Aiming Too Low: Our Certainty, Securities, And Illusions of Control

Everybody wants alignment right now. We want absolutes, clean answers, a solid forecast, and a way to feel safe when the world feels unstable. But when we aim our lives at politics, culture, or any “lower rung” of reality and expect it to carry the weight of our hopes, it eventually fractures. That’s why this teaching through Acts 16 hits so hard: it refuses to give us a laminated checklist for Christian faith and replaces it with something tougher and better: Spirit-led discernment.

We walk with Paul as the Holy Spirit shuts doors, redirects plans, and leads him into Philippi where the first European convert is Lydia and the first church gathers in her household. We talk about why the gospel is medicinal as well as legal, why “just me and Jesus” cripples growth, and how salvation is meant to form families and communities. Then the story gets uncomfortable: a demonized slave girl tells the truth from the wrong place, Paul refuses the cheap “power of agreement,” and the backlash reveals how money, politics, and religion get used to manipulate crowds.

From the prison cell to the earthquake to the jailer washing wounds in his own home, Acts 16 shows courage that isn’t domination. Paul won’t escape if it costs another man his life, and when he finally asserts his rights as a Roman citizen, it’s to protect the fragile church, not to feed vengeance. If you’re tired of certainty culture and you want a practical, grounded way to follow Jesus in messy real life, press play. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find it.

Transcript

Why We Crave Certainty

A Teaching On Acts 16

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Right now everybody wants alignment. They want absolutes. People are looking for certainty. They want to believe something solid and familiar about the future. And so we're reaching for politics and culture and i ideology. And some of these ideas are kinda new, and some of these ideas are just recycled. And we're hoping that something's gonna hold. And it's not. And the reason for that is we're often just aiming too low. There's a hierarchy or ladder of reality. And we want to aim at the highest thing possible to orientate ourselves to know how to navigate the life that we're in. And politics is on that ladder, but it's not near the top. Jesus, in fact, warned beware the leaven of Herod and the Leaven of Pharisees. And so people lose their minds when their their president or their party or who be it fractures doesn't hold up to the weight of their expectations because they're aiming at something lower than God and expecting it to save them. And so this podcast is is a episode's a little bit different. Um typically I do long form dialogues with people, and this isn't gonna be a conversation. I really hesitated even sharing this, but this is actually a a teaching that I did on Act 16, and people were pressuring me to to release this as a podcast. And so here we are. Um sermons are powerful, but sometimes they can pretend uh that you know to be an absolute or certainty. And that's one of the things I really liked about Act 16 is it doesn't really give you certainty and in some senses, it gives you a pattern of of faithfulness. And we see Paul following God in real time, and plans are changing, and doors are closing, and opposition is rising, and still somehow it all moves towards something holy and God working things out. And so we see faith really isn't mechanical and it's not a formula and it's not an absolute, it's responsiveness, it requires discernment, it requires being led by the person of the Holy Spirit, and not just agreeing with about ideas of God, which is what people are signaling for. Um so this episode walks through that. And there's obviously power in in what we say and what it means to follow God when the path isn't clean. And so uh this was never meant to be this uh isolated thing. It's it's lived out in community. So this isn't polished, um it's just an attempt at faithfulness to the text, and so just take it that way. Welcome to the map.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

One zero, all end in running.

Legal Thinking Versus Healing Faith

Discernment Over Checklists

Acts 16 Roadmap And Key Scenes

Timothy And Costly Love

SPEAKER_01 3:11

I forgot to forward the slide today. Last time I I did the slide of where Paul's ministry journey is is going, but I'm gonna continue in 16. Fistan preached in Acts 15. So I'm gonna continue through through 16 and see how much of this we'll we'll get through today. In America, you know, we have more lawyers per capita than any other country in the world and by number. Okay. And inevitably in churches, people who are competent and administrative tend to kind of come into roles when they there's always going to be a lens by which you view the world through your personal experience and what you've taught and the trauma that you've had and what your parents have done, etc. So sometimes we look at scripture things through legal lens, and legally there's kind of absolutes, guilty, not guilty. Now there's loopholes to get to those points, but you understand what I mean is it's it's dealing in absolutes. And if you're we're gonna move through chapter 16 of Acts, and there are no absolutes, there's nuances, there's things that Paul does that are that if you just look at it on a surface level, it looks completely hypocritical. And Paul will use literary devices, like when he talks about when two people make an agreement and the people one person dies, the agreement's finished, right? So he does use legal terms as literary devices, but from an orthodox perspective, two things can be true at the same time. It's not either or, it's both and more. And so the gospel is meant to be medicinal, not just legal. Oh, I'm saved, that's it. Not quite. There's a medicinal aspect of the person of the Holy Spirit that takes place through your life. The journey is the destination in that sense. So we have to kind of hold those things in tension. It's not either or, it's both and more. So, yes, we can think in legal terms, but we also have to think in medicinal terms of what is supposed to be happening to us and what we're supposed to be dispensating. Does that make sense? Okay. So I will read you an opener because I tried to encapsulate what I'm going to do is I'll just read a brief opener. I will give you the reader's digest version of what's going on in Acts 16. But the the main tagline that I want you to kind of have in your head is there's a nuance in following God, there are no absolutes. If you just walk away and like that's the only thing you can remember. There's a nuance in following God, there's no absolutes. Okay. So Acts 16 feels less like a mission trip and more like a night where everything goes sideways but still somehow ends up holy. Plans get wrecked, expectations collapse, people you wouldn't expect show up, and stories move not because anyone had a flawless plan, but because someone kept paying attention to the quiet nudge of God in the middle of chaos. If you're the kind of person who wants religion to hand you a laminated checklist, this chapter is going to frustrate you. Paul does one thing in one moment and the opposite thing in the next moment, and we would perceive this as hypocrisy, but it's really discernment. The kind that doesn't live in spreadsheets or policy manuals, but in the messy, human, spirit-led relationship with God. Paul reminds us that faithfulness is not mechanical, but it's responsive, situational, and inconvenient. There's something almost comedic about the ways expectations get flipped. You expect apostles to show up and act like generals for the kingdom of God, but instead they act like clueless travelers being redirected. A businesswoman opens up her home, a possessed girl is shouting the truth but from the wrong place, and a jailer ends up washing the wounds of the people who he had imprisoned in his own home. It's not impressive in the way that empires are impressive, but it's impressive in the way that real life is impressive. Awkward, unpredictable, and deeply meaningful when you step back and look at it. The church moves forward here not through certainty, but through surrender, not through control, but through attentiveness. Acts 16 isn't giving us a method to copy as much as a posture to adopt. The apostles are leaning, learning to live second to second with the Holy Spirit, and their plans are getting interrupted. Their plans are coming second to community in some instances, and their plans are coming second to the peoples whose salvation matter more than their itinerary and their own comfort. Most of us want faith to simplify our life, but in this account of the church, it actually complicates it in the best way possible. It calls us to stay open when we rather be decisive, to listen when we rather move, and sometimes to do the opposite thing that we did the last time because love, logic, and setting and direction dictate that. The kingdom advances not because people get everything right, but because they remain interruptible and humble enough to pivot and courageous enough to trust God that he's still working when nothing feels predictable. Paul walks through this chapter with a stubborn gentleness that feels absurd. He remains free he retain restrains his freedom when love demands it. He sings when suffering makes no sense, he refuses to escape when escape would cost another man his life, and when he finally asserts his rights, it isn't to avenge himself, but to protect the fragile community that God has planted in that city. That's not weakness, that's strength that's measured not by domination, but by self-suffering. So because salvation here isn't a courtroom drama that someone wins an argument, it's a healing, a slow restoration of the person and communities that are in communion with God. Acts 16 shows us that healing unfolds in real time. And Paul leaves Philippi not as a victim, not as a conqueror, but as a shepherd who has quietly midlifed life into the church where there was none. Households are chains, chains are broken, and the church is breathing for the first time in Europe because of this journey. And that's the invitation this chapter places before us. It's not a formula to master, but a posture to embrace, a life attentive to the Spirit of God, responsive to love, willing to trust God and do something holy, even in the moments that feel messy and unfinished. Another stink bug. Send you back to hell. All right. So, reader's digest version uh of what's going on in this chapter, I would have had a map up here. But the ston wrapped up in 15, and there was a dispute where Paul had had settled that we're going to start ministering to Gentiles, and there's a dispute around circumcision, and James decided okay, we don't have to circumcise Gentiles, but they shouldn't be eating meat and they shouldn't be doing bad stuff sexually. And that's the compromise that we don't have to cut cut appendages off. Um and so we go into 16 on that note where Paul has kind of they they kind of settled this, and they end up in this town, and there's a guy who people know of, it's a young guy named Timothy, and Paul and Silas decide, hey, we're going to take Timothy on this next trip with us. And so on their journey, Paul is trying to go into where is eventually he arrives to a place where he's trying to go into what's present-day Turkey. And so they're basically just going back through these places. What we see happen in 15, he's going to the churches and saying, like, hey, this is the new standards that we have, and he's trying to like build up leaders and do that. And he has this idea that he's going to go into Turkey. The Spirit of God stops him and says, No, I don't want you to go into Turkey. And then he's like, Okay, and they continue journeying. Then he has a dream that somebody in Macedonia is crying out for him to come help them. So then he decides, okay, we're going to go to Macedonia, this town called Philippi. They rock up there. Um when he gets there, they lead this lady who's a businesswoman to the Lord. So the first Christian in Europe is a woman from my closeted feminists in here. You can fist pump to that. Um the the first the first church in Europe is in a businesswoman's house. Um, her entire family come to the Lord, they baptize them. As Paul's moving through that city, a demonized girl who can tell the future through the divination, she could tell people her fortunes. She's like harassing them by agreeing with them. And I'll get into that later. But she's like saying, Hey, these guys are following God and they're telling the truth. You gotta listen to them. Paul gets really annoyed with her. He ends up casting that spirit out of her. The people who are making money off this girl get upset. They have Paul and Silas put in prison. God basically wrecks the prison in the middle of the night as they're praising and worshiping, but Paul does not run away because if he runs away, the prison guard will be executed. They would crucify him if the prisoners escape. So he doesn't do that. He leads that guy's family to the Lord. They baptize all of them. So the second church is planted, and when they exit this city, they exit the city on really good terms for those local churches that they planted, but also Paul. Okay, that's the reader digest version of it, and I'll go back through. Okay. So going back to the beginning of the chapter, as I said, we ended 15. What was the conclusion on circumcision? We don't need to do that. Okay, Paul picks up Timothy, and what does he do? He circumcises him. So Timothy's kind of, and then obviously later when he writes Galatians, he's like, You stupid Galatians who tricked you, and Timothy's looking at him like, What are you doing? What's going on? The mode that Paul is operating in, if you read through his epistles, is Paul brings us very clear theology about Theosis becoming one with God, and he talks a lot about the finished work of the cross and what Jesus has accomplished. The Jews were trying to put prerequisites on people before they could receive salvation. Okay? So Titus later, they wanted Titus to be circumcised, and Paul said, Absolutely not, because the conversation was like, Can you be saved or not unless you do this? So why is he circumcising Timothy? Well, he's he's circumcising Timothy because Paul says, I will be a Jew to a Jew, a Greek to a Greek, a slave to a slave, and a free person to a free person. I am going to be all things to all people. Timothy's father was a Greek, Timothy's mother was Jewish, and in their culture, whatever your mother is, that's that's what you are. If you're gonna go and you're gonna be ministering with Jews through the everyday goings of life at some point, apparently you're gonna see someone's penis, it would become a a stumbling block for them. We're like, we're not gonna receive from you. Okay. In modern terms, I was I was in Haiti with a buddy of mine. He was a native guy uh from Haiti. I met him in in rural West Virginia, of all places. Bobby was his name. And uh Bobby was the son of a voodoo priest, and uh people were terrified of Bobby when he grew up. And he ambiguously shared some of his testimony. His testimony was always kind of shaky on on specific parts because Bobby was involved in a shooting in Port-au-Prince and he fled the country, came to America and got citizenship, got a degree here, met the Lord, and converted. Well, anyways, we go back to Haiti. Bobby is very, very confrontational with everybody. He he's like a black mother Teresa. I mean, he had a million-dollar smile, bubbly guy, but he would just turn on a dime. And you, when you're with somebody and you don't speak a language and they get real like aggressive with people real fast, it's pretty unnerving, especially when mobs of people start gathering. So there are many instances where Bobby put me in situations where, yeah, I'm early 20s, my frontal lobe's not fully developed, so I'm just like, I don't know why you did that, but you know, so we got stopped by the police. They wanted to detain us, take all of our documents, but we always hit all of our real documents, had copies, and he's just like, just arrest us then, just arrest us, take us to jail. I was like, Whoa, I'm not pumped, don't go. Like, we can grease some palms. I'm happy to pay them money right now and not to go to Haitian jail. He's like, take us to jail. So, anyways, we would travel around, get into these kind of skirmishes. Well, one day um he took me, well, one night, he took us to a church, very much like sometimes in the African services. Uh uh white people and black people sometimes where where volume is concerned, we have a different kind of preference. So it was a concrete block church like this, packed with people, and like 50 of these kind of speakers, and I mean they just as loud as they so I'm like, I mean, my head is throbbing. I'm like, I'm just down. And it's so hot in Port-au-Prince. I was wearing a white v-neck shirt and some cargo shorts and flip-flops. I have like tattoos at the time, I had like big gauges in my ears, and everyone else is in suits and ties, dressed to the nines, and so Bobby interrupts the service. He stands up and he's like talking in Creole, and so I'm just like there, humdly, humdly. And then he grabs me and holds me up, and he's like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And everyone's like, No, no, no. And they like stand up, like, no. I'm just like, what's happening now? And uh basically what had happened was he had said he had given a word and they were receptive to it. And he said, My friend speaks prophetically and he has a word for your church. Can he share it? And they're like, No, no, and then he's like, Well, why? Because he because he he he's not wearing a suit, he has tattoos, he has gauges, and it's all wrong. The way he looks is wrong. We will not accept him. And so then Bobby's like, okay, this is Bobby's style. So Bobby's like, okay. And he says, sit down for a second. So then he talks for a long time. Well, then people start crying, and then people start coming up to me and getting down on their knees and and talk like praying and stuff. I'm like, okay, what the heck did that happen now? So then he's like, now share your testimony. So I was like, okay, and I share my testimony. Now preach to them. I was like, is this a good idea? I'm like in the dark, and also like I I recognize knowing Bobby what I'm preaching, like Bobby's just really preaching. I'm talking, but he's not translating. So that makes it a little bit more scary. Because I'd I'd say something and he'd be like going a long, long time, long time. Anyway, so we we leave that place, and he said, I said, What'd you say? There's people, why'd they all start crying? He's like, Oh, I just told them the good story of the good Samaritan, but then I changed all the characters. So the priest that walked by was their Christian pastor, and the Samaritan that stopped was a voodoo priest. And then I said, You're not receiving this man, you're you're and they just like you just went off on this. They they made the connection, and so they were coming up to repent and ask for my forgiveness, basically. Okay, what's the point? That was a long time to get to that place, and we very well could have just been like stoned to death or like beaten down, or like that could have gone real bad. So Paul is basically for the sake of time, I'm just gonna cut the end of your penis off so that we can just bypass that. Okay. It's skin, yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. So that's a really long explanation to get to this point. But basically, we we see something here that we have to prefer people, and sometimes we can't allow the freedom that we have and walk in to become a block for people. It's like, could is there a situation where I actually could be ministering here, but they're not gonna receive of me unless I do X, Y, and Z? And there's like a little bit of discernment with that. Like I said, Paul says in 15, don't circumcise here. It's like Timothy, we're gonna circumcise Titus, we're not gonna circumcise. So part of that is just being led by God, but ultimately we're preferring people in love so that the kingdom of God can advance, right? And so again, we're not dealing absolutes. This chapter's gonna frustrate you because this is gonna continue through the entire chapter. But when we get to verses six through ten, we see that Paul's in this scenario where Paul is very high stakes, he's mission-oriented, and he's now we're gonna go into Turkey. We're gonna preach into like present-day Asia Minor, is what they called it. And then the Holy Spirit tells him, no. So the people in the book of Acts, I don't know if you guys are aware, but they didn't actually have a book of Acts to read. When we when we like in our Western Protestants kind of backgrounds, want to go solder scriptura, it doesn't really work here. Yes, they had some scriptures to reference, yes, they had ecumenical councils basically where they would use people as sounding boards. There's really not going to be anything that's gonna be a supplement to you or a replacement for the person of the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Say again.

Led By The Holy Spirit In Motion

Lydia And Household Salvation

The Demonized Girl And False Agreement

Money Politics And Mob Violence

Worship While Wounded In Prison

The Jailer Saved And Restored

Using Rights To Protect The Church

Untethering From Institutions For Hope

Prayer For Courage And Metanoia

SPEAKER_01 19:47

There's not gonna be anything that's gonna be a supplement or replacement to you for the person of the Holy Spirit. At the very best, what you're gonna have is safe safety net and some guardrails to operate within, but that might not necessarily be within the realm of obedience. And and there's many people who like to spiritual, like they would insulate themselves spiritually by saying, God told me to do it. And it's like you're always in disagreement with everybody else, like you're the only person that hears. I understand like the hesitation there, but I'm just saying that the reality is that those who are led by the Spirit of God are called sons of God. Jesus said, My sheep will know and hear my voice. He said, If you love me, obey my commands. And there's gonna be things that are directed to you as an individual where you're gonna have to be in tune with that. And if you're always relying on other people around you, or even if you're relying on this book, because this book ultimately was supposed to be help you meet the author. And if so that this book is not a supplement. Jesus is the word. Jesus is the word that become flesh, and Phiston said, I'm gonna send the person of the Holy Spirit who is what? Exactly like me, and who's supposed to lead you to all truth. And this book leads you to the author who is all truth. But there's gonna be, and Dave, Dave's ministry abroad could he could testify to that, that there's situations that you need some turn-by-turn GPS direction sometimes on the fly. And when I was studying, I was doing my undergrad in biblical languages. My roommate at the time, he's in China, married a girl from China, has been there for 15 years, fluent Chinese, preachers in Chinese, reads the Bible Chinese. We we thought, okay, maybe there's scenarios where they they take us in prison, maybe they gouge our eyes out, maybe they deafen us. We wanted to have this book inside of us. We were memorizing books of the Bible. We'd sit there and drill each other, going through Romans, going through. We've had to pick. I have a freakish memory, but he does not. So we had to kind of pick like what were you going to prioritize, what can encapsulate from the New Testament the best. So picking one gospel account, which I picked John, and he picked Mark because it was shorter, and then he picked Hebrews and I picked Romans. But anyway, all that being said, they can burn your Bible, they can gouge your eyes out, they can take this book away from you, and everybody in this room away from you. From you, but they cannot take the person of the Holy Spirit away from you. And what we see, Paul is in prison, he's singing and praising God after they've been beaten nearly to death and stripped naked in front of the entire town. How does he have that kind of joy? So, all right, so Spirit says stop. Solar scriptura collapses in this scenario. And Paul has a dream about a man in Macedonia crying out, Come and help us. So they go to the town of Philippi, the city of Philippi. When they arrive there, there's a place where people gather water, but also people can teach there. He starts talking, and there's a uh to a group of women. There's this lady named Lydia there. She's a garment dealer and she sells purple clothing. It says she was already following the Lord, but she, after this encounter, her and her entire family get baptized. And this will be a theme you'll see through this, but this one thing I want to highlight. In America, we have a very hyper-individualistic culture where we think that salvation is an intellectual acknowledgement that we make as an individual, and it's like me and Jesus. But and Jesus did say, like, I'm going to divide households by what's happening right here. But largely when somebody in the household, the head of the household, makes a decision, it's a decision for the entire family, financially, religiously, etc. And so her entire family receives the Lord and gets baptized. And so I want to just really emphasize the point that salvation is supposed to form families. It's actually supposed to form households. And at that time, churches, households and churches were synonymous. The first church that's planted in Europe is in a woman's house. She invites, begged Paul, she's like, if you think we're really Christians, will you come back to our house with us? She wanted to be interconnected with what the body of Christ at large was doing. It wasn't like a Billy, nothing against Billy Graham. Was it like Billy Graham, they they did documentaries about this. There was no discipleship after. Largely, people did not keep following Jesus. So I'm not diminishing his gifting. I'm just saying that you have to be connected to the body of Christ at large. And this is was her yearning in her heart. And she supports the church in Philippi further in this chapter. We see that. So there has to be some kind of tethering of like, yes, I'm following Jesus, and now I want to be around Jesus' people, and I want to partner with this with the body of Christ at large. Does that make sense? Okay. It's just me and Jesus is going to cripple your growth. It's going to cripple your freedom. It's going to cripple your purpose. And you you've assassinated the, in essence, the purposes of God. There's no way that you will walk out the purposes of God for your life by yourself. That whole me and just me and Jesus thing. Yes, go pray by yourself. Don't make a show of it. Yes, but I'm saying in terms of living and purpose, you will not do it by yourself. Um, that will be one absoluteness, Jeff. I'll say. All right. So, lady in your household, come to the Lord. And this is like 11 through 15. All right. 16 through 24. So this is interesting. Um, and I mean Vanessa talked about this a bit. So I'll read the first part of this, and it's chapter 16, and we're 16 and 18. So Paul is walking around the city, and then there's this girl, as I said, who's possessed. So as we were on our way to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who was possessed by a spirit of divination, and she brought her owners much money by her fortune telling. She kept following Paul and the rest of us, shouting loudly, These men are servants of the Most High God, they announce to you the way of salvation. And she did this for many days. And Paul became sorely annoyed and worn out, turned to her, and said, Spirit within her, I charge you in the name of Jesus, Christ to come out of her, and it came out of her that very moment. Why do you suppose that he's frustrated? Do you do you remember the passage where people were going around and they were doing ministry and they weren't part of Jesus' disciples, and his disciples came and said, Hey, like, should we stop them? And he said, Well, if they're not against me, they're for me. Leave it. Do you remember that passage? Why do you think Paul is annoyed? Okay. Okay. Okay. Do you remember another passage where Jesus was accused of casting out demons using demons? This girl is well known in the community to be demonized. Jesus, the religious community, was trying to compromise the message that he was giving by saying he's doing this under demonic power. What good is it for you to have somebody who's completely demonized to agree with the point you're making? It discredits your position. It discredits your position. In America now, we we have we've we're waking. I feel like people are sobering up after like the events of you know this last election cycle, how things are playing out. People are totally content with somebody out of their mouth saying that they agree with the same thing because of identity and group politics. People are totally content. If you say the same thing that I'm saying, I'm just gonna trust and believe we're in agreement, and I'm totally content on that. There's a there is a power of agreement, and people seek that power of agreement. We do it all the time. Okay, women, hear me out. People are people, everybody can complain. People are people, but women annoyance happens, something happens. Oh my god, Betty, you'll never believe what happened. Taylor, he said this. Oh my god, he said, yes, he said that. I would not talk to me. I know we're seeking agreement. Agreement validates our position, but when we seek agreement with people just for the sake of it, it's ego. It's about domination, it's about pushing the agenda forward. And so, like, there is no adjective that we need to add to Christianity. Christian nationalism, liberal Christian, it's all bogus. He quoted a scripture earlier today about Jesus Christ being the cornerstone. What does a cornerstone do? Holds up the building, but it also sets the parameters for the building. What is that building going to look like? Once you set the cornerstone, there's gonna be some limitations. So, in construction terms, if I cut a six-foot board and then I use the newly cut board to cut the next board, and I use the newly cut board to cut the next board, by the time I cut eighty boards, does anybody know, Chris, what happens after I cut eighty boards? Yes, so I end up with an eight-foot board because I use the standard of the previous board. I don't need to know what Donald Trump's theology is. I don't need to know what any liberal person's theology is in the political spectrum. That is not the standard that I'm using. And when we start using these things as standard and we start using looking for a power of agreement, it is going to dis it was going to discredit the gospel. Well, how can you be a Christian and support this? Good question. I don't. Good question. In the life is a game of trade-offs. Did I vote? Yes, I voted. But that has nothing to do with my position or my theology on the gospel. I'm not coming in alignment or under the umbrella of these positions and agreements. And so that's what we see playing out here with this girl. He's like, we could argue, well, if they're not for us, if they're not against us, they're for us. He's like, I don't, I don't want to be uh associated with you because you're discrediting and devaluing what we're actually trying to do here because people are going to make us synonymous with you. And what's happening with you is you as an individual are being exploited for money, you're operating under demonic power, and it's not what we're about. So saying all that to say, again, this is not an absolute of like cutting. I'm not, I'm not saying anything I'm not saying with that, okay? But I'm just saying I made the observation that Jesus said, beware the leaven of Herod and the Pharisees. Be aware that there is a spirit of politics, there's a spirit of religion, and leaven gets into bread, you can't see it until things start bubbling and getting off. And once it's in there, it's in there. So he's like, just be cognizant, be conscientious of leaven and what you're tethering yourself to, and what you allow yourself to agree with and partner with. And this is what I'll leave you with is G.K. Chesterson said it very simply like this. Conservatism is the shadow that follows behind radical ideology. Conservatism is the shadow that follows behind radical ideology. This is somebody who served in the First World War and witnessed the second world. What is he saying? If you say, well, I'm a conservative, I'm more in alignment with Christian values, it's like that's not the standard we're using. We're using the cornerstone standard. Conservative, what somebody who is conservative today very well probably was a radical liberal 25 years ago, but because the law they just move so fast, they're like, somehow I found myself in a moderate and conservative group. Okay, it's not what we tether ourselves to. We cling to the cornerstone. Not my pastor, not my dad, not my friend group, not my colleagues, the cornerstone. Okay. All right. Sorry, I went like broad there, but I bring it back. So Paul Paul deals with her like that. So that was 16, 18. So 19 through 24, we're gonna see the blowback from Paul doing that. What's the blowback? But when her owners discovered that their hope of profit was gone, they caught a hold of Paul and Silas and dragged them before the authorities in the forum, and they were brought before the magistrates, and they declared, These fellows are Jews, and they are throwing our city into great confusion. They encouraged the practice of customs, which is unlawful for Romans to accept or observe. The crowd joined in, and they attacked them, and they tore their clothes off of them, and they commanded them to be beaten with rods. Then they had them struck with many blows, and threw them in prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely. He having received such a charge, he put them in wooden stocks on their hands and their feet. Okay. Did were these people upset with Paul and Silas and Timothy for the days that the girl was falling behind them saying that they were correct? No. So they come to the magistrates saying this is about money, or this is about religion. This is about they're they're messing up the Roman government. So they're they're coming with religion and politics and they're saying they're they're preaching something that's going to cause a revolution. So the politicians, where have we seen this before? The Sanhedrin Council brings Jesus in front of Pilate. We should kill this guy. Why? He's going to cause a revolution. Was it really about that? Anytime the gospel shows up, it shakes up things. Sometimes people lose money, sometimes people lose power. And that upsets people. So they're coming to these magistrates like this is this is you know going to cause religious unrest, it's going to cause political, but it was about money. They did not go to them when the when their when their little divinated girl was agreeing with them. They went because she no longer could tell fortune and they couldn't make any money off of the girl that they were trafficking anymore. Beware the leaven of Herod and the Pharisees. People will wear opinions like costumes to maneuver you. And they want the power of agreement. If they can get you to verbalize and stand with them with that power of agreement, they can build momentum. And so these guys incited the mob mind. And what did the mob do? They beat the living snot out of Paul and they beat out of Silas, which we're going to find out here in Roman law. Paul, they're Roman citizens. So this is these are not this is not uh as savage times per se we might think. They were due trial and process. They gave them no trial and process, they just beat the living snot out of him after they stripped him butt naked. So Paul goes into prison with Silas Timothy. And I'll be honest. So there's two things that I struggle with. Among them, there's many things I struggle with, but these are two of the things I struggle with. One of the things I struggle with is as I get older, sometimes I really want vengeance. Like really. Like people hurt people I love, and people do things to me. I it's hard for me sometimes to forgive. My mind will gravitate towards burning people's houses down or like vindicating myself. It's a kind of like pressure release, right? The other thing I struggle with is anti-authority bias. I have a criminal mindset sometimes. Okay, where it's like when we talked about there's guilty and and not guilty, but there's many loopholes to get to the place. I in another life, I would have been a lawyer, guys. And I would have been like a better call-slaw lawyer, probably if I wouldn't have followed Jesus. Okay. I'm not a criminal, I represent criminals. As I'm doing criminal things, yeah. Um, so they end up in this situation, and and Paul's response here is he just starts worshiping. They start their butt naked, they're they're bleeding, they're they've been beaten by rods, by a mob of people, which I remember like I was thinking about like the story Fiston told us about when you grew up as a boy and you had to like witness that like someone stole something, and they just beat him, beat him, beat him, beat him down. Just the state that they would have had to be in. And I used to do combat sports, and like it's it's nothing like that, but sometimes your face just looks like hamburgered or like it just looks bad. You ever seen Rocky Balboa? That's just from a boxing match, like a mob of PJ beating you down. You're naked, you're in a prison cell, it's midnight, and they just start singing hymns and they're praising God. And it's said that everybody around them was watching them. This is what scripture noted. In the midst of suffering, and even if that suffering comes at the hands of betrayal, your your life is a witness and a testimony to the people around you. There's a there's an old saying that they used to say, but it said, Your life is the only Bible that some people will ever read. And it always frustrated me when people say that, but they say your your life may be the only Bible that someone read. And so here Paul is using his suffering and he's he's using what's going on, and he's just staying in a place of surrender to what God is doing. Well, this is confusing to me. There's an earthquake, the boards break, the door opens up, and it's dark, it's midnight, the jailer was asleep, the one who was like, make sure they don't escape. He wakes up, he loses his mind, he's like, Oh, the prisoners have left. He's getting ready to turn his sword on himself because they'll crucify him. Yet the prisoners get out, and then Paul yells for him down the prison cell, hey, don't do that. We're still down here, we didn't run away. My anti-authority bias would make me run away. My vengeance would make me run away. I bet I'm gonna get you guys. I'll be back. He didn't run away, and so the prison guard is like relieved. Well, he ends up receiving the Lord. Well, same kind of pattern that we see with Lydia. What happens? Paul goes to his house, leads his whole family of the Lord, they baptize the entire family. So now we have the second church planted in Europe. It's from a jailer who imprisoned the people carrying the gospel there. It says that the he he began to tend to their wounds, so he was washing them, taking care of them. Okay. Well, morning comes around, the like the word gets back to these magistrates. Then they figured out Paul and them are Roman citizens. So now they start freaking out. Because what that means for them is we could lose our position as judges, we could be beaten, we could be ostracized, we could be fined. It's bad juju. They ask Paul, they basically say, Hey guys, you can leave the town. And Paul said, We're not gonna leave the town. You're gonna come here and make this right. Okay. Again, the vengeance side of me is like, oh boy. They show up, Paul commands them to publicly acknowledge what they've done and walk them out of town personally. So all of the city, the mob that stripped them down naked and beat them, are now watching the magistrates walk out of town, and naturally it's gonna be like, what are you guys doing? These guys that we beat on yesterday, well, they're Roman citizens, and we actually shouldn't have done that. Why? What does that do? What how did Paul leverage the situation? What he did was he created leverage for himself that now the jailer and Lydia's houses are completely protected. If anybody acts against them, he has legal leverage to go against the magistrates who are going to rule. That's super cool. Because he could have just got a fine and it would have benefited him directly, but he's thinking, how can I leverage the suffering, everything that's going on right now to benefit the church? So many things have happened here. One, Christianity cannot be synonymous with criminality. If he would have fled the scene, it would have been a morally ambiguous thing because yes, they broke the law, but he fled. They did an illegal thing, and technically he did an illegal thing in custody. Right? If the police take me into jail and I'm not guilty, and I like kick the kick the dude and run, then I'm getting a what's it called? Fleeing arrest and obstruction of justice charge, even if I was innocent on the other, right? So he he sticks around to face the music. Christianity cannot be synonymous with criminality. The church is protected from violence in the future and any kind of legal things. He can always kind of come back and hey, remember us, the Roman citizens, who you beat without a trial? So this was super powerful for me. He was escorted out. There's no protect there's protection from revenge. Christianity is not viewed in a criminal lens there. And so Paul is not leaving dunking on people or as a general, he's leaving as a shepherd who has preferred everybody around him over himself. And Timothy is being discipled in that along that way. I mean, again, you're a grown man, and we're not gonna not the end of the appendage, but a part of the appendage. We have to cut that off before you can minister to people, even though I'm not gonna force anybody else to do that. Will you do that? Will you prefer other people around you to do this? Is this message important enough to you? Is God important enough to you? So he goes back to they they walk him back to Lydia's house, and I imagine there was some conversation about moving forward, picking leaders, blah blah blah blah blah blah. And then that's the the end of the chapter. Okay. So I don't I I never have kind of a closing or bow to tie on thing, but um again, I I think where we can walk away from this is in this culture, in this time, we love to deal in absolutes. We want absolutes because they make us feel secure, and we will build systems and beliefs and theologies around the absolutes. And I heard this phrase that anything that makes us feel insecure is demonstrating a false security in something that we have other than the person of God. So to say it like more simply, if something is gonna make you feel secure outside the person of God, then it's a false security that you're putting yourself into. And I think absolutes do that. It helps us to cooperate with each other and to trust each other and to expedite the way that we do things. Um but this chapter absolutely refuses that. And a lot of us also wait for I'm just waiting on God to give me direction. I'm just waiting on God to give me Paul was in motion like God was giving direction. So for some of us, we need to go until God says stop. Some of us need to get up and move and be putting our hands to something, and even if it's the wrong thing, God will say stop. But we need to be in motion, we need to be active. If I go to the hospital and they put the thing up to me and it looks like this, that's not good. We want faith to simplify our life. We want we want things to be convenient, comfortable. But if if that's what my heart's doing, I'm dead. The heart monitor goes like this there's ups and downs, but things need to be in motion for us. And the last piece is we're in a tumultuous time as a country. And I had Dave and Joy over, and we we talked about this. And the comfort I will give you is the church has always survived. Under pressure and thrived under pressure, it's when we start trying to tether ourselves to institutions and tether ourselves to ideas and movements, is when things get squirrely, things get corrupt, things get very difficult to navigate. But the actual pressure is not hard to navigate because we're staying in lockstep with the person of the Holy Spirit. And institutions are in some ways ultimately made to fail. God creates a garden, God's perfect, He creates a garden, there's a snake that ends up there. So we should not be surprised that there's snakes in financial institutions and political institutions, etc. Like that's just a foregone conclusion. So if we accept that, like we were talking this time is talking about courage, and I think we all need to find the courage to keep living and to keep staying in purpose and to not not fall into cynicism, nihilism, and we can become narcissistic in our in our Debbie Downer, Tommy Turbulence, wet blanket mode. The country's going to hell in a handbasket. The country is going to end at some point, anyways. These invisible lines that we draw on a map, they change all the time. Just open up a YouTube video and say time lapse of European countries in the last 200 years. We need to like untether ourselves from trying to prop up the wrong kingdom. And tethering that that our our comfortability and and our peace to outcomes of the wrong kingdom. Yeah, my you can thank my wife for that. I told her, I walked her through what I was gonna preach. She said it's too much. You know, she's English or second language, so I kind of have to think, but she reels me in. She's like, it's too much, it's too much. You're going too broad, too much, you're gonna confuse people, lose people. But we record these so you can go back and also listen to it. Okay. Not everything I said is for everybody. Maybe there's one nugget. Just say, God, what's for me? I receive that and discard the rest. Father, I thank you for this body of believers, and I thank you for um the plans and the purposes that you have for our life as a community and the plans and purposes you have for us as individuals. And I just thank you for this time that we're together. Um highlight what you need to highlight for people to receive and let that do a work in their heart. I just thank you for encouraging, challenging, convicting, and people coming to metanoia where they're just changing the way that they think and they perceive things, and then their actions and their lifestyle are going to follow behind that. But ultimately, we we want to see your kingdom come. We want to see your kingdom manifest in our lives. We want to be a witness to people, and we want to see the gospel have its way in our lives and in other people's lives. So give us courage. We just ask for a fresh deposit of hope to come right now. And we just acknowledge that any area of our life that's in agreement with hopelessness is in agreement with a lie. And so we just invite you in to minister truth to us and minister hope to our hearts that people will still just want to have babies. People will still want to continue to take risk. People will still step out of what is comfortable in the norms, and they wouldn't use patterns or standards or measurements of what they've seen happen in the past or what people were even doing around them, that they would be disturbed so that you can come and comfort them in that disturbance, but they'd be disturbed out of paradigms that that you never actually asked them to live within. We thank you for invading the way that it is and invading the way that it should be and showing us the difference between those things. And uh just wreck our hearts, God. Like Joy said earlier, ruin us. We ask you to ruin us, to grab a hold of us and grip us. And your word says that you'll shake things that are shakable. So just shake us for dear life if we need to be shook, uh, so we start moving in areas that we need to be moving here, and we need to be in areas where we need to be courage, upbuilt, netified. Let that be be released as well. But I just ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 48:35

Amen. Thank you so much.

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SPEAKER_00 48:45

If you've made it this far and you like what you heard, don't disagree with it. Examine your life against it. Jesus says, if you know the truth, the truth will set you free. And the word that he uses for know, there's a difference in in in in gnose and genosis. And there's an experiential knowledge of things, and then there's obviously like theoretical or general knowledge of things. And so I can know the right thing to eat and know that I'm supposed to go exercise, but that doesn't mean that I just have the body of, you know, Brad Pitt from Fight Club or Arnold Schwarzenegger, whatever, just because I'm trying to will it into emotion by by knowing it. So if I put in the activity of um informing myself and and gathering information, it doesn't equate to real measurable change. Okay? So it's not about having the right ideas, it's about letting it's about epistemology. What do we why do we believe what we believe? And what is what I believe doing to me? And what's it actually producing in my life? What's it actually producing in my heart and in my mind? What's what's coming out of me as a result of what I believe? Is that good or not? And so Acts 16 doesn't give us a a clean pattern to follow in that sense because it shows God moving in the middle of uncertainty through closed doors, through pressure, through opposition. And so some people are waiting for a sign. They're like, I'm just waiting on God to move. That's not how this works. So the question is simple. Are we trying to control all the outcomes in our lives and live towards milestones, or are we willing to be led and operate in a realm of trust where we take steps into uncertain outcomes? Because obviously those are not the same thing. And so one life can be built and look stable on the surface because it's people all like you have a lot of securities in place, but it's going to fracture under pressure when an outside force or chaos comes in and and and shatters that. The pandemic was clear with people's health, with people's finances, even though you you may have been wise. And I seen people ending their lives, literally committing suicide because they couldn't deal with the how the world was was moving. And so this is an invitation not to figure everything out, not to force certainty, but to risk to stay responsive and to stay faithful and stay aligned to the one who is the one who actually sits at the top of that hierarchy ladder. And if that's true, you don't have to have your entire map life mapped out. Okay, you just need to be led into the very next step that there is to take. So I'll see you on the next one. If you like this episode, feel free to share it with somebody. Like, subscribe, leave reviews, all the happy stuff. I don't monetize this, so it doesn't really make a difference. In one way, other than it's just, you know, teaching the algorithm to share this with people. All right. See you next time.