Back in 1961 Ricky Nelson sang a song called Travelin’ Man with the lyrics

• I’m a travelin’ man
• I’ve made a lot of stops all over the world
• And in every part I own the heart
• Of at least one lovely girl

If Ricky Nelson had a girl he left behind in every place he went, the Apostle Paul had his heart tied to a church he left behind. Kicked out of Philippi. Kicked out of Thessalonica. Kicked out of beloved Berea with those noble Bereans who studied the Word of God like their lives depended on it. Of course, Paul’s partners Silas and Timothy stayed behind in Berea to make sure everything was up and running. But they were going to be a while. Paul was a fugitive missionary, shipped off to Athens.

Acts 17:16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.

It’s like touring an apartment, turning on the lights and seeing the roaches the size of small automobiles scurrying for the nearest crack in the wall. Ugh. Not exactly encouraging. So for Paul, it’s like a recurring nightmare. Paul must have been wondering what on earth God was doing with him. Show up. See people for whom Jesus Christ is an unknown God. Preach the Word. Make a lot of enemies. Get persecuted, booted out, and otherwise be dismissed. He’s a travelin’ man making a lot stops and enemies, all over the world. And in every part, he left his heart with a church he’d just unfurled.

So here he is in Athens to repeat this cycle. Starting with the synagogue. Just like the last time.

17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.

Today, we’re going to see the wisdom of Paul’s strategy when speaking to people for whom Jesus is an Unknown God.

To the Jews in the synagogue, Jesus was an Unknown God, not because they couldn’t have known Him, but because they hadn’t connected the dots. To them, before seeing Jesus revealed in their Scriptures, Jesus was not a god at all. He was just a guy.  They had a Messiah they were waiting for, but even that Christ was not supposed to be God. The Shema of Israel states it very clearly: Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. The Jews had been reciting that since the days of Moses. They knew it front and back, sideways and upside down. They could count to one and Jesus made two. Jesus was Unknown to them because they didn’t know that One God is Triune. One God, Three “Persons” which isn’t the same as “people.” Three windows of revelation into the same One God. One God to them meant “1” so Jesus was Unknown.

How did Paul deal with people who had the Scriptures, (the Torah, what our Jewish friends have even today as their Bible) our Old Testament? Paul reasoned with them from their Scriptures as the launching point.

But what do you do when someone doesn’t have a Bible background? Maybe someone grew up Catholic, never read their Bible, but only went to mass a couple of times a year and the priest said it all in Latin. Maybe someone grew up Buddhist or Hindu and has clearly formed ideas about those religions, but really no Christian background or understanding at all. Maybe someone was raised by atheists who don’t even believe God exists! Maybe people who believe that Christ is somehow related to Christmas and that’s Santa. What do you do? Paul shows us.

He goes where they are. To the marketplace of goods and services…and ideas. And he doesn’t start off by pointing to a Bible they have no clue about and reasoning from the Scriptures. Paul was starting with Jesus and the Resurrection. He was preaching Jesus as Good News.

Good news is something we can all relate to. Couldn’t we all use a little good news?

What are the needs of the people you know? What are the needs of this community here in Racine? Jobs. Safety. Food. Education. We’re entering into election season in the US. Candidates, whether Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Communist, Green, Independent…they all are trying to focus on “felt needs” to be able to have voters relate…and say “This candidate cares about people like me.”

Paul cared and was not only widely traveled, but also highly educated and deeply discerning. What unifies all mankind? Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Yup. We’re all sinners and are going to hell apart from Christ. We all need to be saved for eternity as a first order of business. If you have worship right, the rest of life is more bearable and can often fall into place in ways we don’t know at the outset.

A job? Maybe salvation in Christ will connect you with people who can give you one. Safety? Maybe salvation in Christ will reorient your life to godly living and help you to reach one person who will reach one person and result in many giving up a life of crime. Food? Maybe salvation in Christ will connect you with people who can help you today with a fish, but moreover teach you to fish and provide for yourself down the road with fish to spare to repeat the process with those you meet.

Hear me clearly: It’s not some “prosperity gospel” where you believe in Jesus and you’ll win the lottery. Believe in Jesus and flip houses and be a millionaire overnight. Jesus is not a get-rich-quick scheme with a halo.

But when we communicate Christ Jesus with others, we are sharing the greatest riches we have and if we truly believe God provides our daily bread…well, that is why we pray,

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

So who did Paul meet in the marketplace of ideas? A bunch of philosophers who sat around all day taking in the latest and greatest ideas. They were the ones on Twitter, in elite colleges, and writing Op-Eds long before those things existed.

18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.

Babbler because what he was proclaiming sounded like nonsense to them—resurrection? Ha! Advocating foreign gods because the Greeks didn’t have a temple or an idol that looked like Jesus. To them, Jesus was an Unknown God. He wasn’t on the list of “approved gods.” He was destined for their spam folder or blocked by their firewall.

Who were these Epicureans? They believed in pursuit of pleasure. They believed that all pain could be and should be eliminated from life. They believed that all those Greek gods were a bunch of hooey. They were intellectual elites. They may have believed that there’s some sort of god who put everything in motion, but that this god didn’t involve himself in anyone’s life. Not a relational god, but more like a Big Bang and auto-pilot. If you think this sounds like the National Academy of the Sciences, you’ve got a pretty good modern picture of the Epicureans whose expert advice could save the world by pursuing goodness and pleasure, eliminating pain, and by human philosophic and scientific ingenuity.

They talked a lot. They argued a lot. Kind of like Congress. Arguing because there was little bipartisanship with the Stoics, that other group in the Athenian marketplace.

Stoicism was a popular philosophy of that day. Stoics were like their name sounds. They are seemingly indifferent to or unaffected by joy, grief, pleasure, or pain. They were nose-to-the-grindstone kind of people. Realists, believing that there IS a supreme god, but he’s left me on my own. Be real. Get real. Life is short. Then you die. Or in the words of author David Gerrold, “Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.”

To the Stoics, the world is determined by fate and random chance, and you either win life’s lottery or you don’t. John Stott described their mindset: “human beings must pursue their duty, resigning themselves to live in harmony with nature and reason, however painful this might be, and develop their own self-sufficiency.”

You’re on your own. Be a Stoic, unless you’re an Epicurean who wants pleasure and no pain. And they were both there in the marketplace of ideas and had some sort of generalized sense of a god who put everything in place and who then went away on a forever vacation, leaving us to cope on our own.

So here comes Paul, preaching about Jesus who was raised from the dead and both the Epicureans and the Stoics would have thought no one would want to be resurrected from the dead. It’s not pleasurable and it’s more of a painful hard life to be endured. To them, Paul was a babbler, making no sense whatsoever!

19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)

At least they were open to hearing ideas. Don’t invite Paul to speak unless you’re prepared to get the Gospel with both barrels, full strength, undiluted, uncut, untrimmed, and with all the power of the Holy Spirit. He’s going to tell them that Jesus is God. They just don’t know it yet. Jesus is presently unknown.

22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

Now, let me add clarification that the Athenians weren’t worshiping Christ as THE Unknown God. The Athenians were covering their bases.

It was fire insurance. Just in case they’d overlooked a god who was important, they could just point to that altar and tell that god, “Oh! That one’s for you! We just didn’t know what to call you.” Covered so he wouldn’t get angry and throw lightning bolts or something. Hedging all their bets and covering all the angles. The altar to AN UNKNOWN GOD is not concerned about an inability to identify like the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington Cemetery. It’s all about making sure you’re not passing over the real one.

But Jesus, however unknown He presently was to the Athenians, is not just one god among many. He’s the only One. So Paul, having already mentioned Jesus and the resurrection (which are not two separate gods: Jesus and the one named Resurrection, Anastasis) goes on to build off of what the Athenians knew…just like Paul built off the Scriptures with the Jews. With philosophers, he points to what they already know. Education, it is said, is like creating Velcro hooks onto which one builds a body of knowledge. Gotta start hanging things somewhere. So Paul says,

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27 God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ 29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone– an image made by man’s design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”

There’s a lot packed into this speech. And we won’t have time today to look at it in the depth we could. But let me draw a few points about what is called “contextualization” of the Gospel by Paul even quoting one of their own poets! Paul was an intellectual in addition to being the greatest evangelist the world has known. Remember our friends the Bereans? They were noble because they examined the Scriptures to see if what Paul was telling them was true. The Athenians had a whole pantheon of gods and adding one more was no big deal. The more, the merrier. Had Paul said adding one more among many is fine, that would have been compromise of the truth and what is sometimes called syncretism (basically a great big religious soup blended together) or pluralism (like a collection of divine shot glasses).  Paul does not compromise.  Jesus stands alone!

But along comes Paul who can quote their own poets, but also tells them that there’s only One God. He is the Lord of heaven and earth and cannot be contained in any temple no matter how marvelous or beautiful it seems to us. God doesn’t need anything we can bring to the table. God gives us life, not the other way around. To both the Epicureans and the Stoics, Paul says, 27 God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.

He’s not far. He’s not impersonal. He’s real. And He cares how you live. He cares what you find pleasure in. He cares what you do with your pain. He cares about your life. Personally. Individually. You’re not just one in a crowd to Him. And “Life is short then you die.” And therefore, God wants people to repent. A Judgment Day is coming.

Humans are different. They are not like a leaf on the forest floor, dirt in our faces, eaten by worms until all we are is just compost. We die and then we are judged. The whole world will be judged. Some will be judged on the basis of what they did with their lives because Jesus was unknown to them and they remained unknown to Him as saved. “I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23).

Others will be judged on the basis of the finished work of Christ—and believing the Good News, resurrected to everlasting life. All the dead will face judgment, Scripture says in Hebrews 9:27. And Jesus is the Judge because He was the first to be resurrected from the dead and accepted to be the man [God] has appointed.

Do you know Jesus? Does He know you?

It’s as easy as believing that Jesus died for human sin and that you need His forgiveness. That’s why Paul’s speech says, 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

Confessing sins to God means admitting that no matter how good or smart or moral or clever we are, we sin. And we don’t ever want to be judged on our own merit. Stop and think for a moment. Can you remember any mistake, any harsh word, any unloving thought or action, any stolen cookie from Grandma’s plate of cookies? For every one of those you can remember, God remembers millions that you don’t maybe even recall at all! When you’re judged it won’t be on a curve. Any one of those sins, left unforgiven, is enough to send you to hell because God won’t allow unforgiven sin in heaven. That’s scary!

But here’s where it’s GOOD News! In Christ, we don’t have to remember them all. Instant forgiveness of every sin. God wants all people to repent and be forgiven so that He can save them to eternal life and be resurrected to the new heaven.

32 When they [the Epicureans, Stoics, and Athenians] heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

Was Paul’s ministry there a failure because only a few came along and believed? Can such a few make a difference?

Was his technique a flop? Maybe he needed a different strategy like he used with the Jews and God-fearing Greeks at the synagogue where the woman named Damaris presumably heard the message since she wouldn’t have been at the Areopagus.

I’d argue that it was not a failure. There were places where Jesus’ ministry was less because of unbelief (his hometown of Nazareth being one notable example). But we have a record in our Bibles of that and of Paul’s speech. Seeds sown through the generations because it was recorded.

We may not be large in number here at Plymouth, but I’m trusting God that few in number isn’t small in significance because we are about making Jesus known. The sermons are posted. They are recorded. You can hand them to people, forward them via email and they are out there in the world wide web for anyone to hear and read on Plymouth’s web site.   We’re touching the globe from the corner of College and 12^th in Racine.

Jesus doesn’t need to be an Unknown God when you can make Him known. Let’s pray.

On the Apostle Paul’s 2nd missionary journey, he ends up in Athens alone.  He reasons with the Jews at the synagogue and then heads to the marketplace where he meets some philosophers to whom Jesus was an unknown God.    Paul speaks at the Areopagus and teaches us the difference between careful contextualization of the Gospel message (which the Apostle Paul does artfully) and a reckless compromising of the integrity of Scripture which Paul would never do.  This message was first preached at Plymouth Congregational Church of Racine, WI on August 9, 2015 by Barbara Shafer.

As we grow older, our thoughts are more likely to turn to how we’ll be known long after we died. In the BBC miniseries Emma, the long-despised aunt of Frank Churchill dies and Emma exclaims, “I am so very happy at this….dreadful news.” Emma’s brother-in-law says, “No one has liked Mrs. Churchill for years and now that she’s dead, we all have to be sorry.” No one liked Mrs. Churchill very much and presumably after the obligatory favorable treatment of the recently dead, she resumed her former status as disliked. On Facebook, she’d go from having many Likes to suddenly Unliked by everyone. She may have had followers, but few friends. That’s because she would be remembered for her controlling behavior than for anything honorable.

History can be both generous and brutal in its record of our lives.

There are a few people/people groups in the Bible who are known for being honorable. Today, we’ll meet one of these groups. The Bereans.

They are mentioned only in a couple of verses in the whole Bible, but what a powerful testimony! They are there for all eternity. They are held out to us as a model of how to approach the Word of God in a responsible way. Particularly for our day and age in which truth seems to be awfully blurry with all kinds of half-truths and lies mixed into a pretty dangerous cocktail of beliefs, we would be wise to be like the Bereans.

When we last left off with our missionary friends Paul and Silas in our study of the book of Acts of the Holy Spirit and the Apostles, they were being run out of Thessalonica on a rail. Their friends, Jason and others, were paying a heavy price for friendship even to the point of having to post bond (pay off) the authorities and guarantee that Paul and Silas wouldn’t have anything to do with causing more trouble in Thessalonica.

Which brings us to today and learning to be like the Bereans.

Acts 17:10 As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea.

Jason and the Thessalonian church brothers sent Paul and Silas away under the cover of darkness. That tells you something about how Paul and Silas were viewed by the authorities. They were treated as fugitives, two guys on the run. They had to sneak away and hope they wouldn’t be found…kind of like those two prisoners who escaped the maximum security prison in NY, one to be gunned down and the other apprehended alive after an extensive manhunt. The difference is that Paul and Silas hadn’t done anything wrong. Just words…of truth…spoken to people who didn’t want to hear it.

Berea was 50 miles south of Thessalonica and when Paul and Silas arrived safely there, what did they do?

On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue.

Some people never learn. Or maybe it’s that they didn’t give up easily. I’d like to think that they were simply faithful to the call of God even under persecution. After all, there had been a ton of closed doors: Asia, Mysia, Bithynia. And the open door of Macedonia with the guy in the vision pleading for Paul to come and “help us.” At some point, one would think Paul would finally find a place to settle down and help someone. So far, he’s been driven out of Philippi, he’s been booted out of Thessalonica, could it really get much worse? It actually will, but for now…there’s also good news.

11 Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. 12 Many of the Jews believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.

I think it’d be kind of nice to be known as a person who would be like the Bereans. Noble character recorded in the Word of God for all eternity. To have people know you for that. For “noble character” on two scores:

1. They received the message with great eagerness.
2. But perhaps more importantly, they examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was actually true.

We could learn a lot from the Bereans. We could learn a lot by trying to be like the Bereans. Studying the Bible to see if it’s true. Digging deep. Not just taking it from me because I say so, but taking it from God’s Word because He says so.

To know God’s ways because as it says in Isaiah 55: 6 “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. 7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. 8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

God’s ways and God’s Word endure. If we’ll only dig deep enough to see it.

There are a lot of denominations out there that have been tinkering with the Word of God. They have done what Thomas Jefferson did: take scissors to the Bible and he cut out all the parts he didn’t like. Remove all of the supernatural stuff so it’s easily believable. Remove all the hard to understand parts, the violent parts, the miraculous parts. Trim it. Prune it. Make it what you want it to be.

But it’s not that they’re trying to give the Bible a G rating, clean it up for public consumption and not pollute young and innocent minds with blood and gore. Nope.

They’re trying to give the Bible a makeover and make Jesus all love and no wrath. Make the Bible all salvation and no sin. Make the Bible all good and no guilt. All good news, but no bad news to make the good news really good. And you know what? Ultimately these efforts will all fail. Why? Because we may be willing to believe a lie, but God isn’t required to believe it too.

God understands the hard parts that He put there. He actually did the supernatural parts that the Bible records.   And He still hates sin. He hates it a lot. And moreover, He defines what it is. That’s what the Bereans knew from study. We need to be like the Bereans and learn to take a stand against watered down Scripture that some in Christendom want to christen as being the new Bible when they’re just dumbed down words which will lead people astray.

So for all those who want to make Jesus a manmade hero wearing a white tunic, Jesus is bigger than that. He can use even the violent parts to accomplish His good and loving and perfect will. God is no dope. The Crucifixion of Christ on account of human sin wasn’t something that God couldn’t control or happened while God was napping. It was every bit as intentional as every other part of the Bible because the truth is: all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)

That’s why Jesus came. To deal with sin because sin is real. And God hates it a lot. Jesus came because we’re all sinners. It wasn’t to pose for stained glass renditions with little lambs. He isn’t Little Bo Peep in a brown wig.

The Bereans got that. They studied all the Scriptures they had (which at that point was our Old Testament) and they didn’t get grossed out by all the blood, get confused by a God of wrath, get bogged down in genealogies, get overwhelmed by all the history involving hard to pronounce names, or bored with all the legal stuff about animal sacrifices.

They studied the Scriptures to see if what Paul was telling them about Jesus being the Christ was true. Which, of course, it was. They studied the Word and were very discerning about what they believed. That’s part of what made them noble.

Think about all the things we consider noble. Gaining a political party’s nomination. Getting promoted at work. Winning an award for being a good citizen, having good attendance, or a good number of days without a work-related injury. Peace prizes. Governor’s awards. Purple hearts. The top 10 Best Dressed list. A big net worth.

That isn’t what matters to God. He considered the Bereans noble because they didn’t consider earthly treasures as anything to be compared with knowing God. He considered the Bereans noble because they weren’t too proud to need a Savior. He considered the Bereans noble because they loved His Word (like our Scripture reading this morning!)…and didn’t buy just any stuff coming out of left field. We need to be like the Bereans.

Perhaps you know people who are avid readers and they absorb every self-help thought that appears on a written page as if it’s true. They are constantly in search of new idea territory to try in their try-and-fail approach to life. The one place they don’t go to learn how to live is the Bible. Maybe they do a flip-point-and-read of Scripture, but it doesn’t stick because they’ve already bought the notion that the Bible is antiquated and irrelevant. So they try horoscopes, feng shui, color energies, karma, oat bran, wheat grass, and smoothies made from organic stuff believing the half-truth that organic is better. They’ve bought all that, too.  Profoundly undiscerning about what they put in their minds through words, talk, and TV.

We’re living in the age of the big lie. Politicians lie. Industry people lie. Bankers lie. Plumbers lie. Planned Parenthood lies. We all lie. Some of us just lie more than others. And those that do usually go into politics where selling the big lie is a test of one’s skill. And sadly, the consequences of promoting the big lie are costlier in a human toll. There’s a huge human toll for politicians, leaders, and yes, preachers. For every person we can legitimately help, we can ruin that person if we are careless with our words.

But the Bereans were noble. They accepted the message Paul was preaching—the Good News about Jesus Christ—as being true. Because they dug deep to test it.

They understood that Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Or as we heard this morning already: Ps 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.  Digging deep in God’s Word is always good!

A little key for us in living in biblical ways is that God is thoroughly consistent. He won’t tell you something doesn’t matter if it does. He won’t lead you down a path that leads to destruction if you’re seeking His will. Don’t get me wrong: He’ll let you go your own way if you hate Him, but He will never lead you to destruction. If it doesn’t match up with His Word, then it’s not true. Dig deep. Test it. 1 John 4:1 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

The Bereans were noble, though. They didn’t buy something just because it was offered for sale. They tested what Paul was saying and found it to be true. Everything should be great, right?

Well, our cycle…remember it? Pure Church, Powerful Church, Growing Church…yup. Persecuted Church.

13 When the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, they went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up.

Some people just can’t stand it when a work of God is occurring.

They have to oppose it in their backyard, in their neighborhood, and chase it from coast-to-coast in their obsession to squelch it. To smother it with mob action. This is where the Bereans were definitely nobler than some of the Thessalonians. Didn’t take much to be nobler than those Thessalonians who were on a witch hunt without an actual witch. They wanted Paul dead because he was the one who was preaching the word of God with such power. So Paul’s ministry at Berea was done. Over and out. He was being run out of town….again.

14 The brothers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea.

Here’s the interesting thing though: Silas and Timothy stayed on at Berea long enough to get the church grounded and established. The fledgling church in Berea was in a particularly vulnerable stage to attack…but they were testing what they were hearing and would be self-sufficient sooner. Their taking personal responsibility for learning the Word made them stronger…and nobler….than the Thessalonians. Because they were self-disciplined and grounded.

Yet, there was some work to be done before they could take off the training wheels. Silas and Timothy stayed on to help. They wouldn’t rejoin Paul until Chapter 18 at Corinth which is in Greece. The most interesting thing, to me at least, is that Paul was chased out of 3 different towns, but left behind 3 stable churches which would remain dear to his heart. Those churches would go on to share the Gospel in a far larger area than Paul could have done on his own. And just to be fair to the church at Thessalonica, plugging in from the rest of Scripture, when Paul writes his letters to the Thessalonians, he describes them positively saying, 1 Thessalonians 1:6 You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. 7 And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. 8 The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia– your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, 9 for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” Paul worried for how a church he’d left without sufficient grounding would hold up. Timothy traveled back there to find out how they were doing.

It must have been hard for Paul to get started in ministry only to have to pull up stakes and run for his life, leaving behind churches over which he’d pray and grieve with concern. But this is how God works. Paul planted. Others watered. And God made these churches grow.

They grew by doing what came naturally to the Bereans. Being noble. We can grow by deciding to be like the Bereans.

• To receive teaching with both discernment and eagerness.
• Eager to learn what it means that Jesus is the Christ.
• But discerning enough to check it out with the rest of Scripture, not buying the lies that our culture and even Christian quacks might try to sell.
• To humble ourselves. To repent and accept our need for salvation….because it’s something that we can’t earn. Noble for the Bereans meant stepping down from their worldly position to accept that they needed Jesus.  They knew it because they knew God’s Word.

Yes, in all these ways, we will grow if we decide to be like the Bereans.

In Acts 17:10-15 we meet the Bereans, recorded for all history as being noble.  We can learn a lot from the Bereans.  This message was first preached at Plymouth Congregational Church of Racine, WI on August 2, 2015 by Barbara Shafer.

Twelve Marks of a Spiritual Leader

Does the world seem to be declining to you?  At a fairly rapid pace?  It does to me.

In 50 years, America has gone from being the leader of the free world on account of Christian moral authority to having very little of all of that. Now freedom, morality, and authority appear to be under siege…and our leadership in those areas no longer matters, if it even exists anymore with so much of Christianity happily going underground in America.

In 50 years, the American church has gone from being a place where any church’s Sunday school was a huge deal–church buses went out to bring the disadvantaged to church to hear the good news about Jesus, the good news about Him who could elevate their circumstances now and eternally… to the American church of today. We have become comfortable places free from challenging us to Christian living. And what do we get? A whole lot of people caring little for the disadvantaged who are the Church’s responsibility.

Many Americans, particularly our young people, despise organized religion; they are content to be spoon-fed in the gutters of life, not caring to hear anything about Jesus. Not when their minds are eagerly filled with the trending nonsense news—good or bad—about Katy Perry, Kanye West, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or the celebrated-as-courageous-athlete-formerly-known-as Bruce Jenner. And the list goes on. Secular sensationalism is the favored news du jour–in the words of that Eagles song’ Dirty Laundry.

I make my living off the evening news

Just give me something-something I can use

People love it when you lose,

They love dirty laundry

Kick’em when they’re up

Kick’em when they’re down…

Give us dirty laundry.

Better yet, share it on Facebook or tweet about it on Twitter. Anyone’s 5 minutes of fame is waiting at the end of a selfie stick… or a gun.  When will we bottom out as a culture?

In 50 or so years, we’ve gone from a place with prayer in schools and where babies were celebrated when they were alive and healthy as the goal of a good pregnancy… to a place in which prayer is gone and babies are aborted by the thousands every day, with greater utility for their parts as dead than whatever good they would have done in their lives which might otherwise have been before them in a by-gone era where families prayed together and stayed together and pregnancy was still considered a social good.

America is NOT the Church and that’s true.

But the world and the Church are intertwined. The Christian’s goal is to be in the world but not of it. The world’s goal seems to be: drive the Christians underground. If seen, at least demand that they will never be heard or their beliefs taken seriously. Even the Little Sisters of the Poor. Silence those Christians from the public square where their witness might do some good.

In a world of so many pastors and Christian so-called leaders who are either “Chicken Littles” or chicken livers, we need more than voices of those who believe the sky is falling (with God apparently helpless to stop it) or the voices of those complacent singers of Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be. Those chicken livers with chicken voices clucking around that standing for God’s truth in an age of moral relativism will hurt their back-pocket and frankly they prefer—and need—that chicken’s scratch to keep the church business running. And therefore, they shrink from the public square, they shirk their responsibilities, they skirt the truth, and they shun the kind of spiritual leadership that God calls church leaders to exhibit even if…and especially when… the world is falling apart at such a rapid pace.

Spiritual leaders do not deny the reality that is before our very eyes, nor do they deny the spiritual reality that is unseen. Spiritual leaders have depth of knowledge to see beyond the surface. They have the character to pursue God’s call undaunted. They have the presence of mind, the clarity of vision, and the purity of heart to do what Scripture says,

Hebrews 3:1 Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess…. Hebrews 12:2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart

Church pastors and quasi-New Age spiritualists with great big crowds, populist books, those feel-good God-wants-you-happy ministries and Cheshire grins are a dime a dozen.

Spiritual leaders, called by God Almighty, are one in a million. The Apostle Paul was such a man.

As we continue our study of Acts of the Holy Spirit and the Apostles , we’re at chapter 16 beginning in verse 16 to learn 12 Marks of a Spiritual Leader.

Acts 16:16 Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. 17 This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” 18 She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her.

#1 of the 12 Marks of a Spiritual Leader: Spiritual leaders value purity. Spiritual leaders lead when there is backdoor discrediting going on. Purity matters. Take a clean shirt and throw it on the floor with the dirty laundry and the clean shirt becomes dirty. Not the other way around. Dirty laundry doesn’t suddenly become all clean. What was happening in our passage? The servant girl’s mixed messages risked polluting the message of God because she was a fortune teller. The demonic have a very clear idea of who God is.

James 2:19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that– and shudder.

Spiritual leaders don’t let the demonic coopt the message because the demonic message won’t lead to salvation. It will lead away from it. That’s why Paul was troubled. He knew that purity matters and if you place purity under the authority of demonic it will lead to no good. It didn’t matter if she was telling the truth on this one. The surest way to get people to believe a lie is to mix it with a little truth. Paul was a great spiritual leader. He put a stop to it… by asking God… to put a stop to it.

Quality #2 Spiritual leaders know their limits. They know where God’s solo effort starts and their job ends.  “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” Trust in God matters.

19 When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. 20 They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar 21 by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.” 22 The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten.

#3 Spiritual leaders remain steadfast even when there is persecution. Spiritual leadership was required and here we see the wisdom in Paul’s choice not to have taken Mark. Mark’s spiritual maturity hadn’t been well developed enough at that point. If he deserted when the going got uncomfortable, when things got physical, Mark would have been the worse for it. His fortitude probably wouldn’t have stood up to the persecution and the result likely would have been a repeat performance of Pamphylia. But Silas was different. He was a prophet. And prophet sorts know that popularity doesn’t come with the territory. Silas was sufficiently mature and gifted to be a steadfast partner for Paul, not dead weight.

23 After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. 24 Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

#4 Spiritual leaders hope when there are impossible circumstances. When all things are impossible, Spiritual leaders recall the words of Christ: Matthew 19:26 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Hope matters and the One in whom we place our hope is critical. So what do they do? They do what Nancy sang about this morning in “I Bless Your Name.” They praised God.

#5 Spiritual leaders praise God even in the storms of life. How many of us, when we find ourselves in difficult places decide to worship God?  Worship makes a difference. It matters.

25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. 26 Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody’s chains came loose.

All the prison doors flew open.  And everybody’s chains became loose.

#6 Spiritual leaders lead because they can’t help it. It’s a gift and a calling. They rise to it wherever they are. Spiritual leadership is a gift of God and for that reason, obedience matters.

Note that when Paul and Silas were in pain and confinement, their wounds bleeding, did they sit around whining? Decrying the injustice? Look for ways to get even with the authorities on account of the false charges? No. What did they do? They prayed and they praised God.

And here’s how they led: the other prisoners were listening. There’s an important lesson for all of us: When we’re under duress, we need to remember that others are listening and watching us. When we are pressed, they want to see if we’ll remain true and authentic or whether we’ll crack and reveal who we really are. I can’t say enough how important it is that we handle urgent circumstances well, as did the families of the victims and the surviving Bible study attendees in Charleston, SC. When their hearts were broken, people saw Christ in their forgiveness. It is important that we handle urgent situations as the opportunity to display Christ.

27 The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”

We’re all here. Even though everyone’s chains came off. “Don’t harm yourself. We are all here.” Isn’t this beautiful? Paul and Silas were unjustly imprisoned. When an act of God freed them in a miraculous way, they not only stayed, but so did all the other prisoners, so that the jailer wouldn’t kill himself. Remember what happened when Peter had his miraculous escape from prison? The guards were questioned and then executed for failing in their duties. Paul and Silas were true spiritual leaders and cared more about others than about themselves.

#7 Spiritual leaders are God-centered and selfless. But wait, there’s more:

#8 Spiritual leaders are ready to testify 24/7. They know what is needed to be saved.

29 The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” 31 They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved– you and your household.” 32 Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. 33 At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his family were baptized. 34 The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God– he and his whole family.

Spiritual leaders love God and others, but it doesn’t make them doormats. Paul and Silas didn’t stay because they were doormats, but because it was right. People misunderstand meekness as being hyper-wimpiness. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Jesus was meek, but not a wimp. A widely used practical definition of meekness is “Power (or strength) under control.” It’s knowing when to use power and when to willingly rein it in.  That’s what Paul and Silas did.

#9 Spiritual leaders are discerning. They are more than just powerful. They are wise. They exhibit self-control. Spiritual leaders cut through the noise of side issues and get to the bottom line. Discernment matters.

That’s what we see here: 35 When it was daylight, the magistrates sent their officers to the jailer with the order: “Release those men.” 36 The jailer told Paul, “The magistrates have ordered that you and Silas be released. Now you can leave. Go in peace.” 37 But Paul said to the officers: “They beat us publicly without a trial, even though we are Roman citizens, and threw us into prison. And now do they want to get rid of us quietly? No! Let them come themselves and escort us out.”

You see, #10 Spiritual leaders understand the value of principles. Principles matter.

The fact that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens meant that they were owed, by law, a fair trial. Had Paul and Silas, just said, “No big deal. All’s well that ends well” then it could set a dangerous precedent about how to treat Christians. It would have ushered in persecution without limits and discredited Christ (since onlookers who are always looking on would believe that Paul and Silas were somehow guilty).

And just as an aside, another reason why Silas may have been a better ministry partner for this phase of ministry: Not only did Silas stick with Paul when the going got tough, Silas was also a Roman citizen, just like Paul. Details like this cannot be minimized. They’re important to the discerning among us. They’re in the Bible for a reason.

38 The officers reported this to the magistrates, and when they heard that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens, they were alarmed. 39 They came to appease them and escorted them from the prison, requesting them to leave the city. 40 After Paul and Silas came out of the prison, they went to Lydia’s house, where they met with the brothers and encouraged them. Then they left.

#11 Spiritual leaders perceive optics but aren’t driven by them. They understand that perception is reality and optics do matter. Had Paul and Silas been seen as guilty as charged, hanging their heads in shame as they slipped into obscurity, the Gospel would have been robbed of some of its powerful testimony. So, they insisted on being escorted from prison, heads held high, the officials hanging their heads (and thanking their lucky stars that they were not executed for publicly beating Roman citizens), and the Gospel came out of prison in triumph. That in itself would have encouraged the people at Lydia’s house, but then word of how all the events transpired…great testimony always encourages. But great testimony does not equal a photo-op. Had Paul and Silas spiked the ball, so to speak, it would have ruined their testimony since it would have become about them and about winning, and not about the Gospel. They perceived the optics but weren’t driven by them.

After they’d encouraged the brothers, they left for the next place of ministry which brings us to #12 Spiritual leaders know when to move on when a job is done. Mission matters more to them than pride of achievement. They move on because God is moving them on as one door closes and God opens a new one down the road like we talked about last week.

The Church in America is sorely lacking Spiritual Leadership.

We have pastors out there writing books about leadership, but it’s really more about the business functions of running a successful church or parachurch ministry. All administration—a well-managed and financed flock with well-orchestrated dance moves—but very little spiritual encouragement to fight the good fight for Jesus. It’s really more about them and selling books …than it is about Him and being a point of testimony to His light in a dark world.

Some pastors will teach the Bible well, but when it comes to taking a tough stand, they look at who visibly butters their bread and just assume they’re doing God’s work enough by teaching what it is that the Bible says. All teaching and no leading resulting in a well-fed but poorly exercised flock. Flabby Christians who melt when exposed to heat.

Such leaders are okay, especially in light of the pastors out there that are throwing the Bible away and throwing their fellow Christians to the wolves for the sake of their own skin, but okay isn’t what God has in mind…for true spiritual leaders. God has in mind leadership excellence in a true spiritual sense.

Genuine spiritual leaders will have these 12 Marks. Spiritual leaders:

1. Value purity.
2. Know their limits.
3. Remain steadfast even when persecuted.
4. Hope in impossible circumstances.
5. Praise God even in the storms of life.
6. Lead because it’s a calling
7. Are God-centered and selfless.
8. Ready to testify 24/7
9. Are discerning
10. Value principles
11. Perceive optics but aren’t driven by them
12. Know when to move on.

A genuine spiritual leader is the kind of person I pray God will bring to you when my time as pulpit supply is done as He brings revival to Plymouth Church of Racine. Let’s pray.

Acts 16 reveals 12 qualities of spiritual leaders that God calls us to exhibit even if (and especially when) the world is falling apart at such a rapid pace.  The Apostle Paul was a one-in-a-million spiritual leader and he shows us how it’s done.

Today, I’m going to let you in on a few secrets of my life. Things that people don’t necessarily know about me. They are all related to today’s message on The Powerful Beauty of a Closed Door.

We all know what closed doors are like. Sometimes it’s a closed door of a job, of a promotion we wanted, of a season of life, of a residence, maybe of a relationship, of a ministry, or even the closed door upon a long-cherished dream. God closes doors and God doesn’t answer, or so it seems, our prayers sometimes. Instead the door closes and all we’re left with is something that we didn’t want…when what we wanted was on the other side of that door.

So today we’re going to talk about the Powerful Beauty of a Closed Door and find 6 beautiful aspects of closed doors. And I’ll reveal a few secrets along the way.

My first secret is that I go through phases where I really enjoy Country Music. Garth Brooks has a song called Unanswered Prayers and the lyrics in part go like this:

• Just the other night at a hometown football game
• My wife and I ran into my old high school flame
• And as I introduced them the past came back to me
• And I couldn’t help but think of the way things used to be
•  
• She was the one that I’d wanted for all time
• And each night I’d spend prayin’ that God would make her mine
• And if he’d only grant me this wish I wished back then
• I’d never ask for anything again
•  
• Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers
• Remember when you’re talkin’ to the man upstairs
• That just because he doesn’t answer doesn’t mean he don’t care
• Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers

The Powerful Beauty of a Closed Door is that it forces us down a different path in the company of different people. Such was the case with our Book of Acts. Last week, you may remember that Barnabas and Paul came to a fork in the road and took it. Barnabas, ever the encourager, takes Mark who was rejected by Paul and they set sail for Cyprus. They became a new ministry team and eventually God would bless their work and heal old disagreements. Mark would write the Gospel of Mark and he would return to a useful place of ministry in healed relationship with Paul, as did Barnabas and Paul before him.

But for now, Paul takes Silas and God’s crazy math in which division is actually multiplication, and subtraction is really addition takes place. Silas would prove an excellent partner for the second missionary journey of Paul. His presence could easily be explained as ongoing delegation and training up of next generation missionaries. God’s closed door with Barnabas and Mark actually opens a door for Silas and Timothy who we’ll meet today.

We’re in Acts 16 which you can find on page 784 of your pew Bibles if you’d like to follow along.

Our first beauty of a closed door is this: A door that’s closed to one person is a door that’s available to another.

Acts 16:1 He [Paul] came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was a Jewess and a believer, but whose father was a Greek. 2 The brothers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. 3 Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.

4 As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. 5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.

We could talk at length about why Timothy had to be circumcised when that letter from James and the Jerusalem Council last week made it clear that a person doesn’t have to become a Jew first, but that discussion will have to wait for later. We could guess why God chose Silas and Timothy as Paul’s new partners in ministry. There are things about the closed door that we will never know on this side of heaven, but here’s the thing: Mark’s experiencing of a closed door created an opening for Timothy and Silas.

Picture it kind of like an elevator with room for 1 person with some baggage or 2 people who travel without baggage. When the elevator door opens and the 1 person waiting has way too much baggage, it makes it possible for the two to ride and yet another elevator will come along for the 1 person who travels heavy. We all get where we’re going, but the beauty of the closed door is that a door closed to someone can actually open a door to others.

Secret #2: people ask me a lot what God’s will is for their lives. On All-Experts which is a web site I’ve been on for more than a decade now, people often ask me questions of a biblical nature. But most often it turns into a Dear Abby kind of thing because they’re seeking answers if they should marry this person or that, what God’s will is for their job, their life, their home, their kids, their parents, their desire for a tattoo…

In many cases (except the tattoo which I really don’t think God cares what the person does with a tattoo on their body so much as how He cares about their love and respect for the authorities in that person’s life), I will suggest that they pray and then consider the will of God like one of those automated door opening pads they used to have at the grocery store. You step on the pad, or today, step into the doorway, and if the door opens, walk through it. If the door is closed, consider why it’s closed (is the store not open yet or are you after-hours? Is it a holiday? Is it not the right door? Are you trying to get in to a place where you don’t have one of those approved id’s that tells the door to open? Or maybe it’s like the old TV show Get Smart where all the doors open for Agent 86 until he dead ends at a phone booth and he needs to phone it in. If there’s no good reason why the door is closed, then try it again since perseverance can be a good thing. But if it remains closed after repeated tries, move on. Not even a phone in your shoe will help you get CONTROL over the KAOS.

So how should we consider closed doors with respect to God’s will for our lives?

Our second beauty is that closed doors prevent us from sacrificing God’s best on the altar of expediency. That was what happened in our OT reading this morning.  Abram and Sarai and Hagar brought problems on themselves by not honoring the closed door and instead tried to find a way around it.  Ishmael was no Isaac.  But we see an honoring of a closed door in today’s passage with Paul and Silas and Timothy. All is going swimmingly but suddenly another closed door:

6 Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. 7 When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.

God wouldn’t let them go in. They tried a couple of different door opening techniques and entry points to try to go the way Paul thought he was supposed to go. But no dice.

How is it possible that God would keep them from preaching somewhere? What gives… on that one?? Didn’t Jesus say to go into all the world?? Make disciples???

Paul was only doing what Jesus had called him to do. He was probably pretty confused. He may have felt like a rat in one of those mazes with nothing but dead ends and no cheese.

I know how that feels. A third secret of my life is that I’ve faced a lot of closed doors for a lot of reasons. Professionally. Personally. And it can be every bit as painful as confusing.

But here’s another beauty of a closed door. Closed doors have a way of driving us to our knees in prayer.

A fourth secret is that I don’t pray enough. I have an ongoing conversation with God almost all day long, but to get on my knees and weep before the Lord? Not so much. But closed doors drive me there.

That’s the place where I’ve laid down my anger at the pastor who had his wife call me and leave a message with my teenage son to tell his mother (me) that I was rejected.  Even though I had been contracted through Trinity’s speaker’s bureau to preach for over a week, he decided to have a man (one of their elders) preach in less than 48 hours.  Instead of my preaching the message I’d been preparing for over a week. Anger. That a man was too chicken to tell me himself and instead, he had his wife do his dirty work on a Friday when Sunday was nearing. And she took the road of least resistance by forcing my 15 year old son tell his mother the painful rejection. I can handle rejection.  I wonder about a stranger putting my child in such a position.  How is that possibly loving? Closed doors drive us to our knees in prayer. It is there, in prayer that we lay down our pain, our rejection, our anger, and we learn what it means to forgive.

Closed doors that happen on account of human sin when someone prays that God will open up a way for me to serve and then when God clearly does, he doesn’t have the guts to honor God,  Instead, how does he respond?  Quickly fill the job with a man.  Basically responding to God by his actions, “Well, I didn’t mean that way.” This man’s disobedience equaled further rejection of me. And the hits just kept on coming. Closed doors drive us to our knees in prayer. It is there, in prayer that we lay down our pain, our rejection, our anger, and we learn once again why it’s important to forgive.

Closed doors after 3 years of dedicated volunteerism to tell me I’m no longer welcome to volunteer, assuring me I’d done nothing wrong, with a trumped up reason of “just a case of too many volunteers, too many choices.” Oh, and well, I’m not ordained, something he knew from before the time I started. All the while he was knowing that ordination is kind of a sore topic for me because I’m living proof that one denomination that trains women will not ordain them. If the problem is that I was too Christian or too evangelistic, just say so. But to stick a knife in the ordination wound and twist it was pretty cruel. Especially from a Christian. Especially from a “leader.”  Closed doors drive us to our knees in prayer. It is there, in prayer, that we lay down our pain, our rejection, and yes, our anger, and better yet, we learn to forgive even if the wound still bleeds.  It bleeds as a reminder that Jesus set the example from the Cross saying,

Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34)

Prayer is also the place where we can cry out to God, “I don’t understand!!!!” when we’re trying to do His will and all we get is pain after pain, rejection after rejection, closed door after closed door.

Great! I’m developing “character.”

A sorry consolation prize for the person who is totally confused and seeking understanding of the ways of God. And all that seems to be there is God’s great big silent voice saying nothing about why all this is happening. I’m crying out in confusion and God is not saying a word.

My life has been a series of closed doors as I run down the hall in Scooby Doo and I’m trying door after door and running to find the one that opens while some cartoon villain chases me and all I can say is Ruh-Roh and hope that a door opens up before the cartoon ends and the smart girl, Velma Dinkley finds her glasses and solves the mystery.

But down the hall and down the road, there is an open door and an answer to the mystery. For this reason, the verses we’re about to look at are among my favorites in the entire Bible. Another secret told.

Closed doors can be a way of moving us to a place of answers. To doing God’s greater work with greater character on account of the closed doors of life.

Closed doors are what brought me to you…for a while…until I need to get off the elevator so that your next pastor that God will bring can find an open door and enough room to ride and to run his race.

I love this story:

8 So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. 9 During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 10 After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

Want to know another secret? Closed doors can cultivate zeal for the open door. It did with Paul. I love this. Luke, the author of Luke’s Gospel and the Book of Acts now changes to the personal pronoun from “they” to “we.” The “we” passages –not like an Irish wee-people—but a plurality in which Luke includes himself. From here forward, Luke will be one of Paul’s ministry companions. Some scholars believe that Luke was the man of Macedonia in Paul’s vision and then Paul’s seeing Luke in person was confirmation–God’s confirmation!–that the vision of heading to Macedonia was in fact God’s will. An open door. Finally.

Like a horse that is behind the starting gate for the big race, Paul’s muscles were eager to run, he was pawing the ground just waiting for the gate to open. He was charged up and ready to spring into action. He sees this vision; he sees confirmation, and then they all bolt from the starting gate to new territory that God has already planned. No dillydallying. No delay. No excuses. No questioning. No looking back over his shoulder wistfully at Asia, Mysia, and Bithynia, dreaming of what could have been. Nope. What does he do?

He gets right after it: A closed door cultivated a zeal for the open door

11 From Troas we put out to sea and sailed straight for Samothrace, and the next day on to Neapolis. 12 From there we traveled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia. And we stayed there several days.

As he writes to the church at Philippi about a zeal for the open door:

Philippians 3:13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Press ON! Press ON!! God led them to the political and cultural epicenter of a prominent Roman colony and the premier city of Macedonia. And that’s where Paul’s work will find great fruitfulness, honoring that vision of a man of Macedonia. So Paul, go to the place you think you’re supposed to go to and trust God with the results. Paul goes on the Sabbath (as was his custom) to a place that would be a logical starting point.

13 On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. 14 One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. 15 When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.

Here’s another beauty of a closed door. The closed door opens our minds to God’s possibilities and causes us to release our pre-conceived ideas, our expectations, and our prejudices in order to see what God is doing.

These guys show up on the Sabbath to find a place of prayer and who do they see? Women. Not exactly their planned ministry target.

Women were culturally inferior to men back then and even speaking to a woman could get a Jew in trouble…whether he was married or not.

Had they not experienced the closed door, every one of “us” that the man of Macedonia spoke about (in “help us”) might have had to been male. A male man, not a mailman postal worker. A guy. But instead, who do they see at the place of prayer? Women who had gathered there. And so they spoke to the women. One of those women was a prominent businesswoman and in true God-fashion as He’s removing barriers of all kinds—first barriers to the Gentiles, and now the barriers to women. Lydia was there. God opened her heart. She led her household to faith and baptism and then she issued an invitation for these missionaries to stay at her home.

Had Paul and his companions not experienced all those closed doors along the way, God’s open door of Macedonia, and open heart of a woman of faith, and open home of hospitality might have been easily overlooked because of Paul’s preconceived ideas. Maybe men instead of women. Jews first instead of Gentiles first. Going east into the larger territory of Asia…instead of west to more fruitful territories of Greece and ultimately Rome.

Our New Testament is filled with a Gospel from a closed door Mark, a Gospel from Gentile Luke and a whole book recording the early church and missionary journeys written by this same man Luke…and then there are… the letters. Thirteen of which were from Paul’s missionary efforts we see in the Book of Acts. None of them are named Asia, Mysia, or Bithynia. But there are ones to the Philippians, and the Thessalonians, and the Galatians, and the Corinthians, etc.. We have the fruit of the majority of the New Testament to showcase the beauty of closed doors…and what God will do with the one He opens.

Closed Doors are not the problem they often seem to be. They’re actually beautiful for those of us who know them well. For those of us who know that…

The Powerful Beauty of a Closed Door is at least six-fold:

1. A door that’s closed to one person is a door that’s available to another.
2. Closed doors prevent us from sacrificing God’s best on the altar of expediency
3. Closed doors have a way of driving us to our knees in prayer.
4. Closed doors can be a way of moving us to a place of answers. To doing God’s greater work with greater character on account of the closed doors of life.
5. Closed doors can cultivate zeal for the open door
6. The closed door opens our minds to God’s possibilities and causes us to release our pre-conceived ideas, our expectations, and our prejudices in order to see what God is doing.

So we can thank God for unanswered prayers, for the Powerful Beauty of a Closed Door. But one last thing about the Closed Door is to accept it for its beauty and its power. Let me share a little secret that I’ve learned the hard way: when we perceive that God is closing a door in our lives, jamming our feet in the opening because we prefer the open door isn’t God’s way. Going against God’s closing a door only leads to heartache.  Instead, acknowledge that there’s a Powerful Beauty in a Closed Door if we’ll accept it.

Remember when you’re talkin’ to the man upstairs

That just because he doesn’t answer doesn’t mean he don’t care

Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers

 Or I might add….closed doors.  Let’s pray.

For anyone who has ever faced closed doors in life, this message from Acts 16 will encourage your heart to discover the powerful beauty of a closed door. This message was first preached at Plymouth Congregational Church of Racine, WI on July 12, 2015.

The road ahead is rarely as predictable as the road behind. The future can be unclear but hindsight is almost always 20/20. Depending on our goals and our calling, the same road which led us to the present may diverge and become a fork in the road.  Such is the case in today’s passage from the Book of Acts.

Last week, there was a sharp disagreement between the Gospel dream team Barnabas and Paul vs. the Pharisaical Christians who wanted the Law and circumcision to endure as a requirement. The dream team’s insistence on “grace alone” triumphed and the Jerusalem Council –all of one mind–sent a letter to Antioch to settle matters.

The road ahead for the brothers from Jerusalem was pretty clear: Go to Antioch. Read the letter. Come home. A round trip. A defined destination. There and back.

So, the brothers all went to Antioch, read the letter to all the people, they were gathered in total agreement; they were glad, encouraged; and they were of one mind as well. No more talk of dissension in our passage. A storybook ending of “they lived happily ever after.”

Everything should be fine, right?  Well, not really.

We’re at a point in the Book of Acts in which we can begin to piece together the greater New Testament, plugging it into where it fits in Acts and a picture of trouble emerges. The Jerusalem brothers have no sooner headed back safe and sound, aiming for that happily ever after, when Antioch takes a different path. The road ahead is a troubled one.

Not unlike the trouble that appears in many churches when a seed of trouble gets planted, dissension grows, and confrontation takes hold. This all happens in what we innocently we read in Acts 15, verse 35

35 But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, where they and many others taught and preached the word of the Lord.

Galatians 2 fills us in on what was happening behind the scenes and it isn’t pretty. The road ahead is rocky. Paul is not a happy camper. His vision of a ministry of grace to the Gentiles—a calling from Christ Jesus Himself—is still being undermined by people he calls the “circumcision group,” sometimes known as the Judaizers. That same group who had caused the need for last week’s Court Decision in the first place are back at it, insisting that Gentiles first had to become Jews and then Christian. Well, they’re not only back at it, they’re using intimidation and threats.

Opposition never gives up.

Standing firm is a constant battle.

Where the Gospel is concerned, the opposition is relentless and fierce. Eternity is at stake.  Satan is a defeated enemy, but a nasty and vindictive one.

Keeping people in slavery is our adversary’s goal.

Galatians 2: 4 This matter arose because some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. 5 We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you.

Paul, true to his character, focuses on the Gospel and the truth. It’s part of how he is gifted by the Spirit. Which brings up a really interesting point: other church leaders were gifted differently, even if they were all notable people and good leaders. But where matters of Christian doctrine are concerned, Paul is steadfast, even more than a bit stubborn.

Galatians 2:8 For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles. 9 James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews. 10 All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. 11 When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. 12 Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

His words come across as rather harsh, aimed directly at Peter and Barnabas and others, possibly John Mark, too: Galatians 2:14 When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? 15 “We who are Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners’ 16 know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified. ..21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

Paul’s vision of the road ahead was clear: the doctrine of grace cannot be compromised (for his whole ministry was based on it!) So what we see in so innocent a verse of Acts 15:

35 But Paul and Barnabas in Antioch, where they and many others taught and preached the word of the Lord.

..this only shows that the fact was they remained in Antioch teaching. The flavor is the bittersweet truth: it wasn’t all fun and friendship. Truth stands immovable, even between friends. Even among leaders. Even among the God-ordained as both Paul and Peter had been. Pride and fear had long been Peter’s fatal flaws and it was both pride in wanting to be seen as a superior Jew and fear of what others thought that crept into Peter’s daily actions to the point where he did not follow 100% of what he believed.

There’s a lesson for us today in this:

Standing for God’s truth isn’t easy, especially where it threatens to divide us from our families and our friends. It challenges our loves and our priorities. But stand we must.

Paul—with his brilliant mind, impeccable logic, and powerful passion—refused to let it go. Too much was at stake, particularly if these leaders were to be effective! So he says,

Galatians 2:11 When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong.

Yet, Peter in his epistle says this about Paul:

2 Peter 3:15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16 He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

By this time, Peter and Paul—despite the earlier confrontation—came to an agreement on the Truth. They were brothers, true brothers, living in both grace and forgiveness. But now, we turn to another disagreement in the road ahead. Back to Acts 15:

36 Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us go back and visit the brothers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.” 37 Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, 38 but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. 39 They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, 40 but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord. 41 He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.

Suddenly Barnabas and Paul who were of one mind on the Gospel during last week’s Court Decision, began a distancing when Peter led even Barnabas astray.  Now Barnabas and Paul become divided over non-theological things like taking John Mark. After all, there was no 11^th commandment saying, “Thou shalt take John Mark.”

If you look at the passage in verse 35, Paul’s name now appears first. He has become the leader, Barnabas is secondary. Like Peter last week, Barnabas will not appear again in the Book of Acts. Although he will be mentioned in 1 Corinthians 9:6, demonstrating that the both Paul and Barnabas would be known together, and it can be reasonably inferred that they even worked together at Corinth (which Paul, at this point in Acts, has not yet visited).

Scholars are quick to say that “It is significant that after so many centuries of study, the church is still not sure who was at fault in the conflict between Paul and Barnabas.”

They talk about how Christians, especially leaders, should not disagree sharply.

Even John Stott says, “this example of God’s providence may not be used as an excuse for Christian quarreling.”

Scholars say that what we see between Barnabas and Paul should not be considered the norm when Christian leaders disagree. That it is an exception brought about by human error rather than by divine design.

It’s my opinion that all these scholars are totally missing the boat. Truth is not relative, but a calling is personal.

Christians ought to contend for the Gospel. Even fight for it. Maybe the church in America wouldn’t be in such sad shape if we spent more time fighting for the Truth and less time saying “Can’t we all just get along?” Just because Christians call themselves Christian doesn’t make their theology right.

The truth stands firm.

And when the truth presses into a situation, it acts as a wedge. It divides.

Scholars are looking for who is right and who is wrong.

They want to blame someone for the dispute.

That’s a totally carnal, fleshly, human, and I might add, it’s an evil thing to do.

Blame has been the modus operandi since Eden when Adam blamed the woman, woman blamed the serpent, and the serpent blamed bad sushi (not really, but you get my point)

But when the FACT of TRUTH pressed in on Barnabas and Paul, it didn’t become relative…what was true for Barnabas versus what was true for Paul. Truth pressed in as a wedge and divided them among their callings.

Their callings, their roles, their personalities were highly personal. Those are what can be relative and individual.

The wedge of truth presses in on the mission to Barnabas. The truth shines in and reveals Paul’s superior doctrinal understanding. Barnabas’ calling, his mission, is still to encourage. Encouragers always see potential. Barnabas saw it in Paul. He sees it in John Mark.

The wedge of truth presses in on Paul. Yes, the truth shines in and reveals Paul’s superior doctrinal understanding, but it also reveals Barnabas’ superior understanding of grace, mercy, and hope.

The truth stands and the road ahead splits in two based upon calling.

• Barnabas goes off to encourage and nurture John Mark who would go on to write the Gospel of Mark. This is the fruit of Barnabas’ calling as an encourager as he walked the road before him of encouraging.
• Paul focuses on unhindered mission to the Gentiles. He can’t have John Mark constantly reminding everyone that Mark deserted everyone once before. They were going to visit the churches they’d already visited and constantly having to explain this deserter would be a distraction. Paul was absolutely right for his unhindered calling and throwing off everything that might prevent his doing what God had called him to do: plow new ground among the Gentiles.

Barnabas offers us a view of grace and the value of 2^nd chances. Paul offers us a view of purity and the value of doctrine. Together they show us to watch our life and doctrine closely. Grace and Truth.  What the Bible says Jesus came in.

The road ahead for the Jerusalem Council brothers had been easy and familiar: back home.

The road for Barnabas and Paul had been a rocky one. A hard one, but good one. The wedge of truth pressed in and divided up the callings. There would be a fork in the road—one path leading toward grace and encouragement; the other toward the necessity of purity of doctrine in plowing new ground for the Gospel. Both embraced grace and truth, but their callings pointed to a priority, a first order of business.  Paul takes Silas and they were commissioned by the church to the grace of the Lord. We aren’t told that Barnabas and Mark were. Perhaps they were as well and the focus has merely shifted to Paul’s ministry now.

But it’s no reason for finding comparison, apostasy, and blame in the silence. Why? Because finally, when we look at this passage, we also see the high road of God’s crazy math. God’s crazy math in which division is actually multiplication. In which, subtraction becomes addition.

And the whole of God’s plan takes the sovereign high road, seeing disagreement and scattering as increasing a harvest.

If you take a pile of corn kernels and bury the pile in a field, you’ll get a rotten pile of corn.

But in the wisdom of the farmer, if it is subtracted from a pile and scattered across a wide area, each kernel fulfills what was in the mind of the farmer:

life and a fuller harvest.

Bette Midler sings a song that captures incorrectly what I’m talking about. It’s a beautiful song and I want to read the lyrics to make a point.

• • From a distance the world looks blue and green
  • And the snow-capped mountains white
  • From a distance the ocean meets the stream
  • And the eagle takes to flight
  •  
  • From a distance, there is harmony
  • And it echoes through the land
  • It’s the voice of hope, it’s the voice of peace
  • It’s the voice of every man
  • From a distance we all have enough
  • And no one is in need
  • And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease
  • No hungry mouths to feed
  •  
  • From a distance we are instruments
  • Marching in a common band
  • Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace
  • They’re the songs of every man
  •  
  • God is watching us, God is watching us
  • God is watching us from a distance

The truth is God is NOT watching us from a distance. Distinctions and disagreements don’t just disappear as they would for people looking at things from a distance. A whitewash; a covering, a gloss. God sees all things clearly, and not merely 20/20. God sees even huge disputes and minor disagreements with perfect clarity. Because He takes the high road, He sees how it all fits together within his framework of truth.

• Sometimes, the road ahead is a familiar road back home, to report back on all the good that has been faithfully done.
• Sometimes, the road ahead is rocky and we have challenges to navigate to keep our lives and our doctrine pure.
• Sometimes, the road ahead is to nurture and encourage others using gifts of encouragement or faith, having hope, or believing the best in people.
• Sometimes, the road ahead means parting company for the sake of Kingdom growth.
• Sometimes, the road ahead will involve confrontation and hard truths.
• Sometimes, the road ahead is to demonstrate God’s ability to turn division into multiplication via His high road. We don’t need to focus on who is to blame. Instead, we can trust that when the wedge of truth presses in, it will reveal how His standard of truth—which never changes—will apply to each of us individually based on our calling.

 May you have the hindsight to know where you’ve been

The foresight to know where you are going,

And the insight to know when you have gone too far.

That might sum up the road ahead.  When God is in charge, even problems aren’t really a problem. He doesn’t see us from a distance and ignore the details. If the devil is in the details, that’s where God is doing His most powerful spiritual battle. Pressing in with a wedge of truth to defeat both lies and hypocrisy, uncovering what is real and true and then covering it over with love and grace for those who love Him.

May we know this as our benediction for the road ahead.  It’s an Irish blessing that could have applied to Barnabas and Paul:  “May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.”