Missions Paul

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!

Mission believes in renewal. What was good in the past can be experienced again.

Acts 3
v11

Solomon’s Colonnade was a roofed walkway supported with large stone columns located just inside the walls of the temple courtyard. In John 10:23 we see that it says:
‘and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon’s Colonnade.’

Jesus had spent a lot of time here. He was familiar with the place. He had walked through often and was comfortable there.
But now Jesus was no longer there. The place was empty of Jesus’ presence. They had crucified him, they’d disowned him and denied him.
Jesus was not walking through Solomon’s colonnade any longer.

The beautiful thing we see in this passage in Acts is that although Jesus was no longer to be found at Solomon’s Colonnade, suddenly the crowds see him again. In this instance, the crowds are able to witness Jesus at work within the life of the beggar, healing him, and working through the lives of Peter and John. Jesus is back on the scene. He’s revisiting the place where he once dwelt. People weren’t expecting it. They were not expecting Jesus to be working through 2 ordinary people.

Whatever God did in the past He can do it again.
Now what did God do in the past …?

The Spirit birthing mission
Acts 2
The visitation came from heaven, it is the only thing that will satisfy this earth.
There are times of realisation that earth and everything on earth will not and can not give to you what you need.
There is not a shortage of evangelistic projects and mission programmes. For we want more people in our churches. We want a regular stream of visitors. We have had high hopes that we would see churches filled to capacity again. We anticipate that new churches would be birthed here in the UK and overseas. that. But we need a certain visitor to come, the Holy Spirit.
This visitation on the day of Pentecost was from heaven

There was no warning. It could not be advertised, no time to make plans, if you weren’t there you had missed it. Can you imagine missing this church meeting?
So is their an environment which will prepare us for a visitation? Yes!
v14, They were praying for the gift that they were to receive, the Holy Spirit baptism. They were asking for what was to suddenly come upon them. Believing prayer has always preceded a visitation from heaven.

It was a violent wind. Not a gentle breeze. We have settled for gentle breezes and not violent gusts. It would seem frightening, fleshly, demonic – sadly that’s how some react to the visitation from God.

There was a sound. Luke was writing about the effects of the Holy Spirits visitation.
When God visits you will hear Him powerfully upon a church, a community as people come under His power.

The was the visual.
Fire always denoted the presence of God.
The visitation of the Holy Spirit was visible as well as audible.
They began to speak in other tongues, and this would become the hallmark as they moved into the mission fields of the world.

Are we ready for His visitation?

The right place and the place of prayer are the best place for mission.
Acts 1

What they did in these 10 days before Pentecost set the stage for the Holy Spirit to come in the way that He did.

They made a decision

V4 Do not leave Jerusalem
They made the decision to return v12
The key to progressing as a Christian is your attitude to return to the place God has called you for. What has been served in this life to you may have led to defeat or disappointment but those experiences have no hold over you if you can still decide to return.

The great verse in the parable of the prodigal son is this: – I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you’. I will set out and go back. These two things are important. It means that I have got to come away from this life. I am going to set myself out from that situation. What I have become and how I have lived my life, the way I do things, the way I speak – everything that would define me right now, what people think of me and what I think about myself, I have decided today right now I am coming away from this. I am setting out and secondly I’m returning.

They prayed together
V14
There is a move from the church before they see a move from God.
When a church finds the numbers in its prayer meetings increasing then get ready something is about to happen.
There was a revival in 1858 in New York. But this was preceded in September 1857 by a man called Jeremiah Lambfear who began to call people to pray with him during their lunchhour.
1st meeting = 6 people; 2nd = 14; Next week = 23; then 65; then 200. Until they had to go to 5 days a week. Within months 6,100 men and women were meeting to pray. 7 months later something happened, people began to find Christ all over New York. In fact 10,000 a week were being saved. The Scotch and Irishmen visited and took back to Ireland the passion and hunger for God. In 1858 there came the Ulster revival.

I believe they were praying for what Jesus promised them. “Come Holy Spirit” “Come fill us with power” “We want to be your witnesses”.
How desperate are you for God to visit you with power? You can live your Christian life with little or no room for the power of God. Or you can be hungry and thirsty enough to pray. To pray every day. To pray at work, home, shops. To attend prayer meetings.
They had returned and were found in the right place and the Holy Spirit found them. It was the commencement of mission, it still is.

Missionaries that run away.
John 21
For all kinds of reasons people find themselves running away.
Some geographically but more and more people run thinking no one can see, for they run away from things that are private, from devotion to God, from enthusiasm for witnessing, from energy for worship, they back away from fellowship that’s too vulnerable. And yet even though they think only they know, the truth is eventually everyone knows. The missionary has run away.
Peter who replied when Jesus asked ‘who do you say I am?’ “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”
Peter who promises “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.” Now says “I’m going out to fish.”
What about you?
Has the devil declared over your life, “Run away because of people’s unkindness, running because of fear, running away from obedience, running because of guilt of your past failure”.

Like Peter we need to bring back the missionaries to their calling.
Peter returns but in hiding, v7.
Why put a coat on when you have to jump in the water to run to shore 100 yards away? It will become heavy with the water and slow you down.
However you would do this if that coat was Peter’s pathetic way of covering up. The denial was still at the forefront of his mind and Jesus has not discussed this, in fact no one has talked about it since it happened.
What did Adam and Eve do when they heard God’s footsteps? They dived for cover.
The accuser will always convince you to cover up.
The reinstatement always happens at the fire. For Peter it was a fire of reminder
The first thing Peter sees as he races from the water is a fire of burning coals with fish on it and bread by the side. Where did Peter deny Jesus? John 18:18 “around a fire”.
And here on the lakeshore Peter is facing a fire with Jesus behind it. It’s a gentle reminder of his sin. No one says anything, it is silent. But the reinstatement has begun!
The missionary is home.