Sermons
A Message by the Rev. Harvey G. Throop
Palisades Presbyterian Church
San Diego, California
(15) The Apostle: Debate!
(Acts 21:7-14)
“Since he would not be persuaded, we remained silent except to say, 'The Lord’s will be done.'”
(Acts 21:14)
What factors do you use to determine the decisions you make? In other words, how do you know what you are supposed to do? How do you know where to go in life – what college to attend -- what job to take -- what person to marry – in what city to live?
There was once an elderly gentleman who went to a clothing store to buy a new suit. He told the clerk that he was buying the suit because he was getting married the next day. He added that he was marrying a wonderful and much younger woman. The clerk, trying to be helpful and friendly, inquired nonchalantly, “Is she beautiful and sexy?” The gentleman replied, “No, actually, she is rather plain.”
“Oh, then,” the salesman offered, “she must be rich.” The older man said, “No, quite the contrary, I'm the one who's rich. She doesn't have much money at all.”
“Well, then,” said the clerk, trying to soften his questioning, “she must be a great conversationalist.” The elderly gentleman replied, “To be honest with you, she is rather dull.”
Confused, the clerk finally asked, “Then why are you marrying her?” With a twinkle in his eye, the older gentleman said, “Because she can drive at night!”
So, back to my starting question: What are the factors you use to determine the decisions you make?
As Christians, you and I believe that we are a people who are guided by the Holy Spirit. Yet, when God speaks, is it always unmistakably clear? Is the guidance of God and the leading of the Spirit easy to understand?
As we continue in this series of sermons on the Apostle Paul we come today to the topic of disagreement among those who listen to the Spirit. Some wonder how can that be? If we are all listening to the Spirit, won't we hear the same thing? Yes, but what the Spirit tells us does not necessarily resolve our debates.
You and I are constantly faced with choices. Sometimes, we have probably all found ourselves wishing that there was a roadmap of sorts at which we could look to know which way we should go. And the longer we live, the more choices we find we have to make: where to live, whom to marry, what profession to enter, what religious or political issues to get involved in – and so on. So just how do we discover what God's will is?
Last year, for example, we looked at two presidential candidates, both of whom claimed to be followers of Jesus Christ, but each of whom who would lead the nation in significantly different directions. Supporters of both candidates -- people of faith -- prayed over their choices and, to the best of their ability, determined their candidate. But what does this say about the people of faith who supported the losing candidate? Did they make a spiritual mistake or misread the will of God? Or, could it be that God's will is not so easily reduced to our choices?
Last Wednesday in our APOSTLES Bible class, we were talking about times when we look to God for guidance. Dave Dyas told about a guy who was late for a meeting and couldn't find a parking spot and so he prayed, “Lord, I'm late for my meeting. If you will find me a parking spot, I promise I'll go to church every Sunday, I'll raise my pledge, I'll….” Just then, a parking spot opened up right in front of the building where his meeting was and he said, “Never mind, Lord. I found one!”
Earlier, when the Apostle Paul was speaking to the elders of Ephesus, he said he was compelled by the Holy Spirit to go to Jerusalem even though it would mean his imprisonment.
So he had begun his journey to Jerusalem. He sailed as far as Tyre, where the ship had to stop to unload some cargo. During the week that the ship remained in port, Paul stayed with some other followers of Christ. Luke tells us, "Through the Spirit, they told Paul not to go on to Jerusalem" (Acts 21:4).
Now that is a significant line of Scripture. Earlier we read that Paul was told by the Spirit to go to Jerusalem. But now we are told that others, also filled with the Holy Spirit, tell him not to go there. Luke just lets that hang there for a while.
In the next verse he writes, "When our days there were ended, we left and proceeded on our journey" (Acts 21:5). Then they get to Caesarea and stay in the home of Philip the Evangelist.
While Paul is staying in Philip's home, a prophet named Agabus comes to visit from Judah. At some point, Agabus takes Paul's belt and ties himself up with it. Agabus then prophesies, “Thus says the Holy Spirit, ‘This is the way the Jews in Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles'” (Acts 21:11).
So again all the Spirit-filled members of the church in Caesarea, including Luke, plead with Paul not to continue this journey. But Paul says, "Stop it. You're breaking my heart. I have to keep going."
Was Paul supposed to go to Jerusalem or not? Did the apostle hear the Spirit earlier, or did the folks in this chapter hear a warning from God? Would the Holy Spirit work in contradictory ways? What are we to make of these things?
There are two possible answers. The first is that Paul missed God's will while others saw it. Some commentators think that Paul's desire to bring the offerings he had collected from the other churches to the church in Jerusalem caused him to do too much and that the apostle missed hearing God's call out of his own stubbornness.
The second answer is that Paul genuinely heard God's call to go to Jerusalem and everyone else simply heard the confirmation by the Spirit that things would be difficult there and then falsely concluded that Paul should not go.
Many times, when we hear that something is going to be difficult, we assume it is not God's will. We are programmed by our culture to take the easier road. When we meet resistance, we sometimes falsely assume God is shutting a door, when in actuality he is teaching us to persevere.
We think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's agonizing decision to return to Hitler's Germany in 1939 after coming to the United States for his second teaching tour at Union Seminary in New York City. Bonhoeffer, a brilliant theologian and church leader in Germany, had come here to teach and preach, just as the church struggle was intensifying back in Germany.
Bonhoeffer knew that Martin Niemoeller, another leading pastor in the Confessing Church movement, had already been arrested and sent to a concentration camp. German Christians were being manipulated, along with all the masses, to support Hitler's radical policy of maintaining the purity of the Aryan nation.
By the time Bonhoeffer arrived here, he was in agony over his decision to come here. His American hosts treated him with generosity, affection and helpfulness, but he was not at peace. He kept asking himself, “Where am I needed most?” Then, one day, while reading the Old Testament book of Isaiah, he read, “He who believes does not flee.” He had fled. He had chosen life. America had become a safe haven for him! But Isaiah's words made it clear to him that his true place was back in Germany.
Almost immediately, Bonhoeffer made up his mind that he must return to his homeland. As he wrote, “I have made a mistake in coming to America. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.”
So Bonhoeffer took the very last ship that went from America to Europe before the beginning of the war. He returned to Germany and to the resistance and to the conspiracy against Hitler that would ultimately lead to his own execution.
So, in the case of the Apostle Paul wanting to go to Jerusalem, some said that the leaders of the church were wrong in trying to convince Paul not to go to Jerusalem and that Paul was right. Others say that Paul was wrong and the church leaders were right. But all of this debate is rooted in an assumption that if two people are both filled with the Holy Spirit and seek direction, they will be told the same thing.
We can struggle forever to try to learn just what the will of God may be. God's will may rest beneath a wide range of options. We know, however, that there will likely be no shaft of light that will come from heaven and say, “My son, my daughter, this is the way … this is what you must do.” Instead, what is required of us is that we obey what we believe God is calling us to do at that moment in our lives. And no one else can determine that for us.
I also believe that it is important to share this sense of God's direction with trusted friends, even though they may take issue with you, in order to help you process it all more clearly.
I believe that God speaks to us so that we hear him – through our experiences, through other individuals as well as through our own prayers. But I also believe that we can draw the wrong conclusions from what we believe God is telling us.
For example, an individual can say, “God told me he wants me to serve him full time.” Therefore, the individual concludes that he or she should quit their job, go to seminary and become a pastor. But one doesn't have to become a pastor to serve God full-time. There are many ways to serve God full-time. Maybe what God was saying was, “I want you to serve me full-time where you are – in your parenting, in your job, in your volunteering or wherever!”
You've heard the story about the young man who was helping his father harvest their corn crop back in Iowa. One day during the harvest, in the middle of the afternoon, he stopped work and took a short break by lying down in the shade of a tree that was near the field he was working in. Later, he told his father about his experience. He said, “I was lying there watching the clouds drift by and, suddenly, I saw them form the letters: G P C.” I knew right then that God was calling me to the ministry: “Go Preach Christ!” His father listened to his son and then said, “How do you know he wasn't telling you to get back to work and to: “Go plow corn!”
You and I have to be careful when we sense God speaking to us. We have to be careful not to limit God's will either for ourselves or for another person. If God is calling that person to something difficult and they are convinced of that, then we must let them go. Paul answered what he clearly believed to be the call of God and, ultimately, it cost him his life.
Yet God did amazing things through Paul's obedience. Through Paul's arrest, imprisonment and subsequent trials, Paul was able to preach the gospel to the Jews, to governors and kings and even in the capital city of the Roman Empire. Later, Paul would write, “I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ” (Philippians 1:12,13).
God guided Paul and God will guide us, too, if we ask him.
After the Spirit-filled debate in the church of Caesarea was over, Luke writes, "Since Paul would not be persuaded, we remained silent except to say, 'The Lord's will be done'" (Acts 21:14).
We sometimes mistakenly assume that phrase – “The Lord's will be done” -- as being deterministic, as if to say that God's will has prescribed all our actions. The fact is, just the opposite of that is true. Since we believe God's will ultimately prevails, we are free to make choices that are within the biblical standards for life, without anxiety about their ultimate consequences. That is what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It means to discover the freedom of living as we were created to live -- as responsible people made in the image of God.
From the very beginning, as we read in the book of Genesis, the Spirit's purpose has been to move over the face of the deep and chaos and create life and beauty (see Genesis 1:2). When God breathed life into humans, it was with his Spirit.
On the day of Pentecost (see Acts 2), the Spirit breathed life into the church. The Holy Spirit makes you and me fully alive. To be fully alive is to stand before God and the world as a responsible human being who has to make choices.
When we, as Christian believers, have an important decision to make, it is only right for us to seek God's will. That does not mean that God's desire will be crystal clear to us.
Rather, our task is to seek God's guidance and then follow through as we believe God is leading us, trusting in his promise through Scripture that “all things will work together for good to those who love God and who are called according to his purposes” (see Romans 8:28).
