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Paul - The Mission, The Message & The Means | Holy Disruption
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July 12, 2026 | Brew City Church | Shelly Schmor
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Welcome to the Bruce City Church podcast. We are a Christian church following in the way of Jesus and located in the heart of downtown Milwaukee. We're glad you've joined us and we hope you enjoy this week's message. Thank you, worship team. Can we say thank you to the worship team? That was awesome. I love it. Bill was leading the rehearsal time and he said something about it's really hot in here. It's like a charismatic something church, Pentecostal Church. And I thought that is the church I grew up in. And you're right because most of the churches when I was growing up did not have air conditioning. And so here we are on this warm day. But I'm so glad to be in this space. It's so good to look out and see all your faces. And I just want to start our time with a word of prayer. I shared this already at our pre meeting little meeting that we do each week. But I don't know about you, I have tried to not be in the headlines too much this week, but the headlines were strong and my mama heart has been heavy this week. And even as we were coming up to communion, I came up on this side and I don't know if you saw, there was all these kids here and it was so precious and so beautiful. And this week there's some moms and some dads whose babies didn't come home. And that breaks my heart. And I've been really moved by this whole story of Nolan Wells down in Mississippi who went out with some friends, four went out, three came back looking like it's a story, another story of racism in our country. We don't know all the details yet, but my heart is breaking, you guys. We need to stop being this kind of society where babies don't come home and parents hearts are shattered. And so this week, as I was preparing to do a message, I'm going to be really straight and honest. It was hard. It was hard because my heart was so heavy for the stuff going on. And so I just want to acknowledge that this morning. I just want to say that we are aware and I think sometimes we can come to church and people can feel like, oh, you're just glossing over all the real stuff of life. And I'm here to tell you this is the real stuff of life. This is what gives us hope. And more than anything this week, I needed hope. And so I'm grateful for the worship team and how they brought us into a place of hope. Singing about this Jesus who sits on the throne, who is all powerful and almighty and so good. So can we just pray and just settle ourselves And I don't know what you're bringing in. Maybe it's some of the same headlines. Maybe it's something else, something going on in your personal life or your work life. But we all come in with distractions. And so let's just spend a moment and let's just lay those aside asking the Holy Spirit to meet us and to bring us whatever words it is that our hearts need this morning. So let's pray, God, we come before you as humans. Not super humans, not people who have it all together, but humans and things weigh on our heart, Father and Jesus, we know, we know who you are. And yet our hearts sometimes become weary in the midst of and so, Holy Spirit, we need you to come and we need you to speak. We need to be reminded of who you say we are, of who you say you are. And so, God, would you meet us this morning? I pray, Father, that as we work through scripture this morning, that we would be aware of our own hearts, of our own biases that we bring. And we ask that we would not just learn another thing about another person, but that we would allow you, Holy Spirit, to hold up the scripture before our face as a mirror. Help us to see ourselves, help us to see you, help us to learn and to grow, but to always remember that you are God and we are not. And sometimes we don't even know how to pray. But this morning we pray, God, stop the chaos. Help us to be your people in the midst of a dark world. God, help us create a world where babies come home, where families are whole. Let us be about that work, even today, whatever that is that you call us to. Maybe it's a conversation, maybe it's just some time to sit and think and pray and be with you. But whatever it is, we ask you to meet us now. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, thank you for allowing us to go there for a moment this morning as we come into this space and we're going to be continuing our sermon series. You can see it up on the screen. Holy the Unsettling Work of the Spirit in the Book of Acts. And we've been looking at and learning from this book that's been penned by Luke that is a partial history of the life of the followers of Jesus called the Way. And each week we've been seeing that the work of the Spirit is often just as it says on the screen, unsettling. And it Calls us into places that are disruptive sometimes in our lives. And sometimes it surprises people and it releases them into the world as agents of change. And also, we've seen in the scriptures that sometimes it shows us people being placed in grave danger, grave danger, as they become people of the way and followers of this movement of the Spirit that's driven and led by the Spirit after the followers, or after following the rabbi Jesus, this one who was crucified and buried and resurrected to new life. And even as I prayed, hopefully we aren't just coming each week and going, what can I learn? What more knowledge can I get into my head? But rather, we're taking these stories and these scriptures and we're allowing them to be held up as a mirror to let us get a glimpse of maybe some of the areas that the Spirit might be unsettling us and calling us into a place of change. Changing our minds, changing our thinking, changing the way we live, and not just accumulating knowledge. Okay, so let's just keep that in mind. We move into this today, and we're going to start with a review of one of the characters that we've talked about here and there a little bit. We had one whole sermon on them, and that is this character called Saul, who was also called Paul. And this character shows up different times. And we did. I did a sermon actually back in May and talked a little bit about where was the sermon guy from, who was he, who was this guy named Paul or Saul? And up until this point, Peter and the other disciples have kind of been the center of things and the narrative of the church. And everything's been happening in Jerusalem. And just a couple of weeks. When Randy talked just a couple weeks ago, he mentioned that the shift was going to be coming kind of from Jerusalem to this place called Antioch in Syria. And so here today, we see some of that big shift and happening, and we'll get to that in just a few moments. But let's remember, who was this guy named Saul. Let's think about who he was before he was called an apostle. If we remember, he came from a city called Tarsus, which would be in modern day Turkey. It was a city of culture and politics, philosophy and industry. One of the industries was a thriving textile business that would make tents or shelters made out of goat hair. So when he talks about being a tent maker, that's what he's talking about. He would have been apprenticed in this and probably continued to practice it. Saul is first encountered as a devout Pharisee, a zealous advocate of Jewish law. And remember we talked about sometimes we use Pharisee as like an insult, and that is really wrong. We shouldn't do that because actually the Pharisees were really devout and they followed after Scripture and after God wholeheartedly. And so sometimes we flippantly throw around some of these phrases and we really shouldn't. But Paul, Saul at the time was a devout Pharisee. He was a zealous, zealous advocate of the Jewish law. And he was living in this city where he was also probably multilingual. He understood different languages, he was probably able to speak different languages. And he was an interesting guy. And so he was one of these people that could live completely at home in both the world of Jewish story and of non Jewish philosophy. And he could talk the language of both. So you can see why he might have been called into some of the things that he ended up being called to. He was young, he was zealous, he was Jewish. He was one that would have been believing that the time of exile that the post exelic texts spoke of, like Ezra and Nehemiah, where they declared, we are in our own land again, but we are slaves. This would have been in his mind. So he would have been anticipating a new exodus, a new fresh start to this story of God, where God would indeed return in glory and establish his kingdom, invisible global power. So it's good to kind of get our heads around that, right? Wrap around who who this guy was. Heaven and earth coming together again was all he was thinking about. He was not thinking about how to get butts into heaven. That is not what Paul was thinking about. And. And so often we do that. Even this week, I was visiting with a person in my life, and over half the conversation was this person making sure that I believed my butt was going to be in heaven. Because I prayed the prayer. And I got these tickets that she likes to hand out with the four spiritual laws on them, and she has people sign them. And I believe her heart is in a good place. Please don't hear me just criticizing her. But I was like, whoa, it's about so much more than that. It's just about so much more than that. And I found myself even in that moment, going like, but what about. And I didn't want to just start an argument in that moment. It wasn't the right thing to do. But this is not what Paul would have been thinking about. He wasn't thinking about just people leaving earth, but he was zealous. He was zealous. About protecting anything that would come against the Jewish teachings and law and corrupt it. And so he was passionate about it. He had a zeal. And so that's a little bit about who he was. Let's think about for a moment. Where has he been? Where has Saul been in this book of Acts? I said, like, we've seen little smatterings of it. We spent one sermon on it. But where do we first see him? We first see him in chapter 7 and 8 of Acts. And does anybody remember what was going on when we first see him persecuting Christians in Jerusalem? And what in particular was happening? There was one pretty cataclysmic event. Stephen stoning. Stephen stoning. And we find Saul there, and we find him agreeing with it, and we find him holding the coats of everybody so that it can happen. And so he was passionate about this, and he was zealous. And this was before he had a moment that changed his mind. And so he was all for persecuting Christians and persecuting believers. And then in chapter nine, we see. And this is where we landed on May 17th. If you want to go back and hear the sermon, you can. But he has this moment, road to Damascus, and he's headed there to do what? Persecute Christians, right? And he's actually been given permission to kill them or to at least imprison them. And he's on his way there, and bam, Jesus shows up in a really powerful way. He goes blind, and he hears this voice and it says, saul, what are you doing? And he's like, I'm obeying what I believe to be true. And Jesus said, you're persecuting me. What are you doing? And he had this moment on the road with him, and he loses his vision. And some hear and some don't, and there's all sorts of story there. But what happens is then this guy Ananias gets a vision, right? And he's told to go find Saul and pray over him and tell him that he is going to be the person that reaches the Gentiles about Jesus, who is Israel's Messiah. Like, you can't make that stuff up, you guys. Like, that's crazy. And Ananias obeys, and he goes and he prays over him and he tells him what he's supposed to tell him. And these scaly things fall off his eyes, which sounds so gross, kind of like cataract surgery. I don't know, just so weird. And he gets his eyesight back, and then he stays in Damascus for a time, and he's like confounding and astounding. All the leaders trying to convince them, why Jesus now? And they're going, wait a minute, were you not the same guy that just was coming here to kill these people and to tell them, like, what's happening here? And he's confounding them. And these people are getting angry because they're going, what are you doing? You're like, double talk. And it's not making sense. But he stays for a little bit of time, he talks with people. And then the Hellenistic Jews start trying to kill him. And the people, the disciples there decide like, this isn't safe for you any longer. We're going to send you to a safe place. And they send him to Jerusalem. And then in Jerusalem, the Hellenistic Jews there try to kill him. So things are not going well in this first calling of Paul's life, one would say, right, but maybe it was going exactly the way it was supposed to go. I believe it was. But it's interesting because each place that he goes, he's confounding these people, confounding these people. First they're kind of like, some are believing, some are good with it. And then he crosses this line somewhere. And we're going to get to what that line was. But it's so interesting to me. But so here he is, he's in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem brothers are like, dude, it's not safe for you anymore here. And so they take him to Caesarea and they send him off to Tarsus so he doesn't get killed. So he's become kind of full circle back to Tarsus. And then while he's in Tarsus, he's doing some things. He's reading, he's studying, he's preaching, he's teaching, doing a bunch of things. And in the meantime, this church in Antioch starts being talked about in chapter 11. And Randy talked a little bit about this. And in this place in Antioch, believers are coming to an understanding, like, Jesus really is the fulfillment of Jewish story. And like, this is it, this is what we've been waiting for. And there's some beautiful things happening, but the church in Jerusalem kind of hears about it and they decide, we better go make sure this is on the up and up. Like, I'm sure you've never heard of anything like that happening with denominations or anything, right? Let's go check on them and just make sure they're not screwing things up. And so they send Barnabas to Antioch to check things out. And when Barnabas gets there, he discovers like there's a lot of beautiful things going on here. This is really incredible. The grace of God is moving. And so Barnabas just encourages them to keep doing what they're doing. And then he gets this idea and he thinks, I should probably go find Paul because there was something about Paul that might be useful here. And so off Barnabas goes to Tarsus to find Paul. And when he goes to Tarsus to look for him, it says that he searched for him. And that tells me that Paul wasn't just sitting around waiting to be found. He was busy doing stuff. I think he was probably preaching and teaching and studying and sitting under teachers and learning and becoming more fluent in the language of who this Jesus was. But Barnabas finds him, snags him up, takes him back to Antioch with them, and then it says that he spent a year there teaching. So Paul became part of the teaching team in Antioch with his mentor Barnabas. And I just think that's a beautiful, beautiful story of full circle mentorship. And I could preach a whole thing on that and how beautiful that is. I'm not going to do that. But we find ourselves then this morning in Acts 13 and 14 and, and if you looked at your newsletter or your social media, and maybe if you didn't, that's just a little guilt that you should check it. But no, but in there I encouraged you to read through Acts 13 and 14. If you didn't, it's okay, you can do it this afternoon, you can call it your homework, you can do whatever. But we're going to be covering Acts 13 and 14 today and you might be like, woo, I'm glazing over right now because that's a lot of verses. And I just want to say we're not going to exegete every verse. We're going to pull out some principles and some things in there because some of it you can just fill in yourself in your own reading. But we're going to find out what we might learn here this morning. So I wanted to start off by saying all of this, that we've already been studying all these places where we've seen Paul and, and then now all of 13 and 14. We can often get into our minds that this happened like within a couple hours. Like it took me 15 minutes to read through the two chapters. So I'll add on a little bit. Maybe it took them six or seven hours. But no, this stuff that we're covering, like think about the fact these people are walking and it's a lot walking. If Paul would have been wearing one of these things, an Apple watch or a Fitbit, that sucker probably would have blown up on his wrist counting his steps. Keep in mind this one trip from Jerusalem up to Antioch. So Antioch is north of Jerusalem. One trip would have clocked between 1 million and 1.25 million steps. That's a lot of steps. So if you break it down, that's equal to 100 days of straight standard, 10,000 days of steps. 100 straight days. Now, for those of you that have done the Camino, I know Steve is here and Dave is here. They do a lot of steps and a lot of walking, but most of us don't have to walk 500 miles to get to the next place that we need to work in. Okay? So think about that fact. This covers months, sometimes years that Paul is putting in and walking and learning and thinking and doing, and all the things that are happening along the way, they didn't just happen overnight. And so when we think about this holy disruption, and if we can put that graphic back up, it says, the unsettling work of the Spirit. The unsettling work of the Spirit. And unsettling means things like disturbing, disquieting, troubling, disconcerting, unnerving, and also not willing. This is really important. Not willing to settle for the status quo, but pushing on to a new way of thinking, a new way of living, a new way of evolving in our understanding. And so that's where we land in this book of acts, in chapters 13 and 14. And as we land there, we see that Luke has stripped away any ambiguity about who is driving this story. This story is not about Peter. The story is not just about Paul. The story is about the Spirit pushing and moving and shaping and shaking the things up. And here's another part Randy talked about a couple weeks ago. He said something to the effect of, we get to some of these places in scripture, like prayer was the topic that day. And we call that discipleship. And oftentimes we go, oh, this is the boring stuff. And I just want to push back, if that's your thinking, a little bit. And that's just because my name, title, whatever you want to call it here, is pastor of discipleship, but rather because I think discipleship is pretty dang exciting. I really do. When I consider that I am learning about the triune God of the universe and my relationship to him and how he relates to me and the people around me and this earth he created and everything that flows to me together. That sounds anything but boring. And so can we just kind of redial that, thinking that maybe we grew up, you know, with our checklist. And it did get boring. But can we just, like, unearth that a little bit? Like, let that go a little bit? Strip ourselves of that and challenge ourselves to think? And so in chapter 13, the very beginning of it starts like this. This. I just want to read a portion of it. It says, in the church that was at Antioch there, there were prophets and teachers. Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius, the Cyrenian Manan, a close friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. And as they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me, Barnabas and Saul for the work I have called them to. And after they had fasted, prayed and laid hands on them, they sent them off. I might need this. Keep it. But right here, right in the very beginning of chapter 13, Luke destroys the image of a silent spirit, a spirit that you can't hear or that you don't know. And in these first couple verses, Paul, Paul. He's now called Paul from this point forward. So I'm going to quit getting confused trying to say Saul and Paul, Paul from this point forward and Barnabas are going to be sent out. And why? It's because this church in Antioch knew how to listen to the voice of God. And I can't tell you how many times I meet with people and they say, what does it mean to hear the voice of God? And I think sometimes we can get in our heads. It's like, hey, Shelley, this is God speaking. Like, somehow that's going to be the way it is. I've never had that experience. If you have, great, that's cool. I'd love to hear about it. But most of the time, when I hear from the voice of God and people that I know, mentors that I know hear the voice of God, it's as if they can put their hand on their gut and they go, something was telling me, this isn't right, or I need to make this decision. And then I talked with other people, and I heard the same thing. And that, folks, is what I would say. That is the voice of God. When those things are happening, you're beginning to hear the voice of God. And I don't know about you, but that, to me, is really exciting sometimes even a little scary, because sometimes the voice of God tells me to do something. And I'm like, are you sure? Are you sure you got the right person on that one? But just like with Peter and with Stephen, There was a Jesus pattern that was going on. And to follow the Spirit is to follow Jesus in his way, in his ministry, and in his body. And as was with Jesus, one of the main places you may find yourself running into things is in the church or in people who call themselves Christians. And that's where those doubts can come, right? Like, why is it causing conflict? Why is it causing. Well, when we're basing it on scripture and we're getting it confirmed by people that we know and trust, and we're paying our attention to our bodies, and that's a part where I think we have gotten messed up a little bit. We don't pay attention to into our bodies because we've been told our bodies are evil or they're full of lust or seduction or whatever the phrase might be. And so we learn to push us out. Oh, that's just. That can't be true. That's just me. I can't pay attention to how my body is feeling in this. And I think we need to reclaim some of that. I think God made a sensuous people, that is, people that have senses that we need to pay attention to and to hold. And so this body is learning how to do this. This is all new, right? They've come together as these followers of Jesus. They're trying to pay attention. They're saying, it feels right to us to send Barnabas and Paul out and to let them be this voice to the world that needs to hear. And they move in faith. And that's what faith is. It's taking a step. When you're going, I'm not so sure, but I think this is right. Does it mean that sometimes we'll make mistakes? Yeah, I think so. Because woven into all of this is our humanness. But I think that's how we grow. We step, we make a mistake, we learn, we try another step, and we begin to listen to our bodies, to listen to those around us, to listen to the word of God. And so here we are. And if you look in the fine notes oftentimes in your Bibles, this chapter gets labeled, like, at the top, and it says, paul's first missionary Journey. And this is where people either flip really fast to get through it or they just glaze right over. Or some of them. Some people get really excited because they're like, I love maps. And so if you are one of those people that would kind of tend to glaze over and just think, this isn't for me, can I ask you to lean in, to push against that and to lean in. And for you map reading fools, here's a map that maybe will help. There it is. That's Paul's first missionary journey. You'll see that he starts in Antioch, which is north of Jerusalem. Jerusalem's down on the bottom. Antioch is up there. He goes over to the island of Cyprus, then he goes up to Perga and up to Antioch of Pisidian, and then he goes over to Iconium and Lystra and Derbe. And then he retraces his steps all the way to Perga and then sails back to Antioch. And that is his first trip. And again, this is where a lot of people are like, blah, blah, blah. This is not for me. I'm not going on a missionary journey. I'm not leaving my backyard because I like it here. And we can just dismiss it, but I'm going to ask us not to do that. This trip alone was 1400 miles. And before I move on maps, I just want to tell you, Ian Benson up here, I don't know where he is, but Ian Benson, there he is, back by the door. Ian Benson. We did a sermon series back when this church before the church merge happened in the Metrobrook Church. And I think it was through the Book of Acts. And Ian became known as Map Man. So if you want to know anything about maps, Ian's your guy. And then I'm married to a guy who also loves maps. Like when we got married, he had steady stacks of atlases because they would wear out, but he wouldn't throw them away because he loved them. And he always boasts about this fact that he had 11th grade map reading skills in fourth grade. So if you want to know anything about maps, Ian or Randy Schmore are your guys. So there you go. But this trip in particular would have been about 1,400 miles. So if we reflect back to our Fitbit Apple Watch kind of thing, that's 2.8 to 3.5 million steps. Some of it was on boats. So we can take a little bit about that of that off, maybe say 2 million steps. But seriously, it was long. It took about two years. Years that were not just peaceful and easy. And many times we can think missionary journeys like, oh, if you're called, then everything, like the path will be made smooth and you will just go. And they ran into all sorts of stuff. It was not peaceful. There was suffering, there was abandonment. John Mark left when they got to Perga and went back to Jerusalem. And it ticked Paul off. And it says that in scripture, we don't know the exact reason, but it happened. And John Mark was related to Barnabas, so it shouldn't have happened. There was all sorts of drama going on and they faced opposition, great opposition, death threats, threats of stoning and more. And so this wasn't just an easy path for them, but it was a path that they got called to do. And so as we think about this, like I said, we're not going to talk through every single verse. But they went. And when they went, Paul had this habit of starting in the synagogues. Now sometimes I go, paul, like, seriously, dude, why would you start there? Like, you know you're going to tick people off, you just know it. But yet you feel this pull to go to the synagogues first. So why? Because he was often met there with what I read was anger and hostility. When people realized what he was starting to talk about, they got ticked at him. And some believed, but many felt threatened. And yet there he was and there he pursued. And when I think about it, and as I've read different and different commentaries, these were the people that were obviously waiting for the Messiah, right? These were people who had been part of this faith for generations upon generations upon generations. They were ready and waiting and wanting to learn about a Messiah. Most of them didn't think that was Jesus, but a few of them believed. So these two men set off. They go to the island of Cyprus, they land in Salimis, they end up in Paphos, which is, which is like the capital, and it's on the other end. It's also the cult center of Epaphrodite, the goddess of love. So there's a lot of spiritual stuff going on there. And they land there and the first opposition they face is a sorcerer named Bar Jesus, which happens to mean son of Jesus. Kind of weird, but they face opposition. And he this Bar Jesus is trying to keep the proconsul, the guy in charge, the capital, if you will. He's trying to keep him from being influenced. And so they face this first out of the gate, opposition. After that they head up into Galatia, which is modern day Turkey, to continue their journey. And let's just think again about this message of Paul, because there's this hostility that I mentioned, and it stems from somewhere and it came from this thorny issue of the relationship of the message Paul brought and the traditions of the Israelites. And so some of the questions that would come up would be, is Paul really a member of God's ancient people? If he believes this is his standing true, that he's really a Jew, was he rebuilding the house of God and the people of God, or was he tearing down the whole thing? And was that his mission? Was his mission to go and destroy or to go and build? People questioned that and they became a serious place of attention, not only between him and Jewish believers, but also between him and other Jesus followers. So there was contention being stirred up in this place and something that we got to keep in mind because we can try and simplify this so to a fault, which I think when I was talking about the lady I was meeting with this week might have been trying to simplify things almost to a fault, but we might think Paul was on a mission trip to tell people about Jesus, right? That this was just a mission trip. And we all want to do that, right? And maybe we simplify it to the fault that he believed Jesus was Israel's Messiah. The fulfillment of scripture, Scriptures, and he simplified it down to that. So we're going to go tell him about him, because this is why he's Israel's Messiah. The fulfillment of the scriptures and that he, Jesus, had been crucified, raised from the dead, and exalted to God's right hand. Now, all this is true, but it was not about getting people to believe this. And I think we've missed something. We've got a disconnect happening when we talk about evangelism. We think we just got to get people to believe, believe that Jesus was all these things, right? We need to tell them that he was Israel's Messiah and the fulfillment of scriptures and all these things. But that is not what drove Paul. It was not what drove Barnabas either. The early Christians and followers of the Ways didn't focus much attention at all on what happened to people after they died. And maybe this is news to you. I don't know. Growing up in Sunday school, if I would have said something like this in one of my Sunday school classes, I probably would have been brought to my grandparents and gotten in trouble for asking too many questions or changing subjects too much, which happened. Just so you know, it has happened. But they were much more concerned with the Kingdom of God. That's what they were about. The kingdom of God was something that was happening and would ultimately happen completely on earth as it is in heaven. What mattered to Paul and Barnabas was the ultimate restoration of the whole of creation. Everything with God's people taking their place in wasn't just about God's people and what they believe. You have to hear that. If you don't get that point, all the things that Paul is about in his books that he wrote and all his other missionary journals.