Jesus 4 Everybody: A Movement of Listening

Two things this morning. First, a word of personal thanks to this church. I've really appreciated the way that you have cared for me with your cards and notes and even a financial gift toward the reception last Sunday for my dad at his passing and his memorial service last Sunday afternoon. It was a great weekend. It was a hard weekend and I've just really appreciated the care that y'all have shown to me and want to thank you personally for that. It really matters to me.

And this morning too, I want to lead us in prayer for this school and lead us in prayer for our teachers and all those who are in education. We have a lot of teachers within our church context and our church family, and we want to pray for them. And we also want to pray for this school, Oberlin Middle School and their faculty and staff. So if you would join me and bow your heads.

Father, we thank you for the startup of yet another school year. And we pray, Father, for all those who are in education in our church. We thank you for teachers and custodians and those in administration and staff. We pray, Father, that you would encourage them as they head back into the classroom this year. We thank you for the essential work that they do and a work that's undervalued in our culture. We don't pay our teachers nearly enough. We don't honor them nearly enough. We pray that you would encourage them in helping shape the lives of the next generation.

Lord, we thank you and pray particularly for the school and thank you, Father, for the administration and staff and custodians and teachers who are coming back to work here. We pray that you would prepare them, Father, for the work that they have to do. We pray for our partnership with this school, that it would be helpful for them and encouraging. We pray, Father, that we would be an encouragement to this school and Father, we pray for opportunities to further that partnership.

And Lord, we pray for all of our students who are going back into classes, some have already started, but going back some into new places, having to learn new names and make friends. Lord, meet them this week as they really need to know your Holy Spirit is real. And we pray this all in Christ's name. Amen.

Scripture Reading

We're going to be in Acts chapter 16 today, verses one through 10. If you want to follow along you can do so on your bulletin, you can download off that app QR code thing out in the hallway. Or you can read on the screen behind me. We're in Acts chapter 16 verses one through 10.

Paul went on to Derbe and Lystra where there was a disciple named Timothy, the son of a believing Jewish woman, but his father was a Greek. The brothers and sisters at Lystra and Iconium spoke highly of him. Paul wanted Timothy to go with him, so he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places since they all knew that his father was a Greek. As they traveled through the towns, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to observe. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.

They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia. They had been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. When they came to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the spirit of Jesus did not allow them. Passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. During the night, Paul had a vision in which a Macedonian man was standing and pleading with him. "Cross over to Macedonia and help us." After he had seen the vision, we immediately made efforts to set out for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. — Acts 16:1-10

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Introducing the Theme

When my kids were little, when our kids were little, we lived in Philadelphia and we lived right downtown. Two of our favorite family outings were the Academy of Natural Sciences and the Philadelphia Zoo. The Academy of Natural Sciences was an old museum, is an old museum that has been around for a long time. And the first floor of the Academy of Natural Sciences is all taxidermies. It's all these stuffed dead animals and you go by the musk ox and the hyena and the yak and the polar bear and my kids were largely uninterested in this. We had more important things to do. We're going to the dinosaur dig. But the other reason my kids were very uninterested in the taxidermies is because of the zoo. It's one thing to see dead animals. It's another, even if they're asleep, they're still alive. They're real. They're right in front of you. And my kids therefore really did not have much appreciation for all the taxidermies in the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences.

And this morning as we open up again God's word, I have a question for you. Do you have taxidermy expectations of God or zoo expectations of God?

Do you have an expectation when we open up God's word, when we pray to him, when we come together as a people either in small groups or in this gathering that God is real and alive? Or are we simply studying passages about what God used to do back then, with a sort of taxidermy God—nice to look at, great stories, but that was then and this is now?

Remember, the main character in the book of Acts that we've been looking at all summer is the Holy Spirit. What we're doing in this summer series is looking at all the parts of the book of Acts that highlight the person and work of the Holy Spirit. And what do we see the Spirit doing in Acts 16? We see him saying no. We see him redirecting their steps, changing their plans.

We heard a couple of interesting things as we read this passage. They had been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak God's word in Asia for some reason.

They tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus—another name for the Holy Spirit—wouldn't allow them. — Acts 16:7

How to Know If You Have a Real God

Here's where I want us to go today. This is a very practical sermon. Some of you do not like these kinds of practical sermons, but I'm going to be very practical this morning. Four "how-tos": First, how do you know if you have a real God? How do you know if you worship the real God? How the Spirit speaks and leads today. How we become listeners to the Spirit. And how we respond to the Spirit.

How do you know if you have a real God? I don't know if you've thought about that before, but that's a really important question. There are lots of people all across this globe who do acts of religious devotion to a god. There are lots of people across this globe who do things for a god, saying "God told me to do this." How do you know? Are those for real?

I want you to think about one test with me this morning. Here's one test for how you know if you have a real God: Do you have a God who can disagree with you? Do you have a God who, like in this passage, can say no to you? Can say, "No, I don't want you to do that. No, that's not the direction to go"?

This is how you know you're worshiping an idol. When your God always thinks like you, agrees with everything you think, and is behind everything you're about in your life—a God who can't contradict you, a God who can't say no. You know, we have real relationships with one another when we can also contradict one another. We can speak and say, "No, I don't agree with you. I don't like that," or we can get into a disagreement. That's a real relationship.

You know you made God in your own image if he's all about what you're about. And this is a problem I want to say for both super conservative Christians and super progressive Christians. Lots of people want to make God into our own image. We want God to say what we think, and it's easy to sort of twist things. We have to be careful, careful, careful.

I also want to apply this to God's word. One of the ways that the Spirit works primarily is through this book. One way you know if the Spirit is speaking to you is when he speaks to you through the pages of Scripture. He will never say anything in contradiction to his word. Let me explain why I believe that.

Why will the Spirit never say anything in contradiction to this book? This isn't a hard one. He wrote this book. These are his timeless words given to us. And yes, there are subtleties to interpretation—absolutely true. But some of the ways today it's very easy for you to hear people say things, saying "God is saying this," but it's an absolute contradiction to the book. That is not the case. That is not of the Spirit.

So we have to be careful because a God who cannot disagree with us, can't tell us to do things we don't want to do, to obey in hard places, to submit ourselves to him—that's not a real God.

How the Spirit Speaks and Leads

This is not the first time Acts 16 is the first time we have seen the Spirit speak and lead in the book of Acts.

Acts 11: "The Spirit told me to go with them, doubting nothing."

Acts 13: "They ministered to the Lord and fasted. The Holy Spirit said, 'Now separate for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I've called them.'"

The leaders of the early church in the book of Acts relied on the Holy Spirit to give them direction and guidance specifically. And in Romans and Galatians, we're told this is still what Christians should hope for. We are being led by the Spirit. That's a normal thing for the Christian life.

Notice here too that the Spirit actually forbade Paul and his company—Paul and Barnabas and all the group here—from doing something we think of as good. Paul wanted to go preach the gospel to people, for crying out loud. This isn't something sinful or wrong, but the Spirit is saying, "No, not here, not now, not you."

There's something about the timing and the place and maybe even the person that was not according to the spirit's will. So how did the spirit exactly dissuade them? We don't really know. It's difficult to say how the spirit said no here, but the holy scripture shows us ways God speaks. I can summarize this in three ways: speech, nudges, and providence.

How God Speaks

Speech

There are many examples in the Bible of God speaking to his people directly. Moses heard God's voice and wrote it down. Elijah heard the still small voice while hidden in the cleft of the rock. Samuel was given detailed instructions: go and anoint David as king. Ananias, we read in the book of Acts, is told, "Go to this particular house on Straight Street and go meet this guy named Saul who's been murdering Christians." Paul on the back of a donkey hears an audible voice come from heaven.

But we also see God speaking in other ways. We read a couple weeks ago about the Jerusalem Council where God spoke to his people as they came together and debated. They said, "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us." Somehow they interpreted this as the spirit's clear direction and speaking to us. We've seen this where the spirit seemed to lead a group to a conclusion not through debate but through prayer together in Acts 13.

I want to highlight that there's both discontinuity and continuity with how God speaks then and how God speaks now.

First, discontinuity. We believe, we expect that Jesus—this is what scripture teaches us—is the fullest and highest and most complete expression of who God is. You want to know what God is like? Look at Jesus. Therefore, we don't expect more special revelation from God to come out after Jesus. We don't expect more revelation that applies to all people in all places and all times about how God's at work in the world after the coming of Jesus. We believe the Canon, the book of the Bible, is closed. Sorry, Joseph Smith and Mormons.

And yet—listen to me—and yet God can and does still speak today. He doesn't speak in the same way that applies to all time, all places, and all people. But of course, he speaks to people individually or to churches to give specific guidance and direction and comfort. So please do not hear me say, "Hey, you're not an apostle. You're not a Bible person in Bible times. Sorry, it's all over with." No, we believe the spirit speaks today.

Can I tell you, if you're a Christian, if you have owned Jesus by faith, we believe the spirit is resident in your life and therefore the spirit can and does speak to Christians today?

Let me remind you of some of these things in scripture. God's voice is often really quiet. You have to quiet yourself often times to hear what God is saying to you. God's voice can guide us in what to do in difficult situations. He doesn't always do that. Sometimes things are a wisdom call, but he does guide. He can give comfort when we're anxious. He can give a rebuke, a word of correction—like I said, telling us no, like we read in this passage.

But God's voice primarily and most loudly speaks through his word. And I want to just tell you what it's like to be a pastor. One of the weird things about being a pastor—I prepare these messages, I write these sermons, and I'm just not smart enough to have you in mind when I'm doing that. I'm sorry. A lot of people will be like, "I thought you were speaking right to me today." And I'm like, "You know, maybe not me. It would be the spirit. I'm just not that good."

Or this is crazy. I've regularly had people come up to me and say, "Man, this point you made in your sermon was so powerful this morning." And I'm like, "I didn't even say that. That's not in the notes. I'm a word for word guy. I write down everything I say—I promise you it's not in there." What is that? That is the spirit of God speaking to you. God regularly speaks when we gather under the preached word. God regularly speaks when we open up our word at home.

We're not a church who's like, "You gotta have your quiet time—shame, shame, shame." We're like, "Why would you not want to hear from God? Don't you want to hear his voice?" That's why we're doing one-to-one Bible reading. We love to hear God's voice.

Nudges

The second way that God speaks—and I think this is even more regular than God's speech—is nudges. And I'm going to call it nudges. Maybe that's an East Tennessee thing. Do you all talk about nudges or prompts?

Somebody not so much words, not so much deep content. For example, Danny preached earlier this summer about Philip who goes and sees the Ethiopian eunuch on a chariot. And I don't think there was like a full paragraph the spirit gives to Philip at that moment.

I think it's something like chariot. Right? Like, over there and many times the spirit works through nudges with us that aren't a full sense of "here's exactly how this is gonna go down in your life." But take this next step. I've had this happen a lot of times in my life where it's like, go talk to that guy. Right? Be quiet. That's a good one for me. Or one for real was pick up that payphone. I'm not joking. That was my call to ministry. Pick up the payphone and answer it.

But nudges are like, hey, little poke, little poke from the spirit that's like, "not gonna give you everything, gonna tell you to take a step." And I wanna encourage you to be looking for the nudges of the spirit. You know, especially in those kind of white moments of your day—you're traveling, you're in the airport, you're on the plane and you wanna put the headphones in and you don't wanna be in a conversation. And sometimes the spirit's like, "hey, right there next to you. Have a conversation. Pray with that person. Encourage her." And we a lot of times ignore those things. We're like, "oh, I don't know. It feels weird." Listen to those.

Third, we see it in providence. The other way we can hear God's voice is through what they said: there's a closed door. There's no way to move forward. The hindering, the roadblock, the barrier. This is what Paul and company interpret as a big no—don't go that way. We can do this too. A lot of times what's hard for us are the prayers that don't seem to be answered. We're like, "I want to do this. Is that okay?" And we don't seem to see an open door. And it's right after a lot of counsel—I'll talk about this in a second—to say, okay, that must be the spirit.

How Do We Learn to Listen to the Spirit?

How do we learn to be people who listen to the spirit? You're aware, of course, that there are multiple voices in your life. And I'm just talking about the internal ones. So there is, of course, what I'm speaking about with the spirit—God's voice in you. There's your own internal monologue. Right? You have your own monologue. You're narrating the TV show that's called your life. You're talking to yourself about what's going on.

There's, of course, words of temptation and assault from the evil one. A lot of times those come like scripture describes them as arrows—like, out of nowhere. "Wow. I never thought about that. Now I'm interested in that."

And finally, your own conscience. One word about conscience: Scripture talks about the conscience. The conscience is that sort of internal meter of right and wrong that you were probably raised with. It's more nurture than it is nature. But it is not infallible. And you can, as scripture teaches, over time sear or harden your conscience so you no longer think what's wrong is wrong. It's not infallible.

So how do we know what we're hearing is real? First, again, a false test. Full of false tests this morning. You ready? The "I have a peace about this" test. Anybody done this one? Know this one? "I have a peace about this. I have this good feeling that this is the right thing to do."

A lot of times people say this when they're waiting on the Lord, they're wrestling with something. "I don't know which way to go." And what they want is some good vibrations, right? They want good feels, a little subjective sense of "yeah, that's great" about something. And I'm not so sure that that's as reliable as people think it is. I'm just wanna lean into that a little bit. Not saying it's all wrong, but I'm gonna step on your toes just a little bit with that one this morning.

Here's why: because when you read the Bible and you see when the Holy Spirit is directing people, it's not always to doing things that are fun or that feel good or that people are gonna have this real sense of warm fuzzies about.

For example, conviction of sin. Anybody love conviction of sin? No. Conviction of sin feels terrible, and yet we know that's the spirit operating in us. The spirit is the one who guides us to what is true.

Or things like this: What about witnessing to people? I'm sure Ananias—we read about earlier this summer—didn't have a deep peaceful feeling to go talk to the Christian killer Saul. It wasn't like, "wow, that feels great." No, he was scared to death of that.

What about repairing a broken relationship? The spirit often prompts us to do the hard work of initiating conversations we don't want to have. Offering forgiveness to people who've hurt us. These are some of the things the spirit cares the most about.

So I want to just challenge a little bit on this "I have peace about this" because we're good, man. We are so—I'm really good at talking myself out of something. We can even use God's word to do this, okay? Right. We could say like, "okay, I gotta repair a relationship, but it's Sunday. I mean, you know, it's the Sabbath. Supposed to rest on Sunday."

So, not today, right? I'm not supposed to do any work today. So you could use parts of God's Word to trump other parts of God's Word. Anybody done this before? Only pastors. This is only a pastoral thing. Right? We can convince ourselves of anything. So I want to encourage you because it's so easy to manipulate and make God say what you want him to say.

I've got several things here about how you become a person who listens to the Spirit. Number one—I've got five of these. Write them down. You gotta want to. That sounds weird to say. That's maybe the dumbest thing I've said in the sermon or I'm gonna say, but you have to want to hear from the Spirit. A lot of times, you know, we see here Paul and Silas, this whole group, they want to hear the direction that God has for them.

And I don't want to hold myself up as any kind of expert on listening to the Spirit. To be honest, I'm not really good at this. It hasn't been a real huge part of my ministry over the years. I found listening to the Spirit scary and intimidating, weird. Am I the only person up here? I fought it. Particularly reformed Christians, we love certainty. We love clarity and this can feel really spooky and kooky. Like that's where those other churches out there. So I'm gonna have to say it: you need to want to. You need to be like, Lord, I actually, with my whole heart, I really do want to hear from you in this.

Second, notice it's not passive. It's not passive. At first glance, this is what seems to happen in this passage. Paul and company just get this vision downloaded. They're like, I know exactly what to do. This is awesome. We're just gonna go do it now. That's not how this went. If you look at the language, there's nothing passively received even about this vision that Paul gets. This vision of the Macedonian man entails wrestling. It entails them thinking, using their mind, weighing evidence, wrestling about this.

The word here in verse 10, when they concluded that this is what God told them, the word there in Greek is symbibazo, which most of you don't know, but means to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. They were wrestling over this and putting the pieces of the puzzle together. They were debating and discussing. It involves thinking and analyzing. It involves weighing things. Even with this kind of direct "here's what you're gonna do"—it's a matter of wisdom.

A "We Thing," Not a "Me Thing"

Number three, it's a we thing, not a me thing. It's a we thing, not a me thing. So if you notice this passage, it's really fascinating to watch what happens over the course of this passage. Did you notice that the pronouns change? It goes from they, they, they to we. All of them are plural. At some point in this passage, Luke joined the team—the guy who's writing the book of Acts. He joined the team and the squad together wrestles with this communication from the Lord. It's a we thing, not a me thing.

Beware the person who says God told me this and that's the end of the story. Beware being a person who says God told me and therefore I'm done. I think that there's something about this passage which is really helpful for us wrestling through God's direction in relationship with other Christians.

I remember a friend in college who was very convinced that the Holy Spirit had told him to marry a particular girl in our fellowship group. So Bruce, my good friend, Bruce was very convinced that Lisa was his future wife. Well, there were a couple of problems with this. One, God didn't tell Lisa. Two—He did. You all are supposed to laugh at that part because, right, Bruce is like, "Hey, God has told me we're gonna get married." And she's like, "You're crazy." Right?

It would have helped Bruce to say, "Hey, guys. Hey, brothers in Christ. Do you think this is real?" And we would have said, "Hey, maybe you should be dating first. That might be helpful. Maybe you shouldn't communicate this to her. Let's see if the Spirit tells her this. Okay? Let's just wait this one out." Right? It's a we thing, not a me thing.

We need relationships. You need Christian friends. I'm not telling you something you don't know, but I want to move out of preaching to meddling this morning because we have lots of high-bye friends. We have lots of "hey, how was your weekend" friends. I'm talking about the kind of friends who know what's really going on with you. That you can say, "Hey, I'm really wrestling over this decision," and they're like, "What? You know, you're kind of an anxious person all the time." See, that's a person who's speaking in. They know your stuff.

One of the things we desperately need—and this is where I want to meddle with you—is like, you need to make the sacrifice in your life to find your Jesus people. We have some ways of doing so within our church. But whatever it looks like, whoever it is, you've got to find Jesus people who love you and love this book and are willing to speak in.

Somebody who can say, "I think this is what God is telling me to do," and they could be like, "Time out, bro. Let's talk about that. Not so sure that's from Jesus. Let's really pray this one through together. Let's wrestle together." We need this. You need this. Don't leave this place today without taking some step in relationship with another person here, coming to talk to a person in leadership. I need these people. Help me find some. We want you to have Jesus people.

Number four: It's gradual

One of the problems of reading 10 verses in the Bible real fast is you think this has happened overnight. They just got the instructions and went that way. These people did not live in the age of automobiles or flight. They make a trek across the country of Turkey doing this without any conversions, without any fruit. This took a very long and circuitous way to get there.

I want to tell you this: there are times in our lives when it feels like you are in a place of waiting and rest and wrestling with the Lord, and it feels like, "I'm not going anywhere." Have you ever had that experience hiking? On the Eastern side of the country, most of our hiking trails are like this—switchbacks, back and forth and back and forth. You're going up, and you may occasionally get to some kind of clearing where you get a vantage point and you're like, "Oh, look how much elevation we've gained. Oh, look at that view. Look where we are." But it's so hard doing in our lives the back and forth switchbacks with the spirit, feeling like we're going nowhere.

I want to encourage you this morning to patience. This is hard for us. In an age of everything all the time right now, waiting on the spirit, wrestling with the spirit. This is gradual.

Finally, notice here that the Bible is not anti-planning. Paul and company had clear designs of where they wanted to go. They knew exactly where they wanted to be. Paul has this plan: he's going to the major cities, capital cities of the regions of the Roman Empire. Thessalonica is the capital of Macedonia. Corinth is the capital of Achaia. Ephesus is the capital of Asia. And those are good plans. There's never a harsh word in scripture about plans. Planning is good. But what we learn about this is being open-handed with our plans and saying, "Okay, spirit, you can mess with me. This is not how I wanted this to go down, but I'm okay waiting."

How do we respond to the spirit?

The hard part of this passage is being told no. Anybody here love being told no? I remember telling a very powerful ministry leader no one time. I could tell it's like, nobody ever tells this guy no. I don't like being told no. I like yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, right?

But there are doors in life that close to us, and here's my question: What do you do when the doors close? What do you do? How do you respond?

Paul and his company end up in this place called Troas. And I'm sure it is not where they wanted to be. This is at least their third choice of where to go. It is not a place that they wanted to go to be in. I want you to remember the word Troas because Troas, for us, these are those places of perplexity and uncertainty. We find ourselves spending the night, spending the month, spending the year in Troas. We're like, "I don't know what's going on. I'm very confused."

When God puts you in a place like this, how do you respond? Pouting? Impatient? Pushy? All that's flesh. All that's about me in my natural state. I hate Troas. I've had a lot of Troas places in my life—the places of weight, the places of not yet. And when you're stuck in Troas, I just want you to remember this one thing: remember the Holy Spirit.

My question for you all summer has been one sermon application all summer: Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?

See, because the spirit is not meant to just be some kind of divine Ouija board that tells you where to go. The spirit is not just about guidance. The spirit is the very personal presence of God in your life. The very personal presence.

Elizabeth Elliot wrote this. She says there were two adventurers who stopped by to see her, all loaded with equipment for the rainforest east of the Andes. They sought no advice, just a few phrases to be able to converse with the native people. And she writes: "Sometimes we come to God like those two adventurers—confident, thinking we are well-informed and well-equipped. But has it occurred to us that all our communication of stuff, something is missing? We often ask God only for guidance. We know what we need. A yes or no answer, please. A simple question. Perhaps a road sign, something quick and easy to point us the way. What we really need, however, is the guide himself."

I don't know where you are this morning.

I'm sure in a room like this, there are lots of people in hard places. Places of waiting, places of uncertainty, places of indecision. Maybe you're stuck in Troas this morning. Maybe you're lonely and scared and you're waiting for God to give you some kind of direction, some kind of sign, a clear yes and no.

And then the one thing I can say to you as your pastor this morning is you have—if you're a Christian, you have the one thing that's necessary, that's needed. You have the Spirit. You have the personal presence of God with you. You're never ever ever alone. Never alone.

Remember, the primary function of the Spirit is not just guidance. It's to be with you. The witness of God in your life. Will you turn to him? Will you lay hold of him?

I know you hate this phrase. I hate this phrase, but with the Spirit sometimes, the journey is the destination. Learning to be with him, learning to access him, learning to rely on him, learning to listen to him, learning to find comfort in his presence. That maybe the most important thing.

But here's where I'm confident as your pastor. We have a real one, a live one here this morning. Not taxidermy, used to be alive. We got a tiger alive when we talk about the Holy Spirit. He's here. He's with you. He's in your life. Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Let's pray.

Father, we pray this morning. We all come to you in different places and we need you to be very, very specific to each of us. Lord, some in here need comfort. Some of us need clarity and direction. Some of us need to hear from you more than anything else.

I pray this morning that by your power, Lord, you would unleash the tiger power of the Spirit within our congregation. We'd be people who want to hear from you, want to respond to you, wait with you and trust you. Lord, we pray that we would be people of the Spirit.

We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Would you stand and respond to God's word with me in song?