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Good morning. How y'all doing today? All right. My name is Bob. The Old Testament reading today is from Deuteronomy chapter 18, verses 9 through 12. Once you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not try to imitate the detestable things those nations do. There must not be anyone among you who passes his son or daughter through the fire, who practices divination, is a sign reader, fortune teller, sorcerer, or spellcaster, who converses with ghosts or spirits or communicates with the dead. All who do these things are detestable to the Lord. It is on account of these detestable practices the Lord your God is driving these nations out before you. The word of the Lord.

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The New Testament reading is found in Acts 13, 9 through 12. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, the phenomenon glared at our Jesus and said, You are a deceiver and trickster. Will you never stop twisting the straight ways of the Lord into crooked paths? Listen, the Lord's power is set against you. You will be blind for a while, unable to see even the daylight. At once, our Jesus' eyes were darkened, and he began to grope about for someone to lead him around by the hand. When the governor saw what had taken place, he came to believe, for he was astonished by the teaching of the Lord. The word of the Lord.

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If you are able, please stand for the gospel reading found in Luke 3, 4 through 8A. This is just as it was written in the scroll of the words of Isaiah the prophet, a voice crying out in the wilderness, Prepare the way for the Lord, make his path straight. Every valley will be filled, and every mountain and hill will be leveled, the crooked will be made straight, and the rough places made smooth. All humanity will see God's salvation. Then John said to the crowds who came to be baptized by him, You children of snakes, who warned you to escape from the angry judgment that is coming soon? Produce fruit that shows you have changed your hearts and lives. The gospel of the Lord.

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Please remain standing with me as we pray, Jesus, we come before you today as your people, asking that you give us ears to hear your voice. We trust and believe and know and have experienced that you are the God who speaks. And so give us ears to hear, minds to understand, and most importantly, hearts that are open. We long to be transformed into your image and into your likeness. And that we know is your work in us that we get to join and participate in. May we receive all that you have for us today. In your name we pray, and all God's people said, Amen. You may be seated. Good morning, Saints. It is great to see you today. Uh, if you're new or newer or visiting, my name is Jason. I'm one of the pastors here. Uh, thank you so much for being here. Absolutely delighted uh to see you this morning uh and delighted to be here at Mitchell when it's 9,000 degrees outside and there's air conditioning in this room, uh, which has really been kind of the surprising gift of uh our move out of Palmer over here uh for the summer and now uh for an extended period of time. And hello to everybody that's watching on one online or watching later, particularly those who are serving in kids or uh with our youth today. Thanks for serving and thanks for then tuning in and watching a little bit later on. Uh, I became a follower of Jesus when I was in high school. Uh, was introduced to the gospel, kind of the end of uh my sophomore year in high school and toward the end of my junior year in high school uh is when I started really attending kind of church for the first time as a believer, as a as a disciple of Jesus. And the first church that I got involved in at that point in time uh was part of the charismatic stream of the church. This is the stream, for those of you who maybe are unfamiliar with that, it's the stream that really emphasizes the Holy Spirit, that emphasizes that the spirit is somehow mysteriously present and actively involved in the life of the church. And particularly that the spirit is the one who empowers us to live lives that look like Jesus. And it's the spirit that graces us to be able to serve others in his name, empowers us in some ways. In other words, it's the spirit who produces Christ-likeness in us, or what's often referred to as the fruit of the spirit. It's the spirit's work to help us become people who are filled with love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and faithfulness and self-control. And it's also the spirit that imparts to us gifts. Uh, but those gifts are not for us, they're actually for other people, gifts to help us participate in the building up or the maturing of the church. So I spent my first couple of years as a follower of Jesus, mainly kind of swimming in that stream. Uh, and it's one of the streams that we draw from here at Communion of Saints. But there was a period of time, kind of in my late 20s, early 30s, where I spent an extended season kind of out of those waters. Uh, and really kind of primarily in the streams of other Christian traditions. Uh, I noticed that what was happening inside me is that I was distancing myself in order to rethink some of the experiences that I had within the charismatic stream, uh, particularly in uh the health and wealth word of faith kind of expressions of the charismatic movement. I firmly believe that every stream has this immense amount of truth and goodness and beauty to impart to us, to learn from, to draw from. Every stream really can nourish our life with God. And yet every stream also has ways that it can be distorted, ways that can be like, yeah, I'm not so sure that was the best expression of that at that point in time. Some of you maybe grew up in different streams and have found yourself kind of in similar places of like, oh, I grew up in a mainline church and then spent some time somewhere else. And now I find I look back on some of those years and have appreciations for things, but also grateful to not be in certain parts of that anymore. For me, that was the charismatic sort of world. Um, but the charismatic stream, what it does for us is one of the many things that it way it nourishes our life of God is it reminds us that God still speaks. Uh, that he does speak through the scriptures, but he also continually actively speaks through the church or to the church through the spirit. It's the charismatic stream that emphasizes the gifts of prophecy and tongues, of words of knowledge and words of wisdom, ways in which God is sort of actively, presently uh speaking to us about our lives today. But one of the challenges of my experience in the charismatic stream was that those gifts often were not paired with a gift and practice of discernments, of sort of holding this together. In fact, sometimes the gift of discernment was de-emphasized or even absent, sometimes even discouraged. That to sort of question, is that really what God is saying right now? was a demonstration of a lack of faith or a lack of loyalty to a leader or a lack of trust in someone. Oftentimes the desire to kind of practice discernment was labeled as doubt or as disbelief or as disobedience or my favorite, a rebellious spirit. Um, some way of going, but I just want to make sure that this is Jesus. Don't question, just go. There was an almost an expectation that everyone would agree a hundred percent and then respond accordingly. But the practice of discernment is so critical to the life of the church. Because what it does is it teaches us to just ask that question is this really from the Lord, or was this the pizza I ate last night? Like, am I hearing Jesus, or did Marcos just not sit well today? And then it asks us, like, well, how do we really know? Like when we're thinking about either something that we've heard someone say, or something that we're sensing or feeling, or a leading or a prompting, how do we really know that that's God that is at work? That's the that's God speaking. And how do we go about testing that? What are the things that we do to kind of just check? Because what the practice discernment actually assumes, it assumes that all of us want to obey Jesus. It assumes I desperately want to hear from God, and I desperately want to know what Jesus wants me to do in any given situation. I really want to know how to be faithful to him in every situation that I find myself in. But it also assumes that none of us are Jesus, that we actually can be wrong, that we can mishear, that we can misinterpret, that we can misunderstand, that we can be off in some way, even if we have the best of intentions, that that can happen for us. We're in a series right now through the book of Acts called Kingdom Movement. And at several points in uh the book of Acts, we glimpse the early how the early church practiced discernment. Today we're going to be in Acts chapter 13. You can follow along in the Bible or in your Bible or on the screens or in your app. Uh, Acts as a reminder is part two of a two-volume work by Luke, the only Gentile or non-Jewish writer in the New Testament. He's likely from the city of Antioch, which is a city in southern Turkey, right on the border now with Syria. And what we're going to see through the rest of this book is that Antioch becomes really a key city in the early church, probably the second most important city outside of Jerusalem. The gospel made its inroads into Antioch after the martyrdom of Stephen and the scattering of the church from there. But Antioch at this point becomes the springboard for the first significant missions movement of the church. The movement that's led by Saul, also known as Paul and Barnabas, who at one point are sent up to Antioch, spend significant time there, and then are sent on from Antioch to carry the gospel to the nations. Chapter 13 marks the beginning of that movement. And we read this about the church. So the church at Antioch included prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon, whose nickname is Niger, Lucius from Cyrene, not Lucius Malfoy, but a different Lucius. And then this guy whose name I'm always going to mispronounce, but it's Manayan, I think is how you pronounce it. But here's my favorite thing about this guy. We're told he's Herod's childhood buddy. This is Herod that just killed James, Herod that just locked up Peter, Herod that's going around killing his own, you know, sort of guards. Can you imagine a guy in the church that experiencing all this persecution from Herod? It's like, yeah, I grew up with him. It's like I'm Hitler's buddy from like high school, and we're just hanging out now in the context of the rest of the church. Why they share that? I don't know, but it's there. And then Saul and says this as they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, appoint Barnabas and Saul to the work that I have called them to undertake. And then after they fasted and prayed, they laid hands on these two and sent them out. So we learned about this early church is this led by a group of leaders. This group of leaders included prophets and teachers. It's not clear which ones are prophets and which ones are teachers. The gifts and roles throughout the New Testament actually overlap with one another. Jesus is called both. Paul is called both. At a basic level, though, prophets are those that deliver this spontaneous, inspired revelation in a moment. It's a word, a picture, a scripture, and a sense that, okay, this is what I think Jesus is saying right now, and listening and sharing that. And then teachers are the nerds that explain and expound upon existing revelation. There are those that are looking at the scriptures and then teaching and expounding upon that. And it's likely that in this group of leaders, that some of them filled both. Maybe all of them were both prophets and teachers. But as the churches gathered, what we're told is that the spirit said, appoint Paul and Barnabas, or Saul and Barnabas for this new work. The implication is that this word came from one of the prophets. That as they're gathered, a prophet had the sense of, hey, I think this is what we're supposed to do next. I think this is what the spirit is saying. Appoint these two guys for this next work. But the question, of course, is how did they know that it was the spirit talking? How is it that they discerned that this was the next right thing to use the language of Emily Friedman? How do they know this was the next right thing to do? And I think we see a couple things about their practice. The first thing we see is this is that they positioned their hearts to hear. This is the really critical sort of aspect about the life of the early church, is they're continually positioning themselves to hear the voice of God. All of our cell phones, if you were to pull them out and look at them, they're gonna have kind of two graphs in that upper right-hand corner. If it's an iPhone, they're gonna tell us Wi-Fi and cellular signal strength, right? How strong is the signal that we're getting? Is it a strong signal? Is it a weak signal? If it's weak, we either have to change networks or we have to change positions. We have to move to a different place, closer to the router, closer to the tower. Some of you remember those old Verizon commercials of the guy walking around with a cell phone going, Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Continually taking different positions and trying to pick up the signal, if you will. That is in some way a really bad analogy for what spiritual practices do. Spiritual practices are meant to sort of place us in a position that we can hear the voice of God. They're meant to sort of help us posture our hearts, to be receptive, to be open, to be tuned in, to move us closer in some ways to the God who is drawn near to us. And what we find for the church in Antioch is that they're worshiping, they are fasting, and they are praying. This is how they're spending their time. Worship is this critical practice that de-centers us, maybe more than any other practice. It shifts our focus from ourselves and our own lives to God. It is really hard to hear the voice of the spirit when we are consumed with the circumstances of our own lives. It's so hard. And so, what worship does is it develops inside of us a posture of humility that takes us out of the center place in the story and reminds us who's really the king of the whole world. Worship puts us in that place of going, oh wait, there is one whose voice, whose opinion, whose words, whose perspective matters more than mine. And I need to spend some time de-centering myself and remembering who he is. And then they went about fasting. Now, fasting is that practice that's typically about not eating meals for a particular amount of time. It is a practice that's common throughout the church, but not necessarily a practice that's available for everybody. Because so when anyone or I talk about fasting, we want to recognize that some of us, this may be a pretty continual practice that we engage in for others, either because you're nursing or you're pregnant, or you're going through other medical issues, or you've had some disordered eating in the past, that you've had things that have happened inside of your own life and experience, that fasting is not an option for you. So please don't ever fast, if that's your story, without talking to other people. This is why the church has always paired fasting with abstinence of like, oh, if we can't fast food, there's other things that we can abstain from in order to simplify our lives. That's what fasting and abstaining do, is that they clear out the clutter, they help us reduce the noise and the number of distractions. It is really hard to hear the voice of God above the din of our ordinary lives. If we think about just how loud, just how busy our ordinary, everyday lives are. Prayer opens those lines of communication between us and God. We typically think of prayer primarily as talking. This is what we do. I'm going to say a prayer, I'm going to speak to God, but it's really hard to hear when we're the only ones doing the talking. Prayer is as much, if not more, listening to God than it is talking to Him. It is as much about slowing down to be with Jesus and to be quiet long enough and to be quiet often enough to be able to sense what the Spirit might be saying to us. What is not, of course, clear from this text is we know that they're worshiping, we know that we're fasting, we know that they're praying. What is not clear is how long they were doing that before they heard this word. What's not clear is how long were they going about doing this. Most scholars think that Paul was in Antioch for two or three years before this moment. Two or three years, where this is their habitual practice to worship, to fast, to pray, not fasting the whole time, but you know, praying, they're going about all this all the time. Two or three years before that word comes. Maybe the spirit had other things to say, or maybe the transformation and preparation that happened during those two to three years of waiting was what really mattered to God. Maybe he's working in the waiting. Maybe he's sanctifying us in ways that really matter. But we are, of course, remarkably impatient people. We love words like instant, fast, express, same-day delivery, on-demand entertainment. I mean, just goes on and on and on. Our culture conditions us to expect immediate results for little to no effort. That's how we're conditioned. And so we bring that oftentimes into our lives with God. We come to church, we open our Bibles, we sit in silence for three seconds, and we expect spiritual fireworks. Right? Oh, God, I'm here. Oh, you're not talking. And then we're disappointed, and then we give up, and then often what we say is, well, I just didn't get anything out of it. Right? I didn't get anything out of it. But have we waited two or three years in that practice to see what it is that there might be for us there? What's also clear in this text is not is also not clear is how long they continued to posture their hearts before they were certain the Spirit was speaking. Notice it said they were worshiping and fasting before the word came, and then after the word came, they continued to fast and to pray. They waited for the word in worship and fasting and prayer, and then they tested it in worship and fasting and prayer. What took them time to hear, they then took time to confirm. They didn't just sort of immediately go, okay, this is it, and then move on, but they spent some time. What we see from this text and probably others is that the first thing they were probably thinking about confirming is this is they wanted to confirm the words consistency. Every prophetic word, every spontaneous word, every sense or leading that we have from the Spirit must be consistent with the written word. It must concur with what God has already said, with what God has already revealed with who we know God to be. In Acts, the early church would have gone to the Old Testament. We're gonna see that remarkably in Acts chapter 15 and to the words of Jesus, to the things that they knew Jesus had said and spoken. They didn't have the New Testament can yet, they're writing it. And so, but they know the words of Jesus. And so they knew that Jesus had empowered the church to take the gospel to the nations. Acts chapter 1, verse 8, Jesus had said, rather, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. And so as they're thinking about the Spirit saying, Set apart for me, Saul and Barnabas, to go on this work of going to the nations with the gospel. They're like, Oh yeah, that tracks. Jesus has said something about this. And Jesus had said something similar to Paul. That Paul at his conversion in Acts chapter 9 says this, the Lord replied, Go, this is through another person, go. This is the this man is the agent I have chosen to carry my name before Gentiles, kings, and Israelites. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name's sake. So it's consistent with what Jesus has said before to the whole church. It's consistent with what God has said to Paul. And speaking of patience, that word to Paul probably came 12 to 14 years earlier. 12 to 14 years that Paul was like wondering, what does this really mean? Thinking about what that might be like. So what they heard lined up with God's word. This is so critical. And I think this is why Acts even says that there were prophets and teachers in their midst, those listening to the Spirit and those studying the scriptures and working together to discern. And then the other thing that's here is that when we discern, we have to sort of you know carefully consider whether or not it aligns with the word of God. But maybe also less obvious here is that what they heard also lined up with the way of God. Lined up with this character, his nature, with the way we see that God works. Because if you really think about what's being said to this early church at this point in time, this is a sacrificial direction. This is a self-giving direction. They were being led in the way of love, not in the way of self-interest. Here, the church in Antioch is just starting to thrive. They're like this new church plant. Everything seems to be going up and to the right, and they've assembled their dream team of prophets and teachers. And then as they're together, they're like, hey, send out two of your leaders. I can imagine they're like, no. Like, we kind of like Micah. Let's keep him singing those songs. Like, don't send it. Micah's not going anywhere. I was like, I just realized that's opening a can, isn't it? Um, but you know, like they're in this place where everything's going well, and now they're being asked to make this sacrifice. Like, wait a second. What they heard from the Spirit was costly, it was uncomfortable, it wasn't easy, it wasn't convenient. In other words, it looked like the cross. It looked like the way of Jesus. And so when we discern anything that we sense that either the Lord has said to like to us through somebody, or that we sense the Lord is saying to us through his spirit, we must take time to prayerfully consider does this align with the written word? And also is what we heard, does it align with the way of Jesus or does it align with the way of our world? Because sometimes we can mistake those two for one another. The other thing that we see here in this text is this is they confirmed that word in community. The church listened together, they heard together, they discerned together, they confirmed together. This is probably our least favorite component of this aspect here. Our approach to everything in life is generally individualistic. And our life with God is no different. We like to worship alone and fast alone and pray alone. It's like I've got my Spotify playlist and I have my prayer app, and it's me and Jesus and my tech, and I'm good to go. And we oftentimes see those things as replacements for community, as replacements for vibrant life in the local church, which is absolutely foreign to the scriptures. Scriptures can't even conceive of that kind of life of faith that is absent the community of believers. And so what happens then is that we oftentimes then discern alone as well. Rather than say, what does it mean to discern together? If we discern with someone else, it maybe includes our spouse or maybe a close friend. It's oftentimes a fairly small and relatively homogenous group that might be susceptible to groupthink. Maybe. But when we discern, the question we ask is: do we take the time to include others? Do we take the time to humbly and actively, openly seek the advice, the input, the wisdom of other people? Do we stop and say, I wonder what this person whose life with God I deeply respect? I wonder what this person who's been this big influence in my life. I wonder what they would say. Do we take the time to even ask, say, hey, I I have this sense, the spirit is leading me in this direction? Are we willing to ask that to someone who might challenge us? That might push back, that might ask us really hard questions to refine our discernment from there. Do we even take a moment to consider, like, hey, if I follow this direction, who might this decision cost? Who might feel like they've lost or that this might be hard for? Is there a way to include them? To say, I have this sense that Jesus is leading me in this way. And I wanted to invite you to pray with me in this. Because I know if the Spirit leads in this direction, that this is going to impact you. And so I want to invite you in to this conversation. What do it look like for our discernment to not just be done alone, but to be done in community? And we see why this matters in the verses that follow. Here, Paul and Barnabas, along with a guy named John Mark, who we'll get to later on, but it's PB and J, they head off to Cyprus. And as they're in Cyprus going about on this first missionary journey, they encountered a false prophet who practices sorcery, whose name is Bar Jesus. Now, Bar and Aramaic means son, Jesus Yeshua, the son of Joshua. It's a common name. He goes by this other name, Elimos, which must have meant sorcerer. And we're told is that he's Jewish. And he's doing those very things that Deuteronomy said. Don't do this. And he's practicing them. He's practicing sorcery, living in clear violation to the ways of God. This is common in the ancient world that we see government officials oftentimes keeping people like this in their company. And what we learn from this guy is he's resistant to the gospel of the kingdom, that he's distorting the ways of God, that he's taking straight things and making them crooked when Jesus came to take crooked things and make them straight. And he opposes Paul and Barnabas, and this confrontation ensues. And this confrontation is not the first time the church has experienced this. It's not the last time. Instead, what we see in Acts is as the church goes forth in obedience, carrying out the gospel, that it's going to be common and predictable for there to be confrontation. That the kingdoms of this world are going to resist the kingdom of our God and King. And so as the people of God join Jesus in the restoration of all things, we can expect trouble. We can expect resistance. We can expect conflicts. But what can easily happen in those moments is what happens. We second guess. We doubt. We withdraw. We pull back. We avoid. When that happens, what do we fall back on? Where's our confidence in that place? Where do we find the courage and the confidence that we need to move forward? I think that's the fruits of communal discernment. Is that we go, wait a minute. I didn't just position my heart by myself. I positioned my heart with the community and we heard the spirit and we confirmed his consistency and leading in community. We heard all of this. We discerned together. And it was the community that said, Yes, go, we're with you. We've got your back. We believe that this is God's word for you, his direction for you. When we have that, then we can go boldly into whatever God has ahead for us. And when we encounter confrontation, we can respond like Paul did here, which maybe I say this every week, one of my favorite passages. But he said this: empowered by the Holy Spirit, Saul, also known as Paul, glared at Bar Jesus. This is a different kind of spiritual gift. The spirit-empowered glare. Um, so some of you have this gift as well. You're like, that is my spiritual gift. It's not administration, it's not tongues, it's the glare. And then he says this. He looks at him glaring in the midst of resistance and immediately has all the confidence and courage to move forward. This is an official of a government in a place where he's a visitor and a stranger. And he says, You are a deceiver and a trickster, you devil. You attack anything that is right, and you will never stop twisting the straight ways of the Lord into crooked paths. Listen, the Lord's power is set against you, and you'll be blind for a while, even unable to see the daylights. It's an incredible amount of fortitude and courage in the midst of a really difficult situation. Where is that coming from? I think it's coming from all those years of waiting, all of that preparation, all of the discernment that went into that moment, and all the confidence that he was moving forward with the full strength of the gospel in his community. And immediately in this part, Jesus lost his sight. Interestingly, this is the same thing that happened to Paul a few chapters earlier. I think the hope is that this guy will also receive the gospel. But Luke leaves that open-ended. We don't know anything more about his story, but we do know that the governor saw what was happened, and he was astonished, and he came to faith. There's something about the church when it moves out in confidence and clarity, community, and confirmation of what God has said and spoken. That when the gospel goes forth like that, people are astonished and they come to faith, which is our great hope. So as we prepare to come to the table this morning, our worship team comes. I want to just take a moment for us to just stop in the midst of all of our, you know, fullness, even of Sunday mornings. And take a moment just to say, okay, Jesus, is there something that you might be saying to me today? Maybe you've got a big decision that you're making at work or in a relationship, trying to discern how to uh handle or approach something with a friend, how to parent your child through a really difficult situation. You got a big financial decision you're trying to make. Help us as we approach whatever decisions we have to make, to be sensitive to the voice of God. Thank you for the people that you've given us to discern with. Help us to listen and to confirm together. As we come to the table, the table is actually one of those places that we posture our hearts. We position ourselves in a receptive place. Someone had asked last week, why do we practice communion every week? There's so many reasons. But one of them is because we remember every single week that Jesus is the center of our story. Jesus is the one that we worship, Jesus is the one that we follow, Jesus is the one that we come to, and it places us in a position of receptivity. Oh yeah, you're the one who speaks. We can hear because you speak. We have life because you're the one who gives life. So we come open-handed, positioning ourselves in a place to receive. So even as we come to the table, would you speak to us today, Lord? In your name. Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. For as it was in the beginning, it is now and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.