Scripture readings: John
14:15-31; Acts 21:1-14
Woody Allen once said, “If only God would give me
some clear sign – like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.”
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| Pictures from Fullerton Arboretum June 2015 |
There are certain places in each of the four gospels
that tell us that the Lord will lead us, and guide us, and help us know what to
say and do. God will tell us things.
John, in his gospel, sheds a lot of light on our
continuing reliance on God’s presence, and God’s communication with us. Jesus
said, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:18) In
other words, Jesus will always serve as a parent to us and do what parents do;
to teach us, and guide us, and go with us, and to take us with him.
Earlier in the gospel of John, Jesus said, “I am the
good shepherd.” (John 10:11ff) He said he would walk ahead of us, which is
another way of saying that he shows us the way. He guides us. He directs us in
ways that are good for us.
Jesus said, “The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the
Father will send in my name, will
teach you all things, and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”
(John 14:26) Jesus said, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him, and
make our home with him.” (John 14:23)
All of this means that, when we belong to Jesus, we
belong to God in all his fullness (Father ,
Son, and Holy Spirit) and this is about a rich and loving relationship. This is
intimacy.
Our relationship with God will not be blind and deaf.
Even if we start out not seeing well or not hearing well, we will not end that
way. God wants to make us into seeing and hearing children.
God has no policy of giving us the silent treatment.
The silent treatment is not what faith is about.
God tells us things all the time. The Bible tells us
the story of a God who reveals himself, and searches us out. In the Book of Job
it says, “God speaks in one way and in two, though man does not perceive it.” (Job
33:14, R.S.V.) In other words, God has lots of ways of always telling us
things, even when we are not aware of it.
The creation is full of God telling us things: Psalm
19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of
his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display
knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their
voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”
(Psalm 19:1-4)
God speaks to us through creation, and through the
scriptures, and through prayer, and through music, and through fellowship with
other people, and through worship. God speaks to us through the circumstances
of our lives.
God speaks to us, in all of these things (usually
through something we may call a still, small voice). God’s voice is almost like
the voice of our own thoughts, only they are not our thoughts at all.
Long ago I served a church on the south coast of Oregon
Although I was driving to Reedsport, I suddenly felt
that I needed to turn off on a road that led to a lake instead. The lake was
another one of the places where I liked to go; only I didn’t want to go there
that day. I wanted the ocean; but I turned anyway, and stopped at the lake.
Being a creature of habit, I always started around the lake by taking the trail
to the right. This time I took the trail around to the left.
There was a bench near the start of that part of the
trail, and there was a man sitting on that bench. I wanted quiet, to be alone
and pray. I pray well when I walk. But I stopped and sat beside the stranger,
and started a conversation with him. I never do that.
The man had just gone through a divorce, and then he
had been diagnosed with an eye condition that was going to make him blind. He
was a Christian who had drifted away from the church and from fellowship with
other Christians. He had drifted away from prayer and intimacy with God.
He told me, after we had talked for a while, that he
felt the Lord was calling him back to a deeper relationship with him. He also
confided that he had been driving somewhere else and had felt compelled to stop
at the lake, and walk down the trail, and sit on that bench, even though there
was somewhere else that he was supposed to be.
I told him that it had been the same with me. We
prayed together, and parted.
The point is that there is this still, small voice
that seems to lead us, without coming from us. God’s still, small voice is like
a thought that is laid upon our thought; but it comes from outside us, or from
beyond us, and often in spite of us.
In the book of Acts, we are told of many different
ways that the Lord had, and may still have, of speaking to us and telling us
the things that we need to know, and say, and do. The book of Acts begins with
Luke addressing his readers with the purpose of his writing his gospel and the
Acts. He writes this: “In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that
Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven.” (Acts
1:1)
This means that what Jesus began to do and teach in
the Gospel, he continued to do and teach in the Book of Acts. By implication,
Jesus is still doing things and teaching among us now.
In the Book of Acts there are supernatural ways that
the Lord speaks: through dreams, and visions, and the visitations of angels,
and people speaking by the direct inspiration of the Holy Sprit: speaking as
prophets. There are places, though, where the Lord speaks in humbler ways:
through shipwrecks, through friendships (Acts 11:25-26), and through his people
meeting together, and arguing, and discussing things when there is confusion
and disagreement (Acts 15).
The Lord has spoken to me in every one of these ways,
except through shipwreck. The Lord has spoken to me through you. I know this
for a fact. And the Lord has spoken to you through me. I am sure of this.
But how can you be sure? How can you be sure that the
Lord is telling you any specific thing with a clear message?
I would say that, even if you received the clearest
possible message, you might not understand it, and you might not find it easy
to follow. Even if God spelled out what he wanted to tell you in letters
printed across the sky, you would have no idea of where that message would take
you, or what it would mean for you as the years passed by.
This is part of what Luke is telling us, in the
portion of the Book of Acts where Paul was walking into the trap that was going
to close on him for the rest of his life in a long, uncertain, and dangerous
imprisonment. The trap would spring a long set of legal and political trials
and appeals that were going to lead to his beheading in Rome
Paul ended up in chains, and we do not know, for
sure, whether he was ever a truly, legally, free man again. We know that Paul
was taken as a prisoner to Rome , and we know
that he was executed in Rome
In our reading in Acts, we see the other disciples
warning Paul not to go to Jerusalem Jerusalem
The Spirit told them that Paul was in danger. Through
the warning they received, and through their understanding of that warning,
they tried to persuade Paul not to walk into that trap.
In the chapter before this, Paul told another group
of disciples, in another city, that this kind of message seemed to follow him
everywhere he went. Paul stated his case (as he saw it) this way. He said, “And
now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem
Paul felt that he was being “compelled by the
Spirit”. He felt that God had a clear message for him, and this message was
that he must be willing to go forward to his arrest and imprisonment, even if
it led to his death.
Paul believed that God was telling him to go and
suffer as a witness to the grace of God. But Paul’s friends believed that God
was telling him to avoid the trap, and stay free to travel the world as a
witness to the grace of God.
Luke says, “When Paul would not be dissuaded, we gave
up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.” (Acts 21:14)
The way I read it, when they gave up and said, “The
Lord’s will be done,” I think they meant that they reluctantly came to the
conclusion that it was the Lord’s will for Paul to not make the best decision.
I believe that this is what they thought.
Luke, writing years later, could look back and he
could see what Jesus had done and what Jesus had taught through Paul’s decision
to go to Jerusalem
Paul and his friends had all been warned, by the Holy
Spirit, about the dangers to come. Because of the Spirit’s’ warnings, Paul’s
friends urged him not to walk into the trap.
I believe that the Spirit was at work in the warnings
of the dangers to come, but the Spirit was not at work in the urgings of Paul’s
friends who wanted him to escape and be safe. They thought that the Spirit was
warning Paul so that he could act smartly.
Paul could tell the difference between the love of
the Spirit calling him to danger and the love of his friends who wanted him to
escape. The tug of war between the love of God and the love of friends was a
tug of war that almost broke Paul’s heart. Paul decided to follow God’s love
into risk and danger.
God didn’t control Paul’s thoughts. The Holy Spirit
didn’t forced Paul to make a choice that led to prison and execution. But God
loves the kind of person Paul was. God simply chose a man who would do anything
for love; for the love of God and for the love of others, whether it was wise,
or safe, or prudent, or not.
We have all watched good people make bad choices for
the right reasons. You know what I mean. Their motive was right and noble: but
their choice was wrong, and it was completely unnecessary, and endless trouble
came of it.
Maybe we have made decisions like that ourselves. And
yet (and yet), given time, the Lord’s will was done. This teaches us that God
is fully capable of blessing our mistakes. Thanks be to God!
There are people we love who make hard and dangerous
choices for the right reasons; to join the armed forces, to become a fire
fighter, and there are other such choices. Their motives are right and noble;
and their choices are right, even though the people who love them will grieve
because of those choices.
This is a very important lesson. Paul was thinking,
and speaking, and making choices out of the depths of love. His friends were
pleading with him in love, and Paul said, “Why are you weeping and breaking my
heart?” (Acts 21:13) It is love that we see on every side of this story.
The very question, “How can we be sure?” sometimes
comes from a desire for the wrong kind of faith. There is a kind of faith that wants
to be right, above everything else. There is a kind of faith that wants to be
safe, and comfortable, and smart. And then, there is another kind of faith
that, above everything else, does not want to fail the ties of love and
faithfulness.
I want to know what God wants because I want to be
right and smart. I want to be right because I do not want to make mistakes. I
hate making mistakes because I hate to be wrong. I hate to be wrong because I
am always trying to be smart, and that is the most dangerous thing of all,
because, above everything else, this is pride.
Sometimes we are tempted to do the opposite of smart.
We are tempted to do daring and risky things to prove our faith. When I was in
college, a representative from a Christian publisher contacted the Christian
groups on campus to look for daring Christian kids to help distribute their
products. They distributed very nice looking Bible reference books. The
representative told us, when we went to his meeting, that we could make a
surprising amount of money in one summer by simply appearing in some rural
community with our samples and we would find someone who would put us up, and
we would find a church that would help promote our work.
In this way we would provide other Christians with an
excellent product and we would learn how to live by faith by stepping out in
faith. In this way we would receive the joy that comes from proving our faith.
We would receive the benefits that come from faith. And yet that would be
another way of proving we were smart: smarter than the average Christian.
There will be times when real Christians ask you to
prove your faith in this way, but they are usually wrong. We must choose faith.
We must live our faith. But we are not called to prove our faith. That is a
temptation that comes from pride.
It is like the adolescent game of “I Dare You”. It’s
a foolish game. It’s an exciting game. It’s a game of pride.
Paul seemed proud because he was stubborn. He seemed
carelessly daring.
Paul was not perfect. And Paul made mistakes. But
Paul was a lover, as well as a fighter. Paul did not fight for pride. He fought
for love. He would blunder for love. He was stubborn only because he loved the
Lord, and he loved his people. Because of this, there was a divine protection
(a powerful grace) that shed its light over his mistakes, so that even his
worst mistakes were not so bad, and good came of them, and the Lord’s will was
done.
This is the kind of mistake we should pray for. We
should be willing to blunder into the loving and faithful choice. We should be
willing to be stubborn for the sake of love.
There were people who were trying to be prophets.
They were prophets. But Paul clung t
Here, in this fellowship, we form a part of what
Jesus has begun to do and to teach in this cluster of communities. In order for
Jesus to continue to work and to teach through this fellowship we have choices
to make about how to use our energy and our resources to be a church and people
of evangelism and mission.
The Holy Spirit has warnings for us as a fellowship
and as members of this fellowship. There are dangers and risks. There are choices
that will be very demanding and consuming.
The temptation for us comes from the direction of
wanting to make the smart choice or the safe and comfortable choice. For the
Lord’s will to be done, the smart choices and the safe choices will only work for
a little while. In order to find out what Jesus wants to do and to teach
through this fellowship, we have to make choices that seem costly, and
dangerous.
We are not called to make such choices in order to
prove our faith in order to get what we want. We are called to make such
choices in order to live our faith and love. So that our faith will make us
look like Jesus in the end.
We have to make decisions that look like blunders. We
need to have a lot of fight in us (a lot of toughness in us) in order to live
out the hard choices (like the choices that Paul made).
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