A journey through Acts

So, this evening we begin a ten week series in Acts 16-19. As we’re diving in half-way through, let me take a few minutes to introduce the book and recap what’s happened so far. The book of Acts, written by Luke (who also wrote the gospel of Luke), describes the early days of the Christian Church. He charts the ripples caused by the explosive news on that first Easter day that Jesus was alive! In the days following the death and resurrection of Jesus, we see the risen Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, leading the preaching of the gospel to new regions and breaking new ground in spreading the message of Jesus to new areas where it had not yet been heard before.

In Acts 1 Jesus instructs his disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit to come upon them, so they would be able to tell the whole world what he had taught them (Acts 1.8):

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

In Acts 2 the Holy Spirit comes upon the tiny, fearful band of believers on the day of Pentecost, and filled the with power and boldness they miraculously begin speaking about Jesus in loads of different languages to the crowds gathered in Jerusalem from all over the world. Peter, the disciple who had denied Jesus three times at his crucifixion, stood up and preached a powerful sermon proclaiming the news that Jesus was the Messiah promised in the Old Testament and the Saviour of the world. That sermon lead to the conversion of thousands of people, and the beginning of the Church's mission to spread the gospel to all nations.

That chapter, and throughout the rest of the book is full of sermons and the content of the good news they preached, the gospel they proclaimed: That Jesus was God, that he entered the world as a baby born to a virgin, that he taught with extraordinary authority accompanied by miracles. They taught that he brought salvation through his death to those who repented of sin and believed. They pointed to the resurrection as proof that all this was true. And it was the Holy Spirit who ‘supervised’ and ‘directed’ this news spreading like wildfire from Palestine along the dusty roads and trade routes of the ancient world. Those who believed, lived out their faith by following Jesus and his teaching – bringing into being a new and radical community. This new community was initially Jewish but it expanded to an international body of men and women from every nation and social background. It took the church a while to get that though and at every stage the Holy Spirit drove them further and further outwards.

In Acts 3-4, Peter and John heal a man who had been lame from birth and preach the Gospel in the temple courts which again led to many new believers. But it also resulted in their arrest and a subsequent trial before the religious authorities. But that persecution, as well as internal challenges described in chapter 5 not only did not stop the growth of the church, they actually led to its growth. In Acts 6-7, Stephen, one of the church leaders, preaches the Gospel to the Jewish council, but he is stoned to death for his faith. This event leads to the scattering of the church and God used that to spread the Gospel beyond Jerusalem. In Acts 8, Philip preaches the gospel to the Samaritans, who had previously been considered outcasts by the Jews. This is a significant moment, a next step in the early church realising that the gospel was for everyone, regardless of their ethnicity or background.

In Acts 9, the Holy Spirit leads Saul, a persecutor of Christians, to convert to Christianity and become the Apostle Paul. In Acts 10, Peter receives a vision from God in which he is told to eat unclean animals, and he realizes that the gospel is meant for the Gentiles as well as the Jews. He travels to the home of Cornelius, a Gentile, and preaches the gospel to him and his household, who are then baptized and receive the Holy Spirit. In Acts 11 we meet the church in Antioch, which had been born by ordinary church members sharing the gospel with everyone they met, after they had been scattered due to the stoning of Stephen. This church was a diverse community, composed of both Jews and Gentiles. It was in Antioch that the believers were first called Christians and it was to play a significant role in the spread of the gospel and the growth of the early church.

In Acts 13-14, Paul and Barnabas are sent out by the church in Antioch on their first missionary journey, traveling to new regions and preaching the gospel in synagogues and other public places. They encounter opposition and persecution, but also see many people come to faith in Jesus. In Acts 15, a council is held in Jerusalem to discuss the question of whether Gentile converts to Christianity must follow Jewish customs and traditions. The council ultimately decides that Gentiles are not required to follow these practices, which opens the door for the gospel to spread even further among non-Jewish people.

And that brings us to Acts 16-19 and our current series. We will follow Paul and his team during his second and third missionary journeys taking the good news to new areas, including Europe for the first time. We will continue to see how the Holy Spirit guides and empowers them in unwavering commitment to spreading the Gospel, even in the face of opposition and persecution. We will see how God's hand guides the breaking of new ground through the preaching of the gospel to people who had not yet heard it. And we will see how the gospel is for all people from all walks of life and from all parts of the world. Tonight, we focus in on Acts 16.6-15 and we’ll look at in in two sections.

1. The Holy Spirit leads the church to reach the unreached (Acts 16.6-10)

This first section raises some of questions that may come up when dealing with a part of that bible that contains a narrative. First – there are the unfamiliar place names. But this is describing real events in real places, and so, it’s hugely helpful to read it alongside a good map to help you see and make sense of the geography of what happened. Second it contains miraculous happenings. What are we to make of those? Should we expect the same things to happen for us, now? For Christians, the ultimate reality is built on the facts of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. A worldview that rules out the possibility of the miraculous is not Christian – it’s a pre-supposition. Something you’ve decided is true even if the evidence later points in the opposite direction. The Bible tells us over and over again that God exists and that he is a God who has intervened, and continues to intervene, in the world he has created. That can happen using both miraculous and what might seem to be just normal events. So we must not limit God. But, even in Acts miracles are not the normal day-to-day experiences and seem to cluster at key moments. So, we need to have the right expectations. But the key thing in passages like this is to ask: what does this show me about God? What is he doing here and why? What he is like, what does he value. Remember this is primarily a book about God – who is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Thirdly, it contains very vivid accounts. Is the purpose of part of the bible like this to tell us that what is being described should be normal, day-to-day experiences that happen exactly in this way. It’s true that we are far less likely to come across a direct command that if we were reading one of the letters in the Bible. So, we need to read the text carefully to work out the timeless, universal principles: the lessons for us today. Not everything we read in a narrative was written for the purpose of giving us an example to follow and we need to be careful to learn lessons from the apostles without confusing ourselves with them. But Luke’s purpose is not just keeping a careful record of history using reliable sources as eyewitness – so we know what happened in the past. He writes, as he explained in Luke 1.4, so that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. As we read Acts, we are to learn how we should live and what we should expect God to do in this world through our proclamation of the gospel. Through Acts, God is inviting us to be part of a much bigger story and are to long to be a part of what God is still doing in the world. Let me now read Acts 16.6-10 for us. Paul sets off for his journey from the church in Antioch:

And they [important detail - Luke uses ‘they’– so we know he wasn’t there at that stage] 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 up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. And 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.” And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we [notice the ‘we’ - Luke is now with Paul] sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

What we see here is that the Holy Spirit guides and directs Paul and his team. He (and as the third person of the trinity the Holy Spirit is ‘He’ and not it), led Paul and his companions to travel to Macedonia (aka Greece) instead of Asia or Bithynia (aka Turkey). Despite their initial plans to preach in these regions and visit existing churches, the Holy Spirit directed them through a vision to go to Macedonia, where they gospel had, as yet, not been preached and – as we shall see - they were able to spread the Gospel and establish new churches. We aren’t told how they were forbidden to speak the word by the Holy Spirit. Perhaps circumstances gave them no choice, but they knew it God’s guiding hand. There is also no implication in all this that the plans Paul had made were in themselves wrong. In Acts 15.36, those plans had been lain out:

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.”

The point is simply that under the guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit they diverted in such a way as to push the boundaries, break new ground, preach the gospel where it has not yet been heard. That was crucial to the growth of the early church. But God is still in charge of the church today, guiding and directing. In his perfect wisdom, he may take us in unexpected directions in order to reach the unreached. And like Paul and his companions, we need to be alert to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and willing to change our plans if He leads us in a different direction. Paul’s plans were redirected as God drew his attention to the Macedonian man's plea: "Come over to Macedonia and help us." This plea was a cry for spiritual help. The people of Macedonia were in spiritual darkness (what you might call an ‘unreached people group’) they desperately needed to hear of the gospel. In Acts 15 the church had realised that the gospel was for everyone. And so we see the Holy Spirit guides and directs the work of evangelism so that everyone can hear the good news about Jesus.

So what about us, as a church? How should we plan for our future as a church? Is making plans even right? Well, we do not need to wait for specific instructions before we act. We have our marching orders, so to speak! Paul and his team did not wait for a vision before he did anything. He knew that he was to be a witness to the ends of the earth. So, they had already decided to go on a journey, they had decided where to go and who to join them. But God guided them as they were moving. So it so good that we’re taking time as a church now to– together, collaboratively – take stock of where we are and what serving God together might look like in the future. And as we make plans, we need to reflect on what it means for us that according to God’s revealing will and ways, we have been instructed to take the gospel to everyone. The work of the Holy Spirit in Acts was to lead the churches outwards to tell people who never heard the gospel about Jesus. So we plan, asking: how do we reach those not currently being reached? Listen to Paul, in Romans 15.20:

I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named

But we need to plan humbly, knowing that it’s not our plans that prevail but the Lord’s plans. All this shows why it’s so crucial that at all stages we need to be dependent on him in prayer. As we seek Gpd’s wisdom in the years ahead, through our church survey we need to pray as a church. So that we plan in line with God’s revealed will. So that we depend on him and not our wisdom. And so that we would be spiritually alert – expecting God to work as we step out in faith. So come and pray on Wednesday. And why not commit – as a group of friends, or a small group to a period of sustained prayer for us as a church at this crucial crossroads in the life of our church. It has been our consistent experience as a church that as we pray, and seek God’s will, he has opened doors of opportunity and given us the courage as a church to step out in faith. Let’s cry out that he would do that again and again in the months and years that lie ahead of us!

Some of you may not know or have forgotten how over the last few years God has worked through us to start two new churches. Over many many years we reflected on what the Bible says and because we love the God who has saved and transformed us, we have sought under God to be a church committed to faithfully proclaiming the gospel message, and to playing our part in the growth of the church in our region, our nation and throughout the world. So we had plans to support world mission, to grow ministries here, to resource the wider church, to develop the next generation of leaders, and to start new churches. But there were significant challenges not least because not compromising on the gospel has made it a challenge in our denomination when it comes to appointing new leadership here, sending out ordained leaders and church plants. But nothing can stand in God’s way. So we planned, and we prayed, and God led us to reach the unreached. In Gateshead a deprived estate was rebuilt. A church in the estate lost their building but were given land for a new church. They raised £100,000 but while prayed as a leadership team felt they could not finish the job. So they approached us for help. An opportunity opened up ad so we prayed some more. They gave us the land and the money, we raised another million pounds and send 75 of our church. And a new church was born to reach the unreached; Holy Trinity Gateshead. A few years later the government announced it was inviting applications for free schools. We saw an opportunity to setup a Christian school in Newcastle. We prayed, invested hours of work in submitting an incredible proposal. We saw a good opportunity for gospel work. But as we attempted to go that way, we were not allowed to proceed. It wasn’t a bad plan, but God had other plans. Shortly after, another church gave us a derelict building in the west of the city for a pound. We raised another one and a half million pounds, and sent 125 of our church. And another new church was born to reach the unreached; St Joseph’s Benwell.

Seeking to remain faithful and not compromising will mean some paths are blocked. No need to panic! God has been so faithful to us a church. He will do the same again! We need to plan and work to reach the unreached. And we need to be willing to step out in faith and follow the lead of God’s Holy Spirit, even when it means leaving behind our plans and comfort. The Holy Spirit leads the church to reach the unreached What about us as individuals? Seek first God’s kingdom. Doesn’t mean all become full-time church workers or missionaries. Make plans in the lights of the gospel.

2. The Holy Spirit leads the unreached to join the church (Acts 16.11-15)

For the rest of this chapter, which we will cover over three Sundays, we will hear what happens in Philippi, and how God works in the lives of three individuals. We begin with the first this week with the conversion of a wealthy, gentile, woman called Lydia. The three characters highlight the fact that the gospel is for all people, regardless of their social status, gender, or ethnicity. Let’s have a read:

So, setting sail from Troas, we made a direct voyage to Samothrace, and the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city some days. And on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshipper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. And after she was baptized, and her household as well, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.” And she prevailed upon us.

Luke recounts how Paul and his companions arrived in Philippi, a Roman colony in Macedonia. On the Sabbath, they went outside the city gate to a riverbank, where they met a group of women gathered for prayer. Among them was Lydia, a businesswoman from Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. Paul began to speak to them about Jesus. Lydia was listening, and the Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message. So, she and her household became the first believers in Philippi, were baptized, and she invited Paul and his companions to stay in her home. What do we learn here?

a) Paul and his team had a part to play. And they wisely headed for a strategic centre (‘the leading city… a Roman colony’) and to a place where Jews/Gentile God-worshipers associating with Judaism might be. But most crucially we read that they spoke to them about Jesus. That too is our task. To seek out the lost and speak confidently about Jesus. To share the good news of the gospel with others and demonstrating its transformative power through our words and deeds.

b) We also learn how anyone comes to trust in Jesus. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. (Acts 16.14) This is how people come to believe. People need to hear the message about Jesus, but God needs to open their heart to believe that message. So we must be humble as we play our part. And prayerful.

c) We also see how God is working to build his church. There may well be a comparison here between Lydia and the Old Testament Queen Esther, who was also described as a seller of purple. Like Esther, she is a woman of influence who can help God's people, and she uses her house as a base for the new church setup in the city. So we can be hopeful.

We’ll come back to some of these things again next week, but our time is up, so let me end with this: God's invitation of salvation and transformation is available to each one of us today. Perhaps as you have heard of Lydia coming to Jesus you realise you have never done that yourself. Jesus is God. He entered the world as a baby born to a virgin. He taught with extraordinary authority accompanied by miracles. He offers salvation through his death to those who repent of their sin and believe in him. The resurrection is proof that all of this is true. So will you turn to him, today acknowledging your need for a Savior? Will you confessing your sins and receive forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ? Are you ready to Identify as a believer in Jesus, to be baptised and join the incredible community of believers that is the church? Let me lead us in prayer.