Gospel-Driven Initiative and the Spirit’s Leading
Acts 15:36-16:10
Consider these words from the book, Just Do Somethingby Kevin deYoung, a book subtitled, a liberating approach to finding God’s will:
“If God has a wonderful plan for my life, as the evangelistic tract tells us, then why doesn’t He tell me what it is? After all, our lives down here are a confusing mess of fits and starts, dead ends and open doors, possibilities and competing ideals. There are so many decisions to make and none of the answers seem clear.
What should I do this summer? What should my major be? What kind of career do I want? Do I (even) want a career? Should I get married? Whom should I marry? Do I want kids? How many kids? Should I play sports or sing in the choir? Where should I go to college? Should I even go to college? Should I go to grad school? What job should I take? Should I stay in my current job? Should I be a missionary? Should I be a pastor? Should I volunteer here or there? Should I leave home and test the waters elsewhere? Is now the right time to buy a house? And for those further down the road…how should I spend my money? Where should I give my money? Where should I go to church? How should I serve my church? What should I be doing with the rest of my life, and where and with whom should I be doing it? When should I retire? What should I do in retirement?...
With so many questions to face…it’s no surprise (that) so many of us are desperate to know the will of God for our lives. If God has a wonderful plan for my life, how can I discover what it is?”[1]
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We continue in the book of Acts this morning and it just so happens that our passage from Acts 15 and 16 gives us a great opportunity to discuss how God guides us and how we can know what He wants us to do. Clearly the section of scripture that we’ll look at this morning addresses other topics--and we’ll discuss those as we encounter them--but a central topic, I would say the central topic in our passage, is the topic of God’s guidance.
Here’s what I think is the“big idea” of the passage of scripture we’ll look at this morning.
And we’ll return to this big idea more fully at the end of our time.
Let me explore the ‘big idea’ of the passage for a just a moment with a question--“How does God weave the steps we take daily--the initiatives we pursue daily--into His sovereign plan?”
Now as I read that question, I wonder if any proverbs came to mind. Let me read the question again and as I read it I want you to be thinking ofany of the proverbs you know that might address or answer the question…
“How does God weave the steps we take daily--the initiatives we pursue daily-- into His sovereign plan?”
Anyproverbs come to mind? Two proverbs came to my mind as I reflected on the ‘big idea’ of the passage…
Well if you have your bibles we’ll begin in Acts 15:36…Acts 15:36.
By way of review, in the story line of Acts, the first missionary journey has been completed, Acts chapter 13 and 14. And in the first 35 verses of Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council hasunified the church doctrinally over the nature of salvation—we’re saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus… period.
We pick up in verse 36. Follow as I read through verse 41….
36 And after some days…and the setting is in Antioch… 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.”37 Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark.38 But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.39 And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other. Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus,40 but Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord.41 And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.
Now here in verse 36 we have the beginning of the second missionary journey…verse36 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.”
Now do you remember how the first missionary journey started back in Acts 13?…. The church in Antioch was worshipping and the Holy Spirit said…and this is Acts 13:2… “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”… the first missionary journey was initiated by the Holy Spirit speaking to the church in Antioch.And now here in Acts 15, at the headwaters of the second missionary journey, Paul with a godly desire, Paul with a godly burden to strengthen those who came to know the Lord in the first missionary journey looks at his fellow soldier in the faith and says… “Barnabas, let’s go back and visit those who came to know the Lord on our first trip and see how they’re doing” (And the verb ‘visit’ in verse 36 has ‘pastoral oversight’ nuances)[2]
Now let’s make a couple of observations about God’s guidance from this very first verse.
The first observation is that sometimesGod leads us through our desiresor burdens. In the book that I quoted from at the start of the message, Just Do Something, the author makes a good case that if we’re running hard after God, if we’re running hard after His commands and His glory, then we can do whatever we want. He closes the book this way: “The end of the matter is this: Live for God. Obey the scriptures. Think of others before yourself. Be holy. Love Jesus. And as you do these things, do whatever else you like, with whomever you like, wherever you like, and you’ll be walking in the will of God”[3]
The church father Augustine basically said the same thing but with different words… 'Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved.'[4] In other words if you’re loving God with all that you are, then you’d never make a choice that offended God.
Now you don’t need another witness to this principle, but let me give you one anyway.John MacArthur basically says the same thing in his little book“Found: God’s Will.” MacArthurargues that if one is saved, spirit-filled, sanctified, submitted to authorities, and suffering (5 S’s that summarize the idea of being totally given over to God) one is free to do whatever one desires. Why? Because if you’re living a godly life, God will give you the right desires.[5]
4 Delight yourself in the Lord, Psalm 37:4 says, and he will give you the desires of your heart…in other words…he will put desires in your heart.
So in our text here in Acts, here’s Paul saved, spirit-filled, sanctified, submitted to authorities, and suffering… or using the criteria of Augustine…here’s Paul loving God with all that he is… and up from his heart bubbles a desire to visit and strengthen the converts that had been made on the first missionary journey. And though we can’t see the smile on God’s face we can imagine that He is smiling.
Let’s make one other point with verse 36. Look at the scope of what Paul desires to do—he wants to cover old territory, he wants to strengthen recent converts. Well we’re going to see that the scope of the second missionary journey changes dramatically from this initial desire. And I think that’s a principle of God’s guidance. Many times,when we begin moving, God clarifies what He wants us to do. We’ve said it before—we find God’s will as we’re doing God’s will; God steers a moving vessel a lot better than one sitting at port. So here’s the point--a desire in Paul’s heart starts the journey but as Paul and his team begin moving, God enlarges the scope of the trip in ways that Paul hadn’t conceived.
Well in verse 37, Barnabas wanted to take his cousin[6] John Mark along on the journey. But Paul was against it because John Mark had abandoned Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey.[7]
Perhaps Barnabas, the “Son of Encouragement” wanted to give John Mark a second chance, a chance to redeem his failure. But Paul would have none of it—the mission was too important to bring a quitter along. Their disagreement over John Mark was heated.
The word translated ‘sharp disagreement’ (paroxysmos)…the English word paroxysm is an outburst of anger…. in verse 39implies really strong emotions.[8] The word is used twice in the Greek Old Testament to express the ‘furious anger of God’ (Deut. 29:28; Jer. 32:37)[9]
Perhaps their disagreement went something like this…
Barnabas:John Mark deserves another chance…He’s really a good young man.
Paul: John Mark’s a quitter. The last time we were together, he abandoned us!
Barnabas:He had his reasons…
Paul: They weren’t good reasons! Barnabas, John Mark’s not suitable for missionary work…he’s proved that hasn’t he?
Barnabas:John Mark is growing…I’ve seen changes. Paul you’ve got to give him another chance!
Paul:Not on my time…I won’t let him jeopardize the mission. Barnabas, I’m done. I willnotallowJohnMarktogowithus!
It’s hard to imagine these two veterans of the gospel in a heated argument with each other. Who was right? The bible doesn’t say. Sometimes people just can’t get along. Some of the best leaders are difficult people to work with…
Martin Luther, the reformer, in a famous self-evaluative moment said “I am rough, boisterous, stormy, and altogether war-like, fighting against innumerable monsters and devils. I am born for the removing of stumps and stones, cutting away thistles and thorns, and clearing wild forests.”[10]
Well the unthinkable happened, verse 39. Barnabas and Paul separated from each other.
Barnabas took John Mark and sailed away to Cyprusand he disappears from the pages in Acts. Tradition says that Barnabas stayed on Cyprus and died there as an old man.[11]
Paul chose Silas (who was also called Silvanus and who was a key leader of the Jerusalem church) and they took the land route through Syria and Cilicia strengthening churches.
Now how could this painful separation fall under the umbrella of God’s guidance? Well it turns out that while God didn’t cause the disagreement between the two men or the difficult parting of ways, God used it to guide both men into increased fruitfulness and service.[12]
How could that be? Well there were now twomissionary teams instead of one. Moreover, Silas brought to Paul’s ministry some ingredients that Barnabas didn’t have. Silas, as a pillar of the Jerusalem church, could speak about the Jerusalem Council from the Jerusalem church’s perspective. Furthermore Silas was a Roman citizen.[13] Silas was a prophet.[14] And over the course of their ministry together, Silas served as Paul’s secretary for at least a couple of New Testament books.[15]“Though Barnabas was a great loss, Silas was a great gain.”[16]
It’s often through our failures and difficulties that God leads us to increased fruitfulness and productivity. I guess we’d call that pruning.. Haven’t you experienced that?
Phillips Brooks, one of the greatest preachers America has ever produced, failed miserably as a school teacher. He didn’t like his students and they didn’t like him. When he was fired, he wrote this, “I do not know what will become of me and I do not care much….I wish I were 15 years old again. I believe I might become a stunning man; but somehow or other, I do not seem in the way to come to much now.”[17]
Well God used his failure and redirected him into ministry. Here’s a statue of him outside Holy Trinity church in Boston. Jesus is standing behind him with his hand on his shoulder.
POWERPOINT
Phillips Brooks
If you’ve ever failedyou’re in good company. You’d be surprised how many of God’s servants have failed—Moses, Jonah, Peter…..the list goes on…But in the plan of God, failure isn’t final. One of the church fathers said… “ The danger is not that we should fall . . . but that we could remain on the ground. ”[18]Proverbs 24:16says it this way… 16 for the righteous falls seven times and rises again…
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Well what happened to these broken relationships? It appears that Paul and Barnabas were ultimately reconciled. In 1 Corinthians 9:6, Barnabas is mentioned as a colleague of Paul again. And it appears that Paul and Mark were reconciled also.In 2 Timothy, as Paul languished in prison, he asked for Mark and commented that Mark was very useful to him in ministry.[19]
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I really like the word ‘commended’ there in verse 40. Paul and Silas were commended, they were “given over” is really what it means, they were ‘entrusted’ to the grace of the Lord. We often think of God’s grace as His favor to us, and it is that, but it’s so much more; it’s all of His marvelous resources available to us as we need them. …Paul and Silas were given over, they were entrusted to the grace of the Lord and that was enough.
Verse 41…Paul and Silas went through Syria and Ciliciastrengthening the churches.
Now these churches wouldn’t have been churches founded on the first missionary journey—the first missionary journey didn’t go through these areas. So that means that these congregations may have been the fruit of Paul’s preaching right after his conversion and before he was welcomed into the fellowship by the other apostles. You remember there were those years when Paul was just out there preaching away. So that’s kind of neat!
But what did Paul and Barnabas do to strengthen the churches?…and the word strengthen means to ‘make firm’, ‘to establish’ and ‘to confirm’. And because that word ‘strengthen’ shows up in the “big idea” of the passage, I want to brainstorm it a moment with you. What does it mean to strengthen a church? What does it mean to strengthen the believers[20] in a church? How do we strengthen the believers in our church?
We strengthen a church through good teaching.
We strengthen a church through encouragement.
We strengthen a church through prayer.
What can lay people do to strengthen other believers in a church?
We can disciple the believers and help them learn to feed themselves from God’s word
We can mentor leaders.
The older women can disciple the younger women.
The older men can disciple younger men.
We’ll come back to this thought at the end of the message for there are ways that you can strengthen our church.
Continuing in Acts 16:1…
1 Paul came also to Derbe and to Lystra. (These would be towns that Paul and Barnabas visited on the first missionary journey.In fact Lystra was where Paul was stoned and left for dead…you can imagine Paul walking into Lystra saying ‘Can anything God come out of Lystra?’ )A disciple was there, named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek.2 He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium.
The first thing we learn about Timothy, in verse 1, was that he was a disciple. He had put his faith in Christ and was growing.
We can reconstruct a little of Timothy’s home life. His mother was a Jew who became a believer and his father, who probably was dead at this time,[21] was Greek. So Timothy was the product of a mixed marriage which was highly problematic according to Old Testament law and precedent; in fact the marriage was illegal in Jewish law.[22] It’s reasonable that at eight days, Timothy’s Greek father prevented him from being circumcised.
We know from 2 Timothy that Timothy’s mother was named Eunice and we know that Eunice was a very Greek name.[23]So that could mean that Eunice’s family had assimilated into Greek culture which would then be consistent with the fact that her family allowed her to marry a Greek man. But offsetting the idea of a family highly assimilated into Greek culture…more Greek than Jewish… we know that assimilation to Greek culture wasn’t complete because 2 Timothy 3:15 tells us that Timothy had been instructed in the Old Testament scriptures since childhood.[24]
It’s possible that Timothy and his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois had come to faith on Paul’s first missionary journey, two to three years earlier.[25]
So was Timothy considered a Jew or a Gentile? It’s an interesting question. According to Old Testament law he would be a Gentile having grown up the product of such a mixed marriage.[26] According to Mishnaic or oral law, which may have been practiced at the time, he would have been Jewish.[27] I bring that up because Paul will have him circumcised and that will bring clarity to Timothy’s status.