Northside Church - Sydney
To The Ends of The Earth Part 2 – Week 3: Envisaging
I'm not much of an art buff, I don't know that many artists, but I do know one artist that is more brilliant than Leonardo da Vinci. I know of an artist that is more nuanced, more abstract, than pro-heart himself. You might know him, I'm talking about Mr. Squiggle. If you don't know Mr. Squiggle, Mr. Squiggle was a puppet that had a pencil for a nose, and the brilliance of Mr. Squiggle is that he could take the scribbles of a three-year-old that they would send into the show, and he would turn them into the most amazing and the most wonderful and the most brilliant artistic masterpiece. Guys isn't that the church, isn't that the God that we worship? And what we see in this passage tonight, look, this is a Mr. Squiggle approach to ministry. In fact, if you went and traced the journey on a map of Paul and Silas and the guys on a map, it would literally look like Mr. Squiggle had attacked it, to be honest, because this was no ordinary missionary trip. They were supposed to take the direct route straight to the heart of Europe. This was the first time the gospel was breaking into Europe, which would later, as we know throughout history, become one of the great historical centers of Christianity. And they were supposed to go there, but in Acts chapter 16, the early parts, we say, for whatever reason, verses 6 to 10, that the Holy Spirit actually kept them from preaching in certain towns. So they were going all over the place, and eventually they ended up in one of the largest cities of the region, Philippi, and they would then go into some of the five great cities of the region, Ephesus and Thessalonica and Corinth and Athens, but the Lord held them back. It was a Mr. Squiggle sort of ministry. Once last week we learned from the passage in Acts chapter 15 of Jerusalem, the question of the council was, "If God makes no distinctions around his entrance into a relationship with him, if he makes no distinctions on your ethnicity, on your culture, on how much money he got in the bank account, on what your past looks like, then the early Christians had to ask, "If God makes no distinctions, then why should we?" And they became the basis of church membership and into the movement that we call Christianity, and I know from last week we were coming out of that going, "Well, what does that look like?" And tonight we see it. Tonight we see three amazing conversions from the passage that we read in Acts chapter 16, verses 13 through to 33. Three conversions, the conversion of a woman, of a slave, and a gentile, and on Jew. And what it shows is this passage is the many different ways that God wins people over. We'll see with Lydia that he won't want to over through her mind. We'll see in this girl that he won over with just a direct assault on her heart and with the jailer by shocking him with a changed life. Here's what we see. What we see is the power of the gospel, the power of the gospel for the religious, the power of the gospel for the oppressed, the power of the gospel for the indifferent. We see the power of the gospel for the religious when we first look at Lydia. Let's look at her economically Lydia. When it tells us that Lydia was from Thyatira, Thyatira was a place that was renowned for its dies and for its fashion, Lydia was from LA. And we see here that she's not only got a residence in Thyatira, she's a well-traveled woman. She's also got a residence in Philippi. I mean, she tells us that Lydia was a very wealthy and a successful business woman here. And so she's dealing in these dies and so anyone would know if she's got multiple residences like this, then she's pretty much a successful fashion CEO. And so she would have had the house in LA, a home here in Sydney, holiday house up at Palmey somewhere in Palm Beach, what I'm trying to say. Lydia was the collet dinnigan of Philippi. If you get what I'm saying, she was the sort of Jennifer Hawkins of Philippi. She was a young woman, great power, successful, into fashion. That's who she was. Now looking at her spiritually though, we see that Lydia was empty. How do we know? Because she was a gentile. She was a non-Jewish woman who had turned away from paganism from all the multitudes of different gods that were around at the time. And she had begun to worship the Jewish god. And so we are told that she was praying and she was studying and she'd turned away from the pagan roots and she was beginning to read about the god of the Bible. But what it tells us is that she was turning away, she was reading the stories she was religious. So here's a question. How did God get to her? How did God get to her? He got to her through preaching. The preaching of the word, it says we're told she was praying and she was studying the Bible and that Paul goes up and he goes to this place of prayer and he begins to speak to them. And what does he say to him? We don't have a direct transcript, but we've seen some of the way that Paul works in his speeches in the book of Acts and it would have gone something like this. The kind of thing that he would have said, he would have said, hey, Lydia, I know I can see that you were seeking the blessings of God, Lydia, I can see that you're reading the stories of the Bible, the stories of amazing people like Joseph and David and Esther. And look, I want to tell you about the ultimate Joseph. I want to tell you about the one who was also elevated to the right hand of the power and the authority and still forgave those that sold him in the slavery. And I see you reading about David, I want to tell you about the ultimate David, not a David just to save people from giants, but a David that saves people from the real giants, the giants of sin and the giants of death. And being a woman you probably like Esther in the way that she was willing to risk her life and give up her position at the center of the palace in order to save the Jewish nation. Hey, I want to tell you about the ultimate Esther who was willing to give up his place in the palace, not to just save the Jewish nation, but to save the entire world. See what he was doing, he was preaching Jesus from the Old Testament. He was preaching Jesus and Paul turns to Lydia and says, Lydia, every prophet, every priest, every king, every suffering servant, every mighty warrior, every hero, every slain lamb Lydia that you read about in the Old Testament, it's Jesus. It's Jesus. Jesus has come to live the life that you're supposed to live. Jesus has come and died the life that you're going to die. Jesus has come to fulfill the law that you've been crushed under at the moment. It's Jesus. And the Bible says it says that she responded, you know what it says, that she got it. She got it. She responded. The respond meant that she literally means that she found it attractive and look, what did Paul give her? He gave her a Bible study, sat down with her, walked her through the scriptures, a seminar, a sermon. What this shows us so is that the gospel doesn't make people religious. What it shows us is that religious people need the gospel. And Lydia was religious. She needed the gospel. And here's why, because religion is always outside in. Religion is always, I'm going to try and do all this sort of stuff to please God. And so in that way, he has to bless me. He has to answer my prayers. If I do all this good sort of stuff, then the God's got to work for me. But Christianity on the other hand is inside out. It's not outside in. Christianity is saying I'm compelled because of the amazing, the unconditional love that God has shown me through Jesus Christ. Because of all that he's done for now, I want to try and just please him. It's inside out. Guys, that's an entirely different dynamic for change in your life tonight. That's an entirely different dynamic of change. Religions, I obey because God is useful because I can get stuff out of him. Christianity says I obey because God is beautiful. Because I see what Jesus Christ has done for me. You see, the preaching of the gospel did this. She had a God that was useful, but on that day, she received a God that was beautiful. The way the Holy Spirit worked in her life had made Jesus Christ beautiful to her and says she got it. You see, that's the dynamic that's going to make you guys grow up. The question I got for you tonight is your Christianity a bore? Is your Christianity a burden? Is your Christianity crushing you? You see, because Christianity is the religion where you've got to work out what you were going to do when you realize that you don't have to do anything at all. It's not meant to be a burden. It's not meant to be crushing you. In that sense, we see the gospel for the religious. The gospel doesn't make you religious. The religious need the gospel. That's what happened to Lydia. You just will go out into a beautiful God. Then we see Lydia. Now we see the slave girl. We see the slave girl, how the gospel works for the oppressed. Who was she? You see, if Lydia was the collet dinnigan of Philippi, then this girl was on the other end of the spectrum, whereas Lydia was powerful, this girl was powerless, whereas Lydia was economically powerful, this girl was economically vulnerable. Why? It says because she was a slave. She was a slave. How do we know? Have you ever heard the term mad as a cut snake? She was mad as a cut snake. She was mad as a cut snake, this girl. It says that she possessed a demon's spirit in her, but it doesn't translate it the right way. The way to translate it actually says in the Greek that she had the spirit of a python. People believe she had a spirit of a python because in the ancient city of Delphi in Greece, there was a giant temple to Apollo, one of the pagan gods. Outside the temple to guard it, it was this giant python. Whenever someone was manic or crazy or so called demon possessed and they sang all these crazy things and they're speaking high voices and they're speaking low voices and doing all sorts of crazy stuff that you might see on the movies in the Exorcist or something like that. When people were going nuts like that, they believed that they would possess by the spirit of the python and that she could predict the future and she could tell the future and guess what? In a pagan culture that made her valuable, that meant they were starting to make money off her. Come along, give us a couple of bucks and she'll tell you what your future's going to be. She was a slave. She was not only spiritually oppressed, but she was socially oppressed. Who was this girl? This girl would be like the 15-year-old prostitute in King's Cross that is being pimped out by a couple of big guys who walk down the street next to her shoulder to shoulder. She represents a 15-year-old girl that the Hope Street mission we support is trying to reach out to with their women's space. She was spiritually oppressed. She was socially oppressed. You look at this and you go, "How the flip can you fix this?" And what we see, how did God win her over? It was by the power of the gospel. We're told, "What does Paul do here?" It goes through verse 17. It was saying that she's following her around. She's yelling at him and she keeps it up for many days and says, "Paul becomes so troubled that he turned around and he says to the Spirit in the name of Jesus Christ, 'Get out of her.'" I've wondered what his tone would be like. He's probably so frustrated with her after she's followed him around. He's just going, "Jesus, get out. Leave me alone." And guess what? It happens. It happens. It says that she was saved in that way. She was freed. What was going on there? She got a gospel defibrillator. Those funny things, "Shh, Paul is a sort of warming it up, clear." And she copped a gospel shock to the heart that the bluest spirit away. Sometimes people need gospel power. And we're told. The funny thing about this girl is, she was told that she actually knew that there was a way to salvation. She actually knew there was a way to be saved because in verse 17 she's saying she follows him around and says, "These guys are from the God of the Most High and he's telling people how to be saved." She knew that there was a way to be saved. She wasn't ignorant. She wasn't naive. She knew the truth. Here's the thing. She knew the gospel mentally, but it wasn't enough to save her. Why? Because she didn't have the power of the gospel. She didn't have the power of the gospel and you see here she was a slave on the inside to a bad master, to an evil spirit that made her a slave on the outside to bad masters. She was a slave, a slave on the inside and the outside, internally, externally. And so we look at this and we say, "Well, what is this demonic possession? What has this got to do with us here in the 21st century? What's this got to do with this?" The Bible says, we talk, we look at the theme running through the Bible, the Bible teaches us that you are either a slave to Jesus or you're a slave to something else. And whether you consciously or unconsciously realize this, you're a slave because you've got to live for something. Just like Bob Dylan says, you're going to serve somebody. He says in his song, "You've got to serve somebody." You may be an ambassador to England or France. You may like to gamble. You may like to dance. You may be the heavyweight champion of the world. You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls, but you're going to have to serve somebody. Yes, indeed, you're going to have to serve somebody. Well, it may be the devil or it may be the lord, but you're going to have to serve somebody. Dylan got it right. Dylan understood that consciously or unconsciously, we're slaves to all sorts of masters. We're a slave. We can be slaves to our careers. We can be a slave to our families. We can be slaves to our self-built identities. We can be a slave to money. And here's the thing. If you have any master in your life other than Jesus and you go chasing that for the rest of your life, if you fail it, it is going to be brutally unforgiving. I know it sounds funny, but although the terminology sounds negative to be a slave to Jesus Christ, what you will find when you're a slave to Jesus Christ is the only master, that if you fail him, he will forgive you. And if you find him, he will fulfill you. We're all slaves. We can be a slave internally. We can be a slave externally. That's what was happening with this girl. And so look at the contrast. A lady is a respectable businesswoman, slave girls, barely a member of human society. She is a moral and religious person, the slave girl is completely alienated from any sense of moral right or wrong. Lydia's got a lot to be proud of. A lot to be proud of. The slave girls are completely marginalised, scummer society. Lydia's got a moderate amount of power. The slave girl's completely powerless. What? Look, why look at the contrast? As F.F. Bruce says, it's so we can see that the gospel can address and transform absolutely any condition. And that it's not only for the culture and the able, nor is it only for the helpless and the broken. You see, here we see the gospel for the oppressed and here's a funny thing, guys. Sometimes you just need to power the gospel. I remember going on one of the Hope Street walks that we did today and talking with the people at the Women's Space and talking about the 15-year-old prostitute that is getting pipped out at King's Cross on a Friday night, on a Saturday night. And I asked them, "The women's space," I said, "What do you do here?" And they said, "We look after these prostitutes. They come in here. They give them food and shelter." And I said, "How successful is it?" And they said, "Well, it's a real struggle." Often they end back up in prostitution and I said, "Why is that?" And the person there said to me, "We are dealing with powers and principalities and structures in this society that are downright evil and powerful. People need liberation not only from themselves. Some people need liberation from the oppressive structures in this society. You can't do that alone as a church. That's why we partner with these guys. She was a slave internally. She was a slave externally. She needed gospel defibrillator. She had a spiritual arrhythmia of the heart, had to get it happening again. Finally, the gospel, the gospel for the indifferent, we see that in the Philippian jailer. We see, and who was he, when we look at it, you have to realize what went on here. You see, as a result of her liberty from this social oppression, her pimps were no longer making money for her. And so as a result, they incited all sorts of racist riots against Paul and Silas in the town. They get the whole town against them, get them in front of the courts, and they literally beat these guys to a pulp. It says they were severely flogged. Literally beat them to a pulp and they send them to the jails and they send them to this Philippian jailer. And who was he, he was a solid practical sort of guy. We know because he was a jailer that it was, he would have been an ex-soldier because civil servants often were ex-soldiers. They got the cushy jobs. It was one of these little perks, sort of like the politician's pension that you get. He would have been an ex-soldier. He was blue cholera. He was middle class. He's sort of like an ex-digger that would have been living in Penrith. So we've got Lydia the collet denigan of Philippi. We've got the 15-year-old prostitute with the pimps. And now we've got an ex-digger from Penrith in the story here. Talk about contrast between these three. And so they take him into him now, and how did God win him over? They won him over through the practicalities of Christianity, through the practicalities of the gospel. You see, when they went to jail and after all this riots, they were beaten up, they were bloodied, and they go there and they're sent to the jailer. What does he do? He tortures them. This was a hard man. It says that they were put into the stocks. They were put into these funny wooden things in which their legs were stretched apart by the chains. He tortured them after all that they had been through. And yet, and yet in the midst of this, he's there and he hears something strange and amazing coming from down the hall. He hears his wafting down the hall. You are my strength, strength like no other, sing it, Silas, strength like no other. They were singing in the stocks. They were singing in the stocks and he's singing it. How would they possibly do that? Because the world says, well, when you take our circumstances away, when you take freedom away, when you're looking at a cell, then you take away someone's joy. When you take away someone's career, you take away someone's joy. When you take away love, you take away someone's joy. When you take away the health, you take away someone's joy. How the heck would they be singing? It's because they were singing from something deeper than their circumstances. Apart from the gospel guys, I've said this before, joy and suffering swallow each other up. And how could they sing? It's because their joy wasn't in their circumstances, their joy was in Jesus Christ. And here they were, they were showing him the very depths of Christianity. Not only were they singing from the stocks, they were acting from a different script. They were acting from a different script because here's the other amazing thing. They're singing away there and this earthquake hits and it was told, they literally shakes the foundations of the cellar, bust open the big bars of the cell, the chains of the stocks and wood, they fall off their feet and the guys are staring freedom in the face. And the amazing thing is that in the law of the land back then, it was that if a jailer lost their prisoner, then the jailer lost their life. It's sort of like an incentive program. Romans, what did the Romans ever do for us? And so here's the thing, when the bars of the cell were busted open and the chains of the stocks fell off their feet, the jailer gets some lights, he's petrified, he's about to fall on his own sword because he's about to lose his life because all the guys are gone and he strikes and match, he turns the lights on and Paul goes, "It's all right we're here, it's okay, it's still here, it's still singing." God the rest of it, these guys held the prisoners in. And the most amazing thing, now Paul and Silas, they had his life in their hands, or it was just before he had their life in his hands. And instead of bolting for it, these bloodied, bruised boys are holding the prisoners in. They didn't repay evil with evil, they repaid evil with good. And this hard, practical, down to earth, ex-digger from penith, rushes in because he has never seen anything as concrete and as amazing as what these guys were showing them in Christianity. And he says, "I want to know what you guys have got, I want to know what you guys have got, how could Paul and Silas stay back like that, how could they hold him in?" He's asking, "You see the only way in the face of an open cell is because Paul and Silas instead of bolting for their freedom were able to withhold their freedom and the reason they were able to do that is because they were acting out of a script, they were acting from a script, a story which they already knew so well of one who had withheld his freedom in order to save lives of them." At the Garden of Gethseman, Jesus was in the dungeon, Jesus was in the cell, Jesus was locked up, he was arrested and what did he say? "Guys, I could call in a thousand my angels to come here and bust me out of this place." But he turns to his own jailers and he says, "No, no, no, I won't." Because if I run and get my freedom now, then you're going to lose your life. Because of Gethseman, he said, "No, if I withhold my freedom, you're not only going to get to keep your life, but you're going to get a life that is far more amazing than you can ever imagine." Paul and Silas were acting out of a different script, guys, a script that is a gospel and Jesus, the story of Jesus is, he said, "I'll withhold my freedom at the cross so you can have yours. I'll lose my life so you can gain yours." And as a result, this hardened ex-digger from Penrith who had no time for sermons, no time for this spirituality junk, no time for this charismatic worship type stuff, he's converted to Christianity. Why? Because he saw the practical demonstration of Christianity, he saw the depths of Christianity, it's the gospel for the indifferent. Guys, sometimes you were going to know that, you might know these sorts of people, sometimes you just got to keep singing from the stocks. There might be some of you tonight that have got to be singing from the stocks and people are going to watch your life and go, "I want that, how can they sing like that?" And it's because we as Christians, we act from a different script, guys, someone who withheld his freedom so we could have ours. So guys, what do we take away tonight from this application, brief, quick? I'll leave out what this passage is saying to us tonight is, "We need to be flexible in reaching out." Right? We've been asking how do we reach out. We need to be flexible. Look, Lydia, she was religious, she needed preaching, she needed the word. The slave girl, she was oppressed, she just needed the power of the gospel. Did Paul give her a rational discourse on a slave girl, "Can I give you my five steps to why you should follow Jesus Christ?" No, he said, "Get out!" And then the jailer was indifferent, he was a practical, nitty-gritty down the middle average sort of guy and he just needed to see how Christianity works in someone's life. He needed to see people that are singing from the stocks, who are singing from something different. And so what it means, guys, is there is no cookie cutter method to converting people. Not only that, like the earthquake, they didn't give Paul and Silas a chance to evangelize. They were just, it was their context, it was their situation. There's no cookie cutter method to it all. The other final thing is that the gospel is a unifying power. And that is the gospel is for everyone. Christianity is the only religion, you thought about this, Christianity is the only religion that doesn't have a religious center. Islam comes out predominantly out of the Middle East, Hinduism comes predominantly out of India, Confucianism comes pretty much out of the Chinese mainland, where does Christianity come out of? We can't put our finger on it anymore because it means there's no type of person, there's no type of culture for the gospel. The gospel is not a function of your culture, the gospel is not a function of your geography. The gospel is not a function of types of people, it's not a human construct, in that sense it's a divine power. I mean take a look at this picture, verse 40, we didn't read from it tonight, but it says here Paul and Silas came out of the prison and they went to Collette Dinnigan's house, Lydia's, it doesn't say that in the Bible, by the way, where they met with the believers and encouraged them. Can you imagine what this would have been like for Paul looking around the room and seeing Collette Dinnigan and seeing the slave girl that's no longer getting pimped out and seeing the hard and hard nut that tortured him in the stocks, the ex-soldier and the digger just hanging out and having a meal doing life together, having a bit of lasagna after church? Can you imagine the picture that he's got with this and the most amazing thing, I sort of like to imagine that maybe they just had a great night of worship and they're all doing a sleepover or a slumber party at church, wouldn't that be a great idea? And they're hanging out together and they're all sort of half asleep on the floor the next morning, he gets up and it's almost out of habit, he would have gone into this habitual prayer that a Jewish man would have to say, a prayer that he can go and look it up on the internet, that's some part of the midrash, the old writings of the Jewish faith where he says, a Jewish man would have to get up and say, "Lord, I thank you that I wasn't born a woman, a slave or a Gentile." And he looks at his new church, the church in Philippi, the church, by the way, in his pastoral letters, the only pastoral letter in which he didn't have to criticise or challenge them to get their act together. And he sees these guys, his new church in Philippi lying on the floor, a woman, a slave, a Gentile. Is it me or has God got an incredible sense of humour? What it means is, what it means is that the gospel is a divine, unifying power. In Sydney, people don't like that, don't get together. People like Colin Dinegan and the prostitute from King's Cross and the average guy who's the ex-digger. In Sydney, people like that would normally never get together. But I know in our example here in this place, it's not those specific examples, but those sorts of types, we see them in this place every Sunday. What it says is that gospel is a unifying power. We would never be getting together in that way. And so my question for you guys tonight, too, the application is, look, on what basis do you feel your sense of connection and unity to this church? Is it the music? Oh, the music's great, I really like the music, so I'm going to turn off the music's going to change. This is the preaching. People are always talking about I like this church because this preaching's good, it's expository and I like this preaching because it does this. Look, the preaching's going to change. It's because it's the groups and the activities that they run and the programs are really like, the guys, the programs are going to change. If you're here tonight and you're judging, I want to find a Bible-believing, gospel-living local church where you just judge us on the basis of we're a church that wants to see, yeah, the preaching of the gospel-like leader, we want to see word ministry in this place. But like the slave girl, we want to see the power of the gospel, we want to see the power of ministry and of mercy deeds in this place. I like the Philippians, we just want to see real, nitty, gritty, practicality, the examples of the way that God's worked, the way that God has changed lives. We want to see the Daniel Jang interviews in this place. Judges on that, judges on the gospel. And so guys, where are you tonight? You're one of those people that God's just useful to you tonight, come out under the burden of religiosity. Come to Jesus. Do you know Jesus mentally tonight, but not spiritually? Look, are you consciously or unconsciously a slave to a master other than Jesus Christ tonight? I'd like to tell you, it's going to be brutally unforgiving, it's going to crush you. Come to the only master tonight in this prayer time, that if you fail him, we'll forgive you. Are you the sort of person that is just indifferent to Christianity tonight, as a friend bought you along and you're sort of, ah, whatever, I'll check this sort of stuff out, but I'm not up for you. Maybe you can't be spiritual, faith's sort of stuff, it's all a bit fluffy, look guys. Just take a look around, look at Daniel's interview tonight, it changed lives. It works. It's whole Jesus stuff, Christianity, look, it's not just another paradigm, it's a power. And you can have access to that power through faith in Jesus Christ tonight. When we have ministry time, you can come up and ask us questions. You can be a part of it. Maybe you just need a defibrillator. I'm going to ready up the back for you. Clear. Brothers, sisters, Christians, guys and outsiders, what sort of church do you envisage? God is the ultimate Mr. Squiggle, ain't he? I see that in every day in the lives of the people in this place, he can take the most mucked up and scribbled and scrambled lives and turn them into the most amazing, wonderful, unimaginable, beautiful works of art. It's true of some people's lives tonight. It can be a true of your life tonight. And it only happens through the divine unifying power of his gospel. You've just heard it. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this amazing, incredible thing that is your church. Father, tonight, maybe throughout this message there have been people that have been brought to our minds that you've laid on our hearts, our people that have just religious and stuck under that barrier of trying harder and harder in order to please you, do on the praying and do on the trying, and they don't realize that they just need to rest in Jesus' work tonight. Father, there might be, and we know, we know through the work of the ministries of what we know through what some of our people today saw at Hope Street, that there are socially and economically oppressed people, five to ten minutes from this place. Socially and economically oppressed people in this suburb, Father, in that sense, we need your power in a mighty way, Lord God. We need all we can get as far as partnerships for the gospel of concern. We thank you for those partnerships that we have, Father, for the indifferent. We work and we live and we walk with them just about every day of our lives. We help us as a church as we go out into this week as individuals that sing from something deeper, that act from a different storyline, and that just live and demonstrate the incredible and the amazing power of your gospel and your work and through your Holy Spirit in our lives. So, Father, it's in that way that we pray these things in our mighty Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We pray that in His name. Amen. Amen.