We’ve been going through uh for the last uh several months uh the book of Acts and so we’re just continuing onwards going through it consecutively and uh every chapter and every passage opens up a new flavor and a and um a new topic and a new way of uh thinking about God and thinking about our lives. And I was thinking this week as we as we get into it that our church, Knox Church, has been here 115 years and it has very solid turn of the 20th century Presbyterian bones. And our namesake John Knox, this guy, he was a 16th century minister. He was originally ordained as a Catholic priest before he was caught up in the great reformation movement that was sweeping through Europe. One point he was taken prisoner by the French and forced to serve as a galley slave. And upon his release he fearlessly returned to Scotland where this renowned preacher uh continued leading the growing reformation movement. And one of the great cries of the reformation was to call the church away from centuries of bloated traditions. Traditions which had assumed uh an authority on par with the Bible. So one of the great reformation cries was solar scriptura. The scriptures alone were the source of authority for Christian believers. But alongside the high value that the reformers placed on the Bible, there’s this impressive string of Presbyterian prophets who quite clearly and remarkably heard the voice of God. John Knox was one of them. His mentor John Wishard was certainly regarded that way. John Knox wrote about his mentor saying he was singularly learned in godly knowledge and clearly illuminated with the spirit of prophecy. We have several examples on record of Wishard prophesying events that later came true and George Wishard was when he was executed for his faith. Uh his successor John Knox continued to lead the reformation movement and he came to be referred to as the prophet and apostle of the Scottish nation. And a number of his biographers record how when John Knox was on his deathbed, he sent word to a man he really loved, a man named William Kirkali. And uh John Knox told him, “You need to cease trying to hold that castle on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots.” This was a castle that was under assault by the English army. Unless Kirkali left the castle, John Knox said he’d be pulled out of that nest and he’d be brought down over the castle wall with shame and his carcass would be hung before the sun. “So God has assured me,” Knox said. Galdi chose to ignore that warning and he was eventually forced to surrender the castle. The castle gate had been blocked by by the stones from the English bombardment. So Kirkaldi was lowered over the wall by a rope in shame. And on a sunny afternoon, August 3rd, 1573, he was hanged at the Market Cross in Edinburgh facing east away from the sun. But before he died, his body swung around and he was hung before the sun just as John Knox had predicted. So prophecy is part of the legacy of the man our church is named after. And I don’t know if that legacy has reverberated much in these walls in the last hundred years, but if John Knox were with us this morning, the idea of hearing prophetically from God, it wouldn’t come as any surprise to him. And this really, it shouldn’t shock us because if we accept the Bible as the word of God, we already believe in prophecy, in hearing God’s voice, in supernatural communication. We believe that all scriptures inspired by God and that this very mysterious supernatural process led to the compiling of our Bibles. Second Peter 1, Peter writes, “No prophecy of scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” And Peter himself then a writer of scripture talks of he knew what it was like to be carried along by the Holy Spirit in that realm of divine inspiration. So our Bibles are living active prophetic words given by God through various human writers to us. Now there are those who aren’t too keen on the idea of hearing God’s voice outside of the Bible and they would limit God’s speaking to the Bible. sometimes quite bluntly suggesting that once God wrote his book, he went mute and he has no call or reason to communicate anymore with his children in any way. But have you ever never had a vivid dream or a felt a nudge from the Holy Spirit or had a Bible verse or reference uh come to mind when you were praying? Or you felt moved out of the blue to connect with an old acquaintance or or you saw your day steered in a new direction and you knew that it was the Holy Spirit doing the steering. Maybe even more directly, you heard a phrase or a sentence or a message to you that you knew was simply not your own thought, that it came from the Holy Spirit. If so, then hearing the voice of God, receiving supernatural communication, it’s not such a far-fetched idea. It’s not outside the boundaries of our experience. And in our passage this morning in Acts chapter 21, it’s basically one of those travel passages in the book of Acts, Paul leaves the elders at Ephesus. He continues his journey toward Jerusalem. In it, we gain some surprisingly valuable insight into how God might speak to us and how we’re to share and handle and apply the word when he does. Back in Acts chapter 19 21, we’re told that following three very stable, successful years in Ephesus, Paul resolved, it says, in the spirit to go to Jerusalem. That seems a little bit unambiguous. We wonder was he trying to figure out in his own spirit? Is this the Holy Spirit directing him? Gets a little clearer in chapter 20 when he tells us tells the Ephesian elders that he’s compelled he’s constrained by the spirit to go to Jerusalem. Literally, he’s bound in the spirit to go. He says, “Now compelled by the spirit, I’m going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are awaiting me. Apparently, the voice of God through the Holy Spirit was providing Paul with an increasingly clearer picture of what was what he was going to face in Jerusalem. Both compelling him to go, but also warning him of what he would face there at the same time. And wouldn’t that help any of us if we were going to be pitched into a really confusing, painful period of our lives? if the Holy Spirit might give just a little revelation to prepare us for that difficult time. Heard a man named Graham Cook speak on a few occasions. He operates with something about prophetic gifting and he says, “Many times I’ve had words that were delivered ahead of time so that people may through a prayerful response be made ready for what God was doing.” He says, “I once gave a man a word that his job situation was going to change for the worse. His boss would turn against him, make his life so difficult that he’d want to leave. The Lord, however, was going to teach him about trusting, standing his ground in faith, resting in the Lord, and fighting the enemy. And he was to stand still under God’s hand through this time of testing, and he would inherit a place of authority. He says, “At that time, the man’s cousin was his boss. They were the best of friends. So his initial reaction was, though I completely missed the prophecy, and I encouraged him, just put it on the shelf. Don’t dismiss it.” Ironically, the prophecy drove him and his cousin to pray for their company. So, for a while, everything just got better. Several months after the prophecy, his cousin moved to another job. The man who took over was violently opposed to Christianity. Followed 18 months of hell in that place, as this man took every opportunity to get the Christian fired. During that time, the only thing the believer had to hold on to was the Lord’s promise for that situation. And two years after the prophecy was given, the manager himself was dismissed and the Christian brother was elevated to fill his place. And you see God’s loving, merciful heart uh providing this information ahead of time for the Apostle Paul. Not that God would always do that all the time for all of us, but he did it for the Apostle Paul. Then things got sticky as he continued his journey and ran into fellow Christians who were also certainly in touch with the Holy Spirit. Paul and his companions took this long 650 kilometer crossing uh to uh from Ephesus uh to the land of Israel. Upon landing, they found some Christians in the city of Ty. And they also felt God’s spirit directing them. And we’re told that through the spirit, they urged Paul not to go to Jerusalem. It gets a little confusing here, doesn’t it? You can imagine the pressure that that placed on the Apostle Paul. got even heavier when he moved a little further south to Cesaria. There another person named Agabus, this is a guy who clearly hears regularly enough from God that he’s recognized by the church as a prophet. He went up from Jerusalem and he acted out this audiovisisual prophecy. Luke who was with him at the time says coming over to us. He took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it, and said, “The Holy Spirit says, in this way, the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.” And that prompts all the friends who were with Paul to get very aggravated and to plead with him not to go to Jerusalem. However, despite that pressure, Paul says, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I’m ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” And when they saw that he couldn’t be dissuaded, Luke and the rest of them, they just threw up their hands and surrendered and just said, “Well, okay, the Lord’s will be done.” So that’s the progression. Paul’s compelled by the spirit to go to Jerusalem, fully warned that he’s going to face trouble there. Through the spirit, the people in Ty urged him not to go. Then the prophet Agabus acts out that audiovisisual prophecy. This is what the Holy Spirit says is going to happen to this man when he gets to Jerusalem. All of his buddies beg him not to go, but he’s determined to press on for Jerusalem anyway. Stop and analyze this uh just for a moment. Let’s think about how God’s revelation works in any of our lives. And let’s think about it in terms of steps or stages like this revelation, interpretation, application. This is the same steps we follow whether we’re reading our Bible or whether we’re trying to figure out something like a dream or an impression or a direct word of prophecy. Revelation is just how God’s word is delivered to us. And most commonly it’ll come to us through the Bible. Certainly the most common way God will speak to all of us. But at times God may also have desire to have his revelation delivered another way. Once the revelation’s received, then we need to interpret it. If it’s the Bible, we take the words on the page and we seek to interpret and deduce and unravel the meaning of scripture. We do this so naturally, we don’t even realize that we’ve gone on from one stage to another, a second step in hearing God. And finally, after we receive the message from God, we work to interpret it. Then comes the time to apply it. And that’s just the stage where we act. We take this message from God and we we live it out. Changes our lives. It’s possible for us to lose our way or jump to conclusions in that process. For Paul, I think this passage indicates he received the revelation. He interpreted it correctly. I’m compelled to go, but I’m forewarned that there’s going to be trouble there. And finally, he applied it correctly. He maintained his course for Jerusalem. His friends in Ty, on the other hand, also in touch with the Holy Spirit, they perceived the revelation of Paul’s pending troubles in Jerusalem. They immediately interpreted that as an awful thing. Their application was to do whatever they could to stop Paul from going. Interestingly, Agabus, he’s the more seasoned prophet in he he goes up to Cesaria. He simply delivers the message that was given him from the Holy Spirit that Paul is going to be bound like uh like as if with the belt. But then Agabus, his job done, he fades into the background of the passage. It’s like he delivered the revelation. He leaves it with Paul and the others to interpret it and apply it correctly. And it doesn’t say that he’s part of the group pleading Paul not to go. So this three-step process, revelation, interpretation, application, I think that helps explain the disconnect between Paul who set his face to go to Jerusalem and the believers entire who saw trouble ahead and tried to stop him. And later in Acts chapter 23, after things as prophesied had gone badly for Paul in Jerusalem, God gave a confirmation to Paul that he’d been on the right track and he had done the right thing. It says, “The Lord stood by Paul at night and said, “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, you must also testify in Rome.” And then Paul gets to proceed to Rome at the government expense. and um they take him prisoner. I think we can relate to those believers in Ty who received though that revelation that Paul who they loved was going to be arrested and imprisoned and badly treated they immediately assumed that it wasn’t God’s will for that to happen. And for most of us our our cultural conditioning is that uh anything that involves suffering that’s not a good thing for our lives. Can’t be part of God’s will for our lives. Our culture we’re marked by a fair bit of comfort and and self-interest. And we might think, well, God wants me to be happy. If I’m not happy, if I’m not secure, I’m not in his will. God wouldn’t want me to suffer pain. And if I’m in pain, maybe I slipped outside of God’s will. Now, of of course, that’s not true. But our natural intuitions try to trick us into believing it. Now, does Paul remind you here of anyone else as he moved toward Jerusalem, knowing full well the fate that awaited him there? In Luke 9:51, we’re told that Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem. He resolutely set out very clearly explaining to his disciples that once he got there, he’d be betrayed, he’d be killed, and later he would rise from the dead. Jesus gave a very detailed prophetic revelation to his disciples. But for Peter and the others, it was unbearable for them to consider. They didn’t want Jesus to go to Jerusalem and be killed. So Peter’s application of that prophecy, he went so far as to rebuke Jesus, say, you know, you’re stop talking like that. That’s bothersome. And Jesus, knowing that it was really uh Satan’s words that Peter was channeling, said, “Get behind me, Satan. You’re not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” So knowing full well what awaited him, Jesus was compelled to go to Jerusalem. He set his face resolutely on that journey. He moved toward the cross, not away from it. on our behalf. He would take the punishment of the Roman government, but much more significantly, he was bearing the punishment of the holy God against our sin and all that we had we were responsible for. Set his mind on the things of God because God wanted to bring us by faith into his family. The only way possible was for the sinless son of God to sacrifice on our behalf. The only way for God to remain entirely holy and just and still have us as his own was for the son to set his face for Jerusalem knowing full well what awaited him there. And as a follower of Christ, Paul knew that suffering it’s not outside God’s will for our lives. Sometimes sometimes suffering is right in the center. It’s right in the sweet spot of God’s will because of what it accomplishes in us and what it accomplishes through us. So, we thought a bit about the supernatural ways that God communicates with us, including supernatural scriptures. Saw how Paul navigated the the revelation the Holy Spirit gave him with an interpretation that I think was correct and then a difficult but I think accurate application. So now maybe we can think for a few moments how we as a church might process supernatural communication in a way that’s accurate and responsible. few weeks back there’s some weird stuff in the book of acts and a few weeks a back I talked about the care and maintenance of the gift of tongues focusing on Paul’s instructions to the church uh in the book of Corinthians and in that same letter to the Corinthians Paul also provides some tips about the care and maintenance of the prophetic ministry Paul really likes the prophetic ministry and he champions its use in New Testament churches in teaching the Corinthian church how to use and manage and benefit from a very diverse set of spiritual gifts doowled out by the Holy Spirit. Paul tells them that everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, their encouragement, and their comfort. So, it’s a gift that’s very internally effective for the church, for Christians like us, because we all need strengthening and encouraging and comfort. Then Paul, so Paul also talks about this external evangelistic function as well. Gets even stranger. He says if an unbeliever comes into their church service and everyone’s speaking in tongues, visitor will just he’ll think everyone’s out of their minds, probably just walk out. But if that same visitor comes in and there’s a word of prophecy, it might be just for them. Prophecy might lay bare some of the secrets of their heart, they might find themselves falling down and worshiping God, saying, “God is really among you. It’s been proven.” Now Paul seems quite eager that we figure this out and get on with it. As he writes about the gifts the Holy Spirit gives the church, he writes, “Follow the way of love. Eagerly desire spiritual gifts. Oh, especially the gift of prophecy.” Says, “Since you’re eager to have spiritual gifts, try to excel in gifts that build up the church.” My beloved brothers, be eager to prophesy. Don’t forbid speaking in tongues, but everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way. And then he also tells us then what a fitting and orderly way ought to look like or might look like in the church. And frankly, it’s this sounds wild. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul’s idea of a church service includes elements like this. He says, “When you come together, everyone has a hymn and a lesson or a word of instruction.” And I say, “Thank you, Paul.” That’s exactly what we do every Sunday here at Knox. We sing and we have a word of instruction. We knew we were a church that was on the right track. And Paul says, “Well, I wasn’t quite finished.” He says, “Let me start again.” He says, “When you come together, everyone has a hymn, a lesson or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue, an interpretation. All of these must be done.” He says, “For the strengthening of the church.” He goes on, it gets even stranger. He says, “If anyone speaks in a tongue, two or three at the most should speak one at a time. Someone must interpret. If there’s no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God. Then two or three prophets should speak and others should weigh carefully what is being said. And if a revelation comes to someone who’s sitting down while the first speaker speaker should stop then for you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. Spirits of the prophets are subject to the control of the prophets. In other words, it’s not just some ecstatic thing that comes on people. Everyone’s fully in control of the spiritual gifts that they’re operating under. Now, I don’t know how that strikes you, but I can imagine having a conversation with Paul and telling him, “Paul, we’re really we’re not that kind of church. We’re pretty button-d down. We’re more of a talking heads type church. And uh if we did the things that you recommended to the Corinthians, how would we prevent it from becoming very messy and really out of control?” And somewhere in the back of my mind, I can hear Paul, the Apostle Paul, answer me, ‘Doug, I didn’t realize that your main goal in church was keeping everything under your control. I find it works better and uh it’s more fun when we give room to give the room to the Holy Spirit and allowing the spirit to retain some element of surprise as we gather together. So that’s that’s a bit of a convicting word. Do you sense the disconnect between ourselves and what Paul says the church might look like? I know that opening up the gift of prophecy and to God speaking to us outside the Bible, it seems rife for abuse. Seems like it would open up the opportunity for some self-proclaimed prophet to strut up to the front and point their finger at everyone and say, “God told me this.” to say to you, “God told me that you need to stop doing this or you need to start doing that.” I have a hard time with anyone wanting to use their spiritual gifts to bully other people, to beat up on the body of Christ. How would how would that work with someone with gift of evangelism if they tried that? They say, “Hey, I have the gift of evangelism.” So, if you know what’s good for you, you need to drop to your knees, repent, and believe right now. Or someone with the gift of encouragement says, “Look, I have a God-given gift of encouragement. So, stop your whiny, depressive, depressive sniveling right now. listen to me and put on a happy face. It’s ridiculous to try to use a spiritual gift to pull rank or assert dominance within the body of Christ. If someone prophetically gifted tried to do that, I think they’d need to grow up. That doesn’t mean that the prophetic word itself, if it’s really from God, doesn’t have authority. Because if it is God’s word, of course it has authority. In the past, and maybe not long ago, I’ve said this a few times. As I mentioned uh from the autobiography of Charles Spurgeon, that renowned 19th century Baptist preacher, he preached at the great Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. And he writes of the times when he would be preaching and he would stop and he’d look up some anonymous person in the crowd and he would deliver a very convicting word of knowledge to very accurate word of knowledge for that person. Didn’t happen all the time. In fact, Spurgeon says that uh I could tell as many as a dozen similar cases where I pointed someone in the hall. I had didn’t have the slightest idea who the person was or that what I said was right. But I believe that I was moved by the Holy Spirit. and how so so striking has been my description that the people have gone away and they’ve called their friends and said you you need to come listen to Spurgeon because he’s told me beyond a doubt secrets of my soul or and if it wasn’t God he couldn’t have described me so act so so exactly so the prophetic person isn’t to be bullying or doineering but the prophetic word if it comes from God that does carry its own great deal of authority so a picture that sort sort of makes sense to me in church is that someone who senses maybe God speaking to them to approach an elder or a church leader and say, “I think that maybe possibly perhaps God may have shown me something. Might be a word that could help the church or help some individual in the church. Can I tell you what it is and leave it with you and you can help me discern what to do with it? Might be a revelation from God that we can interpret and uh and apply together in community. If it is God’s word, it’ll carry some authority and it will comfort, strengthen, and encourage all of us. We could probably all work with something like that. And it lines very much lines up with Paul’s word to the Corinthians that a prophet would speak and the others would weigh carefully what was being said. Lines up with what he says to the Thessalonians when he writes, “Don’t put out the spirit’s fire. Don’t treat prophecies with contempt. test everything, hold on to the good, avoid every kind of evil. In other words, the prophecy comes to the church community, we discern it together, we weigh it, we test it, uh we hold on, we try to discern what’s true and good in it and helpful that’s coming to us from the voice of God. And if it’s not that, well, then we take a pass on it. But we don’t despise prophecy, and we don’t despise the person who’s given that word. You know, I can speak very theoretically uh and I think I can speak biblically about the care and maintenance of prophecy among God’s people, but I can’t speak to it from any vast wealth of experience. I know what it’s like internally uh to feel God speaking to me both through the Bible and and through other means. Broader church usage is a bit beyond me. Some of you though probably as God’s spirit gives gifts to the church, you’re more gifted prophetically than maybe you realize or if you asked your father for it, if you eagerly desired it, a prophetic gift might be something the Holy Spirit would be delighted to uh to give you. Or you may already know that you sometimes hear things pretty clearly from God. Uh but you haven’t felt permission or an avenue uh or a way to express that. Whatever the case, if God wants to speak to us in the Bible in other ways, who among us doesn’t want to hear his voice, if it brings strengthening and encouragement and comfort our way, if it can accomplish that kind of good. If Bob and Holly were camping last summer with Holly’s cousin, Daryl, and Daryl told them of the very convoluted path by which he’d come to follow Christ. He had this kind of hard scrabble upbringing uh in the East Coupney, BC Mountains. His dad operated a portable sawmill. His father eventually lost that business. He was injured in a farm accident. He had this great internal spiritual struggle and I guess he was gloriously saved at a church meeting. But then he died of a heart attack at age 53. Daryl himself says that he accepted Jesus uh when he was about 9 years old, but he would still go forward in the church every summer when the evangelist showed up and people told him it wasn’t necessary, but he went anyway. By his mid- teens, he was questioning the whole thing. He was questioning different interpretations of the Bible and whether Christianity was making any real difference in his life. By his late teens, he left it all behind. He professed to be an atheist, lived hard, drank hard, stole, sold drugs, did whatever he says he could to just get along. After his father passed away, his mom moved to Three Hills, Alberta. She became the switchboard or a switchboard operator at Prairie Bible Institute. 1979 she contracted pancreatic cancer. Darl began spending time in Three Hills with her as she was dying. Family and friends were sitting with her around the clock and Darl says he would take the midnight to 6:00 a.m. shift. He’d been given a couple of books for Christmas. Mere Christianity by CS Lewis and Johnny by Johnny Ericson. Didn’t have anything else to do on the night shift, so he read them. He says CS Lewis had some pretty good arguments against his belief system and uh and he was intrigued by the book of Ecclesiastes bought a Bible and the author of Ecclesiastes sounded just like him. A guy who had tried everything and found that a lot of it was mere vanity. The other book by Johnny Ericson got him interested in the book of Job and he read that as well. As he came to the end of the book of Job, Daryl Daryl says uh it was like I heard an audible voice speaking to me. Who do you think you are? Who are you to question me? You think you’re so smart and so talented? What do you know of my creation? What do you know of my power? What do you know of my ways? And through those chapters, Daryl says it was like God was cutting him down to size. And Job 42:5 is highlighted in his Bible where it says, “My ears had heard of you.” This is Job speaking. “My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” And it was shift change at the hospital and to get some privacy he went to the washroom. He sat on a toilet and he prayed. He says that was a far more appropriate place than the front of a church for him. But he says because he’d made a commitment and fallen so often in the past, very hesitant to let his family know of his new commitment. Two days later, he had to return to work. He was running a large job in Golden, BC that involved a lot of equipment. So, he’d been living there um at a motel uh for several months. The motel owner let him keep the room for free when he needed to go to Three Hills to be with his dying mother. So, he returned to Golden for work. The motel owner asked about his mom and he said, “Well, she’ll be gone any day now.” Motel owner said, “Well, that must be really hard on the family.” And Daryl said, “Well, my mom’s a Christian and she’s been serving the Lord for many years. And though they would all miss her and hated to see her go, it was okay because they knew she was going to meet the Lord and her reward. Soon he returned to Three Hills, went to his mom’s hospital bed, knelt down beside her, took her hand. He didn’t say anything. She hadn’t spoken for a couple days. She was pretty much gone. Daryl writes, “When I took her hand, she opened her eyes. They went clear. She looked into my face and said, “Oh, son, I was so proud of when you testified to that man, meaning the hotel owner on Tuesday evening.” She squeezed my hand, went back to sleep. Some hours later, she was dead. That was my confirmation. I knew that this was real. So, I told the family what she had said and and what I’d done. Just to close off, he says, “I joined the church. I got involved. Studied the scripture with great fervor. It hasn’t always gone perfectly, but he’s been faithful.” says, “I’ve been a liberal and a legalist and I’ve stumbled through most of the labels. I’ve been wrong and I’ve skinned my knees, but he has carried me.” Our God, I think our heavenly father, he loves to speak to his children. And we might hear his word through that book of Job as he spoke to Daryl. Or we might he might speak a prophetic word of comfort to a dying mother. As we mentioned when we were talking about the gift of tongues, it’s never impolite to ask our father for things he already might want to give us, including the ability to hear a message from him that can build up others in the fellowship and in the church. I don’t think John Knox would mind at all if a church that was named after him had a little bit more of that in it.