AUG 11 2013PM A Call to Help
Acts 16:1-16:11
Paul and Barnabas have parted ways since they couldn’t agree on whether to include Mark on the 2nd missionary journey. The disagreement was so sharp that Barnabas took Mark and went his way, while Paul took Silas with him to start his 2nd missionary journey. READ 1-3.
These verses show how Paul took Timothy under his care to develop and grow him. We have been looking at Paul’s letter to Timothy on Sunday mornings. This is where it all started. Timothy was an unexpected surprise and his love and maturity in the Lord struck Paul.
Timothy had an unbelieving father, a Greek. He wasn’t a follower of this Jewish God. If he had been, he would have had Timothy circumcised. He was an unsaved father. So Timothy was from a spiritually divided family. Yet he followed God despite his father’s unbelief. He still had made the choice to follow the Lord as taught by his mother.
Timothy had an unblemished character in the community. He was known as a young man of purity and maturity. Paul attempted a well-meaning compromise. There was a large population of Jews throughout the districts where Paul was planning to minister. As a Jew, Timothy needed to be circumcised if he was going to minister to the Jews. As long as he remained uncircumcised, he would be considered a heathen and he would never have been allowed to preach in the synagogues.
READ 4-5. The apostle Paul, following the leading of the Holy Spirit journeyed to the churches that were planted on his first missionary trip. Paul, Silas and Timothy were passing through cities, strengthening the churches in the faith, as well as seeing daily increase in people being saved. Now let me prelude verses 6-7 with this story:
An old sailor repeatedly got lost at sea, so his friends gave him a compass and urged him to use it. The next time he went out in his boat, he followed their advice and took the compass with him. But as usual he became hopelessly confused and was unable to find land. Finally he was rescued by his friends. Disgusted and impatient with him, they asked, “Why didn’t you use that compass we gave you? You could have saved us a lot of trouble!” The sailor responded, “I didn’t dare to! I wanted to go north, but as hard as I tried to make the needle aim in that direction, it just kept on pointing southeast.” That old sailor was so certain he knew which way was north that he stubbornly tried to force his own personal persuasion on his compass. Unable to do so, he tossed it aside as worthless and failed to benefit from the guidance it offered.
God’s direction is not always our direction. READ 6-7. Paul has chosen Silas as his ministry partner, and begun his 2nd missionary journey, and something interesting happens in vv. 6-7:“they were forbidden of the Holy Ghost”…“the spirit suffered them not.”
Paul and Silas tried to go south into Asia, but God said no, and put up a roadblock. Then they tried to go north and had the same response. They had come from the east, so west was all they had—west to the Aegean Sea and the region of Troas, where they awaited further instructions from God. Asia needed the Gospel, but this was not God's time. Asia was an important region and God would establish churches there but for now, Paul was forbidden to speak there.
Paul was “forbidden” of the Holy Spirit to preach the Word in Asia, and not allowed “to go into Bythinia.” His ear was trained and his heart tuned to hear what others less quiet, less loving, less obedient never could.
A lady, asked how she knew the voice of the Spirit, answered, “How do you know your husband's step and your child's cry from the step and the cry of all others? I can’t tell you how I know the voice of the Spirit, but it is as real to me as the voice of any person I know.” If we are “filled with the Spirit” and “live in the Spirit,” and “walk in the Spirit,” we shall have an intimate, personal knowledge of the Spirit as real as that of our dearest friend.
Paul, Silas, and Timothy were sensitive to the leading of The Spirit, as we should be. We should pray every day, “Lord, I’ll go where you want me to go, I’ll be what you want me to be, I’ll do what you want me to do, I’ll say what you want me to say.”
We have to be willing to lay down our will and plans for the direction that the Holy Spirit brings. God’s direction is at times the direct opposite of our direction
Paul, Silas, and Timothy had just come from the east and wanted to go either south or north but the Holy Spirit’s direction was west. There are many plans in a man's heart, Nevertheless the Lord's counsel--that will stand.
Sometimes God closes doors, puts up roadblocks, when we are going the wrong way. This isn’t an audible voice, but sometimes it’s an inner impression, a lack of peace inside. God sometimes uses outward circumstances to guide us, like a door closing…and the worst thing we can do is kick it down and barge thru anyway. If we insist on having our way God may do something that we won’t like in the end…He may let us! We need to have God’s wisdom to know the difference between Satan’s hindrances and the Lord’s roadblocks.
READ 8-9. This man of Macedonia represented the culture, intelligence, religion, and achievements of a supposedly enlightened Greek civilization. But the truth was both he and those he represented were in the darkness of spiritual bankruptcy. Man’s disappointments are often God’s appointments! And when God closes one door he opens another. It happens in v. 9.
Notice Paul kept going. He wasn’t discouraged by God’s change of plans. This fact is important because if Paul had allowed the closed door and the restraint to discourage him, the great call he was about to receive would have never happened. God’s directions are to be followed to the letter.
READ 10-11.
He heard the “Macedonian Call”, as the song “Send the Light” says! And they crossed over into Europe…as far as you and I are concerned, that’s the most important call that’s ever been made or answered!
God gave Paul the vision of a man in Macedonia crying for help. He cried, “Help US.” (plural) It was the vision, the picture of a man representing all of Europe, crying and begging Paul to come and help the whole European continent. It’s a call Paul would never forget, and neither should we.
We all have a God-shaped void inside of us, and often people try to fill the void w/ things of the world! But the only thing that can fill the God-shaped void is God! And as they try all these things they are really calling out, come and help me! But did you know it’s not their responsibility to come to us? It’s really our responsibility to go to them.
Ill.—Evangelist Freddy Gage tells of visiting 2 churches back to back, and it was a great lesson in opposites. He said that 1 church was dying, the other was growing and thriving. The first had a big sign out front that said, “All welcome…come on in.” And it was dying.
The other was thriving, but it’s sign wasn’t on the outside, but just inside the door…you could only see it from the inside as you made your way out… “you are now entering the mission field”. That sign was saying, “go out and bring them in from the fields of sin!” Just as Jesus said, “go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in.”
Nowhere does the Bible command sinners to come to church!
Aren’t you glad Paul understood that? He didn’t say from Troas… “hey, ya’ll over there in Europe, you wanna hear the gospel? Come on over, all are welcome!” No, he got in a boat and took the gospel to them!
Paul discussed the vision with Silas and Timothy, and Luke who had now joined the mission party. They concluded that the vision was definitely of God. It was God’s will for them to go to Europe and to preach the gospel.
(PAUSE) The story has often been told of the little church in Germany sited near train tracks that carried Jews to their death.
"Each Sunday Morning," the German man telling the story said, "we could hear the whistle in the distance and then the wheels coming over the tracks. We became disturbed when we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed by. We realized that it was carrying Jews like cattle in the cars!"
"Week after week the whistle would blow. We dreaded to hear the sound of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of the Jews en route to a death camp. Their screams tormented us."
We knew the time the train was coming and when we heard the whistle blow we began singing hymns. By the time the train came past our church we were singing at the top of our voices. If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly and soon we heard them no more. Years have passed, and no one talks about it much anymore; but I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. I can still hear them crying out for help. God forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians, yet did nothing to intervene."
Have you ever heard God’s call wanting to change directions for you, your family, or maybe your church? Have YOU been the one that has ignored God’s nudging? Did you ignore God’s call because:
- You didn’t think you had the time.
- You didn’t think you had the energy.
- Maybe you just flat didn’t want to do it.
- OR Financially you didn’t think you or the church could afford it.
The fact is, went God invokes His will for you or me or for the church, we can’t afford NOT to do it. How dare we sit in our comfortable building and sing our songs and eat our food and enjoy our fellowship, and not walk out those doors into the mission field w/ a vision, hearing the call, and answering it! That’s the vision…
