Discovering God’s Will by His Spirit

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Transcript:

Turn with me, if you would, in your Bibles to Acts chapter 16. Acts chapter 16. I mentioned this morning that we would talk tonight about the role of the Holy Spirit in discerning God’s will.

And I have to preface every time, it feels like I have to preface every time I teach on the Holy Spirit that we really should pay more attention to the Holy Spirit than we do. And I’m not saying that we deliberately ignore the Holy Spirit. I just feel like sometimes we as Baptists are a little bit afraid of the Holy Spirit because it’s been co-opted by, because that concept has been co-opted by those who teach things or in opposition of the Scriptures, and we don’t want people to think we’re charismatic.

One reason or another, we kind of shy away from the Holy Spirit. But it’s the teaching of Scripture, and we do hold ourselves out as people who base our faith and practice on Scripture, it is the clear teaching of Scripture that the Holy Spirit is a co-equal part of the Trinity, is every bit as much God as the Father and the Son. The Father teaches that, the Son teaches that.

We see all throughout Scripture that the Holy Spirit has a prominent role to play in the life of a Christian. Jesus, in his earthly body, what they call his incarnation form, which means he was born into human flesh, he couldn’t stay here with us forever. Because in that form, he was limited.

He had voluntarily limited himself. And again, I’ve told you before, I don’t completely understand how all that works. I just know what I see in Scripture.

And he even said that if he stayed here, he could not send the comforter who would be with us. And one of the great things about the Holy Spirit is he can indwell each of us at all times. The Holy Spirit is not bound by that human body.

And he can indwell me, and he can indwell you, and he can indwell believers in the uttermost parts of the world. And he can speak to all of us at the same time. He can intercede with the Father.

The Bible says with groanings that words can’t express. He can be there regardless of any other space and time limitations. He can be with all of us.

And so it was God’s plan all along to leave this comforter, to leave the Holy Spirit with us, to guide us, to lead us into all truth. And so I think we do ourselves a disservice, for one, when we ignore the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. You know, it wasn’t a plan B for the Holy Spirit to be left here with us.

It’s been God’s plan. God the Father sent the Holy Spirit. God the Son called for the Holy Spirit to be sent.

This was God’s plan. And so we shouldn’t ignore the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives as we’re seeking God’s will in the Scriptures, as we’re praying for God to reveal His will to us, as I talked about this morning. We should also realize that it’s the Holy Spirit of God who speaks to us and teaches us.

It says in the book of John that He will lead us into all truth. And so we sort of wrap up this discussion tonight of discovering God’s will by looking at the role of the Holy Spirit in teaching us God’s will. And the reason I preface with all of this is, again, I’m skeptical myself when somebody says, oh, the Spirit told me this.

Okay, this ought to be good. But, you know, there’s nothing in the Bible that would lead us to believe the Spirit can’t tell us things. And when I’m honest about it, the Spirit has led me and told me things as well.

And I’m sure if you think about it, the Spirit has led you and told you things at times too. The Spirit probably talks to us a whole lot more than we realize just because we’re not listening. We shut that aspect of things off.

Again, as I’ve said throughout this series though, anything we need to test against Scripture because the Holy Spirit of God will not. It’s not that one is greater than the other. It’s that Scripture was inspired by the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God will not reveal something to you or to me that is in direct opposition to what He’s already revealed to all of us in Scripture.

And so we test things against the objective standard of Scripture, but folks, let’s not cut the Holy Spirit out of our spiritual growth, our progress, our discernment of God’s will. Let’s not cut the Spirit out and say, I’m not listening to that. It’s like trying to run a marathon on one leg.

We need the scriptures and we need the Holy Spirit to guide us to the truth that’s in the scriptures. So we’re going to look at Acts chapter 16 tonight and see an example of how the Holy Spirit can lead us to discovering God’s will. And we’re going to start in verse 6 of Acts chapter 16.

It’s talking about Paul’s, I believe, second missionary journey. And it says, now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia, after they were come to Mycenae, they are saved to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered them not. Okay, if you’re confused, that’s okay because that’s a lot of geography there.

I would encourage you to go back and look at your maps. You can look while I’m talking or you can look later. But you can see where these place names are if you’ve got maps in the back of your Bible and sort of trace the route that they went.

But what’s being pointed out to us, what’s being recorded for us, is that Paul is on a missionary journey. They’ve been to preach at certain places in what’s now modern-day Turkey. Galatia is in Turkey.

Phrygia is in Turkey. So they’ve gone there and they’ve been preaching. And now they’re about ready to go to the next place.

They’re about ready to go to Asia. Now, when it says Asia, it’s not talking like we would think East Asia, China, Japan. It’s talking about the Roman province of Asia, which is also part of Turkey.

It was actually called Asia Minor, because the whole big continent that we think of is Asia, and they were saying that’s the little Asia. And so he said the next logical place to go is we’re going to go speak and preach in this part of the Roman world right next to us, this province next door in Asia. And yet God, the Holy Spirit of God, said no. Now that’s kind of unusual for us to think of, that the Holy Spirit of God would say, no, don’t go preach the gospel there.

And so they said, okay, we’ll avoid Asia, and you can see the route, we’re not going to leave out of here and head to Asia, we’ll go up to Mysia, and from there we’ll go into Bithynia. But the Holy Spirit of God again tells them, no, the Spirit suffered them not. The Spirit said, no, don’t do that, don’t go there.

Again, that’s unusual for us to think about because the Great Commission is so ingrained, at least in our thinking, if not always in our practice, unfortunately, that the thought is, well, of course, we’re always supposed to go. We’re always supposed to be telling. We’re always supposed to be preaching the gospel.

And that’s true. But here he was, Paul said, I want to go here and preach the gospel. And the Holy Spirit had other ideas.

And how many times do we have missionaries in our midst? Either they come and speak here at the church, or you go to some kind of missions conference, or some kind of state meeting, or something, and you hear a missionary speak, and they will tell us stories where they had plans to go do this in furtherance of the gospel on their field, wherever it is, whatever country, and yet God orchestrated it. They prayed and had a sense, or had a leaning, or had an opportunity over here, and God led them in a completely other direction, completely opposite direction, and they know that it was the leading of God, and something incredible happened that was beyond what they were even capable of.

We hear those stories all the time, and I will tell you, there’s not a specific instance that comes to mind because I’ve heard so many of these kind of stories where the missionary intends to go here, and yet God sends him over here and something incredible happens. These things still happen today where God shuts the door and says, no, don’t go that direction. Wait a minute, God, I want to go preach the gospel over here.

Yeah, I’m not telling you don’t preach the gospel, but go over here. And I’ve often wondered, why do those stories seem to happen? Why do these miraculous stories seem to happen outside of our borders to the missionaries, but don’t seem to happen as much to us here?

And I really believe it’s because here we’re in our comfort zone. We don’t realize our dependence on God, and we’re not as attuned to the voice of His Holy Spirit. Whereas you get outside of your comfort zone and begin realizing, I am completely and utterly dependent on God’s will.

You start to listen to the voice of the Spirit. Now, we’re no less dependent on God. We’re no less dependent on his protection, his provision, his direction.

We’re no less dependent than they are here. It’s just we don’t realize sometimes how dependent we are because, well, this is my home. This is where I live.

This is where real life happens and all that miracle stuff happens over there. Really, I think the Spirit of God speaks to us more than we realize. And so the Spirit suffered them not.

The Holy Spirit of God told Paul and told Paul and Silas, don’t go and preach there. And so it says in verse 8, they passing by Mysia came down to Troas. They’re kind of winding their way around, kind of winding their way around on the west coast of Turkey.

And it says when they came to Troas, I guess they lodged there, they stopped there. Now that’s kind of in the same general area as Asia, but he’s not going there on a missionary journey. He’s just going which way God leads him.

Because you get up to a certain point and you run into the Black Sea. You can either go right toward Bithynia and the Spirit said, no, don’t go there, or you go to the left back toward Greece. Verse 9 says, And a vision appeared to Paul in the night.

There stood a man of Macedonia and prayed him, saying, come over into Macedonia and help us. Now, the man is not praying to Paul as though he’s praying to God, but what he’s doing there is begging Paul. Paul goes to sleep, he sees a vision, and there’s a Macedonian man.

Macedonia is not the country of Macedonia that we think of today that was part of Yugoslavia. It was part of Greece at the time. And there’s this Greek man from Macedonia who appears to Paul in this vision and said, Would you please come over to us?

Come over and help us. This is what we call the Macedonian call. And when he had seen the vision, immediately, and after he had seen the vision, Immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with going and preaching the gospel in Asia. Nothing wrong with going and preaching the gospel in Bithynia. It was going to happen at some point.

God insisted that it would happen at some point. But in the moment that God said, no, don’t go there, you, Paul, it’s not that nobody was supposed to preach the gospel there, that Paul, you in this moment are not supposed to go preach in Bithynia or Asia. Now that seems to be strange to us, but it’s because God had other ideas.

God was already preparing a field for Paul to go work in. And so it was important at that moment that Paul set aside his ideas about what he wanted to do and followed the direction of the Holy Spirit, which was going to lead him to this is God’s will for you over here in Macedonia. Therefore, verse 11, therefore loosing from Troas, and Troas, by the way, is a Greek name for Troy.

So the city of Troy, Helen of Troy, Trojan horse, all of those things. That’s where they’re talking about, Troas. We came away, or we came with a straight course towards Samothracea and the next day to Neapolis.

So they have sailed across the Bosporus. I know, a lot of geography, I’m sorry. They had sailed across the Bosporus into Greece, out of Turkey.

And from thence to Philippi, which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia and a colony. And we were in that city abiding certain days. So Luke here, who’s writing the book of Acts, was with Paul and said, And when we left Troy, we sailed across there into Greece.

We went directly to Samothrace. We went into Neapolis. And then we knew, though, that the destination was Philippi, because that was the chief city, that was the capital of Macedonia.

And that’s where God had sent them. Paul didn’t take time to camp out in Samothrace or Neapolis. He knew that God was sending him.

The Holy Spirit was leading him to Philippi, and that was God’s will. And on the Sabbath, we went out of the city by a riverside where prayer was wont to be made. And we sat down and spake unto the women which resorted thither.

So there were women outside the city on the Sabbath day who were praying. Now, we don’t know entirely what all of these women were praying to. As I read the context of the passage, I know that at least some of the women were worshiping the true God.

They may have been Jewish women who were there in Philippi. But we know that this was a place where people came and prayed. It was a place where people came and worshiped.

And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshiped God, That’s how I know that some of these were Jewish people because she was worshiping the one true God. She was there as she heard us, it says, whose heart the Lord opened that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul. Folks, there’s a lot of good theology in this passage that I wish we had time to camp out on for a while.

A couple of things. God led them there where he was already preparing the people. There were people who were already on the right path.

hey, if they were Jews who were worshiping the one true God, they were already on the right path. It’s not that that alone was going to get them to heaven, but they were already on the right path because they weren’t following after these pagan deities of the Greeks. Paul already had a common ground here of being able to say here from the scriptures, let me tell you about the resurrected Christ. God was already working in this woman’s life, and the Bible says here that the Lord opened her heart.

now we forget and I’ve said this many times we forget about the role of the Holy Spirit in evangelism and conversion and I think that’s part of maybe just a small part of but it’s definitely part of the reason why we don’t evangelize more is because we forget about the role of the Spirit we we think it’s our responsibility I’ve got to convince them I’ve got to know enough I’ve got to twist their arm I’ve got to make them make a decision I can’t do that I’m going to mess it up and then we just shut down. Whereas if we realize it’s really not our responsibility to convert anybody, but it is our responsibility to open our mouths and share what we know to be true. There are going to be questions you can’t answer.

There are going to be questions I can’t answer. There are going to be questions that maybe nobody can answer. But we share what we know.

We preach what we do know. Paul even said that he determined to know nothing among a group of people saved Christ and him crucified. If you know Christ crucified and risen, folks, you know enough.

You tell what you know, and God does the preparation and the changing of the heart. And he was preparing the heart of Lydia even before they came, and he opened her heart to be receptive to the message on that day. So she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.

She listened because God had made her heart receptive. And when she was baptized at her household, it seems like a step here. Where’s the public profession?

I’m guessing by the fact that they know she was receptive is because she did something about it. Baptism was always preceded by a public profession of faith. So this woman listened.

She took to heart the message that was preached about Christ by Paul. She received that message by faith and then followed it up with baptism in verse 15. When If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there.

And she constrained us. Her whole household was baptized with her. Now that seems strange to us.

There are passages in scripture where somebody says, what must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you’ll be saved, you and your whole house. It doesn’t mean that if I as a father, or you as a father or a mother, trust Christ that your children are automatically saved.

that applies to the whole household. That’s not what it’s talking about. In the Eastern world, in the Eastern mind, religion and culture are very much connected.

That’s why a lot of times there’s resistance to conversion. In a Muslim family, in a Muslim country, a lot of times you’re ostracized from the family if you convert to another faith. I have relatives who’ve converted to Catholicism.

It bugs me, but I still love them. They’re still family. And I maintain we don’t teach the same gospel, just to make that clear.

In Eastern religions, you convert to another religion and you’re dead to the family. And so a lot of times, even today, if people convert, they’re either risking alienation or they convert as a family. And not because one person says, oh, this is the way it’s going to be, you do this, but because there’s something about that social cohesion.

And hey, if grandpa believes this, maybe it’s worth looking into. too. Maybe there’s, hey, if mom and dad believe it, maybe there’s something to this.

And so I think that’s what’s going on here, that when the Bible talks about, and their household, it’s because one person said, hey, this must be the truth, and they all were willing to listen at that point, and entire families were converted to Christ. See, this whole idea of individual, we are saved as individuals, don’t get me wrong. Each person has to trust Christ individually, but this idea of I’m going to make all my decisions by myself as an individual. I’m going to go my own way, forget what anybody else thinks. That’s kind of peculiar to American culture.

We’re a lot more individualistic than everybody else. So it’s not that she got saved on behalf of her whole household, but she trusted Christ and was baptized and her whole family followed suit. Just want to make sure we understand that concept tonight.

And so she said, if you judge me to be faithful to the Lord, then I want you to come stay at my house. So they stayed at her house. The purpose for that was she wanted them to stay in Philippi longer because she wanted the gospel to be preached in their area.

She was the first known, the first recorded convert to Christianity in Europe. And it came to pass, verse 16, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gained by soothsaying. So she was a fortune teller.

She was able to do that because she had a demon inside of her. And she made great profit for the men who owned her. The same followed Paul and us and cried saying, these men are servants of the most high God, which show unto us the way of salvation.

Now, I’ve read that for a long time and thought, okay, even the demons recognize who Christ is. I think there’s more to that than this though, because the Bible says that grieved Paul. I think there’s truth to the statement, even the demons recognize who Christ is, and they recognize that they have to obey.

You notice when he cast the demons out of the man in Gadara and into the herd of swine, there’s no argument from the demons. They just had to do it. But the reason I think this is grieving to Paul is because they’re doing it in a mocking way.

They’re mocking the preaching of the gospel. And this she did many days, but Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out of her the same hour, not an hour later, but that means at the same time, at that moment, he came out of her.

Folks, there is power in the name of Jesus. And when her master saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas and drew them into the marketplace under the rulers. They realized their gravy train was over.

She couldn’t tell fortunes anymore because the demon was gone. Hey, forget she’s just been liberated from a demon. We’re worried about our pocket book, but I guess that’s all that matters.

And brought them to the magistrate saying, these men being Jews do exceedingly trouble our city. They brought them before the judges and said, these men are making trouble. And on top of that, hey, they must be troublemakers because they’re Jews.

Okay. And teach customs which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe being Romans. What was not lawful for them was to claim Jesus as Lord.

That word Lord seems so innocuous to us today, but in their day, Caesar was Lord. Your Lord was your sovereign king, your sovereign master. And for them to say Jesus is Lord is for them to, is challenging loyalty to Caesar.

And so they said, it’s not lawful. And the multitude rose up together against them and the magistrates rent off their clothes and commanded to beat them. This seems like some of the mob stuff going on in the news right now around our country.

They do something somebody doesn’t like, and let’s just tear them up and beat them up. And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely, who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison and made their feet fast in the stocks. Now, obviously, his job was to keep any prisoner there, but he had been so commanded by the mob and probably was so fearful of the mob and the magistrates that, okay, these guys I really need to keep in here, that he put them in the innermost part of the jail and made their feet fast in the stalks.

They were not getting out. And at midnight, Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God, and the prisoners heard them. These men had incredible faith in God.

They’re being thrown in prison. I’m going to be whining the whole time. And they are praying and singing praises to God in full view and hearing of the other prisoners.

And suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bands were loosed. That’s a big earthquake, that it shook the whole jail to its foundations and liberated everybody who was in there, not just Paul and Silas. And the keeper of the prison, awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword and would have killed himself, supposing the prisoners had been fled.

He saw the doors open, figured everybody had fled, and he’s going to be killed anyway, but with that mob, it’s going to be a slow and agonizing death, so I might as well just off myself now, he’s thinking. But Paul cried with a loud voice saying, do thyself no harm, for we are all here. Now, I understand Paul and Silas still being there, but why in the world are the other criminals still in the jail?

And my best guess, and this is just conjecture. I don’t know. You see and hear somebody who’s an otherwise sane man singing praises to God about being in prison.

You might be curious about what that man has to say and what’s going on in his mind. And we see in other places in the book of Acts that the Greeks are very curious about any kind of novel idea. So Paul said, don’t hurt yourself, we’re all here.

Then he called for a light and sprang in and came trembling and fell down before Paul and Silas. He’s got to realize, First of all, he’s trembling because he was about to die. But also, I’m sure, trembling because something is weird here that these men are all still here.

And brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? Now, wait a minute. Why is he asking them about salvation?

You think maybe he heard them singing and praying also and praising God? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved and thy house. That’s what I spoke of earlier.

Hey, this offer is not just good for you. It’s good for your whole household too. If they’ll believe, they’ll be saved too.

And they spake unto him the word of the Lord and to all that were in his house. Folks, he went and got his family. He said, come here, these guys.

And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes and was baptized, he and all his, straightway. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house. They all believed.

They all trusted Christ. They were all baptized. Now, what does this story have to do with the Holy Spirit? We know that the Holy Spirit is responsible for opening men’s hearts to the gospel, to the preaching of God’s word.

We know that it’s the Holy Spirit that makes fertile ground in somebody’s heart to receive God’s word. The Holy Spirit was at work already. Already was at work in Macedonia, where he was not preparing a place for Paul in Bithynia or Asia at that point.

Now, that doesn’t mean that God didn’t want those people to be saved, but God had another plan and said, this needs to happen at this time. And so when Paul tried to go to Asia, the Holy Spirit said, no, that’s not God’s will for you. So when Paul turns and tries to go to Bithynia, the Holy Spirit says, wait, no, that’s not God’s will for you either.

The Holy Spirit gave Paul a vision in the night of somebody in Macedonia who said, come over and help us. The Holy Spirit led Paul to discern God’s will was for him to go to Macedonia. I have to believe the Holy Spirit led him out of the city to where prayers were taking place down by the river.

I have to believe that the Holy Spirit led him to exactly where he could find Lydia and preach to her. The Holy Spirit led him to go out into the marketplace the day that he did, so that that little girl could be liberated from her spiritual bondage, if not her physical bondage. And the Holy Spirit led Paul to be put in prison and to respond to that imprisonment in just the way that he did so that the jailer in his entire household, just like Lydia and hers, could find freedom, could find hope, could find forgiveness in Jesus Christ. It definitely was God’s will for Paul to go to Macedonia.

And it was the Holy Spirit who told him, go here, not there. It’s not the only time in Scripture we see the Holy Spirit leading somebody in one direction or another. And folks, the same Holy Spirit of God who was at work in Paul’s day is the same Holy Spirit of God who’s at work in our day.

The same Holy Spirit who Jesus told us would guide us into all truth. Folks, that doesn’t just mean in our study of the scriptures, although that is part of it. We read the scriptures and with the help of the Holy Spirit we study and he can help us to discern the truth.

He can illuminate the truth for us. But in decisions, in things in life, what am I supposed to do here? The Holy Spirit, folks, can give us unctions, can speak to us.

I know we don’t want to base our whole Christian life on feelings, but for lack of a better word, the Holy Spirit can sometimes just give us a feeling, you know, I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not supposed to do this. Have you ever been in a situation where you’re about to make a decision, and I don’t even mean a sinful decision.

You’re just about to make a decision, and you feel like the Holy Spirit is throwing up a red flag. What was that show back years ago? It was before my time, but I’ve heard people talk about it, where the robot, the danger, danger.

You know what show I’m talking about? Do you ever have a moment? Have you ever had a moment where you feel like the Holy Spirit is throwing up his arms and yelling, Danger!

Danger! at you. Don’t do this.

Folks, the Holy Spirit can lead and guide us. Because the Holy Spirit is part of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is God.

And just like I talked about this morning, he sees the whole picture. He knows what God’s will is. So three things that I want to share with you tonight, and then we’ll be out of here shortly.

First of all, the Holy Spirit may surprise us and challenge our idea. as we look to the Holy Spirit of God to help us through this maze sometimes of discerning God’s will. And can you help me understand what this scripture is teaching me?

Can you help me know what to do in this situation? Can you give me some leadership here about what choice I’m supposed to make? The Holy Spirit will sometimes surprise us.

If you’re just looking for the Holy Spirit to agree with what you already wanted to do, you may just need to call your friend down the street to do that because the Holy Spirit has his own agenda. By that I don’t mean an agenda separate from God’s, but his agenda is not to just do whatever we want to do. Paul had been ministering through this region for some time, and his travels had taken him around and through Asia before, and it would do so again later.

But when he found himself here this time, it would have been natural for him to go ahead and say, you know what, I’m going to preach in Asia, I’m going to do what I’ve done before, I’m going to do what I’ve done elsewhere before. But we see that the Holy Spirit had other ideas. The Holy Spirit said, no, no, not now, not this time.

Instead, the Holy Spirit said, don’t stay here and preach. Do not stay here and preach. Do not go to Bithynia.

And as he continued to journey around Turkey, he found door after door after door closed by the Holy Spirit of God. We see that in verses 6 and 7 where it talks about his travels. So Paul is somebody who was on the mission field and was attuned to the Spirit of God in a way that we really should be and could be if we’d realized that we really are dependent on God.

Paul, as somebody who was attuned to the Holy Spirit, realized, wait a minute, I have this idea of what I think God would want, but that’s not what the Holy Spirit’s saying. The Holy Spirit said, no, you’re supposed to go over here. And so as we look for the Spirit’s guidance in trying to discern the will of God, Don’t just expect that the Holy Spirit’s going to always agree with whatever you think you’re supposed to do.

Sometimes the Holy Spirit is going to tell you something surprising. Sometimes the Holy Spirit’s going to want you to get out of your comfort zone a little bit. Sometimes the Holy Spirit’s going to tell you to do som

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