdom and love, cares for and directs all things in the universe.”

John Piper offers this beautiful definition:

“Providence is ‘God’s purposeful sovereignty.’ Its extent reaches down to the flight of electrons, up to the movements of galaxies, and into the heart of man. Its nature is wise and just and good. And its goal is the Christ-exalting glorification of God through the gladness of a redeemed people in a new world.”

After studying Acts 15:36-16:10, I wrote down this summary statement: God uses imperfect people to accomplish His perfect purposes. By the way, the Bible is filled with examples of God using imperfect people for His purposes. It never glosses over the sins of people because the hero of the Bible is always God. It’s all about Him, not about you.

When I was a newer Christian, I enjoyed reading missionary biographies but noticed the more I read the more I felt inadequate because many of the missionaries were depicted as almost perfect. When I was in seminary, one of my professors was Ruth Tucker, author of From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya. Her book takes a different approach from most missionary biographies. Instead of just touting the “good things” about men and women of faith, she paints a more realistic picture of these flawed yet faithful followers of Christ. It was roundly criticized when it first came out because many did not like having their missionary heroes taken off the pedestal.

I had a totally different reaction. I liked reading about missionary mistakes and personality problems because these are my kind of people. In other words, I didn’t think I could ever be like Adoniram Judson or Hudson Taylor, but when I learned what they were really like, I thought to myself, If God can use their weaknesses and shortcomings, then maybe He can use mine.

Because God only has imperfect people to work with, He works His way and His will through us to accomplish His perfect purposes.

We learned last week how the Jerusalem church handled doctrinal division by establishing Jesus + Nothing = Everything.

After the message was clarified that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, Paul was eager to get back on mission. We see this in Acts 15:36: “And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, ‘Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are.’” Paul was devoted to discipleship, not just to evangelism. He knew the best way to ignite evangelism was to reproduce reproducing disciples who go with the gospel to those in their cultural contexts.

As Paul prepared to go on the second missionary journey three years after the first one, we don’t read of a divine call or a church commissioning service. He simply said, “let us return,” or ‘go again” to “visit the brothers in every city.” The word “visit” is different from how we view visiting today because it means, “to observe, to examine closely, and to look upon with mercy.” Paul wanted to get up close to these new Christians to see how they were holding up, and then help them with what they needed.

In our passage I see three ways God providentially leads His people.

1. God leads through disagreements. Paul’s plan seemed good until Barnabas shared his idea in verse 37: “Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark.” Barnabas and Mark were cousins, so it was natural for them to want to be together. The phrase “wanted to take” actually means, “he kept on insisting.”