Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for this morning’s message is our reading from Acts chapter 16, the Apostle Paul’s vision of the cry for help from a spiritually lost and dieing people.
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ Jesus, the Savior who calls us to service, and who also equips us for that same service. HELP! Now there's a word that'll get the adrenaline pumping. Calls for help tend to energize us. People start running. Sirens start blaring. That's because calls for help create a sense of urgency as we realize that someone's life or safety may be hanging in the balance.
Now, if this is true of distress calls issued in the face of some physical danger, how much more so is it true of a call for spiritual help? Well, in our text today, just such a call comes to the Apostle Paul. Did you catch it in the words of the text? "Come and help us!" And did you recognize that plea? Have you heard it before? "It’s a cry for the gospel, isn’t it? A cry that certainly comes only through God's direction. But at the same time, a cry that calls for our urgent response as well.
And that’s the mission of (Mt. Olive / Concordia) Lutheran Church, and each one of us baptized believers as well. To leave the comfort of our lives and take the Gospel out into the world. To make more disciples by baptizing and teaching. You see, that’s why our Lord’s second coming didn’t occur the day after the resurrection. There is more work for you and me, and all believers, to accomplish in his name before that glorious day comes. “I have other sheep, and they know my voice as well.” Jesus told his disciples. And then he commissioned them, and all believers as well, to go out and find those other sheep and bring them home to their Good Shepherd.
But now perhaps we feel unprepared, or unequipped to deal with this spiritual emergency. We don't know where to go or what to do. And that's why we need God's direction. And He will give it to us, just as he provided direction to the Apostle Paul and to the team of disciples with him. Let's spend a little time today with Paul and the rest of that ancient team of spiritual first responders, and let’s learn from them just how to react to spiritual emergencies.
Our training mission takes us to ancient Asia Minor, in present day Turkey. Paul and his companions are in this region of the world, checking up on the churches that by God's grace and power had been founded by the apostle and his coworkers just a year or so earlier. But they weren't content to merely rest on their past efforts. There were more towns and cities in that region in which to share the gospel. They thought of turning west, but Luke tells us they were, "...kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia". They then thought of heading north, but Luke again reports, "...the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to". How strange this sounds to us! Is the Holy Spirit preventing mission work here? No, he is not preventing it, but instead giving it the proper direction at the proper time. Later, when the time was right, God would send Paul back to those places he hadn't been allowed to enter at this stage of his journey. What a reminder to us that mission work is never done just by luck or accident. God is the one who steers the course of his Word. The timing is his. He may close what seems to us to be a window of opportunity, but only because he's ready to open a door somewhere else, as he does so here in our text, which goes on to read. "So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, "Come over to Macedonia and help us".
One thing about God! He thinks big! While Paul is thinking of adding to the churches in Asia, God has a whole new continent in mind – what we today call Europe. And Paul recognized the Lord's voice in this call. Speaking on behalf of the missionaries, Luke says, we concluded "...that God had called us to preach the gospel to them [that is, the people of Macedonia]." And it had to be God who was directing this. Unbelievers are in such a sorry state of spiritual trouble that they don't even know they need help, so God in his grace puts out the spiritual emergency call on their behalf.
And fellow Christians! You and I have been commissioned by Jesus himself to receive and respond to such distress calls. He has said to us, "...go and make disciples of all nations...” You see, we are on a mission, a search and rescue mission from God. So what should we do? Should we just sit around and wait for a vision, like Paul's? Well, even though we're probably not going to receive it that manner, you and I can still expect direction from God. We know he wants us to make disciples. So, He's going to give us opportunities to do so. And we need to train our ears to hear his call for help.
Sometimes that call might come through the tears of a family member or coworker, who tells you their life is all messed up and out of control, and they don't know what to do about it. Sometimes that call is heard in the shocked and distressed voice of a friend whose doctors have done everything they can, but failed to cure him, and have now given up. Sometimes the call might go out in a Sunday bulletin announcement. For example, “There’s a New Adult Information Class beginning. Bring an unchurched friend to church.” And sometimes a spiritual distress call comes through the opportunities God presents to us as a congregation, or district, or synod. Maybe we're given the opportunity to support a new mission here in our district, or maybe a mission on the other side of the world, perhaps a place like Indonesia, or Thailand, or Hong Kong. These are all calls for help, all of them coming to you and me through God's direction.
But just what makes you and I qualified to handle these spiritual emergencies? How do we know how to help someone who's in spiritual distress? Surely, there’s got to be someone more qualified? But friends, who could be more qualified than we are, since we ourselves were once rescued from the same disaster? With this very thinking in mind, the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, for the very purpose that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God."
You see, when our lives were out of control, when our sin had made us enemies of God and had earned us his eternal punishment, when we hadn't a clue as to what awful fate awaited us and when we couldn't have cared less, then it was that God came to our rescue. He called and directed our parents and other people as well, to help us and bring us the gospel. And through the words of Scripture those people spoke over us, and the waters of Baptism they applied to us, God comforted us then, and he still comforts us today. Comforts us with his own promise, that all our sins have been more than paid for by Jesus, for whose sake alone our wrongs are forgiven, our troubles are made into blessings, and the glories of heaven await us. That's comfort, my friends-comfort from God, comfort for us to enjoy right now, and comfort for us to share. But when should we share it? Should we maybe wait until some day when we're a bit better prepared? No! This comfort from God is ours to share today.
When the call goes out to help find a missing child, people drop everything. They go at once. There's a real sense of urgency. People know they're working against the clock. There are only so many hours before night comes and the search will be called off on account of darkness.
When it came to mission work, the Apostle Paul and his coworkers in Christ had that same sense of urgency. Listen to how Luke describes it, "After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. From Troas we put out to sea and sailed straight for Samothrace, and the next day on to Neapolis. From there we traveled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia”. What we have recorded here is much more than a mere travelogue. These words capture not only the apostles' enthusiasm, but also the seriousness and the importance with which they regarded their mission. They knew there were only so many hours of daylight left to them. They understood that an eternal night of judgment was coming. People were dying and going to their eternal punishment with every passing moment. The souls of those still living couldn't afford to wait on Christians who were hoping to become more at ease with the mission assigned them.
And guess what! All these years later nothing has changed. There is still an eternal night of judgment coming. For some it came yesterday. You see their obituaries are in today's paper. And if they didn't know Christ as their savior, then sadly for them, it's too late. But for all those souls still living, there's still time. How much time? We don't know. They may die this evening. Christ may return tomorrow. Friends, do you now sense the urgency of God’s calling?
But now, be honest. Maybe you still don't want to act on that calling. Maybe the responsibility that comes with God's calling is overwhelming. Or maybe the importance of the work leaves you burdened with the guilt of past failures. Have there been cries for help in the past that you’ve ignored? I ashamed to tell you that in my life I've ignored some of those cries.
OK then, what should we do with this guilt? Should we live in it? Should we die with it? Well, as Paul would say, “mai geneto!” which translated means, “may it never be so!!” For Jesus has paid for these sins too! His holiness covers all of our failures, even our failures to share his gospel. God does not count these sins against us. He doesn't point an accusing finger at us today and say, "You better never let that happen again! Now get out there and do it right this time!" Instead he proclaims us forgiven and he regards us as perfect, even as perfect missionaries - all thanks to Jesus, our sin-bearer and substitute. And that, my friends, is the difference between a law approach to evangelism and a gospel approach.
So today we rededicate ourselves to the work at hand, not out of fear for God's threats or guilt for past failures (those are law motives), but purely out of thanks for his incredible, unending agape love (that’s the gospel motive). And we go about our mission with a sense of urgency that comes from knowing that God, who directs every call for spiritual help, is waiting to do great things through us today. Look at the lives God touched though Paul and his companions. While in Philippi, Paul shared the gospel of God's forgiveness in Christ with a woman named Lydia. And God blessed that work. Luke tells us, "The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message". Lydia became a believer and instantly a missionary as well, first by sharing the good news about Jesus with her family, then by having them baptized in the Savior's name, and finally, by opening her home to serve as Paul's base of operations in that city, so that more people could hear the gospel and be saved.
And Jesus works through us in the same way. He has put people, like Lydia, in our lives as well. People whose lives will be forever changed through the words God gives us to speak to them. Forever changed through the faith God is ready to work in them. Isn't it exciting, my friends? Isn't it exciting to be a part of a congregation and a church body like ours that loves God's Word and loves to share it? God is constantly directing calls for help our way. He's opening doors for us all around our community, and throughout our country, and all over the world. Just think, God is pleased to use us, and our message, and our offerings to accomplish such great things. As one example of this, I think of the way God has used our church to evangelize Africa. We began our work there decades ago with just a handful of dedicated missionaries. And today, by God's grace, tens of thousands of people belong to the Lutheran Church of Central Africa, to say nothing of the countless thousands that are already in heaven because of the gospel we preached there.
While I was at the seminary in St. Louis, I had the great pleasure to make the acquaintance of a number of the disciples of those very first missionaries. Men who were now themselves in a foreign country, preparing themselves to return to their homeland and to carry forward that initial work of ministry back to their own people. The call for help is all around us, my friends. Listen for it. Respond to it with a sense of urgency. And respond in confidence that the same God who has rescued us will now use our gospel proclamation to rescue many more for Jesus' sake. Amen.
And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in true faith unto life everlasting. Amen.