He Calls

I consider this an unbelievable expression of grace that I have a chance and opportunity to speak to you this morning. The last time I did was a couple months ago, February 28th, I was on the platform with Pastor Jerry, if you recall, and we were actually talking about the call of God that really, we were talking about the specs a moment ago, how that I've always known that I was going to end up being a teacher. And the moment I gave my life to Christ, July 17th, 1976, I knew exactly what I wanted to teach, but it's still a grace that's been extended to me, a kindness for me to be able to speak to you. And I talked on that day about missing at least a part of that call that God has on my life, because I became driven. I don't expect you to remember what I said, but that's basically what I was talking about, how the motivations to do what God wanted you to do got clouded by the idea that I felt like I had to do it all. And so, God actually reoriented and rearranged from totally flipping me upside down to change my circumstances so that I could look again at what He had called me to do. So, I'm grateful this morning for an opportunity to extend that conversation about the call, because as we turn our attention to Acts 13, as we continue this study on the Holy Spirit, the praxis of the Holy Spirit, we're coming to Acts 13 where we are going to see where the Holy Spirit is going to call Barnabas and Paul to the mission. I want you to see things perhaps in a different way than maybe you've been looking at them. And I'm going to start off by telling you a couple of stories that talk about the call of God and things that I've observed simply because they happened around me. The first, the first opportunity was when I was six years old. It was in the middle of the night, so, I was sleeping, and I was awakened because there was some commotion going on in the hallway outside of my bedroom. And so, I went out, only to see my brother, Dave, who's exactly a year older than me, telling my parents that he'd been called to preach. At seven years old, he had been called to preach. Well, maybe that's the reason why in the months and years that followed, that he and I would actually pretend that that was the case. We took a hamper basket from our mom, turned it upside down, and that became the pulpit so we could reenact a Billy Graham crusade. I was Cliff Barrows, leading the singing, and my brother was pretending to be Billy Graham preaching the gospel. As I look 55 years later, what a joy to know that my brother is not pretending to preach the gospel, because there isn't a day that goes by that he's not in his office, someone coming to him, who's had their life turned upside down and broken by maybe some choices or other things, and there he is preaching the gospel to that person. I can't tell you what a joy it is to see my brother do that. Here's a second example that also happened around me, about 20 years ago, we were still, The Chapel was still at North Forest Road, and if you've never been there, the main campus, the worship center and the education rooms and all of that is on one side, and on the other, there's a house that we bought and turned it into the offices. And there's a bridge going from the campus to the offices. And my brother and I, sorry, my son and I were walking across that bridge, and Pastor Jonathan said to me, "Dad, I don't know, but I think God is calling me to ministry." So, as I look back and look forward, I would say, "Oh, my goodness, what an incredible thrill it is to see God fulfill that call these years later." There isn't a week that doesn't go by where someone says, "You must be so proud of Jonathan." Well, I wouldn't use that word, proud, I would certainly say, "We are grateful for having front row seats to see how God confirms His call." And when we get to Acts 13, we're not going to find anything different, we're going to find God, through His spirit, calling Barnabas and Paul to the mission. I've used those three examples intentionally, about David being called to preach and my son being called to ministry, and Barnabas and Paul being called to vocational ministry, because I want to upset your paradigm. Because quite honestly, I fear that too many of us think that the only people God calls are people who have been called to vocational ministry, but I'm on an assembly line at GM, or I'm in a grocery store, or I'm a stay-at-home. I want you to see that this message is for all of us, because Barnabas and Paul are going to be called to fulfill the third leg of the mission statement that Jesus Himself gave right before He went back to heaven. Acts 1:8, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem," that's where they are, "and in the region next to it, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Jesus not only gives us a mission, but Luke takes this mission statement and actually uses it as an outline to his book called Acts. So, Acts 1-7 are really nothing more than Luke telling us how the gospel was a saturated event in Jerusalem. In fact, the enemies of Christ said to the disciples, "You have failed Jerusalem with your teaching." Why? Because they understood Jesus is serious when He says, "Take the gospel to where you are Jerusalem." And the second leg of this mission takes place in Acts 8, when because of persecution, because of this persecution, the disciples in Jerusalem were driven out, and they went to, no surprise, Judea and Samaria. So, God used this persecution to fulfill or get the second leg moving.
But that persecution, as you know, was initiated by Paul. Have you ever stopped to think that when the Apostle Paul entered into the presence of God in eternity, he probably was greeted by people he had martyred for the faith? Now, that's the power of the gospel. And so, now we're here at this stage, where the third leg out to the world is going to be accomplished. And Pastor Jerry talked about how the gospel was introduced to the Gentiles at the home of Cornelius. But now the call of God is going to be on Barnabas and Paul to take the gospel to the world. And Luke is the one who's telling us all this, so that when we get to the last chapter in the Book of Acts, we find Paul preaching the gospel in Rome.
Why? Because every single person in the first generation, who when the gospel went to Rome would think Luke had every right to say, "Mission accomplished." The mission that Jesus gave in Acts 1:8, it's been accomplished for our generation. And now it's the time for the second, and the third, and every successive generation until right now, that you and I would get it, that you and I would take that mission. So, if you think for a moment that because we're talking about Barnabas and Paul being called to the ends of the world, this doesn't concern you, I hope by the end of this message, you realize, "No, that's not right." Here's why, here's why I'm going to tell you, it sounds like our mission statement, it should, "The Holy Spirit calls every believing man, woman, and child, to the mission of reaching every man, woman, and child." So, I want to see, and I want to talk, and I'm hoping that I'm looking at people who are going to be convinced that this belongs to me, that I am going to be a part of reaching every man, woman, and child. And so, the call comes here as we open up chapter 13 and we start with the very first verse. Here's what it looks like, "Now in the church at Antioch, there were prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. "While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.' So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off." There are some really cool things here, and I hope that I can convince you of them. Here's the first. Before we get to Acts 13:1, I want you to know that the Holy Spirit was already at work. I can show you that. The Holy Spirit was already at work. I've had what I would call, based on what someone else has written, I have had at my journey with Christ, I've had several crises of belief. Now, when I say that, that doesn't mean I'm deciding whether or not I'm going to walk with God. Here's what a crisis of belief is for me. When God says, "Deone, that part that you've been carrying inside your heart, you're not carrying that anymore. It needs to be dropped off here." And the work of God has been in such a way to prepare me for the next thing by already being at work in my heart now. And one of those times was way back in 1995, when because of this crisis of belief, someone handed me the Bible study called Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby. If you've never been there, if you've never been in that study, and even if you have, here's the main idea, find out where God is working and join Him. Find out where God is working and join Him.
That's why it's so important that I make this point that the Holy Spirit was already at work. Find out where He's working and join Him. Why? God doesn't need any of us to come up with plans and ask Him to bless it. He does not work that way. As A.W. Tozer says in The Knowledge of the Holy, God is always previous. Everything we do or are to do needs to be a response to the loving initiative of God. God, find out what He's doing. So, what in the world does that have to do with this mission and with Barnabas and Paul and the other three? How in the world does God demonstrate by what we just read that He's already at work? Well, you look at those guys, Barnabas, he is actually from Cyprus. And we know how he got to Antioch, the Bible tells us this in Acts 11, "Those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed, traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks or Gentiles also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. News of this reached the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch." So, he's the first name mentioned in Acts 13:1. How did he get to Antioch? He was from Cyrene, Cyprus, and then through the apostles at Jerusalem, he ends up in Antioch.And then you have the name, the second name that's mentioned is Simeon called Niger. He's from Africa. So is Lucius, the next one mentioned, he's from Cyrene. And then you have Manaen who was brought up in the home or the palace really of Herod the tetrarch. Herod the tetrarch is the one who put John the Baptist to death, and also presided over a brief trial of our Lord on the night before He went to the cross. And that palace was in Caesarea. So, Manaen is from Caesarea. And then there's Paul, we all know he came from Tarsus, but we need to know, it's very important that we know how in the world Paul got to Antioch. Here it is, "Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So, for a whole year, Barnabas and Saul met with the church, taught great numbers of people. And the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch." So, how did Paul end up in Antioch? Barnabas the encourager went and found Paul and brought him there. Do you realize, do you realize that only eternity will tell us just what God was able to do through Paul because Barnabas took a chance on this renegade named Paul when no one else would? This is significant. So, you look again at all five of these names, Barnabas is from Cyprus, and Simeon from North Africa, Lucius from Cyrene, Manaen from Caesarea, and Saul from Tarsus. Why am I saying that God was already at work? Well, if you look very careful, you recognize something, none of these five were natives of Antioch. What does that mean? God had already called and they had already responded to the mission field. They were already, these five men already were missionaries. What's a missionary? A missionary is nothing more than someone who says, "Wherever, whenever, I'll go." And they had that heart. And so it was no big surprise that God would actually look at Barnabas and Paul, amongst these men, and say, "I want these two to do a specific work for me." And I ask you, where's God working in your heart right now? What is God doing in your heart right now to prepare you to be one of those every believing man, woman, or child, to reach every man, woman, or child? Because God, if you're listening, will in fact be working in your heart to get you there. But I got to give a warning, especially for those who say, "I'm ready, I'm going out there right away," that God will often use someone only after He has put them what I call the backside of nowhere for a while. Moses, Paul, Jesus Himself in the wilderness, God will often put you to the side where it's like I don't even exist right now. Everything seems like winter, no life. He's preparing you for the work He wants to do through you. That's the first. Here's a second thought, the call of the Spirit was for a specific task. So, we look again at Acts 13 and we realize that God said, through His spirit, "Give me Barnabas, and give me Paul." And what they ended up doing on this first missionary journey is, they basically traveled through the region of Asia Minor. We call it Galatia. So, the churches that are mentioned in Acts 14 are merely the places they went. And my question is always going to be this one, how did they know? How did they know to go there? Because we're not other than the Holy Spirit sent them out, but we're not told how they knew to go there. But we knew one thing, they knew He had spoken, and they knew how to listen. They had learned to recognize the Holy Spirit's voice. That's why Edmond's, Pastor Edmond's message from a couple of weeks ago, so important, so important that we learn to recognize His voice, that we learn to recognize His voice. And in order to do that, we have to shut other voices out. This is true of me, so, I'm not preaching at you. But maybe one of the reasons why we don't really hear from God is because we're inviting too many people into the place of our hearts, and asking them to speak. And maybe we wouldn't need to speak to so many if we really just spoke to God. Because here's what I know, listen, God rarely shouts. That's not the way He does things. It's that still small voice, but you won't hear it, I won't hear it, if I'm too afraid to get along with Him and seek His face and not the opinion of every last person I might know on social media. This is the truth. God wants to call us. So, He calls Barnabas and Saul, and that's where our attention might be this morning, and if it is only there, we might miss something powerful. If you got your copy of God's word right in front of you, because we won't put it back on the screen, just look at the first verse of Acts 13, it says, "Now in the church..." Why is that so important, the word church? The Greek word is ecclesia.You say, "So what?" It means called out ones. God had called these people who blamed up this church, to be called out for the task of the mission. Let me make sure that you understand what you're doing right now, or what you should be doing, all of us are called out from the world to come into a place like this so that we can be equipped to go back out into the world and draw people to Christ. I've seen this in other churches, I love what we have, the mission statement. Just turn around and look at it when you leave. But I've seen this in the mission statement, or I've seen this in churches, when you're leaving, it will say something on the back wall, "You are now entering the mission field." So, if all I consider the church to be an opportunity for me to get away from the world, and then this little salt warehouse where we're all salt, we're collecting and clumping together as salt, rather than being sent out to the world, we've missed it. This is a specific call. And every single person in Antioch was called out, just like you are, wherever you are. So, we have a tendency, don't we? To lift up and glorify the professional, the person in vocational ministry. And our strategy to reach every man and woman and child might be to say, "Let's bring them into this building, and Jerry, you go after them." That's not how God's going to get it done. That you and I would recognize that God is going to use us where we are, because I'm going to say something that might prove why I have a doctor's degree, I'm being funny, God knows exactly where you are. And it might be entirely possible for you to begin to consider the sovereignty of God, that He not only knows where you are, He's put you there to be on mission with Christ. And in fact, you do exactly what I think the Book of Acts is trying to do, wherever the disciples were, they saw it as a platform to declare the gospel of Christ.
You may have a Job or a position in life that you can't stand, or you might have one that you absolutely love. Either way, where you are, because God knows where you are, and God's placed you where you are for now, it's a platform, it's a divine appointment for Jesus Christ. Let's not be so silly to think that the only people who are called are the professionals. What you and I do is a holy work, because it is our platform to declare the beauty of Jesus. No one, in my opinion, ever said that better than Martin Luther. Look at this, "Therefore, I advise no one to enter any religious order or priesthood," in other words, vocational ministry, "unless he is forearmed with this knowledge and understands that the works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they may be, do not differ one whit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the woman going about her household tasks, but that all works are measured before God by faith alone." So, we don't elevate. We honor, but we don't elevate the people in vocational ministry because we realize that what they do is not any more significant than what you and I do where we are. This is important. I want you to understand something about me, that my call to the mission did not start on August of 1984 when I received my first paycheck from The Chapel, it started earlier, when I was covering high school sports for a local newspaper, and then in a pallet factory making pallets, can you imagine me making pallets? Or TOPS for nine years. My ministry, my call to ministry did not start when I received my first paycheck from The Chapel, and it didn't end in February when I received my last. I am called to make Jesus known, so are you. And when I get that, I want you to know next, amazing things can happen. Amazing things happen when the church is aligned with the Spirit. And we get the privilege of seeing those kinds of things like this dear sister being baptized. If that's not amazing, I don't know what is. We get to see this, but amazing things happen when the Holy Spirit and the church are aligned. So, if I asked you, "Who sent Paul and Barnabas out?" And you said, "The church," you're right, look at the verse, "So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off." The church did. Don't make laying on hands weird. It's nothing more than, and everything but. But it's nothing more than the church affirming the call of the Spirit.
So, if you said, who sent them out? And you said, it's the church, you'd be right. But if you also said it was the Spirit, you'd be right. Look at the next verse, "The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus." So, the Spirit speaks, and the church affirms. That's how this work, is to be together. That we recognize in our midst, the Spirit is working, and so, we join Him and affirm it. But what was necessary for them to affirm it? They prayed, and they fasted.
I wonder if you'd agree with me that maybe sometimes the reason why I've missed the call of the Holy Spirit is because I wouldn't shut off the TV so that I could spend one hour in prayer, or I wouldn't push myself away from a table to have a meal, so that I could have a feast in His word. What I'm saying is that maybe, just maybe some of the reasons why you and I don't hear the voice of the Holy Spirit is because we won't do the work necessary to put ourselves in the place where we hear from Him. And that's a tragedy in the making. Because if we don't know what the Holy Spirit's doing, we're not in the place we should be. Here's another point, lean into the Holy Spirit for a burden for the lost. Lean into the Holy Spirit for a burden for the lost. Here's what Luke tells us in Acts 13:4, "The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia, sailed from there to Cyprus." So, what Luke tells us is that they went first to Cyprus. And you might be thinking, "Well, why does Luke tell us that? And why are you pointing that out? What is so important about them going to Cyprus?" Because if you look at the beginning of this journey, it won't stay this long, you look at the beginning of the journey, Barnabas is in charge, Barnabas is leading, why in the world would Barnabas then choose to go to Cyprus? Because that's where he was from. Why would Barnabas not want to reach to the people closest to him, the people that he loved? Because that's where he had a burden. I believe it was Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision, who said, "God, break my heart with the things that break the heart of God." And what breaks the heart of God is people who will go through their life rejecting His Son. This is what God is teaching us. Do you, do I have a burden for the lost?
I came to The Chapel for the very first time in August of 1979. And my sister, Kelly, had been coming before me for about a year, and she kept on saying, "You got to come to The Chapel, you got to come to The Chapel," I was going to the church I grew up in, "You got to come to The Chapel and hear Pastor Andrew," who's our founding pastor, "you got to hear him preach." And so, I came, and he wasn't there. You might be thinking the same thing today, "I invited a guy to come to church today to hear Pastor Jerry, and who's this guy?" Right? But the person who was speaking was a missionary from India called Ian Thomas. This is how it started.And I want you to pretend you're in the congregation way back in 1979. Here's this question, "Would you please raise your hand, how many of you know personally someone who does not know Jesus Christ as their savior?" Yeah. Same kind of reaction. Here's the second question, "What business do you and I have going to bed tonight without weeping for their souls?" It really was only about two years ago, where honestly, I had the first experience in my life, when someone close enough to me went into eternity and barring some incredible grace that God can bestow on a person. That man is in hell. Am I gripped by a burden for the lost? Perhaps no one has ever understood this, I think, better than a man, his name is John Knox. And John Knox was the founder of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. And this was his prayer, "God, give me Scotland or I die." Maybe that's the reason why it's said that Mary, Queen of Scots, has supposedly said this, "I fear the prayers of John Knox more than I fear all the assembled armies in Europe." Think about that, friend. What would it be like if I was in front of people who would actually pray, "God, give me Getzville or I die, God, give us Cheektowaga or I die, God, give us Lockport, give us Niagara Falls or I die, God, give me that wayward son or I die"? Do I, would I be willing to catch from this text and others in scripture the burden that God wants me to have for the lost, not just so they don't go to hell, but so that they can stand in the presence of the one who is beautiful, Jesus Christ? Do I have a burden for that? And if I don't, why not? Here's something else, one point more I want you to see, expect resistance, expect resistance. I'm not going to read the verses that follow, I'm going to tell you briefly for time's sake, what actually happens. They arrive, this missionary team, at a specific place, where the person, the target, if you will, is a Roman official named Sergius Paulus. But just like every other Roman official would have, he has a sidekick, and it's a sorcerer named Elymas or Bar-Jesus. And Bar-Jesus or Elymas understands that if Paulus hears the gospel, gives his life to Christ, Elymas is going to be in the unemployment line. And so, he gets in the way, or tries to get in the way of his master hearing the gospel. One of the themes, one of the themes of the Book of Acts is that if you get in the way of God, He's got a great way of getting you out of the way. That's exactly what He does here. Elymas is stricken with blindness for a while so that Sergius can hear the gospel, and he comes to Christ. Expect resistance and opposition.
I greatly am afraid of Christians who say something like this, "I started to do this, and I knew it was God because everything fell into place." That scares me, because it might be entirely possible that one of the reason why everything falls in place is because you're not doing anything to make the enemy mad, because it isn't going to be that way. And Paul's going to even talk about this all the way through his letters and his experiences in the Book of Acts. I have a firm belief that the thorn in the flesh that Paul was referring to were the obstinate Jews who followed and chased him all over Asia Minor until they got him arrested. Expect opposition. And that's going to have to be a heart struggle for you and for me, because you know what? When it comes to going out in the world, all of us, we want to fit in, don't we? We want to belong to the team. Can I ask you a serious question? Why would we expect to be included in the world that crucified your master? I think we need to take a look at that and understand that it's not going to be that way. We can expect resistance. I've spent most of my time, as I turn the page and come to the conclusion of my message, most of the time talking about the call of God to a specific task. And a specific task is to be on mission. But I want you to know that right in, talked into this passage of scripture, there's one more call, and I believe it's the more important one. Here it is, simply this, "Set apart for me." The Holy Spirit is speaking, "Set apart for me." What I'm saying is that the initial, and important, and always essential call of the Spirit is to Jesus first, and then the task. That we sit at His feet and learn of Him, and receive the manifold expressions of His grace, so that when we go out to the world, we actually have something to say, we actually have something to give them, people who talk and live out the reality of Jesus. You want to be aligned with the Holy Spirit. Look what Jesus said right before He went to the cross, here it is, "When the advocate," that's the Holy Spirit, "comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who goes out from the Father, He will testify about me, and you also must testify." It's how I'm walking through my life, led as the Bible tells me I should, lead by the Holy Spirit. I will agree with the Spirit and testify of Jesus. That is the direction of my heart, to speak of Jesus. Please hear me right, don't misunderstand what I'm about to say, the four spiritual laws, it has its place in witnessing, even though right now, I can tell you right now, I don't think I could name one. It has its place.
The marking up your Bible with the Romans Road, it has its place, but I think there's something more powerful, and that is that you know Jesus Christ. It's not on the screen, Paul wrote, "We have this treasure in broken jars that people can see Jesus in us, because that's the power." What I'm saying is, those things that I mentioned have their place, but it's far more important to be in love with Jesus. I think I demonstrated that in the first service, because unbeknownst to me, in the congregation right over there in the first row was my granddaughter, Geovanna. If you want me to take like an hour and a half to talk about my relationship with her, I will. I want you to understand something, I don't have my Bible marked up about it, I don't have index cards I'm now going to talk about Geovanna, just come over some time on a Wednesday afternoon and see the love relationship we have, and see how easy it is for me to talk about someone that I love too much for words, as I say to her. Why would that not be the case with Jesus? Because that's what I have to offer, that's all I have to offer. Yes, I can win people perhaps with an argument, you can't touch this, I love Jesus. And that is what changes everything. And I want you to hear that and see that from me so that my social media is not about me vomiting on about some issue, nor is my priority in a restaurant to tell you or tell the waiter how wrong they got my order, because there's something more important, that you would know Jesus, and you would see Him in me. Because there's one thing I fear about me, that I fear about you, and that is that if you don't see it this way, that you need to be with Him before you do, that you don't understand the need to have a reconciling relationship of love with Jesus, that your life will become, my life will become a sinkhole. Do you know what a sinkhole is? It's when there is erosion underneath the surface to the point that there's nothing to support what's on the outside, and it crashes. And the only thing that you have to find out is, how many people you'll take with you. We see this all the time, don't we? I don't want that. I want everything that I do publicly to be only a testimony of the internal relationship of love I have with Jesus, so that, this last point is important, the Spirit's call to mission always rests on a previous call to Jesus. So, on every campus, we're going to have a song, and it's almost like the song preaches my message better than I can. I want you to listen, and as you're listening and seeing the words, think, "How do you want me to respond, God, to what I've heard today? How do you want me to respond to the song?"
Told you, preach the message. I'm wondering this morning if maybe there are a few people in this room who can identify with this, back in 1976, I'm a senior in high school, and for pretty much the last four months of my high school experience, every time I went to church, the conviction and the drawing power of the Holy Spirit was so strong, and I didn't want to hear it. So, right as soon as the pastor got up to preach, I walked out, for four straight months, walked around the block a few times until the message was over. And it might be you. The Holy Spirit's been trying to get your attention that it is time for you to give your life to Christ, but you've been resisting. Maybe today's the last day that you're resisting. And maybe you'd go over to the fireside room, talk to a prayer partner about your need for Christ. Don't dismiss His voice. But there might be also a lot of us who hear the call of God and maybe we've got too many other things in our hands that are in the way. It's hard to be available to the Holy Spirit when the reason you might not hear His voice is because He already knows you won't do what He asks. And that's go to stop, if you know Him. I would encourage you to take your life literally before the Lord and say, "God, I am available. I'm letting go of everything that I've held onto as my security blanket, and I'm going to trust you, because I do not want to play or pretend anymore. I really do want to be available for whatever you want me to do, but I can't do that until you have my heart." And Father, on behalf of the Word of God and the Spirit who inspired it, Lord, I'm calling people here in this room, who know you as their Savior, I'm calling them up to the responsibility of the vow that we made, that we would follow you without any reservation. Our lives are yours. I hear your call, and Lord, I want you to know I'm available. Because if the Spirit testifies of Christ, that's exactly what I want to do. And I ask this in Christ's name, amen.