God Speaks and Satisfies

Awesome. Good morning. How are we doing today? Great, great. Well, hey, we are coming to a point of our service where we are doing what we always do, which is congregational prayer. All right, so you’ve been talking with some of your neighbors for the past few moments. I want to invite you to buddy up with one of the neighbors again. We are going to pray for something you’re going to hear a lot of over the next month and following. We are going into a series that we’re calling “Deeper.” So my prayer is simply this: that we would just pursue a spiritual depth going into 2025 that would anchor us, because we have no idea what’s today. Today is January 5th. No idea the things that are going to come January 6th or February 1st or what’s going to happen in your life in the middle of March and otherwise. But there is someone we can know, and we can know Him very deeply, and our knowledge of Him and our intimacy with Him—that’s the type of thing that can buoy us and give us some foundation and some strength to walk through all those things. So my request for you, what what we’re doing right now, is just pray. Gather with one of your neighbors and just pray for your own and our corporate spiritual depth in 2025, and I’ll put a bow on it here in a moment. Y’all take it away.

Give for Father, thank You for today, God. You’ve chosen to bring us to another year, Lord, not just of us as people, God. You’ve You’ve given everybody in this room another year to be able to have life and and walk with You, God. Thank You for that. But but You’ve also given our church another year, Lord. 1841—that’s a that’s a big deal, Father. I pray that as we go into 2025, Lord, You would give us, as followers of You and as a church, a spiritual depth that we’ve never known before, Lord. I pray that we would prioritize You and knowing You and walking with You, God, as as You help us to to see You like we sang about a few moments ago, that we would praise You, that as we praise You we would have a blessed assurance that You are good and that one day You’ll call us home to Yourself, Lord. For right now, I pray that You would help me to preach in such a way that we all walk away from here loving You a little bit more, ready to pursue what You have for us. Holy Spirit, may You please give this church a better sermon what they hear than what I’m going to preach. We love You, and it’s in Your name we pray. Amen.

If we were sitting down for coffee or for lunch after this, and I got to ask you this question, I’m I’m really curious what your answer would be: what season or moment of your life were you closest with God? Like, truly, I I I’m I’m really curious what what you would have to say to that. What season of your life—maybe a couple months, a couple weeks, a couple years—or what what moment would it have been where you felt God’s presence and you felt close to Him in a way that you’ve just never really returned to, or maybe, God willing, you’ve never come down from ever since? I think for me those moments have always been my transition times where Becca and I have been presented with a couple different options, and the Lord has just said, “Okay, Jeremy, I’m I’m calling you to follow me somewhere. It’s time for you to spend some time with me, and let’s let’s get real about this, and let’s let’s talk about this.” Those have been the the seasons of my life where me and Becca have gotten away, and we’ve fasted some, and we’ve prayed some, and we’ve worshiped, we’ve talked with mentors, talked with others, and yeah, those are those are the moments for me.

My prayer is that 2025 will begin a season of your life in which you grow closer to the Lord than you’ve ever been before, and one that you look back on in the years to come and you say, “Man, the the the spring of that year—that that was the time.” Because I I believe there’s a group of people in here that want a dynamic and a vibrant relationship with the ruler of the universe. Is that is that true? Is there a group of people in here that wants that? Yeah, exactly. It’s th—this world is filled filled With folks that both want that and they want what God has and they want to be close with Him, but there’s also folks that just kind of want to have a “Soo” relationship. The Bible’s filled with both types: those that aren’t really serious about experiencing God and those that are. And today we’re going to learn from the second group, those that are.

If you will, go ahead and open up in your Bibles to Acts 13. I’ll meet you there in a second. If you’ve been with us on Wednesday nights, you will know that Acts is the story, it’s the account of how God, through the Holy Spirit, started the church, He matured the church, and He led the church to accomplish the mission that He has for the church. And chapter 13 is an extremely decisive moment in the book. It’s where the Spirit directly intervenes to help those early believers more fully obey the commission that He gave them.

You see, in Acts 1 verse 8, Jesus, after He has died on the cross, been buried, ascended—sorry, resurrected from death, but before He ascended, He said these words to the disciples. He said, “Wait in Jerusalem, and you will receive power from the Holy Spirit, and then you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and then to the ends of the Earth.”

You see, so far in the book of Acts, the church in Jerusalem hadn’t really made it out of Jerusalem yet. But God’s plan was that the church would not only make it out of Jerusalem, they would go to the ends of the Earth, taking the message of the Gospel to every man, woman, and child. The church in Jerusalem wasn’t doing this, but there is another church, a church in a different city named Antioch. The church in Antioch had begun doing that. Antioch was a, if you don’t know, a culturally and ethnically diverse city on the border of modern-day Turkey and Syria.

The church in Antioch was a spiritually vibrant church, and I think that’s something that Sauldam Baptist also wants. We want to be a group of believers that is intimately and powerfully walking with God, experiencing what Jesus promised before He left. In John 14:12, Jesus said, “You will do even greater things than what I have done.” Now, we don’t do greater in type. None of us can raise people from the dead. I don’t think none of us are able to take my lunch I’m going to enjoy later and feed thousands with it. But what Jesus had in mind is that we would continue His works in a greater quantity, that the one Jesus would be multiplied through the hundred or so of us, and that we would accomplish God’s mission in this world.

Today’s sermon begins a preaching series called “Deeper.” It’s not just a preaching series, though. I would call this like a discipleship initiative, if you will. I believe that for us to do even greater things than Jesus, for us to do what Jesus wanted us to do, for us to be the type of church that our community is literally dying for us to be, then we’ve got to go deeper—deeper in our relationships with Jesus, deeper in our love for Him.

So this is how it’s going to work out over the next month. I’m going to address three topics. This morning, I’m going to address the topic of fasting and prayer. Next Sunday, we’re going to address the topic of evangelizing, and then on the 19th, we’ll address the topic of financial giving. And then on the final Sunday of this month, we will have what’s called a commitment Sunday. That’ll be an opportunity for you to be able to commit to embracing one of those disciplines for a season.

Now, why these three? Fasting, evangelizing, and giving. I think in the spiritual life, those three are extremely uncomfortable, right? Fasting, man, like it requires a discomfort of hunger. Evangelism requires this discomfort of being bold and starting conversations with people about Jesus and saying, “Hey, without Him, you’re going to hell.” How incredibly uncomfortable is that? Or even financial giving requires this discomfort of control and security. Like, am I really going to give away the resource that I need to be able to pay my bills and feed myself?

Here’s the deal. You know this. All growth requires discomfort. There has never, ever been a famous athlete on any sports team that didn’t have to practice and train and make some uncomfortable decisions. There has never been a great academic scholar or Nobel Peace Prize winner that got their intellect without having to work at it.

and study and do things. All growth requires discomfort, and the same is true for us spiritually. For us to grow and go deeper, we have got to get uncomfortable. So this month will lead to something after this month. All right, this is this deeper initiative really starts to take its roots starting in February, and this is what February, March, and April are going to look like. On February, March, and April, we’re going to have Wednesday night studies to continue to go deeper into these topics. I believe on Sunday mornings, my goal, my prayer is that people who are embracing these will be able to share what they are like learning as they are going deeper. Every month, we’re going to have an opportunity for you to join me and Carter and others to go sharing the gospel with folks, and on Sunday nights to be able to just pray and worship together, and then further resources and prayer support as we go into this. Truly, my prayer is that at the end of January you would not have just heard a couple all right sermons about spiritual disciplines. My prayer at the end of this month is that you would join me in committing to embracing at least one of these disciplines for a season of 90 days. So in your bulletins there is a little commitment card. I don’t want you to do anything with that except for take it home and look at it later. That’s going to be for you. It’s opportunity for you to just sign your name and do a check box and put your own information down about how you would want to commit to going deeper with the Lord. So with all that being said, let’s begin to study what it might look like for you to go deeper. This is Acts 13:1-3. It’ll be on the screens. It’s so much better in your laps. Acts 13:1-3.

Now the church in Antioch, there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, a close friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. And as they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after they had fasted, prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them off. If you are a notetaker, if you want a core idea to take away from today, then it’ll be this: We fast to seek God, to hear from God, and to obey God. We fast to seek God, to hear from God, and even to obey God. God, and I’ll take all those in turn. Let me define fasting for you. Fasting is simply this: it’s denying food for a spiritual goal. All right, there’s no more complex than that, no more hyper-spiritual than that. It is just saying instead of eating, I’m going to not eat for this spiritual purpose. When I fast, I select a meal beforehand. I don’t do it spontaneous, and I tell Becca, I said, “Hey, I’m not going to eat this meal,” so that she doesn’t make me food and we have to have this weird, awkward interaction, you know. When I fast, I don’t tell you guys, so that you know. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Hey, whenever you fast, let your fasting be done in secret,” instead of like walking around saying, “Man, oh, life is so hard,” and people say, “Oh, what’s going on?” It’s like, “Oh, I’m fasting right now,” you know. The whole point is not to draw attention to yourself. The whole point is to get a little more intimate with the Lord. So I select a meal beforehand that I won’t eat, and I make a plan. I say, “Hey, during that time that I would spend eating, I’m just going to pray, I’m going to read some scripture, I might even sing a few songs.” Here’s my thing to you: follow dietary needs. If you want to fast, I would even say if you are pregnant or nursing, please don’t fast. Please don’t, don’t put that on me, okay? Like, don’t, don’t do that. If you have some other dietary things like diabetes, or if you have some situations where you just like you need to eat, have food regularly, man, this, this isn’t for you. But if you’re in a position of life where you are able to make the decision to not eat, I would encourage you to consider it today. Fasting, it’s interesting, it’s not a New Testament command. Jesus never tells us to fast, however, drawing on His Jewish Heritage, he does assume we fast. So in the Sermon on the Mount, He says, “When you fast, don’t do it like this, but do it like that.” Jesus assumes we’re going to fast. He doesn’t tell us you have to do that; it’s not a requirement, but it would be something that would help you. Now, see, fasting could be so powerful if it’s done for the right reasons. One of the reasons we fast, it’s drawn straight from Acts 13. It’s this: we fast to seek God. Look again at verse one. Look at this group of people that are gathered at the church in Antioch. First, you have these spiritual gifts. You’ve got prophets and you’ve got teachers, and then you’ve got this list of names. Barnabas, we know elsewhere from Acts, he’s from an island called Cyprus near Greece. You have Simeon, who was called Niger. Niger is just Latin for black, so most commentators understand that Simeon was a North African Christian. So you have a Grecian, you have a North African, you have Lucius of Cyrene. Cyrene is a city in modern-day Libya, another country of North Africa. You have Manaen, a close friend of Herod the tetrarch. Herod the tetrarch is a Jewish ruler of extreme social standing. So you have this Jewish guy who has come from extremely good means, and then you have Saul. Most folks in this room know who Saul is: this man who was a fiercely devoted Pharisee who persecuted Christians, that God radically saved on his way to go persecute more Christians. You have this extremely diverse and gifted church, all really like just kind of huddled there in Antioch. Man, when I look at Sauldam, I see the exact same thing. I see a church that God is growing in our diversity and our giftings as well, and I just wonder. God clearly was preparing this group in Acts 13. He was preparing them for some pretty incredible things, and I just wonder, Mr. Harold, what might God be preparing us for as well? You know, as I think back on that history stemming from 1841, I think about the first 20 years of our church life where Sauldam started five other churches in this community. I think about almost a hundred years ago when a 14-year-old guy named John Hamer preached his first sermon ever in our chapel, and he would go to earn a doctorate, become pastor of North Charleston Baptist Church, and eventually start the Baptist College, what’s now known as Charleston Southern. I wonder what the next 200 years have in store for us. What are the other churches that God would want to use Sauldam to start or to restart? Who are the future leaders that God would want to raise up in our midst for us to send them out to go start incredible universities and to do incredible things? God is preparing us for something. He’s growing us. He’s growing us in our diversity. He was doing that for the church in Antioch, and He is doing that here. The church in Antioch fasted because they wanted to seek God, but don’t get this twisted: they fasted to seek God, not because He was hiding from them, but because God can be available to us. Okay, here is the gospel. The gospel is that God, the Creator and the ruler of the universe, loves you so much that He has made you for an intimate relationship with Himself, one that is governed by love and harmony, not by rules or religion. There is a God who has wired you to be satisfied when you love Him, but because of our own choices, because of our sin, because of our disobedience and our inability to follow Him the way we are meant to, we remove ourselves from Him. You and me, we are all like Adam and Eve. You see, Adam and Eve, they’re the very first people ever made. God made them for an intimate relationship with Him. They walked with God in the cool of the day. They had this type of relationship with God that you and I just don’t understand yet. God gave them the one rule: don’t eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What did they do? They ate it. They ate it. They sinned. They felt shame, and then what did they do? They hid themselves from the Lord. You know what God didn’t do? He didn’t let them be hidden. God pursued them. God made Himself available to them. God went and found them, and in the same way, God is available to you too. So we don’t Fast so that God would somehow like us more. No, we fast because the God of the universe loves us, and He made a way for us to be forgiven through His Son, Jesus Christ, who took on the punishment for all of our sin and our disobedience. All the times we messed up, it went on His shoulders, so that when God looks at us, He doesn’t see us clothed in our sin; He sees us clothed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. So even though there is junk on the inside here, it is all covered up by Jesus Christ, so that when God looks at me, Jeremy Simmons, who fails Him on a daily basis, God doesn’t see my failures; He sees the perfection of Jesus, and He has that for you.

If you are here this morning and you heard us sing about God opening the eyes of our hearts, and you heard us singing about a type of assurance that you’re craving, then you’re hearing me talk about Jesus, who you may not quite be sure you actually know, but you’ve learned some things about. Man, my offer to you would be to embrace the love of Jesus. There is a God that loves you more than life itself, and He’s done everything necessary for you to love Him back.

We fast to seek the God who is pursuing us. God had been preparing the church in Antioch for something big, so they fasted to seek Him and to seek His direction. We fast as well to hear God and to hear Him give that direction. This is verse two. “As they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said…” I want to stop right there. You hear that? The Holy Spirit said, and please don’t miss this: God speaks. God speaks. This church in Antioch, they were worshiping, they were fasting. You get the sense that those two things just kind of go together. It would make sense that as you pour out your praises to the Lord, you would intake more of Him, and to intake more of Him, you had to stop intaking food. So they’re not taking in food so they can take in Him, and as they take in Him, they’re pouring praise back to Him.

I get the sense when I’m reading this in Acts 13 that this was not a special called meeting. I get the sense that this was normal. They were regularly gathered to worship and to fast. That’s just something that they were used to. The church’s literal hunger was a sign of their spiritual hunger. Their hunger for God was greater than their hunger for lunch. God responded to them. I believe full heartedly that God responds to our acts of devotion, and He honors our attempts to go deeper.

God’s standard for us is perfection, and who in this room is perfect? None of us. Jesus had to come and be perfect for us, so we do everything we do as followers of Jesus not to try to be perfect, but as recipients of the perfection of God, which means God does not look at you like a boss expecting you to do all the checks on your job description. God looks at you like a child who is just trying to follow their dad. I don’t expect perfection from my kids. Sometimes my flesh wants that, but I don’t actually expect that from them. How could my kids perfectly do everything I would ever want them to do? They can’t. But what I am absolutely excited about is when my kids try. It’s when my kids just put forth some effort to get to know me a little bit better, to respond to me. That’s what God wants for us. He just wants us to pursue Him.

The Holy Spirit sees this church in Antioch gathered for worship and praying to Him and fasting for Him, being hungry for Him, and He speaks. The question is, do you want God to speak? Do you want God to speak? I do. I know you do. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. God speaks. The Antioch church believed the Spirit would speak, and so He did. And this is what He said. He says, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” You see, it was God’s work that Barnabas and Saul were being called for. It was His mission to reach and redeem a multitude of people. Not just God’s work, but also God’s workers that get called. Not just anyone was able to step into this.

Particular call from God, but the two that He had already chosen, the church in Antioch. It was not their job to muster up the energy to accomplish the mission. It was not their job to invent the playbook to do His mission. Their job was to obey. The church’s job was to obey. The church in Antioch heard the Spirit loud and clear, and they sought to obey. That’s the final reason we fast. If you’re taking notes, we fast to obey God.

I said a few minutes ago, Jesus doesn’t command us to fast, so I’m not saying that we fast to obey a command to fast. No, we fast because it gives us the strength to obey. Often times when God calls us to do something, we draw strength to do it from Him through fasting. I find it so ironic that by not eating, which is getting strength from food, you can open yourself up to God’s strength via fasting.

God will call you to do things in life that are just downright difficult. The strength that you will need to walk through that, it is not the type of “I pulled myself up my bootstraps” strength. The type of strength that you need to do what God calls you to do is God’s strength, and the only way you get God’s strength is if you have more of God. And a real good way to get more of God is to have less of other things. It’s to tell your soul and your body that you will not be a servant or a slave of your appetite, but by God’s grace you will tell yourself what to be hungry for.

Man, so much more could be said about this passage, but I want to start closing and ask this question: Have you ever gone deeper with God by fasting? Have you ever tried this before? And if not, are you willing to give it a try? I fully believe that God is worth anything that we would give up to have more of Him. God is the truly satisfying one who sustains us, and He is the one who speaks when we seek Him.

Jesus said it this way in Mark chapter 10: “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said, “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now at this time houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and fields with persecutions and eternal life in the age to come.”

God is worth you giving anything up for, and God is far more satisfying than anything this world could ever offer. I want to close in praying for us simply that we would consider fasting as a way of going deeper with Him. If you will bow your heads and close with me.

Lord, I really do believe those words, God, the ones that You said through Your Son, that there is no one who makes a sacrifice for You who won’t be given more than what they gave up for You. Jesus, I fully believe that You satisfy. I fully believe that You sustain us. I fully believe that You speak. Jesus, I pray that we would have a group of people in our church that would choose to go deeper with You by fasting, who would embrace the discomfort of hunger, who would recognize that we don’t fast to be loved by You, but because You love us.

And Holy Spirit, speak. We’re a church that needs direction. There’s lots of great things that we could attempt. There’s lots of great things we could invent, we can try, but Lord, we must be directed by You. We don’t know what this year holds in our lives or in the life of this church or in our community or our nation, but You do, and we just want to walk with You through it all. Holy Spirit, I pray that You would speak to us and You would help us to know You more intimately.

For the person in this room that doesn’t know You yet, would You please speak to them during this final song? You would assure them that You love them, that You want them, that You’ve done everything necessary for them to be forgiven of their sin, that You have a better life for them than what this world could ever offer. Thank You, Lord. Amen.