Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts chapter 14, highlighting the steadfastness of Paul and Barnabas in their missionary journey despite facing opposition and violence. He emphasizes the importance of courage, confidence in Christ, and wisdom in ministry, encouraging believers to support one another and remain faithful in their mission. The sermon concludes with a reminder that perseverance in the face of challenges is essential, as the ultimate goal is to serve God faithfully rather than seeking personal glory.
Welcome and Announcements
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Thank you, Choir, for singing.
Thank you for singing out as well, church. It's a blessing to be able to lift our voices in worship to the Lord. Today will be in Acts chapter 14, continuing through the study of the book of Acts. Just really have encouraged my heart studying through this.
I hope it's been a blessing to you as well.
And we are just going to continue looking through now the mission of Paul and the mission of him and Barnabas and the journey that they go on as they're leading through mission and leading through ministry.
And today we're going to look at some difficult part, but the steadfastness in ministry and what that looks like. We're going to read all 28 verses of the entire chapter today.
So we'll stand out of reading of God's word. If you found your place, it will also be on the screen as well. Let's all stand. The Bible says in verse 1, In Iconium they entered the Jewish synagogue as usual
and spoke in such a way that great numbers of both Jews and Greeks believed. But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers.
So they stayed there a long time and spoke boldly for the Lord who testified the message of his grace and made them to do signs and wonders. But the people of the city were divided. Some sided with the Jews and the others were with the apostles.
And when the attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews with their rulers to mistreat and stone them, they found out about it. This is Paul and Barnabas. And they fled to Iconium toward Lystra and Derbe and the surrounding countryside.
They were continuing preaching the gospel. In Lystra a man was sitting who was without strength in his feet, who had never walked and had been lame from birth. And he listened as Paul spoke and after directly at him and saying that he had faith to be healed. And Paul said with a loud voice, Stand up to your feet.
And he jumped up and began to walk around. When the crowd saw that Paul had done this, they shouted saying that in the Lystonian language, the gods have come down to us in human form. Barnabas was called Zeus and Paul Hermes because they were the chief speakers.
The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the town, brought a bull and wreath to the gate because he intended with the crowd to offer a sacrifice. And when the apostle Barnabas and Paul saw this, they tore their robes.
Proclaiming Good News
And when they heard this, they rushed into the crowd saying, People, what are you doing to these things? We are people also just like you.
And we are proclaiming a good news to you, that you turn from these worthless things to a living God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them. In past generations, he allowed all nations to go on their own way, although he did not leave them himself without a witness.
Since what he did was good for you by giving rain to the earth and fruitless seasons and filling your food with your hearts of joy, even though they said these things, they barely stopped the crowds from sacrificing to them.
Some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium. This is where they were just dead. And when they had won over the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city,
thinking he was dead. Verse 20, After the crowds gathered around him, he got up and went to the town. The next day, he left with Barnabas for Derbe.
And after they had preached the gospel in that town, they made many disciples. They returned to Lystra, where he was just stoned out, Iconium and Antioch, strengthened the disciples by encouraging them to continue in their faith and by telling them it is necessary to go through many hardships to enter the kingdom
of God. And when they appointed elders for them in every church and prayed with fasting, they committed to them the Lord in whom they had believed. They passed through Poseidon and came to Pamphylia, and they had spoken the word to Perga and went down to Antilia.
And from there, they sailed back to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work they had now completed.
And after they had arrived and gathered in the church together, they reported everything that had happened, that God had been with them, and they had opened the doors for the faith to the Gentiles. And verse 28, such an encouraging verse, and they spent a considerable time with the disciples. Lord, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done. Thank you for the reading of your word.
I know it was lengthy, but I pray, God, that you would help us to comprehend and absorb what you have said in these passages. And give me the words to say as I preach this morning. In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
As I was looking through a couple of notes and things and thinking through some stuff, I had the opportunity just a couple of weeks ago to go to Cape Carraway and preach a message on Hebrews 12, 1 and
Derek Redman's Story
2. Spent four messages preaching through what it looks like to look to Jesus, be perseverance in our faith. And I came across this story in 1992 of the Barcelona Olympics. A British sprinter named Derek Redman had been training for years for the 400-meter race.
It was the semifinal race to go into the qualifying race of the Olympics. And he burst out of his block strong. And as he's about 250 meters, about halfway through the race to finish, he felt a sharp pain in his leg. His hamstring had torn in this semifinal qualifying race.
Most athletes in this moment would have stopped. They'd have carried off for medical attention, but Derek refused. He pushed himself to come back to his feet. He began to hobble toward the finish line. In one moment of unforgettable memory, and I'm gonna show you this video, you can see it for yourself.
The moment of nothing like this has ever happened in Olympic history, a man broke through security and ran to Derek's side. He began to wrap his arms around him.
It's later come to know that this was his father, Jim, who had began carrying his son to the finish line at the last meters. By the end of the race, the crowd of 65,000 people rose to their feet with a standing ovation to cheer on Derek for his race.
In that day, he didn't win a medal. In that day, there was no record book that said that Derek finished at all.
Actually, if you look up the history in the record book of the Olympics, it has his name, and beside his name, it says, did not finish. Even though his father was there to help him, and he came across and did not quit the race at all.
He didn't have to run alone. And in this passage in Acts chapter 14, I believe Paul and Barnabas are in the middle of their missionary journey. They're facing opposition. They're facing misunderstanding and even violence.
And yet they refused to quit because God said, I'm going to be with you every step of your way. I want you to watch this short two-minute video of what had happened. I believe the mission of the gospel
is clearly wrapped up in that video as we see someone struggling, someone that has been hurt, and yet someone else has come beside them to help them. It's our mission. We're called to be courageous.
We're called to be dependent on others and also dependent on the Lord and to have wisdom and faithfulness and humility and perseverance.
And ultimately, it's a picture of the support of the local church as we're going to look at at the end of this passage because I believe as we go closer together and closer with one another and begin to
reach out to those that are around us, we do better when we're together than if we are just by ourselves out on an island. So as we begin to break down this passage, I want us to look at the first couple of verses.
I want us to look at Paul and Silas as they're committed in their conflict. They're in Iconium. They're here to preach the gospel.
It says that they were as usual speaking and great numbers of people were coming and many were believing and turning to the gospel and being stirred up for one another. And they are committed, yet it says that there's conflict here. It says that there are others that are opposing them. They were divided.
They were seeking to divide them. And it's an encouragement to know that 2,000 years ago when Paul and Barnabas were on their mission, there were people that were against them, there were people that were committed to saying, hey, we're going to cause conflict.
Commitment in Conflict
And 2,000 years later, we still see this, right? We still see conflict that happens when we try to do stuff for the Lord. Someone twists it out of context. And we need to understand that we must be committed.
And we see three things that they do. The first thing they do is they have courage to speak. Even in the middle of the conflict, even in the midst of what is going on, Paul and Barnabas, they entered the synagogue as they did as usual, verse one, and they began speaking boldly.
And it says that they were, despite knowing that opposition was likely going to happen.
Oftentimes this opposition comes and we have this choice of, am I going to stand up and am I going to be bold for the Lord? Am I going to be bold to speak the gospel? Or am I going to change my message based on who is in attendance?
Just recently, I've been in some of my small, very little free time, I've been watching a couple of documentaries. And one of the recommended documentaries was the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. I believe it was 95.
And I was watching this bombing and I had heard about it in history, but I'm watching the images of the building that's been destroyed there in Oklahoma City.
And the ATF and the firefighters, they're rushing into this building that's on fire, that there's people, there's babies, there's individuals that are either dying or they're already passed away.
And they're running in this building, forsaking their own care to sacrifice themselves to maybe save someone.
And I believe this is what it looks like when we are running with gospel courage.
It is running toward the fire when everyone else is running away, knowing that for the sake of the gospel, we can go and we can share with someone and that maybe by the Lord's deliverance, maybe by the Lord's
divine moment that he would change their heart, he would change their minds. But it ultimately starts with us. Do we have the courage to speak? Do we have the courage to say, this is what the Lord says in these difficult moments?
Oftentimes, we'll have situations in our life that will tempt us to shrink back from the gospel instead of stepping up forward and stepping forward and saying, you know, I'm gonna make this declaration for the Lord because this is what God has called me to do.
We want us to challenge ourselves in our mind to ask ourselves, what are these situations in your life that tempt you to shrink back and not have the courage for the gospel? But also we see in verses two and four, we see the confidence that they have in Christ.
You see, they had courage to speak, but then they had this confidence to say, you know what?
We may not be as confident in our skill or our cleverness or the way we speak, but what it says is here is that they stayed a long time and they spoke boldly for the Lord. They testified to the Lord.
They began to just share and disciple one another in this moment because the opposition that was there didn't silence them.
Oftentimes when people come against us and we shriek back and we retreat, our voices are no longer heard.
And what happens is, is when the confidence, when the people came against them, it just deepened their reliance on God. What they just said was, we're just gonna hunker in. We're just gonna continue preaching the gospel. We're gonna continue telling others about Christ.
No matter what comes, no matter what's going to happen, it's almost like a soldier, as someone mentioned about Jackson going back. He doesn't have courage in himself in this moment when he is called to serve his country.
He has courage that his commanding officer is giving him wisdom to say, this is what I need you to do and I'm gonna have confidence in your plan. Our commanding officer, God in heaven is telling us, go and tell the others about him. Go and tell others about the good news of Jesus.
And we have confidence that he has the plan that come what may, whatever happens in our life, as long as we go and we tell and we share, all of a sudden we're able to follow the command of the officer that's in charge of us, which is God.
Are we aware of the opposition around us? Are we aware of those people that are around us to come and maybe conflict harm against us? And are we also aware of who's on our side?
You see, when conflict comes, when opposition comes, if God is on our side, the Bible tells me that God is greater than anything in this world has to offer in difficulty, but also in goodness as well, then we
can trust in him. But then in verses five through seven, oftentimes, and I've got a friend of mine that I shared these verses with this morning, that we oftentimes will have things that'll come against us and there's caution that comes with wisdom.
When we have the wisdom of the Lord, we often can have wisdom that precedes a little bit of caution here.
And when they learned of this plot to stone them and to kill them, it would have been really easy for them to say, you know what? We're going to prove a point. We're going to stand our ground.
We're going to, thus saith the Lord, we're going to stand here and we're going to take it and you'll see later where some of these things happen. But what happens is, is they said, you know what?
We're going to strategically leave because we have a mission here that doesn't involve us to be foolish.
We've got to trust the Lord and wisdom knows when to stay and when to go. Wisdom tells them, you know, with this moment,
we're ineffective in our ministry and so we've got other counties, we've got other places where we can go and we can share the gospel.
It's almost like this, a shepherd who is leading sheep, he doesn't take his sheep and he doesn't say, hey, let's go find the biggest wolf's den we can find and let's go see how strong these little sheep are.
Let's go put them in the middle of the wolves and just see who's the best and who's the strongest sheep we've got.
No, wisdom, that shepherd says, I'm going to put you in a place where you can thrive and you can survive and I'm going to be the one to thwart off the adversaries that come.
And so this is the wisdom that they're displaying and oftentimes we must be men and women who are praying for wisdom as much as boldness.
God, give me the wisdom to say the right things at the right times but also the boldness to sometimes say things that maybe people aren't going to like, maybe people aren't going to, aren't going to accept in that moment but it's going to challenge them to think.
Are we having the wisdom and are we having the boldness sort of mixed together? And now they leave from there.
It says they leave and they go to Lystra and Derby. I see here they're faithful in the field. They didn't allow one little hiccup, one little,
little, I mean there's death threats here. This is something that is coming against them to hinder what they're doing. They said we're going to continue to be faithful in the field. We're going to continue to go forward. We're going to continue to share the gospel. We're going to continue to make disciples.
Faithfulness in Message
We're going to continue no matter what to be faithful in the field. And we see a couple of things here. They were faithful in their message. Their message didn't change in verses 8 through 10.
Paul begins to preach and as he's going down his way as he's done in past, a lame man is there, a lame man who has never been able to walk. He looks at him and he says, can I be healed?
I've got faith in Jesus as you've been said. And Paul looks at him and says, if you've got the faith, I've got the gospel that both saves and transforms. The gospel saves us and transforms our life.
And this is a moment where we see a physical transformation, but this is a visual representation of a spiritual transformation inside where we take from death to life into Christ.
Where when the gospel comes in and penetrates our heart, as we see through baptism, we go from a dead creature to a new creature, a creature that could not walk on its own, but because the gospel has come
in and infused our life, now we have the purpose to stand on our own feet and to walk in the glory of God. It's like a doctor who comes into a room with a cure,
who says, you know, I know you've been hurt and I know there's some pain here, but I'm going to give you the remedy to be cured and to be able to fight this. And this is what Paul does.
He applies the gospel into this man's life to his life to be healed and to be able to walk. Are we willing to meet people where they're at?
Are we willing to stop where we're at and say, wherever I'm at, wherever situation I'm in, I'm willing to go and help the people as we did this last week during our serve week and we do all throughout our life. I try this often.
I even did it last night. I fail a lot of times to do this, but we were at Cracker Barrel. We decided to go eat because on a busy schedule, sometimes we forget to thaw out the meat.
Have you ever been there where it's like, okay, we've forgotten to thaw the meat out. Let's just go out to the restaurant. It'll be a little easier.
And so we ran into Cracker Barrel and food came out and I said, all right, kids, don't eat yet. We're going to pray for our waitress. And so Erin came and I said, Erin, I said, how's things going? I said, we're going to pray real quick.
Is there something we can pray for you about? And in that moment, she sort of was taking a step back and she said, you know, my grandma, she's got breast cancer and she's having surgery in a couple of weeks on the third, I believe as she said and the third or the fifth.
I can't remember. And she said, if you'll pray for my grandma, that'd be great. So in that moment, we stopped right there. We prayed with her. It was boldness.
It was faithful in our missions. It was willing to meet people where they're at and be vulnerable. Now she could look at me and she said, how dare you want to pray for me? I don't believe in God. I don't believe in Jesus. Who do you think you are asking me to pray?
In that moment, some barriers and some walls were broken down and we were able to pray for their deepest needs in that moment. Now that may have been one little seed that was put in that she's going to say, you know, there was someone who cared enough to ask.
There was someone who was there who was willing to say, hey, is there something in your life?
Are we willing to be bold and take stands for Christ and be faithful where we're at? Verses 11 through 13, we see they were full of the Spirit. They see this goes back to that wisdom part that they had in Iconium. They were full of the Spirit.
This miracle stirs up a cultural misunderstanding. The people here think that these are gods. This is Zeus and this is Hermes. This is Paul and Barnabas. They are actually gods that have been transformed into this world and the Spirit's presence through the wisdom of God gives them the clarity to respond here. Not with pride, but with truth.
They look and they say, no, no, no, we are just mere men like you are. Do you not understand that God has done something greater here? God has done something wonderful here.
You see, when Da Vinci and his famous paintings or any other artist that you want to reference here in this moment, when they begin to make a masterpiece,
the people that were the art historians or the curators of the museum, they don't take the paintbrush that Da Vinci used and they don't lay it there and say, look at this paintbrush. Look how great it is. This paintbrush, man, it just jumped up and began painting this wonderful Mona Lisa.
It began painting, this paintbrush is just the greatest paintbrush that's ever lived.
No, they put the artist up for display and they say that this is what is great.
This artist did something great and in the same instance, it's not us as the paintbrush.
It is God who has empowered us to go out and be faithful for his message, full of his spirit, to tell people about the gospel, to tell people of how their life can go from death to life if we will just simply follow and admire what God has done in our life.
Forsaking Praise
So they were faithful in their message, they were full of the spirit but also they forsook the praise. They forsook the praise that was coming in verses 14 through 18. The Bible says they tore their clothes and they were grieved that the glory was being misplaced. All of a sudden, God is blessing
hundreds and thousands, most scholars say that thousands in these communities were coming to know Jesus.
Remember just a couple of chapters ago they preached and one person came to Jesus and now the Lord is blessing and hundreds and thousands of people are coming to know God and coming to know this wonderful transforming power and yet they understood where proper praise was at.
Humility in their moments and humility in their life protected their mission. Pride can come in, pride can hijack where we're at and it is so important to be humble in our life.
This is one of those areas that my mother-in-law, she listens a lot, this is one of those areas that I struggle in the most is pride, right?
Because we think highly of ourselves, we think highly of what we can do and all of a sudden we must get to the point where we humble ourselves and we come before God and we say, God, it is nothing that I am doing, it is just simply glory to you and you alone
and I promise you when we get to this place as I was even thinking of last night as I was reviewing some of my notes and I went to Roy on yesterday or Friday and I said, Roy, how's things going?
And he said, you know, it's just glory to God that I'm still here. Something bad could have happened and I just want to praise God.
Now he could have responded and said, you know, I was a pretty strong guy. Yeah, I jumped up, I flipped that mower over, yeah, look at my muscles. No, no, no.
He said, look at God, look at what he's done. He provided someone to come by, he provided something great to happen and I'm just a recipient of his grace.
Are we humble in that way to where we can just simply say and how quickly can we get to this point where we say it is simply by the hand of God that we are here. Forsaken the praise of ourself and turning it back to God.
In verses 19 through 21 we begin to see they were forward in their mission.
After being stoned and left for dead, some scholars believe that Paul actually died here and God brought him back to life for a purpose because his mission was not done yet.
I don't know where I stand on that but it says they left him for dead and it says that in that moment after they left him for dead, Paul gets up and he walks six miles. I want us to understand this was not just walking from here to Mickey's house across the river.
This was not just a small walk. This was a six mile journey.
That might actually be six miles. This was a long journey walking now that I'm thinking about it. This is a long walk like after you've been stoned. This is not little pebbles. These were big stones.
They were throwing them in. They left him for dead. He gets up the next day and he walks six miles to continue preaching the derby. They were forwarding their mission. They didn't care what was there. Perseverance is not stubborn. It has simply been empowered to endure for the sake of the gospel.
It is saying that I'm going to run my race as Derek Redmond ran his race in that open illustration. He pushed forward when the pain was there. His father came alongside of him and began to help him along his journey.
It mirrors to us that when times get tough it's great to have those people that are around us that can come alongside of us and put their arm around us and say hey I'm here for you. I'm here to help you.
I don't want you to give up in your ministry. Oftentimes these questions of forsaking come into our life and these questions of what would it take for me to stop fulfilling God's call in my life. They come in.
They were human. These are questions that we struggle with. Well my co-worker abandoned me. My neighbors slammed their door in my face as I was trying to invite them to church and I was doing these things and I just don't know if this is really what I should be doing.
Continuing the Mission
This is where they began to go forward. They said you know what even though we've been stoned even though there was a conspiracy to kill us we're going to continue preaching the gospel. We're going to continue going forward.
And then it says here in these last seven verses that they went home to Antioch and they were refueled at home. They were refueled. They went back to this charging station you could look at it like that.
This gas station of their spiritual journey where they were going back and they were getting filled back up so they could go back out and they could preach the gospel again. And I believe that this gives us a picture of a couple of things.
The first one is the power of the local church. The power of the local church. I shared this one when I first came here two years ago.
when I was born I was born on a Thursday and on that Sunday I was in church.
My mom and dad ran a little bus ministry and they I say little they were bringing in 15, 20, 2,000 kids to the church in the bus ministry and I was in my car seat there's a video
of me like three months old in my car seat little baby my mom's driving the bus my dad's helping pick up kids and on Sunday I've never known life without church. I've never known what it was like to not be in church.
I was called to salvation in church on a Saturday on a Sunday night as a five year old boy I recently was able to go back the building is still there the back wall but the church has burned
down and I was able to take a picture in front of that and was called to preach at the local church went to Bible college at a local church met my wife in that church there was married in
the local church was called to ministry and ordained in the local church everything in my life has been centered around the local church
and this is where we see the apostles here they begin to be strengthened in the local church they go back to the local church they go back to the body of believers that sent them they begin appointing elders
and reminding them that the kingdom of God is at hand and there's many trials that are going to happen I love that as they come back they tell them hey these are all the things that you were able
to see done because you were able to send us because you were able to send us out
often times me and my kids will go outside and we'll begin to put together a little campfire and as the fire goes out the more logs we put in the bigger and the better the fire is but if
I were to light this log here and then walk over a couple feet and light another log it's not going to burn as good it's when those logs come together and they begin burning together we begin to see
a giant fire and this is the picture of the local church we are those logs and we're coming together for the sake of the gospel and we're allowing the fire of the Holy Spirit to burn in our lives
so that it can be hotter and greater than anything we can do in and of ourselves the second thing we see in verse 22 is the instruction
in verse 22 it says that they were strengthened by the disciples and encouraged them to continue in their faith they told them it is necessary for you to experience hardships in order to enter the kingdom of God they
were discipling these believers here they were discipling this church at Antioch and they were saying listen because you sent us we're able to come back and tell you all that it has done here and I'm here to tell
us that this instruction is great for us it teaches us how to live for Christ in a hostile world it teaches us that there are going to be
oppositions that come against us but how do we respond and how do we give instruction to those that are also hurting for sake of time we see there's rest here in verse 28 we see that the rest that comes from the local church you know even missionaries need rest
got a man that I said Todd Payne who's coming from India he's here on a little bit of a rest time where he can just come and share the gospel I've got an email just this morning from a lady that's in Toga that is
her sending churches in Lenore and she asked us hey can I come and share what the Lord's doing I just want to tell the other churches in the area what God is doing and that's where we can begin
to be have seasons of recharging seasons of refreshment when people just need rest when people just need to get along and hang out with one another and this is times where it's so vital for even ourselves where there's
times for rest but there's times for work there's times to get out and do the work of the Lord and to get out and push ourselves man this last week has been exhausting for me you may not be
able to tell I'm a little high strung anyways but it's been exhausting I've gotten home and we sit on the couch we get the kids in bed at 8 o'clock and I'm just like oh I'm wore out
my feet are hurting my ankle's been hurting anyways and I'm out there playing basketball and running around playing volleyball with a bunch of kids and it's like man my body is not as young as it used to be
a little fatter than I used to be and I'm not as young and sometimes just sitting back and having those moments of rest are so vital for us but there's also a time where we've got to get out
and work I read this illustration of the day that I thought it was so profound it says that a bow a bow and arrow if you take a bow and you keep it permanently in its fixed position the
bow begins to get weaker and weaker because it is permanently losing power because it's permanently at its bent position
the reason why the bow is so effective is because there's times of rest where it's able to bring itself back and then you pull it back and it's got more power than it had before
and there's times for us that are so vital that we have rest and restoration in our lives and so we must model what the church has done here where they provide rest and then we see in the last
Sharing Encouragement
couple verses here the fellowship that they received says they gave this report of what God had been doing they shared the victories they shared the struggles they shared that they were almost beat to death and it encouraged the church when I was playing football
many many years ago 16 17 years ago now I don't remember exactly how long ago it was and even now as I coach one of the most encouraging things that we would do is after the game the next week we would begin to study film right
Scott's Scott is here Logan and some of these guys that help coach they have film study time where they go back and they re-evaluate what the team did
one of my most encouraging days was on Monday because half of our practice was film study right that's half the practice where we didn't have to go outside and sweat and hit each other and so we'd sit in
and we'd watch but one of the most glorious things is when we'd watch the film study we'd be able to see the plays that we did the things that we were able to accomplish
that's why I think it's so important when our young people come back from camp we go on mission trips we show videos we show some things that we've done because not everyone can do those things and so it's
important for us to have those fellowships where we share the victories we share the hard times the good things but then we get ready for the next event that's coming we get ready for the next match and part
of that film study is studying the next team and studying these things but it's bringing us together through fellowship
and I think it's so important for us as a church to have those times of fellowship that's why it's part of our mission statement to be together in the gospel to do those things I joke about it often
church I say often when we meet we eat and a lot of times when we meet we're going to eat today we're going to meet and on the 6th Mim just told me that we're going to eat and we're going to meet this is so good because it brings us together
it brings us to a place where we can share over a meal where we're not rushed where we can just say hey I'm struggling with this or this is some things going on in my life or I've got
a grandkid or a kid that's doing these things can you help me these are why the church is here to build each other up to have fellowship with one another and to encourage someone else in the gospel
when's the last time you were able to share with someone to encourage them to tell them what God has done in your life and just say
hey I want them to do some things in your life too
when's the last time we were able to share those encouraging moments or maybe even hard times the Lord works in hard times as well if we can just share with one another those things that's there he comes I want to close down by going back to the story of Mr.
Redman he wasn't there he may have been there to win but in the end he wasn't there just to win gold he was there and his life was there to finish well he wanted to no matter what happened he had love and
determination for the sport that he was going to continue this race and he was going to finish no matter what comes Acts 14 shows us the same thing Paul and Barnabas were not concerned about medals they didn't have
a title listen if they were concerned about appreciation or titles they would have stopped there in Lystra and they would have accepted the praise they would have said yeah I am Zeus I am Hermes yes continue praising me
no they stood down and they pushed the apostle away and they said my mission is to simply tell what the Lord has done the Christian mission is going to have setbacks it's going to have criticism misunderstanding exhaustion
and yes as we looked at last week there's even going to be betrayal in the ministry there's even going to be betrayal in our life but the truth is our mission is not measured on how easy it is but how faithful we are
when Jesus we stand before him he's not going to say how easy was your journey
how many trials did you go through what are the did you was you able to have the really really easy road oh great
we're going to stand before Jesus one day and he's going to stand there and he's going to when the applause fades when the world's done he's going to look and with one singular voice he's going to say did
Faithful Servants
you do well for the kingdom are you a servant that is well done and good and faithful or did you just choose the easy and convenient road Paul and Barnabas here they could have chose the convenient road but
yet they rather chose to speak courage and speak with truth they chose to give the wisdom to God and to step aside and to know that God is there they chose the humility and to deflect the praise and
give glory back to God and they chose the perseverance to continue to press on when everyone around them I'm sure was telling them to quit
I'm sure the leaders and the Jewish leaders that were coming they were saying just give up just stop preaching this message and everything's going to be okay you won't be killed you won't be stoned there's not going to be persecution just stop
and yet they continued to press forward they continued to say
God I want to give you everything that my life has to offer even if it's my life and God looked at them and said just continue running children
continue carrying on I'm going to be there with you and at the finish line when you think that there's nothing there I'm going to be right there beside you helping you get across that finish line until then until we get to our finish line be steadfast in your mission
not for the medals not for the glory not for the plaques that we're going to get not for the fame but be steadfast in the one that has called us to be true in our mission
Father we thank you for this day God I thank you for this passage Lord it's such a encouraging passage a passage that we often overlook of just understanding that we're going to have hard times we're going to have difficulties but where are our eyes fixed at?
Are we faithfully fixed on who you are? Are we faithfully determined to continue no matter what happens in our life?
Lord give us strength maybe there's one here this morning that's been discouraged that's been beat down that just needs rest Lord I'm thankful you give us that journey of rest maybe there's one here that doesn't know you
who's never trusted in you and today would be the day where they put their faith and trust in you maybe it's
while we're having a time of fellowship with food or maybe while it's outside they just come and they say hey can you tell me more about this man named Jesus Lord help work in their life help work in our lives as we continue to fellowship together verse in your name we pray amen
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