You're listening to audio from Faith Church, located on the north side of Indianapolis. If you'd like to check out more information about our church and ministry, you can find us at faithchurchindy.com. Now, here's the teaching. It's, It's, always a little disconcerting when a larger than number larger than usual number of people leave when you get up to preach, but, I'm I'm just going to assume those are people going to help set up for the lunch, that we're gonna share in a little bit. I'm pastor Jeff.

Glad to be able to open the word with you today. We're continuing in in our study of the book of Acts, which we've sort of called the theological history of God's people. We're trying to understand where we've come from and how we fit into the story of what God is still doing in the world. And we're in this section in Acts chapter 21, which is towards the end of what we call Paul's 3rd missionary journey. He's heading back towards Jerusalem.

Last week we saw him give kind of a farewell to the elders of the church in Ephesus He's led by the Holy Spirit to go even though he keeps being told it's going to include suffering and imprisonment. And this week we're seeing the continuation of that journey where he makes 2 important stops along the way and receives a message from the spirit and from God's people in each of them that I think will draw some application for our lives. As we start this section in Acts, you'll notice we have a new little sub series theme with the picture of these handcuffs that's highlighting the opposition and imprisonment that Paul is facing. So with that in mind, we're going to get into Acts 21 today. As we do that, let me ask you, have you ever had a conversation with someone that you knew was going to be a difficult one?

Not just because it was going to be a hard challenging topic to get through, but you also knew that you and the other person didn't see eye to eye at all in how you were looking at the situation. When I graduated college, I went to grad school, at the university where my dad taught in a graduate, marketing communications program. And I went to go study in that program under him, Got a graduate marketing degree, worked in marketing for about 5 or 6 years. But along the way, I'd had this sense and Emilead had a sense that God was calling me, calling us into vocational ministry. Finally realized, okay, this is it.

This is the time to sort of end that season of life and go to seminary to be trained for what we thought God was calling us to. And But that meant I was gonna have to call my dad and tell him not only I'm, you know, going in a different career path, but I'm rejecting the career path that you've chosen for yourself and that I had followed you into. And silence on the other end of the phone, not knowing what's going to come out. And And I'm very thankful that my dad was very gracious and supportive. And after, you know, I think quickly collecting his thoughts, was able to say, well, if if that's what you wanna do, we'll support you in it.

But I knew that underneath that, there were all kinds of questions like, why would you do that? Why would you go down that path? Why would you abandon financial stability and a and a successful career path? What? Why would you spend money to make less money?

Why why would you go get trained to go into a position where you're gonna face opposition and challenges, and and and this thing is right in front of you, that you can avoid all of that. You know, I don't know about you, I've I've found lots of ways to convince myself at times that God doesn't really or won't really call me to suffering or pain or loss or go through hard times. And yet we come to this passage where we see the apostle Paul saying, Jesus has called me to follow him in this path that's marked out with suffering and imprisonment and and loss. And I just want to say upfront that the goal is not that we intentionally look for hard or difficult or painful things to do. We don't chase pain for its own sake.

We were talking about this passage together, Joey, Pastor Joey and I, and he came up with a good line. You don't go through hell just for the hell of it. But what if God's calling is on the other side of suffering and pain? What if God's calling is on the other side of suffering and pain? I think that's the question that's raised for us through Paul's example and the interactions he has with these believers.

If you haven't already, go ahead and open your Bibles. If you have, the scripture journal, it's on page 124 in in Acts 21 looking at the first 16 verses. On this trip back to Jerusalem, Paul makes a couple of important stops that Luke highlights for us in Tyre and Caesarea. And as we said, he receives messages from God's spirit through God's people. So let's look at those and and see what application we might draw from that.

Paul, gets to this, sea of Tyre and Cyrus, sorry, Tyre in Syria which, would be north of, Jerusalem by, a number of hours. And the Christians there tell him, through the spirit in verse 4, not to go to Jerusalem. Through the spirit, they're telling him don't do this. In other words, it's not just their idea, it's not just their intuition. The Holy Spirit is leading them in some way to tell him don't do this.

And this is now Paul had in the last chapter, you remember, told the elders that he met with from the church in Ephesus that the Holy Spirit was testifying them in every city, imprisonment, and and suffering is waiting for him. So now the same message in a different city, this time with people telling him don't do this. And Luke doesn't give us the details of how the conversation went, but but at the end of 7 days, they gather together, in verse 5 and kneel down on the beach and pray and say farewell and sort of send Paul off with their blessing. Umpersuaded that he needs to stop this journey. Then he comes to this town of Caesarea, which would be the the seaport that is closest to Jerusalem.

And Paul meets this, prophet Agabus there while he's staying in the house of Philip. This is the same prophet Agabus almost certainly who back in chapter 11 had prophesied about a famine. And now here in verse 11, it it's he's almost like one of the old testament prophets like Jeremiah acting out some vision. He he takes Paul's belt off of Paul and puts it around himself and binds his hands and his feet in verse 11 and says, thus says the holy spirit. This is how the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.

And when we heard this, Luke goes on, we meaning Luke is part of this. We and all the people there urged him not to go to Jerusalem, But Paul answered in verse 13, What are you doing weeping and breaking my heart? I'm ready not only to go to Jerusalem, but even to die there for the name of the Lord Jesus. And since he wouldn't be persuaded, they ceased. And they said in the end of verse 14, let the will of the Lord be done.

Let the will of the Lord be done. Now, 2 more prophecies in 2 cities where Christians are saying the same thing to Paul. Paul, don't go there. How do we make sense of it when good godly people disagree and they're all seeking to be led by the spirit? And then we're getting different messages from the Lord, I don't think.

It wasn't as though the spirit was telling one group of people one thing and Paul something else. I think it was just a plea for them not to follow through on what they had seen. They heard from God and and I think we can say they were thinking, Paul, what are you doing? Are you crazy? Have you lost your senses?

You can avoid that. There's no reason for you to go to Jerusalem. Stay here. Don't suffer for no reason. But Paul hears from the Lord what he's going to endure and he thought, God, if following you means suffering, I understand that.

Everyone's telling me that, you're telling me that, Jesus told me that, but I'm willing to go through suffering if that's where you're leading me. See, Paul's friends were right in saying that he would suffer, but they were wrong in thinking that because there would be suffering that Paul shouldn't go. They could see no good coming from Paul in prison, suffering, possibly dead. Think of all the good that God's doing through you, Paul. Don't don't throw that away.

Don't waste your potential. But I think part of the message for us here is that God is not saying don't fulfill your potential, fulfill your calling. Fulfill your calling because when you're following God's calling, you will fulfill your potential. And And that calling may include suffering and loss and pain. Paul's friends could not see why Paul would risk prison and pain if they could be avoided by avoiding Jerusalem.

But Paul could not see how he could avoid Jerusalem without avoiding Jesus and what God was calling him to. The spirit tells Paul to go to Jerusalem and tells him what he's gonna suffer and Paul obeys. Now, maybe it's not so foreign to us this idea. I mean, I think we all kind of have a sense and experience of what that's like, right? Going through pain to achieve some greater goal that's in front of us that's greater than the pain.

Right? Anyone who's been through military training or police academy or anything like that, anyone who's played sports and invested hours and hours of practice and in the weight room, any women who have given birth to children know what it's like to go through pain for the sake of some greater good on the other side. We we diet and we exercise to try and get our bodies in shape and be healthy. Many of you have gone through courses of study in college or or to med school, and you've spent 80, 90, a 100, 110 hour weeks with little sleep in order to get this training and and all the difficulty being an intern for for the goal. You started up a new business.

You've taken all the risks because you can see there's something worth it on the other side, and you think it's what God's calling you to. You know, there's a saying that it it takes 10000 hours of practice to get good at an instrument, which is why I'm not good at any instruments. I haven't been willing to put in the 10000 hours. But what if the calling is on the other side of suffering and pain? Paul doesn't answer this question.

Luke doesn't answer that question for us in the passage, but I but I think it raises a couple of points of application for us. And and it sounds obvious, but I think we just we need the reminder. We follow the lord no matter the destination. We're called to follow the Lord. No matter what the destination is.

Paul was going to Jerusalem as as Pastor Joy pointed out last week with this offering for the poor Christians that he collected on all his journeys, and we see this mentioned several times in Paul's letters. Maybe that doesn't seem like a real strong reason to say like, no, I I need to go to Jerusalem, including imprisonment, and and suffering, and pain, but it wasn't just a a a benevolence gift. It was something I think really significant going on there. God wanted Paul to say something about what his kingdom is like through this gift from the Gentiles to the Jewish believers. Remember that the Jews and the non Jews despised each other.

Back in Acts 15, we saw how there was this big dispute in the early church about whether or not the God was making salvation open to the Gentiles, and they had to wrestle through that. And and the apostles finally saw that, yes, God is indeed making salvation available to non Jews like us because of what Jesus has done. So this offering, this reason behind Paul's going to Jerusalem is evidence that Jesus really is the savior. And he really is the one who has reconciled God and people and people to one another, that he has torn down all the dividing walls of hostility, and he is the prince of peace who unites people from every trump, tongue, and language, and nation. Paul is so convinced of the the worth of Jesus and his message that he's willing to suffer, to bring the love of Gentile Christians to Jewish Christians.

Paul is willing to suffer to unite God's people as part of his calling. Maybe that's part of what our suffering could be about. Paul did this ultimately because he believed God had authority over his life. He didn't know how it would turn out, but he believed in the sovereignty, the rule of God, and followed the command of God. I don't know about you, but I like the idea of God's sovereignty a lot when it comes to his care and his comfort.

I'm a lot less excited about the sovereignty of God when it comes to his commands and his directions, especially in things that might hurt me or cost me something. Maybe we sense God's call to, to, to something. Maybe we sense God's call to step out, to follow him into something that might be difficult or or bring rejection or or persecution or loss. And we can anticipate what it's going to bring to us, and so we become afraid. And that's often the pattern for God's people, isn't it?

I mean, think all think all the way back to Moses. 1 commentator, writing on Exodus 3 shared this, God told Moses to go stand before pharaoh and demand that he set the Israelites free. And Moses asked, who am I to go to pharaoh and tell him to release the children of Israel? And God answered, I will be with you. And this commentator says, that's a strange answer, isn't it?

I will be with you is not an answer to who am I. But it's the only answer for God's people. Who are you? You are the one whom God is with. Moses stood in front of pharaoh because God was with him, and Paul went to Jerusalem because God is with him.

Who are you, and what is God calling you to? You are the one whom God is with, and the thing that he's calling you to. What are you going to do? What is God calling you to do because he's with you? Sometimes we we don't maybe have a clear idea of discerning God's will.

And there's nothing rocket science about what I'm gonna share, but maybe it's just helpful reminders to us to to listen, to be intentional, to try and listen to the Lord, to to read his word to us, to meditate on it, to pray through it. Because that's how we find out what God is like and and what he wants for his people. And maybe work at asking God, asking other people for an understanding of how he's gifted you, and and where people around you are seeing God use you. I mean, I know there's spiritual gifts inventories, and we can take those things, but honestly, I think the best way is you just serve, and try something, and find out if God is working through that to make a difference in other people's lives. And listen to other people.

Boy, I was really blessed when you did that, or I saw you having an impact there. And then we need to be in community. Being in fellowship with other Christians is a way that God will direct us, encourage us, empower us, deploy us. Don't overcomplicate it. I mean, don't don't wait to do something until, like, we hear this voice from the heavens.

Right? That's not the point of this. Let's live our lives for Christ now, taking steps of faith and seeing what God does with it if we don't know for sure. He might call some of us to go to a far off place, but that's not what happens here for most of these believers. Hardly anyone in in this passage goes to Jerusalem.

The people that went up from Caesarea almost certainly went back to Caesarea. Most of these people stayed where they were and followed God's calling for them in Tyre and Caesarea and and all the other places that are mentioned. That's how the gospel spread in those places was those people staying there and living out their calling in that place. We follow the Lord no matter the destination. And that doesn't necessarily mean going somewhere, it might, but it's probably gonna include some hard things and some challenges and some frightening things.

Every Christian is following the call of Jesus who said, Everyone who will be my disciple must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. But every Christian also has the promise that as we do that, God is with us to empower us, to guide us, to to use us. And as we do, as we're taking up crosses, that's not just self sacrifice, there's loss and pain associated with that, but God also promises that he uses those things to make us a blessing to other people. Just like Paul says in second Corinthians about some of his own experiences. The God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the God of all mercies, and the father of comfort who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have received.

God uses our suffering, our trials to bring comfort from to others out of the way he's strengthened and comforted and encouraged us. It it kind of it's almost like an image of being an explorer going into an unknown country. I have no idea where God is going to take me this week. And it and it may be really difficult journey that I go through, but I'm going to uncover, I'm going to discover riches of his grace, and his presence, and his power, and his hope there that I get to bring back to other people. Every obstacle we face, every pain we suffer, every affliction we endure Jesus can use as a testimony of the hope that we have in him.

The grace that he pours out into us in the middle of it. What if the calling is on the other side of suffering? We help one another follow the Lord. We follow the Lord regardless of the destination. We also help one another follow the destination.

This passage is showing us a community wrestling with things and debating and even arguing and disagreeing where the stakes are high. I mean, do you see that here? This is a well intentioned spirit led community of people who disagree about what God is doing and how to follow him faithfully. Paul has a clear sense of what God's calling him to do and the price to do it. And and once these other believers see that, they support him.

There's there's a willingness here that's modeled for us to engage with sensitivity with others that can lead to a change of perspective. This is an example This is an example of a community life that has real significant interaction, not not just digging in to defend a position and saying, well, I know what God's doing and you just need to get on board much as it is listening to one another and and honoring one another and paying attention to what God is saying through other people. The goal is not winning, it's not convincing the other person that I'm right. The goal is trying to figure out together what God is saying and doing and how we can support and encourage and affirm and care for one another in that calling. But every call of God is going to be hard because it's going to take us to the end of our strength so that we rely on his strength.

And that's why we need the encouragement and the support and the and the prayers of other people in the body of Christ. It can be hard for us to believe that God's calling me to do something that's that's going to hurt, that's going to be difficult. It's probably even harder when we have a sense that God is calling someone I love to do something that's going to cost and hurt. So we have to be careful not to proclaim a verdict too soon, to give a to give a quick answer to a complex situation, you know, or an uncertain calling that we really need time to pray and think through. Let's not dull our sensitivity to listening to the spirit because of fear.

Because the fear of maybe not what it will even cost us, but what it might cost someone else that we don't want to see hurt. We want to be a people who believe in Jesus so strongly and in the presence of his spirit that we become risk taking, spirit led, faith filled people. God called people to to start faith church, not so that we could come here and and rejoice in the comfortable circumstances that we have, but so that we could come here and be comforted with the promise and the presence of Jesus to send us out into the difficulty. So that other people will have an opportunity to see the gospel at work through us and to hear the good news of Jesus. And to do that, we come together as God's people in community to ask questions, to pray, to discern, to give encouragement, to give advice, to follow-up, to walk alongside, to bear one another's burdens, to weep with one another.

We share our even our hesitations like these believers do. Paul, I'm not really sure this is a good idea. But then when the leading of the spirit is clear, we come alongside to say in verse 14, the will of the Lord be done. I I don't even maybe like it. I can't make sense of it, but the will of the Lord be done.

It's not our place to walk the calling or the path that God has marked out for someone else. It's our place to try and help them discern it and to encourage and support them along the way. Trusting that God knows what he's doing, and that Jesus loves them more than I do. And I believe that for my friends and family members that that I'm not sure I want to release into something that may be difficult or dangerous, that God loves them more than I do. And if that's what he's calling them to, that's what I than I do.

And if that's what he's calling them to, that's what I want for them. And we see it play out in verse 16. I love this little note. Some of the disciples from Caesarea went up with us bringing us to the house of Nason of Cyprus, an early disciple. Why would they walk all the way to Jerusalem with him?

Because they're there simply to support him in this calling that they don't even like or want for him, but that's what Paul's been called to do. So, alright Paul, we're in it with you to help make it come to reality in your life. They didn't want him to go, but they trusted God's sovereignty and supported him. That's our role for one another. And leave the rest up to God.

Look back at, verse 13, the statement of Paul. I am ready not only to be imprisoned, but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. And Paul is he's not throwing his life away. He's not wasting anything. He's entrusting it to the only one that can sustain him, to the only one that can guard his life and keep it eternally.

And the end of this story that they didn't know at the time was that as Paul goes to Jerusalem and it ends up appealing to Caesar and he goes off to Rome and he's in house imprisonment and he and he writes to the believers from Rome in prison to fill to the believers in Philippi saying, I want you to know that what has happened to me has served to advance the gospel so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. God's calling Paul to go to prison so that he can reach people in prison for Jesus. That only makes sense if this life is not the only one that we have. That one day we will know glory, we will know fulfillment, we will know perfection and beauty forever because Jesus is coming back to restore this world. And one day there will be no more suffering, and no more trials, and no more tears, and no more brokenness, and no more goodbyes.

But glory never comes before the cross, and resurrection never comes before dying to self. That's the pattern of Jesus. It's the pattern of Paul. If he calls us to suffering now, is that suffering worth it if it means that God is going to work through that to bring people into his kingdom? That through what we can testify to in our suffering that there may be people worshiping Jesus in eternity with us because of what we've been willing to faithfully endure for Jesus.

The point is not to be like Paul, the the point is to be like Jesus. He's the one who set the pattern for us. Paul could go through this hard thing because Jesus has already gone through the hardest thing, and come out the other side to tell us that we don't have to be afraid, and that there can be a purpose in God's calling that may be through the pain and the suffering. So that we could say with Paul, with Jesus, not my will, but yours be done, father. Let's pray.

Father, thank you for this hard but challenging and I hope, we hope encouraging word. Who are we? We are the people that you are with. Oh, Father, I know there are people hearing this who are in the middle of some profound trials and suffering and difficulty. And Lord, we don't make light of that.

And we thank you for the hope that we have in suffering. And we pray that we will grow to be a community that bears one another's burdens and loves and serves one another and encourages one another. Give us wisdom, Father, for sorting out our will from your will. Give us faith, give us strength. We're weak.

We need you. We need your wisdom. But you promise to be with us and to give wisdom for those who ask. Give us faith to follow your calling, Jesus, wherever the destination takes us. We ask it in your name, amen.