Missions Paul

Mission goes forward.
Acts 13
Why did John return to Jerusalem?
We learn later how Paul saw the severity of this referring to it as desertion.
So was it because of fear for being a missionary?
Was John simply homesick?
Or did he have a problem with Paul’s leadership?
We are not told, just that he returned home.
Luke teaches us that it is not always necessary to air our dirty washing in public or other people’s for that matter. Just say what needs to be said. Sometimes less is better. Not everyone needs to know the details.
In actual fact when fewer people know the reasons for the failure then it is easier when the fallen is restored as John Mark was.
Just say the bare facts and move on.

But the church was praying …
Acts 12
Some Christians had been arrested … but the church was praying.
Christians were facing persecution … but the church was praying.
Their leader, James, was martyred … but the church was praying.
Apostle Peter was captured … but the church was praying.
Peter was in prison … but the church was praying.
The angel of The Lord came to Peter … but the church was praying.
Chains fell off Peter … but the church was praying.
Peter was led out of the prison … but the church was praying.
Peter was knocking on the door of the church … but the church was praying.
Peter kept on knocking on the door … but the church was praying.
The church needs to know when to stop praying as much as when to pray.
Sometimes we talk too much.

Prejudice needs breaking
Acts 11

Prejudice will blind you to what is the most important matter.
When Peter arrives with the good news of household salvation what was he faced with?
Questioning over why he had entered a Gentiles home and what he had eaten!
What concerned them was not the baptism of the first Roman soldier but the sudden break with the unquestioned way of life!
They were blinded.

Prejudice makes us act like we are God
It leads us into the most desperate of sins, that of taking His name in vain, assuming and declaring He is saying what He is indeed not saying. God does not always believe what we believe in.

Prejudice keeps us outside of being able to influence.
v3 and v12 they went into the house!
Influence was inside not outside the Gentiles house.
God did not speak a message to us outside of the house. But “He was in the world.” Up close and personal. Who with? Us! Mankind, the sinner. He was the incarnation of God. God in flesh. God came into our home. The holy entered the unholy and influenced it forever.

Prejudice keeps us opposed to the Spirit of change.
v12 The Spirit told me (to change) …
v17 who was I to think I could oppose God (I had to change, will you?)

Broken prejudice welcomes the Spirit of blessing
v17 As I began to speak (Pentecost happened all over again!)
There is no mission with prejudice.

Peter probably didn’t think he had prejudice.
We probably don’t either.
But he was.
And we probably are.
Acts 10
Prejudice is exposed in the place of prayer, v9
Prejudice is defeated when a higher law of love is obeyed, v28
Prejudice closes us down to the possibilities of God, v45
“Just as we are” 4 words that will keep prejudice at a distance, v47
Do you prejudge?

Saul was filled with hatred – in Acts 9:21 he caused “havoc” in Jerusalem – RSV 26:11 says he persecuted in a “raging fury”.
However, he was a man of “great learning” Acts 26:24. A Pharisee, a son of a Pharisee.
On the way to Damascus – with a passion for God – a clear vision – a life-consuming zeal – he thought he was doing the will of God this new sect of Christians were an abomination before God.

Then came the knockdown.

We are serving a God who can build and tear down. Saul is traveling the road all built up. God tore him down. Saul suddenly found himself on the ground. He had gone to arrest Christians and Christ arrested him.

Sometimes the only way God can make us see is to knock us down and blind us for a while.
The setback must be viewed as an inevitable process of the success. If there is no setback then you’re probably not really moving forward with anything.

Listen to what a trapeze artist says about the knockdown:
“Once you know that the net below will catch you, you stop worrying about falling. You actually learn to fall successfully! What that means is, you can concentrate on catching the trapeze swinging toward you, and not on falling, because repeated falls in the past have convinced you that the net is strong and reliable when you do fall … The result of falling and being caught by the net is a mysterious confidence and daring on the trapeze. You fall less. Each fall makes you able to risk more.”
The knockdowns builds a resilience to go keep going. It also releases new ideas.
Kellogs cornflakes resulted when boiled wheat was left in a baking pan overnight by mistake.
It has been said that in science, mistakes always precede the truth.
Don’t shy away from the knockdown, don’t take the setback too personally, failing does not make you a failure.

The knockdown can be the best thing that ever happened to you.

Philip is told to venture ‘south to the road – the desert road – that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza’
Acts 8
The very fact that Luke the author, mentions and highlights that this is ‘the desert road’ as a kind of aside, underlies the strangeness of such a command.

Philip has just come from Samaria, where he has been involved in major successful evangelism, and is now being led down a desert road, a road that to Philip would have seemed pretty inappropriate for any further Christian work.

The Message bible describes it as ‘a desolate road’. Nobody would be on this road, because it is thought that the phrase ‘Go south to’ is translated in Greek as ‘at noon’, and the message bible actually uses the phrases ‘at noon today’. Noon time the road would be deserted of travellers because of the heat.

For Philip this seems a strange instruction, he is being called to walk down the most unlikely of roads, ‘a lonely road’. From great success to seemingly nothing.

Why?
Because God has someone there that he wants Philip to meet. And Philip’s meeting with the Ethiopian is a life changing one, not just for the Ethiopian Eunuch but the community to which he goes back to. His life is transformed by Jesus, and so he goes back to his community and tells them about his experience, and their lives are transformed.

A desert, desolate, lonely road. A road of unimportance. A road which looked insignificant. But a road that led to greatness. One road, one meeting, a transformation takes place, all God’s deliberate purpose.
The road you’re on maybe a road like Philips’, desolate, and lonely. You may question God as to why you’re on this road. It seems to you inappropriate.
But keep going as it will lead to Gods purpose. It will become clear.
Mission is not exciting all the time.

Missionary power and wisdom: the power to get you through and to know how.
Acts 7
When there is no way God will make a way. Through success and failure, a number of options to no options, ill health, redundancy, divorce, heartache after heartache, God will bring you through.

v9 “Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him and rescued him from all his troubles”.
And Stephen knew God was giving him the power to get through his trial.
But God also gave him His wisdom.
To be full of wisdom is to know the God of new ideas.
Stephen was able to see what God had done. He would in his trial clearly explain through biblical history God’s plan of salvation.
The religious could not change and embrace Gods salvation through Jesus.

How flexible are you? Would you hear God’s still quiet voice tell you to do something completely different to what you were expecting Him to say?

Power and wisdom are both needed. One without the other leads mission to fail.

Acts 6
Stephen was laying his life down before he became a martyr. Are you?
Your calling is to serve people. V8
You are called by God for people. Its others before you. It is putting people ahead of you. Serving others, reaching others, others all the time. It is never about us. Never entertain the thought ‘ well what about me? What about what I want? How I feel?’ for they are destructive thoughts.
When the apostles laid their hands on Stephen he was set apart, he was anointed for works of service to people.
You are anointed. You have left the self-serving, self-glorying lifestyle.
You are anointed to serve, thinking of others, lifting up others.
Today you will probably mix with the same people who do not know Jesus.
Your purpose is to:
• Create enthusiasm for the things of God.
John 2:17 (at the moment of Jesus cleansing the Temple) His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
Your calling is to get these people interested and enthusiastic for a God that they may never have believed in.
• Serve unselfishly and sacrificially.
Mark 10:45. “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Your calling is to help these people, to give to these people your time and energy. To lay your life down for these people.
• We are anointed as Stephen was anointed and as Jesus was anointed.
To Preach good news of hope to the hopeless. To Heal those with crushed hearts and shattered emotions. To Release captives from satanic prisons. To Set at liberty the bitter-hearted. Luke 4:18.
We must stay connected to our friends, it is here where the great commission begins, it is here where we are called to disciple-make. And then we must go to people who have no friends. To the unlovely and unlovable. This is where God lives. If we are following Jesus then this is where He is going.
This is mission.

When we sing ‘All to Jesus I surrender’ and we do not, then we commit the sin of A + S.
Acts 5

When we commit our lives to God to work for Him but then on Monday we enter into that workplace and steal in time, effort, things and then go to the house group and ask people to pray for us to be a light then we commit the sin of A + S.

When we stand before God and make a vow with our babies in our arms and promise to honour them and let them be whoever God wants them to become but then at home as they grow up we exasperate them and we begin to live our lives in them and get them to do what we wanted to do but never did or failed at and then we tell people how great our children have become we commit the sin of A + S.

When we write a tithe cheque before church but you remember this week you’ve spent too much money and before you write 10% you think Id better write 5%. During the service you listen as a person is made a member and you hear how they commit themselves to the vision and community of the church through the giving of tithes and offerings. It’s a wonderful moment and you remember the lovely day when you became a member also. Ten minutes later you step forward to the communion table to give your tithe and no one knows that its actually halved in size, well not everyone, you know and God knows. It is the sin of A + S.
Not one of us has been immune to this sin.
All of us have committed the sin of A + S.
Cheap Christianity.
Many deny the cross but take up the benefits of Christianity.
Mission is everything.

When God is with His Church then the response from individuals in that church is “It’s not about me”.
Acts 4
v32 they were one in heart and mind.
Secondly the response is “None of what I have is mine”
v32 no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own.
When God saw those 2 responses He moved upon His church again with great power and much grace. V33.
How exciting is this thought?!!!

1. They were one in heart and mind
Society protects the violation of our rights. Our rights have become more important than community. The result has been that we have many nomads, rootless people moving round in circles of life, belonging to no one.

So why are so many people individualists?
Ego.
“I don’t need help. I can do it on my own. Leave it to me, No one has to tell me how to live.”
Ignorance
Today many do not know how to converse with people, there are little relational skills. They have never been taught and they are not willing to learn.
Time
Other people are never convenient.

2. no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own.
We have no claim to anything except we are a child of God, a servant to the King. We have no claim on anything we have or title we have gained. All that we have all that we possess belongs to Him. We do not own a penny. But He owns it all.

God is waiting for these 2 responses and then the mission begins!