Acts 16:1-10 - On The Road Again and Border Walls

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

It is great to be back with you this morning, or afternoon, or evening, whenever you are listening to Tabernacle Talk. And yesterday, we saw that Paul and Barnabas, people that we've been with now for several chapters, they split ways.

And Paul took Silas, and they went to go visit some of the churches that Paul and Barnabas had planted, and to encourage them and the Lord.

Barnabas and his nephew John Mark, they sailed to the island of Cyprus, and they were going to go preach the Gospel there. And we learned how God works, even though sometimes how we do things is flawed or failed.

So, today we are in Acts 16, Acts chapter 16 in verse number 1. The Bible says this. Then Paul went on to Derbe and Lystra, where there was a disciple named Timothy.

Now, if you remember Derbe and Lystra before, just I think two chapters ago, this was where Paul, yes, was mistaken for a god, that the crowds came and they stoned Paul, dragged him out of the city thinking that he was dead.

So, this was a place that when Paul thought about, the last time he was here, they literally tried to kill him. They literally beat him so badly, they thought he was dead, and yet he's returning there.

If it was me, I would be like, oh, God might be sending some other person to go there.

Maybe, you know, I planted the first seed, and someone else will come along who has a more agreeable personality to this group of people, and maybe God will use them to really build the church there.

But in Lystra, in the town that Paul was beaten and stoned, says there was a disciple named Timothy, the son of a believing Jewish woman, but his father was a Greek, so his mother believed on the Lord, believed on Yahweh, but his dad was a Greek.

He was someone that did not believe in the God of Israel. He's not spoken of as a proselyte. So here Timothy is in the situation that maybe many of you have either been in personally, or maybe you have children that are going through it as well.

Maybe you have friends that have been in this situation, where maybe one of the parents is believing, and the other parent is not. And we see so much of Timothy throughout Scripture. I'm really excited to get introduced to him.

He's the one that Paul wrote the books of 1st and 2nd Timothy to later in the Bible. Verse number 2. The brothers and sisters at Lystra and Iconium spoke highly of Timothy.

Paul wanted Timothy to go with him, so he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, since they all knew that his father was a Greek. This is a very interesting portion.

So we were just in Acts 15 where people were telling the Greeks, you have to be circumcised in order to be saved. In order to have salvation, you need to be circumcised and follow the law of Moses.

Here, Paul, for a person that is already saved, everyone is speaking well of him. Everyone knows his dad is an unbeliever. And Paul here encourages Timothy to do something that he does not tell people to do in every instance.

It's so interesting. As you read throughout the book of Galatians, chapter 2 really deals with this. Paul had a mindset that said, you cannot tell people to do things that are outside of what God has said in Scripture.

And as we learned yesterday, that even boiled over into the old covenant, the old law under Moses versus the new law in Christ. He says you can't tell people that they have to be circumcised in order to be saved.

But Paul had the mindset, and here Timothy has the mindset, I will do whatever it takes in order to see people accept Christ. I am not going to have anything about me be a stumbling block for people.

That when I am talking to people, I am communicating the gospel, and nothing about me, nothing about who I am is going to be so offensive as to bar the way from people understanding and hearing and accepting the gospel. Here's what I'm talking about.

I don't want anything that I do to be a stumbling block to people, that the gospel is offensive enough as it is, that Jesus is the only way to heaven, that trusting in His righteousness alone is the only salvation that we can experience.

That is offensive enough on its own. It goes against our natural flow of thought, that we do righteous actions and thus we get righteous results. That's how we think it works.

I do good things, God lets me into heaven. If I live a horrible life and I do a bunch of bad things, God doesn't let me into heaven. Of course, that's how it works.

No, no, no, no. It's all Jesus alone, and we can't just grab Jesus and then do whatever we want to do. No, no, no.

It's turning to Him as our Lord. It is repenting. It's turning from our sin and our way and trusting in ourselves to trusting in Him and following His path for our life.

That is an offensive message to the natural person. I don't want to add any other offensive things on top of that that doesn't have anything to do with the gospel.

So in our day and age today, politics is a very kind of divisive thing, and the Bible has a lot to say about different topics, and it should absolutely influence how we talk about things, how we vote on things, what our opinions should be on topics

that our nation labels as political. But when I think of something like, let's say, a border wall, there are no border walls mentioned in Scripture. It's something that's outside of God's Word.

Does that mean I can't have an opinion on whether or not we should have specific types of borders and specific types of structures at our borders? No, I can absolutely have an opinion on that.

But for me, as a preacher of the Gospel, I am absolutely emphatic that I'm not going to say, okay, here's my opinion on this extra topic that has nothing to do with God or the Bible, and I'm going to put my opinion out there, and someone might reject

the Gospel that I'm preaching, not because necessarily they got to the point where they understood what Jesus was saying, and they rejected Jesus, but because they just see me as perhaps a political hack. Ah, you leftist, ah, you Republican, you

Trumpist, whatever. Whatever people might think of me, I don't want that to get in the way of preaching the Gospel. So here, Paul has Timothy circumcised because everyone in that area knew that his father was an unbeliever.

And that would make it so that none of the Jews would listen to what Timothy would have to say, because they'd say, ah, you're just a Gentile, we're not even allowed to interact with you. And so Paul encourages Timothy.

Timothy goes along wholeheartedly with it because of his heart for the Lord and because of his heart for the Gospel, that he says, I'm not going to let my dad determine if I'm going to be able to minister to people.

I'm not going to let the fact that I'm not a full-blooded Jew offend people. So I'm going to do what it takes. I'm going to become a Jew.

The Apostle Paul talks about this in, I believe it's 1 Corinthians 8. I'm going to turn over to that page as quickly as I can. He says this in chapter 9.

He says, Although I am a free man and I am not anyone's slave, I have made myself a slave to everyone in order to win more people. To the Jews, I became like a Jew to win Jews.

To those under the law, like one under the law, why myself am not under the law. He says, I observe all of the Jewish things when I'm around Jewish-observing people, so that way I can communicate the gospel.

That way they're not fighting with me about, oh, this tradition, this habit, but we're actually dialoguing about the gospel. He says, To those that are without the law, like one without the law, not being without God's law, but within Christ's law.

He says, When I'm with Greeks that don't do anything with Jewish habits, I'm not bringing up the Jewish habits. That way they don't see me as, oh, there's like a real oddball kind of guy.

He says, When I'm with the Greeks, I'm not violating anything in God's law, but I'm not following all of the Jewish traditions like I do when I'm with Jews. He says, To the weak, I became weak.

In order to win the week, I've become all things to all people, so that I may by every possible means save some. Now, I do all of this because of the gospel, so I may become a partner in its benefits.

So this is why Paul has Timothy circumcised, even though we just spent the last chapter saying, you don't have to do it in order to be saved.

Here what he's communicating, what Timothy's heart is, what Paul would communicate that his heart is, is I'm not going to put any more difficulties between people and the gospel that are absolutely necessary.

So that's what's happening in verses one through three. Verse number four, as they traveled through the towns, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem for them to observe.

So the churches were strengthened in the faith and increased in number daily. So they're continuing to bring along this letter, what would later become called the Judaizers, the ones that said you need Jesus and all of the Old Testament stuff.

They had gone along a lot of this route and Paul would spend much of his letters writing against that particular heresy. Verse number six.

They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia and were prevented by the Holy Spirit from speaking the message in Asia. Isn't that interesting? God doesn't want you to speak the gospel in specific places at specific times.

Isn't that incredible? That's a wild thought, but it's true. Here it says the Holy Spirit prevented them from speaking the word in Asia.

He says that's for someone else. Sometimes if we're not able to present the gospel to someone, we can take a bunch of that burden on to ourselves and go, oh man, that would have been the greatest opportunity.

It might be that the Holy Spirit prevented you. Now, if you didn't care at all, you didn't want to say anything to anyone, then that might be on us.

But there are some times when God says, I've got specific people at specific times going to specific places and those people will bring the message. So the Holy Spirit prevents them from speaking the message in Asia.

Verse 7, when they came to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. Here it's not just one area that the Spirit says, nope, not there. There are two areas.

So, verse 8, bypassing Mysia, they came down to Troas. During the night, a vision appeared to Paul. A Macedonian man was standing and pleading with him, cross over to Macedonia and help us.

After he had seen the vision, we immediately made efforts to set out for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to evangelize them. I want to make one very quick note.

It appears from the writing of Acts, that Paul and Timothy picked up the writer here, Luke, in Troas. So verse number 8, bypassing Misia, they came down to Troas.

And then verse 10, after he had seen the vision, we immediately made efforts to set out for Macedonia. So there they pick up Luke, that's just kind of a cool thing you can see in the text.

Hear the Macedonian call, cross over to Macedonia and help us. That God does have a specific people, a specific time, a specific place for you to share the gospel. Don't be scared of it.

God will not put you in places where he doesn't want you to witness. You don't have to worry about if the conversation opens up that someone says, hey, what do you do on Sundays? Or hey, I noticed you posted a Bible verse.

What's up with God? Or I have this thing in my past. Don't be scared of when God gives you the opportunity.

Realize that verse 10, God has called us to evangelize them. Take it as an opportunity. Dive wholeheartedly all in and be excited.

Verse 9, with that Macedonian call, if any of you are familiar with maybe some older hymns, the hymns send the light. It says we have heard the Macedonian call today. Send the light, send the light.

There are souls to rescue, there are souls to save. Send the light, send the light. And that's where that particular phrase is from.

If you've heard that song and you go, what is a Macedonian call? It's here, it's this call from this man saying come and help us. So I want to close today with those two thoughts.

Number one, what are you willing to give up? What opinions are you willing to not voice for the sake of the Gospel? It's not that you can't have any opinions.

Paul had plenty of opinions that he lists in his letters, but he says I realize what my opinion is and what the Gospel is.

And if my opinion is going to get in the way of me sharing the Gospel, that if I'm sharing opinion first and it's going to shut people off to the Gospel, or maybe if I'm giving some Gospel and before someone has even accepted the Gospel, I'm plugging

in some of my opinion as well. They don't match. They don't match up together. You can't marry opinion and Gospel any more than you can marry the Law and the Gospel.

They don't go together. So what are you willing to give up? What are you willing to not voice in order to have a stronger Gospel witness?

He says if I'm with the Jews, I'm doing everything that the Jews are doing within the bounds of God's Law. He says if I'm with the Greeks, I'm doing everything the Greeks are doing.

I'm not bringing over some extra Jewish stuff, unless it's specifically what God has outlined in Scripture. You know, I'm not committing to sexual immorality. I'm not committing to idolatry.

Any of those things, I'm not doing everything else, just my normal day-to-day walk.

Truthfully, if this jersey were to cause people to not hear me preach the Gospel, maybe if I wore this on a Sunday morning service, and it were to turn people off to the Gospel, and they would say, oh, he's not really very serious about God.

Well, I'm not going to wear this jersey if it's going to turn people off to the Gospel. I want everything that I do to point to the Gospel of Christ. So, what are you willing to give up?

What opinions are you willing to stop voicing to everyone in every circumstance or all over social media in order to see people accept Christ? And then secondly, how is God working in your life that you might be able to evangelize someone?

Maybe God has had some doors that he has shut like he did for Paul and for Timothy, and he says, you're not going to go there yet. You're not going to go there yet. I want you to go here.

I want you to speak to this person. Are you listening for the voice of the Spirit? If they weren't listening, they wouldn't have known that the Holy Spirit didn't want them to go into Asia.

If they weren't listening, they wouldn't have noticed that the Spirit of Jesus didn't want them to go into Bithynia, but they were listening to God, and then they went into Macedonia. Are you listening to the voice of God?

Are you listening for the instances in which God says, okay, now it's time to evangelize. Here's the moment I have for you. Are you paying attention?

Tomorrow, we get to go to Philippi, which is where our church family has been studying the Word since the beginning of the year, and we get to see some background tomorrow. It's going to be a great time. Look forward to studying with you!