It’s
been said that the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a
problem. Well, if that’s the case, then
I guess I ought to admit something today so that I can begin to do something
about it. I am without a doubt a
creature of habit; I don’t like change.
It’s true, and my sweet wife can tell you that it’s much more than just
a preference, it’s more like an obsession.
I like getting up at the same time every morning. I like having my morning routine. I’m perfectly happy when my daily schedule is
never interrupted in the least. I eat
the same thing for breakfast every day, the same thing for lunch, and it
wouldn’t even bother me if I had the same thing for dinner every day. Yes, I am someone who likes to keep things
well within his comfort zone. However, I
know I’m not alone in this regard. You
see, many of us are creatures of habit.
Most of us have some sort of schedule that we adhere to with varying
degrees of regularity. Almost every
single one of us in hear have a comfort zone of living that we try our hardest
not to venture out of. However, when we
do venture outside of it is where our greatest moments of triumph and growth
occur, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
Why
do I bring up my not wanting to change or our overall love for remaining within
our comfort zones? Well, because that’s
where the Christian church has been thus far in its establishment. Sure, we’ve seen stories of persecution and
hardships, and we even saw the newly ordained Deacon Stephen get stoned to
death last Sunday, but all of this took place within Jerusalem, a place
comfortable to the church and her members.
Y’all know how people are, we can know every little detail about where
we live, but somewhere unknown (even if it’s much smaller) gives us a sense of
confusion, it takes us out of our comfort zone.
Despite all the hardships experienced by the church thus far, they were
primarily operating within the city of Jerusalem, the place that many (if not
all) of them considered home.
If
we look back to the final words of Jesus to his followers before his ascension,
he told them that they would, “receive power when the Holy Spirit [had]
come upon [them], and [they] would be [his] witness in Jerusalem and in all
Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Well, we’ve seen Jerusalem, and now we’re
going to see Judea, Samaria, and the end of the earth. This is where the Church really begins to
fulfill the mission given to them by Jesus just before he ascended. However, it didn’t come about as a result of
the Church’s deepening knowledge or spiritual growth. They didn’t go out into different areas
because of their desire to see the gospel spread. NO!
They left Jerusalem and went out into Samaria because as we’re told in
verse 1, “a great persecution arose against the church in Jerusalem.” Saul, whom we said last Sunday would later
become the Apostle Paul, was leading this persecution. It’s funny; God was using Paul, even in his
prior life as a persecutor of the Church to accomplish His will. He was also using the hardships of
persecution and exile in the life of the Jerusalem church to bring about a
furthering of the gospel. Doesn’t it
always seem that God uses our struggles and our trials to either bring us
closer to Him or to push us into bringing others to come to know His saving
grace?
Well,
Luke, the author of this book, doesn’t just stop at telling us that the church
was going throughout the world preaching, but he gives us a specific example of
one who was going out to a specific region.
He tells us about a couple of events that happened during the
evangelistic ministry of Philip. One
point of information for our understanding; the Philip that is represented here
in this text is one of the newly ordained Deacons and not the apostle who
accompanied Jesus during his earthly ministry.
As I mentioned earlier, due to increased persecution of the church
within Jerusalem, followers of Christ were forced to leave the comfort of
Jerusalem for different places, most of them going against their wishes. However, remember the Old Testament prophet
Jonah. Jonah didn’t want to go to
Nineveh and tried to run. Eventually
God’s calling of Jonah to Nineveh was too strong for Jonah to resist. Once he got to Nineveh and actually delivered
God’s message, the entire city of Nineveh repented. Well, even though we’re not told specifically
that Philip didn’t want to go to Samaria, we do know that pretty much the
entire church would have preferred to have stayed in Jerusalem instead of going
out into other regions. But as we saw
with Jonah, you don’t always have to be the most willing of witnesses to do
great things for God.
Not
only did Philip have to go to Samaria when he would have rather stayed in
Jerusalem, he ended up coming into contact with two folks that he probably
didn’t really care about having much contact with in the first place, or at
least people who he probably wouldn’t have sought out otherwise. Now, we don’t have time to go into both of
these accounts in depth, so I’ll just quickly skim the surface of Philip’s
interactions with them. The first
person that he comes across is Simon the Magician. Now, Simon was well-known in Samaria for the
magic that he had been doing. Some of
the Samaritans even said of him that, “This man is the power of God that is called
Great.” In other words, they
thought that he was sent by God and that his power came from God. However, we know from our text that that was
not the case. Now it’s possible that he
could do magic, or the more apt term is probably sorcery. He could have been empowered by Satan, even
if empowered unbeknownst to Simon him.
There’s also the chance that he was simply performing magic tricks
similar to that which we see today.
Either way, Simon heard Philip’s proclamations of the gospel and even
converted and was baptized. However, he
went on later to ask if he could give silver in exchange for the Holy
Spirit. After Peter, who came to assist
Philip, rebuked Simon, we do see sincere repentance on Simon’s behalf. Let this serve as a reminder to all of us
that when seeking out the lost, it’s not a one-time thing, but a continual
process.
The
second person that Philip encountered during his time in Samaria is most
commonly known as the Ethiopian Eunuch.
He goes to an area called Gaza after being told by an angel of the Lord
to do so. It’s not really that he would
have had anything against this region, but with things going so well in
Samaria, it wouldn’t surprise us to find Philip questioning God’s sending him
away from there. However, we don’t find
any of that; he just goes. Now, this man
who Philip found was already a devout follower of God. However, he was most likely a Jew and still
followed the Jewish system of faith held by the religious leaders of Jerusalem
at the time. But Philip and this man
begin a conversation and Philip is presented with a golden opportunity to
present the gospel to him. After hearing
the good news of Jesus Christ, the Ethiopian eunuch professed that he wanted to
be baptized (a sign that he now understood the gospel instead of simply
adhering to the Pharisaic system of being counted among God’s people). After he’s baptized, we’re told that the
Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away.
Both
of these accounts are about Philip going to some foreign place and meeting with
some foreign person. Yet in both
accounts Philip was given the opportunity of presenting the gospel, and in both
accounts it led to the conversion and baptism of a new believer in Jesus
Christ. In keeping with the theme that
we began with, Philip was pushed outside of his comfort zone, and yet it led to
great things. Sometimes, God’s calling
takes us to places that we don’t want to go, and calls us to deal with people
we would rather not deal with. Sometimes
God allows us to go through difficult situations in order to both increase our
faith and advance the kingdom here on earth.
Sometimes we’re called to leave our own comfort zones in order to
fulfill God’s will. For some of us, it
may take the form of moving from “home” to an unknown place. For some of us it may mean giving up some of
the comforts of life that we’ve always enjoyed.
It may mean reaching outside of our own little group of friends to
people that we don’t know and that we might have looked over in the past.
Friends,
the bottom line is this: the growth of
the Church and the advancement of God’s kingdom aren’t always easy. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy what I do and I
really enjoy talking with people about Christ, and I hope you could say the
same thing. It’s not like we’re always
going to be asked to endure hardships in order for the gospel to be
spread. Many times, our efforts in
growing the kingdom are actually quite enjoyable, but we cannot just confine
ourselves to doing what we want to do or what feels comfortable. There are times in all of our lives where we
are called to step outside of our own areas of comfort and security for God’s
kingdom. One of the early church father,
Tertullian, famously said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
church.” In other words, many times it
takes people who are willing to give up what they have in order to advance the
gospel. My sacrifice is easy; I’m called
to give up the decision on where myself and my family live. For others, it means giving up comforts of
life. For some, it means giving up their
freedom. And for some, the words of
Tertullian are true, they’re called to give up their lives for the Church. None of those being more evident or
meaningful than the One who gave His life in order to establish the Church. When we become more concerned with staying in
our own comfort zone than with proclaiming God’s Word, we’re denying
Christ. I firmly believe that one of the
tools that Satan uses most frequently to push us towards inactivity is that of
comfort. When things are going well for
us, we are far less apt to change. I
think that’s why sometimes God was to push us so hard at times, to make sure we
land outside of our own comfort zones.
Now,
I don’t have time to go into this today, so let me just end by asking you to go
with this question in mind. Where have
the greatest joys in your life come from?
The answers, more than likely, come from times when you stepped out of
your comfort zone. Taking a risk on that
guy or girl and getting married; disturbing the household balance by having
kids; taking a chance and going for that new job and leaving the security of
what you know for what could be. Now,
all of these greatest joys have come from outside of our comfort zones as they
existed at the time, and today we can’t imagine life without them. So let me ask you, don’t you think that the
greatest things that we can hope to accomplish for God kingdom lie outside of our
comfort zones as well? Maybe it’s time
that we find out. Glory be to God; in
the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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