Acts, 15:1-35
Vern Peterman · May 29, 2005
Acts (2005), No. 21
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262326514457

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

You'll study it again and you'll see something you didn't see before. Ever been through that experience? And I keep doing that again and again and again. Oh man, I didn't know that and I didn't see that. Rich things come out. And the reason is that this is not like any other human work of literature. And that's that because it is inspired by the Holy Spirit, there is a depth that is infinite. within the scripture and that makes it neat.

So what we're doing is just hitting the high spots and so don't think that because we're going through Acts that we're hitting it all. We're just hitting the high spots and in truth we could study this for years. I don't propose that we do that but there's much more there than we're hitting at first grab here. Let's start, let's take a look at, you got 1536 excuse me, back up, 15.1-35, that should be the first one we look at. Alright, and we left you last time with some questions there, starting on page 2, the bottom of page 2, first question.

Looking at what Peter had to say in verses, and this is chapter 15, 7-11, and this is Peter speaking at the Jerusalem Council meeting, What does it sound like Peter would say is required for salvation? What real distinction does Peter make between how Jews and Gentiles are saved and brought into the church? What did you come up with on that? What's that?

No distinction? You hear what Laban said? No distinction. Anybody disagree? How can you possibly say that, Laban? Yeah, faith alone. Yeah, that's why. Yeah, he talks about faith. He talks about believing and that's it. Okay? There's no footnotes. No quid pro quos. No caveats. None of those.

It's belief. You have faith. That's it. He makes some reference back to this event that here he was when The Gentiles at Cornelius' house became believers, and he makes some quick reference back to that. Other than that, he just lays it right down on the line. It is by believing, it is by faith, that's it, nothing more, nothing else. He doesn't say, well the Jews do this dance and the Gentiles do this other one. No, it is by faith, period. Both Jews and Gentiles come into the church by faith, by believing. Okay, good, you got the right answer in spite of my challenging you.

Number two, Dr. Luke does not elaborate on the content of what Barnabas and Paul had to say. So here I'm calling for a little speculation, but some reasonable speculation. Given the decisions that were made at this council, what does it appear that Barnabas and Paul did convey to the rest who were there? What do you think Barnabas and Paul said? It doesn't say what they said right in this context, but what do you think that Barnabas and Paul said based on how they responded?

How did they react? What did Barnabas and Paul have to convey to the apostles and the elders and the others that were gathered there? Yeah, they'd gone there, and as a matter of fact, they found how did the Jews react? that they went to. Some Jews believed, but what did many of the Jews do? They opposed Paul and Barnabas, right?

They had violent opposition. As a matter of fact, it's not done. They're going to find out shortly, and we're going to see that within a couple of chapters here. The opposition from the Jews would be substantial. So to make the Jews the gateway would be kind of retrogressive, it would be going backwards, because first of all, their experience was that there were Jews that believed, but also many that soundly rejected and roundly rejected the gospel. They also saw that just like Peter experienced, that the Gentiles would believe and be saved. And that's precisely as simple as they presented it as they went along. Okay. Um, okay. Question three.

James is the last speaker whose comments and open testimony at this council were recorded. Does this mean that he was the leader of the church in Jerusalem, just happened to be the last one to speak, or what else does it say? Any thoughts on that? Was James the big kahuna? The big mucky muck? What's that? He was the brother of Jesus. Okay, so they had some place there in that.

James wasn't saved as a Christian in a part of the church until he believed though, right? Yeah, James too. And James was the last one recorded, but we don't have any real evidence that he was like the grand spokesman, the president, or any other high title. What we get is a sampling of, here's Peter, here's Paul and Barnabas, here's James, different ones testifying.

What they had to say was in sync with one another, right? What they had to say was in unison and so they recorded that and the rest of the church understood that and it was an agreement. So James' last one recorded doesn't appear In spite of that, that he's looked upon as, you know, I'm the big mucky mucker. I'm the one that calls the shots. Just the last one recorded. There's no titles given to him. He didn't say, based on what James said, they did this. So, real interesting. Okay, question four.

The account of this council concludes that all the apostles and the elders and the whole church gathered there We're all in agreement regarding this decision when a decision is to be reached in church matters What if anything does this passage say about how those in the church should reach decisions today? Why am I not in this case the decision in Jerusalem was conveyed to the church of the Antioch? Does this mean that one church should direct the affairs of another today? How far my decisions of one church impact another church ah? so what we do is is we'll get Roger and Mike and how and and I together, and we'll have an elders meeting, and tell the people over in California how they're supposed to run their church.

Right? They'd love that. Who are these guys, right? Now, does this passage give us anything about how a church is to operate? What have we been saying about the character of the Book of Acts? Rachel's got it right. It's a transitional book, okay, for one. So we can't just take whatever happens in Acts and say, ah, that's the cookie cutter. That's the pattern, okay? Right.

So what else can we say about this gathering? We want to search for a gathering. This was still in the Apostle program. That would be why I searched, like, in Jerusalem, with the Apostles. Yeah, we're not certain that any of the books of the New Testament have been written at this point. At most, a couple of them. Possibly Galatians and James. Something, maybe Mark. That's about it. But it's also possible that by this council, none of them had been written.

They are operating substantially from Scripture, if not entirely, out of the Old Testament. They are operating, as Rachel has pointed out, with Apostles present. The Apostles are present there. Do we have Apostles here? No. And that's one reason why we don't send a letter to the churches over in California and tell them how to run their ship. Because we're not Apostles. The Apostles, having apostolic authority, could talk to multiple churches about how things were to operate.

They could direct through Titus and Timothy, here's how things operate. But we don't see elders directed to tell other churches, here's how you do it. You don't see that example. So the character of this meeting here is different from what you see in the church today. We have scripture now, they didn't have New Testament scripture then. They had apostles then, we don't have them now. The apostles had a specific role. They had spiritual gifts in place that we don't have now. Yeah, Art?

Regarding what is done in California, and what is done in the Church in California violates what Scripture says to us today, and as you have said, and several others have said, that we don't have the right to spill that, but we should warn our own people Yes. Thank you for bringing that up. Thank you for bringing that up. Because we don't send letters to the churches in California telling them how to run their churches, doesn't mean that we don't point out what's true and what's false here.

We don't want to characterize the churches as simply, hey, here's a list of things not to do. We don't want to just be, you know, here's the negative side. But we do want to be responsible in giving warning about things that are off the track. That's not to, you know, be slanderous of anybody. It is not to speak ill of anyone.

But it is in order to point out what is true and what is false. And it is the example that we see, for example, going through Ephesians and Colossians. What does Paul do? He says, don't do this, but do this. He points out, not only is the positive statement, but the negative statement, this is how it ought not to be. This must never be mentioned among you. Those kinds of statements.

And you're right, Art, those warnings are part of what needs to take place in the church. Because that is one example we have, as the apostles wrote, it is as we teach scripture, what we're going to encounter. And it is in the nature of the world we live in. Until we walk through heaven's gates, warnings will be necessary. Cautions will be necessary. So, yes, excellent point. Yes? So what do you think about, compared to the need to be culturally relative, We're going to see more of that. He's asking the question of cultural relevance. You can see in a larger sense what easily needs to be culturally relevant. If I came to you and just started speaking in Spanish or Russian or Bundling or something, you would be puzzled. it wouldn't communicate, and that's something that's fairly obvious to people.

But then we get to the question of how do we adapt what we do and how we communicate as a church to the culture, and also drawing a line, what do we decide, hey, we're not going to adapt to this. There may be things that the culture is doing that we say, hey, those are not culturally neutral, that those are in fact things over the line. And I'm glad you brought that up because that's something we're going to encounter as we get into the Book of Acts. I think probably the great focal point of that is in Acts 17 where Paul was talking to the philosophers in Athens. But how do we make that connection that communicates well with the culture and at the same time maintain the purity of the gospel and the character of the church.

One of the points that I think is important to make, and we see it from the New Testament epistles, is that today's church has recognized, hey, we need to be culturally relevant, and sometimes what they have done has brought too much of the world into the church, and that can be a problem.

It's also important for the church to recognize that our gatherings are not primarily focused on evangelism. And the reason is, this is a gathering of the church. The evangelism goes on primarily out there, not here. It's not that we have some blanket statement, we never present the gospel. We're going to do it this morning in the main service. The primary purpose of the church gathering together is what we saw in Ephesians 4, the building up of the body of Christ. That's what we're here about.

So we don't have lots and lots of altar calls like a lot of churches do, or seeker-sensitive services, things of that sort, because the focus of what we're doing here is to build up the body of Christ. And you do that with things that are done among believers for the building up of believers. not by making something in the church that is targeted for those on the outside.

Excellent point. Thinking those things through carefully is really important and really critical. The modern church in America has probably not done as well at that as it should because there has been a tendency to not Either not connect with the culture, one, or two, to go too far with it and not see the biblical dividing line. And there is a dividing line. Some examples, because I think your question is really valuable. Examples would be, when we go into another culture, are we drawing upon things that they understand or even avoiding things or conveying things that they are confused by?

I brought up the example of Peace Child, where they heard the story of Judas, and the tribal people thought, oh, he's the hero. Man, he stung them good. Until they understood that Judas had betrayed the Peace Child. And then they said, oh, that's the worst thing you could do. Then Judas was no longer the hero. and they understood that Christ was God's peace child. The exchange of the child between the tribes that meant establishing peace and betraying the peace child was unthinkable.

It allowed them to understand. I had a friend years ago whose name was Paul Carlson, who was in a tribe in northern Mexico called the Tarahumara tribe. When he came across Psalm 23, where it says, He leads me beside still waters, He couldn't translate it that way. He had to translate it, he leaves me besides moving and rushing waters. Because they believed that the still waters had little imps or demons in them called weedlebees. And so to them, that leaving them beside still waters would be a horrifying thing to do.

So this is again the question, how do I carry the message into another culture so that they understand? Real important question and something that Not just missionaries, but the church constantly has to be thinking about, how do I do it? It is incredibly valuable as well as critical where you draw that line. Let's take a look at the next section here. What I want to do to give us an introduction because this is where Paul and Silas now are going to head off.

And we'll see why it's Paul and Silas are going to head off into some of the same churches that they'd seen before but then Head to Philippi. So what I want to do is go through a couple years ago. We talked through Philippians And this has been over two years ago So by way of recollection for some of you by way of new information for others we'll go through this Here's Philippi, which is the first church, basically, established on the European continent. And you see some of these other major cities that are involved in the New Testament evangelism and church establishment.

I'm going to pass through this. Here's the Ignatian Way, which was a Roman road that passed east-west right through the middle of Philippi. And here is remnants of it right now. still remaining, including the one on the lower left that even has chariot ruts, if you can imagine that, that were worn into the rock. Here's a little close-up of that one.

It was a Roman colony established 30 BC under Caesar Augustus. And the Roman soldiers and officials were planted there. Their commission, so to speak, was you make this a little Rome. We want you to think like Romans. We want you to act like Romans. We want you to represent Rome in that area. That was the appointment of a colony. They had military, political, and cultural presence. Roman to the core. It was to work its way out into the rest of the culture.

They enjoyed a tax-free status and special funding, among other privileges. You live in Philippi? No taxes. Cool. All right. Philippi was one of five cities in the New Testament. By the way, those are listed as five. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're all Roman colonies of the New Testament era.

But Philippi is the one that is named as a colony, and that's Act 1612 Now here's kind of the overhead map see the the main road going east-west through there That's the Roman Road And it's still there today still being used just they put asphalt over the top of it goes right through the middle of Philippi You have on the upside on the upside is kind of up the hill and you have the theater off to the right there and off to the left you've got several kind of sanctuaries of the various pagan religions and And then on the other side is the forum.

That forum there is where we'll see here Paul and Silas will be whipped in public. It's also probably where they encountered the slave girl that we'll read about shortly here. And then you go farther down, there's the baths there, and then they've got a market hall, which is kind of an office for the open market forum there. Here's more of this roadway. Here's the Lion of Amphipolis, and it was done by Alexander the Great, tribute to one of his generals, and it's between Philippi and Thessalonica there. This is traditionally what was Paul and Silas' prison cell. I would say that that's debated, just so you know. Sometimes you'll see pictures of it. They're arguing back and forth. Some people think it was something else. This shows some French archaeologists who are working through Philippi there.

Here's the theater. They had a theater, and of course there were theatrical productions as well as athletic demonstrations. And of course, being Roman, what would you expect? Military demonstrations, right? In the middle of this theater here. Here's another perspective looking down. And then you see out in that kind of ribbon, that's that ribbon of highway, that's the Old Via Ignatia, Ignatian Way, and some of the perspective there. So when the people would be gathered up in that theater, you get some idea of what their view would be like.

Looking down from the hill, this is the hill above Philippi where the theater's kind of off to the left side of where we are now. This is looking down at Philippi. Here's the highway that's now paved. That's the Roman road that's now been paved over. And those places you see right in the lower portion, those are the pagan temples. And then they have the forum where Paul and Silas were whipped right in the area just the other side of the highway and then farther back is the gymnasium and bathhouse and things of that sort. Oh, by the way, the hill up behind them was that lots of gold mines that were up there.

So that was another one of the kind of financial attractions to Philippi. There was lots of pagan worship, and Athena, by the way, was the goddess of the warriors. So being a lot of soldiers were there, that would be prominent. A number of different deities, we won't go into that now. There are lots of rock carvings above. One of the things that was true of the time, and this is what Paul and Silas had to say along with the others with them, was so phenomenal.

If you were in Philippi and you died, how you were going to end up in the afterlife was still uncertain. You had the society of the Thracian horsemen and you'd call those guys in to do certain various kinds of hocus pocus so that you try to get this person's soul in the right place. And so he'd call those people in. And then they'd put special carvings on the rocks. So you go above, in the mountains above Philippi, and there's rock carvings all over the place, because that's where they would bury the people up on the hillside, and they'd try to make sure that that person's soul ended up in the right place.

So here to have Paul walk into town and say, hey, all you've got to do is believe in Jesus and it's a sure deal. It was just, you're kidding. You must be kidding. We always have to fuss with this and carve rocks and do all kinds of fancy rituals and everything and just hope it works out okay. You mean to tell me that you believe in Jesus and after that it doesn't matter what they do? Yeah, exactly.

Here's the river where Paul and his companions first met the Jewish gatherers that were there, and by the way, the fact that they met along a river meant that they didn't have a synagogue. To have a synagogue you had to have at least ten men. So it tells you that they didn't even have ten men, ten Jewish men to form a synagogue. So it's pretty clear that there was a small number of Jews there. So here's Lydia among the Jews that were gathered along the river there. And here's the river.

So here's, as he writes to them, the book of Philippians talking about in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now. How is Philippi like the Denver area? And here's looking up, by the way, farther up the hill. And this is where there's graves and gold mines up the hill here. And then you look down on Philippi. You can see a portion of the roadway off to the right. See that little ribbon of roadway? And then Philippi, the forum.

There, the other side of the roadway, and the bathhouse kind of farther off to the upper edge there. It's an inland city on the edge of a plain at the foot of a mountain range. A major highway runs through it, the Ignatian Way. A regional military political center, but not the empire's capital.

We see that. It had a large population. By the way, there's a decimal point wrong in there. It's 500,000. It's not correct. It should be 50,000. medical school, possibly where Dr. Luke was trained, and religious variety in many religious buildings. Okay, that's it for the overheads.

Let's go to the handout and just kind of do a review here. We're going to start off where Paul and Barnabas are talking about, hey, let's go back to the churches where we were at before. And why would they want to go back to the churches? See how they're doing, okay, and what else? Yes, okay, so they want to go back to the churches.

Now remember, in going back to the churches, they'd been there once for evangelism, second time through appointing elders, and now the third time through would be to carry this message to let them know, hey, this is the decision that's been reached back there, just so you can settle this issue once and for all.

Don't have to worry about trying to be like the Jews or follow the Mosaic Law or anything of the sort. You are saved by faith. That is the message we want to carry to you. This will now be the third time going through those churches, especially with this message. What is also either stated or implied is that each time as well they would be with the churches teaching and carrying a message to them that would help them grow in the Lord.

Okay, then they run into a problem. What's the problem they run into before they get started? It's a problem that sometimes divides churches. Personalities, right? Barnabas wants to take John Mark, I'll put the names together just to make it easy to know who it is, wants to take this guy with him. Paul says no way. How come? What's that? Alright, and what's the reason they don't get along? What's the point of contention here? Ah, Mark said, I'm homesick. Yeah, he went back to Jerusalem.

Now this Mark has quite a bit of history even up to this point. He is the author of the Gospel of Mark. We'll later find out. He even perhaps makes a brief description of himself. towards the end of the Gospel of Mark without using his name. An embarrassing moment. It'd be one of those things where if he stood up and tried to share his most embarrassing moment. Remember at the arrest of Jesus there was a young man that ran away and lost his clothes?

So at any rate, you've got this guy here. We're going to see more about him, but anyway, this point of contention. Paul says, hey, he flaked out on us, I don't want to take off on another trip and have him heading back home. Why do you think Barnabas has a particular connection to Mark? Yeah, they're related, possibly cousins. There's a family connection there. There's also something else happening.

Barnabas When Paul first became a believer, what was Barnabas' role? What did Barnabas do? It would have been a rough time if Paul just showed up at the apostles. and said, hey, I'm here, and they said, ah, you know? Instead, what happens, Barnabas does the introduction and says, hey, I want to tell you, this guy has now become a believer. Really? Believe me, okay? So Barnabas kind of front ends a guy that would be in their minds, in the apostles' minds, questionable. Very. And now what do you have?

He takes the underdog again. John Mark and says, I think we ought to go with him. I think he's learned his lesson. And instead takes this guy who Paul was... Later, both by Paul and Mark, even by Peter. So they don't drop off the scene entirely, but from the Book of Acts, these verses here are the last for both of those guys. The focus is upon Paul. Interestingly here, Paul and Silas, they're heading off.

Silas is a fellow who we had sort of just met, if you will. So they head to the center of these churches in what is now the middle of Turkey. And so now they're going back to these churches. This time Silas quite likely is being introduced to these people for the first time. Paul had been the one who had been there before. And so while they're in that area they pick up Timothy. Now Timothy, interesting connection here.

Greek father, Jewish mother. Was that allowed? According to the Roman law, they don't care. But the Jewish law, no. That was a problem. And what we find is very interesting. Here's Timothy. Later on, Paul says to Timothy as he's writing to them, that, hey Timothy, I know that you were taught the Old Testament scriptures by your mother and your grandmother.

Doesn't say the father. He also mentions in the early verses of Acts chapter 16 that Timothy was circumcised, which meant that the father apparently had no interest in seeing that Timothy was circumcised. So here's a Greek father with no interest apparently in the Old Testament scriptures. So this is a Greek that had not come into Judaism, but kept his pagan roots. Had no interest in teaching Timothy. had no interest in seeing that he was circumcised, apparently Greek and pagan to the core.

It was contrary to the Jewish law, but something that did happen, especially out in the areas, because remember, during the New Testament times, more than, or I should say at least twice as many Jews lived outside of Jerusalem as inside Israel. And what that meant is you had lots of Jews who were out in pagan areas, And so these compromises were not allowed by law, but common.

And this would have been one of them. I think also, too, how did marriages get set up in those days? Who set up the marriages? Often the parents were involved, especially if it was a first marriage. The parents would be involved, and so this may have been a match even made Timothy's mother had no choice in.

So very interesting. Let's take a look here. So they take Timothy with them. Then as they try to seek direction, it's like they're wanting to head west or north. They mention heading those two directions. And what happens? Do they end up in those places, going just west and north, or what happens next? Where do they end up going and why? Isn't that interesting?

So they have what appears to be a miraculous direction by the Lord. Don't go here, don't go there, go here. It's not here, not here, but here. So there's both a negative statement and a positive statement, and it's miraculous. Now, we've got a question in front of us. We're going to ask it later, but I'll ask it now.

Is this a small sampling of what was typical in terms of how they were guided, or was this a singular rare event? Were the apostles and those who were with them in those days constantly going about guided through miracles? Were they constantly speaking in tongues? Or were those more unusual events? What do you think about that one? Okay.

Then when they get to, they get to Acts 16 10 through 17, we notice a pattern in there. Seven times Dr. Luke writes, we, and he writes we in such a way that it's clear that he is among them. Ah, real interesting. Here's Dr. Luke writing with the first person pronoun, repeatedly. He also says, five times, us. So here between the two, we've got in about eight verses there, a dozen First-person pronouns that includes dr. Luke himself, so he is writing now notice when he when he first started off He says I am writing to you Theophilus Follow that is mentioned here early. I'm writing to you Theophilus Because I pulled together all these facts and details you know very carefully here he's writing and able to say in first person and it's like he is underscoring without drawing attention to himself and This is first-hand testimony. I'm telling you what I saw. And I'll do so in order to underscore that it's first-hand testimony with a dozen first-person pronouns.

Okay? So we see Luke doing that. What's interesting is once he gets to Philippi, about halfway through the account, the pronouns stop. Isn't that interesting? So here he is. He's giving first-hand testimony. They get to Philippi. And then all of a sudden his pronouns used in that way drop out until we get to chapter 20. So that's one of the things people have wondered, did Luke stay in Philippi? Or was he sent off in a different direction? I'm not sure we know precisely the answer to that, but the indication after consistent use of we and us for a dozen times, then to all of a sudden have it stop, the indication was that he somehow went a different path for a time and then joined up with them later as we see recorded in chapter 20.

Alright, so now they go here to Philippi they're going to establish the first church on the European continent and because they had special direction from the Lord it wasn't because they just kind of said, hey how about if we go here, okay and they went off that way No, they had ways that they were trying initially to go, and then the Lord said, no, I don't want you to go here, I don't want you to go here, I do want you to go here. Very specific. Isn't that interesting? Let's ask something. Have you ever been at a time in your life when you have been struggling to find God's will, and you're thinking, my heavens, if I only knew what God wanted! Ever been through that?

What do you think is going on during those times? What do you think is happening during those times when you just feel like you're pulling your hair out? I can't do too much more of that myself, but you feel like you're pulling your hair out because I don't know what God wants. What's going on then? What's happening? Is God deliberately just trying to frustrate you? What's happening there?

Why is it that we go through times like that? Pardon? Okay. Alright. Learning patience in real life. Yep. Okay. That might be one thing. Yeah. Laban? I think it's something real valuable to bring up because we've run into a couple of different situations here. One was the conflict between Barnabas and Paul.

That's a will of God kind of issue, isn't it? The other thing is this one Here, where he says, you know, I want you to go this way and not that, it brings very pointedly the question, how do we know God's will? And I think some things to not just draw from this, but to see the issue and to look at the whole of Scripture. And one thing, when we see the phrase, the will of God, which interestingly enough doesn't occur that often in Scripture, it is consistently Not a, you know, rat in a maze, pick the right path kind of thing.

It has more to do with, this is God's will in terms of character. This is God's will in terms of what life is lived out as. And so one of the things we're seeing in the main service is we keep saying, this is what the life of Christ looks like. God cares more about that. than the specific will of God, you know, pick the right path or fork on the road kinds of issues. And I think that's one thing for Christians to get clear. Often we'll place great emphasis on should I buy this house, should I marry this person, should I buy this car, should I wear the yellow pants, whatever.

And we look often at that as will of God kinds of decisions and the truth is that the core of God's will is He wants us to walk with Him. That's God's will. That's front and center. There are things about God's will that if you're a believer are fixed in place. That's why Paul spends the first three chapters of Ephesians plus telling them their position. This is God's will. Why? God's fixed it in place.

Are there decisions to be made? Yes. You want to know what the most important thing is? He wants you to walk with Him. The other thing I think comes out from this When the apostles were done with these little miraculous revelations, was it clear to them what they should do? Yeah. Very clear. And I think that's the other point that we can draw out of this.

When we're looking for God's will, if the Lord cares about the fork in the road kind of decision, He will make it abundantly clear. But if that's not of primary importance, those are those moments where you're going to be tearing your hair out thinking, well, what does God want? The truth is, He wants you to walk with Him. And if He hasn't made it abundantly clear already in His Word, or in some set of circumstances, then maybe it doesn't matter. Because what really matters is He wants you to walk with Him. Isn't that neat? It really is comforting. It is not something that we need to tear our hair out about. It's not something that we need to wring our hands over. God isn't pacing the floor of heaven thinking, how on earth am I going to tell this guy? Instead, the Lord is saying, look at who I have made you. Irreversibly. You are in Christ. Can't be touched.

I want you to walk with me on that basis. That's the primary aspect of my will. He says, and on those rare moments where it really matters, and I haven't already told you in my word, I'll make it real clear to you. Other than that, don't worry about it. I want you to pray about it. I want you to talk to me. But I really want you to walk with me. Fork in the road kinds of decisions that we're going crazy about. The Lord says, I'm not worried about it. He says, if it really matters, I'll let you know.

Other than that, don't give it a thought. Because you notice, as we've gone through this, it says apostles went here, and they went there, and they went the other place. And all those different decisions that they made, we're not given a lot of details on how they went here or there. And you know why?

God doesn't care. They made what seemed like reasonable decisions. And when the Lord says, no, I've got something else in mind, He made it abundantly clear to them. There was no question. And we can rest in that. We can rest in what the Lord has done in making us in our position. We can rest in the Lord ultimately wants us to walk with Him. And we can rest when it really matters which fork in the road, God will let you know.

And you won't be in doubt. And you won't be going crazy. Yeah, it isn't like, oh man, I left you in this fog and there was this fork in the road and you took this one instead of that one. Shame on you for not knowing. But you didn't say anything. The Lord isn't going to do that. The Lord's not going to do that.

The Lord isn't... a friend of mine some years ago said, you know, he used to enjoy sitting out on the lawn and playing games with the bugs. You ever do that? You know, put the stick in front of the bug and, you know, take the bug and move him from here to there. God's not playing weird games with you. If he's going... if he's doing something with you, you know, he's not sitting up there up in heaven saying, ha ha ha, look what I did to him! Okay? He's not sitting there up in heaven saying, I just can't wait to slap that bug. Okay? He's not looking there to condemn you because you took the wrong fork in the road that you couldn't tell.

God has made it abundantly clear who we are in Christ. He's made it abundantly clear what it means to walk with Him and what that looks like. And we can rest in that wonderfully. That's the reason why we spend weeks and weeks and weeks talking about those things. And those rare moments where something isn't revealed in Scripture, what a wonderful thing to depend on the Lord who says, I'll make it clear because I love you. That's neat. That's cool. That's really great.

And the Lord is not trying to play games with us to figure out, you know, how do I slap this guy because he took the wrong mystical fork on the road. It wasn't because the light turned green after three seconds instead of two or some strange, weird, you know, symbol. Trying to figure it out. No, none of that.

We have a Lord that loves us. and he works all things for good. We've run out of time. Brian is telling me he's going to buzz, buzz, buzz, and grinning and all that stuff. Anyway, so let's pray. Lord, thank you. As we look at circumstances like we've seen here in Acts, your will is quite clear. And even though we, as we will see, times may be rough after doing exactly what you wanted. how wonderful it is that we can depend upon you at every moment, depending upon who you have made us to be, depending upon your resources and who you are, depending on your life within us, and you're empowering and energizing each moment, each day. Thank you for that, in Jesus' name, amen.