Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts chapter 18, highlighting Paul's ministry in the corrupt city of Corinth. He emphasizes how Paul, despite facing discouragement and opposition, remains committed to preaching the gospel with compassion and courage, encouraged by God's promise of presence and protection. The sermon calls believers to invest in relationships, stand firm in their convictions, and finish their spiritual race strong, reminding them that God is with them in difficult times.
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. Amen. Well, I hope you enjoyed that worship song this morning.
It has been a blessing to my soul and my heart over the last couple of weeks and months as I've been worshiping the Lord through it. If you have your Bibles, we'll be in Acts chapter 18 this morning. Acts chapter 18 is where we'll be at.
One thing, I don't know if it made it in the bulletin, on October 19th, the Williams have opened up their barn, and we're going to have a chicken stew feast at 5 p.m. That's a Sunday night on October 19th,
sort of in the kickoff to the fall or just get together. That's what we're going to have, and it's going to be a great time.
Some of our ladies are going to make some desserts and just hang out at the farm there. Those details will be in the bulletin October 19th at 5 p.m.
Acts chapter 18 is where we'll be at today. We've got 23 verses we're going to look at this morning and looking at Paul's life here in Corinth. If you're willing and able, we'll stand out of the reading of Scripture, and we'll get started today. The Bible says,
After this, he left Athens and went to Corinth, where he found a Jew named Aquila,
a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. Paul came with them, and since they were of the same occupation, tentmakers by trade, he stayed with them and worked.
He reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath and tried to persuade both Jews and Greeks.
When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself to preaching the word and testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah.
When they resisted and blasphemed, he shook off his clothes and told them, Your blood is on your own heads, and I am innocent. From now on, I will only go to the Gentiles.
And so he left there, and he went to the house of a man named Titius Justice, a worshiper of God, whose house was next door to the synagogue. Crispius, the leader of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, and along with all of his household. Many of the Corinthians,
when they heard, believed and were baptized. Verse 9, The Lord said to Paul in a night vision, Don't be afraid, but keep on speaking, and don't be silent. For I am with you, and no one will lay a hand on you to hurt you, because I have many people in this city.
He stayed there a year and a half, teaching the word of God among them. When Galileo, who the pro-council of Achaia, the Jews, made a united attack against Paul and brought him to a tribunal.
This man, they said, is persuading people to worship God in ways contrary to the law.
As Paul was about to open his mouth, Galileo said to the Jews, If it were a matter of wrongdoing or a serious crime, it would be reasonable for me to put up with you Jews. But if these questions are about words and names of your own law, see to it yourself.
I refuse to be the judge of such things. So he drove them from the tribunal, and all of them seized Sothisius, a leader of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the tribunal. But none of these things mattered to Galileo.
After staying for some time, Paul said farewell to the brothers and sisters and sailed away to Syria,
accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila. He shaved his head at Cynthia's, oh, I can't say that name, I'm sorry, because of a vow that he had taken.
When they had reached Ephesus, he left them there, but he himself entered the synagogue and debated with the Jews. When he came and stayed a little time longer, he declined, but he said farewell and added, I'll come back to you again if God wills. Then he set sail for Ephesus.
On landing at Caesarea, he went up to Jerusalem and greeted the church,
went down to Antioch, and after spending some time there, he sent out and traveled through one place after another in the region of Galatia and Pergia and strengthened all the disciples. Lord, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done. We pray that you'll be with your reading of your word. We pray that you'll be with me as I speak this morning, that you would have your will and way in everything that's done.
In your name we pray. Amen. You can be seated this morning.
I try to do my best with some of these old Jewish places and names, and I had that one name down before I read it, and it just left me as I was trying to read it, and I apologize for that.
But as we open up today, as we begin to look through what is going on in this passage, Paul is entering Corinth.
We know he left from Athens this last week, and he's now moving to another region. And Corinth would have been one of the most corrupt cities in all of this region.
In all of ancient world, if you study through this, this was the place of debauchery, the place of sin. And yet God used Paul to be here at Corinth and be one of the most fruitful places that the gospel has spread in all of Paul's ministry.
We're going to look through that here a little bit today. But as you study, we know Paul wrote two letters that's recorded in Scripture,
1 and 2 Corinthians. This was written to the church at Corinth. There was a third letter that was never recovered. We can tell if you read 1 Corinthians that he had wrote another letter. So we know that he loved this church.
He cared about this church. And he was drawing from Christ in difficult places.
There's times in our life where we're going to go through difficult times, and our only source of strength, our only place where we're going to seek comfort is from the Lord. And so I want you to imagine yourself stepping into a world. Maybe this is like New York City or Las Vegas, Nevada.
You've heard the stories. Maybe you've been there before. Maybe you've drove through Nevada or you've been to New York and you've seen the lights and the glamour.
Overwhelming every sense that you have. I've drove through Las Vegas. I've never actually stayed there. And I've spent a little bit of time in New York City. And both of them, they are all inspiring places.
There are places that get you just, you don't know what's going on. You sort of seem overwhelmed with everything that's going on. Paul, in this same sense, he were stepping off of a ship from Athens, coming into Corinth.
And in the moment as he steps off, he hears the sounds of the merchants shouting in the marketplaces, the smells of the incense that's going on as people are worshiping their false gods. He sees the pagan temples,
the wreaths along all the walkways, the glitter as the sun hits it and shines and just lights up this whole place. This was the place of Corinth. One writer said it like this.
It was the crossroads of culture, commerce, and corruption. People from all over the empire gathered to do business, to chase pleasure, to worship idols.
This city has everything that you can imagine and lacked nothing. The only thing they lacked was Christ in their culture.
Now, Paul, imagine him coming from Athens. Last week as I preached this, he preached a brilliant sermon. He saw many people come to know Christ.
And now as he's preaching, some mocked him. You can imagine him being tired. He's now alone. He's not with his fellow companions. Paul and Silas or Silas and Timothy come later. He's probably discouraged at this point.
And the Lord brings him to Corinth. Arguably, in his mind, he knew about this place would have been one of the last places that he would have desired to go. And yet God drove him and challenged him to go to Corinth.
He walks in. He begins to stand in the middle of the noise, stand in the middle of the sin and the opposition, and preach a gospel-like message to say that there is a Savior in this world as we demonstrated the baptism.
His name is Jesus. He came into this world to die for your sins. And he begins to get up and preach in this city of corruption. We can relate, can't we? Our culture today, it's corruption all around, busy, distracted, the hustle and bustle of life.
As I've said many times, I've got like four different calendars that we're managing at different times. And I'm talking to these people, and I'm trying to put them on there, and I forget to put it on this calendar. Life can be busy.
Life can be tough. I was talking to Peter before the service, and he said, I don't understand how you are able to manage.
And I said, I've got a really good assistant. His name is iPhone and Siri.
And he tells me all the time the dates and things that I need to be at, where I've got to go. He reminds me of different things. These are, but oftentimes, these are distractions that can come in our life. And Paul, he can relate to this. He understands there's distraction.
He understands there's the hostility to the truth of Christ that has been preached, that he's going to be preaching. And it would be tempting for him to sort of shrink back, to not maybe say some things,
not say some controversial issues, and just sort of keep quiet in the realm of the culture where he was at. And Acts chapter 18 shows us the opposite, that in Corinth, Paul stands with God's power. He stands and delivers messages and preaches with compassion.
Paul's Compassion and Courage
He preaches with courage. He preaches ultimately to strength to finish his life as he offers us that same strength today. And so we see in the first eight verses here, Paul delivering his compassion at Corinth. Paul doesn't just endure at Corinth. He invests in them.
We begin to see that he walks in and he meets these two people, Aquila and Priscilla, and they begin to have this commonality. There's some interest they both do together. They're both tent makers. They both have this common thing.
And Paul begins to set up shop and begins to invest in the community where they're at. He begins to have compassion on them. And we begin to see the first four verses here, Paul's companions, Aquila and Priscilla, just ordinary people. Ordinary people just as determining to do extraordinary things for other people.
They were encouragers. Aquila and Priscilla came alongside of Paul and said, Hey, I feel like you're struggling a little bit now.
Can we come on? Can we begin to encourage you?
And it says that he spent a period of time where he only spoke to the town on Sundays. And I think that's important on the Sabbath because he invested his time wisely throughout the time. He was balancing ministry and work.
It shows the faithfulness that he has to his own participation in work, but also the faithfulness in ministry. And he begins to do these things and he begins to work in this area until Silas and Timothy come to encourage him and allow him to spend more time.
Some of the greatest friendships that you have in life, as Pat said this morning just a minute ago, where Barbara has been there for 50 years for her and how they've invested in one another and how they care for one another.
And this is the comrades as you begin to go through life, the struggles that you go through, the difficult times when life comes for you and life come against you and you pick up that phone and you just
need that person to talk to. This was Paul in this situation.
Aquila and Priscilla came alongside him and began to encourage him in a way that was going to refresh his soul. And I challenge us to ask ourselves, who are we been that Aquila and Priscilla to?
Who are we investing these relationships that we have, this internal investment that we have where we can reach out to a brother or a sister and say, hey, I notice you're going through some hard times. I notice there's some difficulties going on.
The joy has just sort of seeped away from you. And how can I come alongside of you and encourage you? And the follow-up question is, who is our Aquila and Priscilla?
Who are the companions that we have in our life? As times come and difficult times come, we can call and we can encourage one another.
As we have our revival coming up, I've got one of my best friends, John, who's coming to preach to us for a couple of days and we've been talking back and forth. And he's had a hard ministry over the last couple of weeks at church.
They've had to do some really hard things to an individual that was living in sin. And during this time, he's called me and he's asked for encouragement.
He's asked me to be praying for him. I got a text this morning from him. He's praying for me.
I've been praying for him this morning. And these are the companions that we need in life because we're going to go through difficult times. And we need people that are going to pour into us and we pour into other people as we begin to show this compassion to those that are around us.
And I've got to hurry. I don't have a lot of time here. We look at also Paul's companions, but Paul's compassion in verse 5.
He's compelled by the word. The Bible says that he comes in and he preaches the word because he has compassion for the souls of men that are around him. Compassion fuels his boldness.
But Paul, he doesn't just stand up and say, I'm going to come out and I'm going to preach a hateful sermon and I'm going to preach these things to you. No, no. He has love for them so much that he has to go out.
He has to stand and he has to stand in the streets and say, I love you so much that I'm going to be bold for the sake of Christ.
I'm going to tell you that Jesus loves you, that he came and he died on this cross for you and that you are living in sin and the ways that you're living have to change.
The things that you're doing have to change so that you can turn your life over to Jesus and say, I want to live for you. D.L. Moody said it like this. I must speak today as if someone's soul depends on it because it does.
This morning, there are souls all around us who are not believing in Jesus and we have this ultimate opportunity to stand and say, Jesus cares about you so much that he sent himself to come in to die for us because souls are at risk of dying and going to hell every single day.
And we must end and we must speak with Christ's power.
Not only do we see the companions, the compassion, but we see Paul's convictions in verses six through eight. The Bible says that some rejected violently.
Sorry, I got a little something in my throat there. Paul stands and says that as he's preaching, some violently rejected him.
And Paul, in this moment of adversity, he stands firm.
We are introduced to a character here named Krippresis, who was the synagogue ruler who believed and said, God is working. God is doing some great things. The crowd's resistant and yet we must stand and continue what we're doing. He was encouraged, but he began to stand bolder on his convictions.
There was faithfulness that goes through. As we go through life, there's faithfulness that we are responsible to do and we have to ask ourselves, are we been faithful with what God has given us? With the ability that God has given us, with the power that God has given us, are we staying faithful in those things?
And then in verses nine through 17, we see this turn of events happen where Paul was standing, he's preaching, but now there comes fear. There comes persecution and Paul stands with courage without fear.
God's Assurance to Paul
Paul stands up and you can sense it in the passage. Paul, you see that he's fearful.
You feel that he is fearful in this moment as we begin opening up verses nine. It says, the Lord said to Paul in a night vision, do not be afraid. We clearly see he's afraid here.
We clearly see that the oppression of the world is causing his soul to be in turmoil. And yet God speaks to him and God comforts him in verse nine. He says, listen, there's comfort that's coming here. Do not be afraid.
Aren't you thankful that the Lord can come to us in our deepest, darkest times and wrap his arms around us and love us and say, hey, I know that you feel like the world's coming to an end, but just remember, I'm still in control.
Just remember that I hold the galaxies in the palm of my hand and nothing happens without me knowing it first.
The problems that you're going through, the difficulties that you're going through, I knew it was going to happen and I'm here to come alongside of you and give you the comfort that you need. The Lord pierces through Paul's discouragement.
He comes to him in his deepest moment in the dark of the night, the Bible says, and says, I am coming to help you in this moment. It reminds me of almost like a small child. The storms are going on. The lightning is going on.
The thunder's going on. The power's flickering a little bit.
And the child is in the back room and he's crying. He doesn't know what's going on. And the mother and the father go into that room and they wrap that son and daughter up around their arms and say, hey, it's going to be okay. Dad's here.
Mom's here. And I know you're struggling right now.
I know you don't know what's going on outside, but know that I'm here with you. Now, mom and dad can't control the storm. But in that moment, the child feels safe and security because the mother and father's arms are wrapped around them. And in this moment, the same thing happens.
Jesus comes in and Jesus is wrapping his loving arms around Paul and saying, hey, I know times are getting tough. I know things are getting troublesome and you're wanting to give up, but don't give up.
Know that I'm here for you and know that I'm here to love you. He gives this command also from the Lord. He says, keep on speaking. Do not be silent in this moment.
Fear wants to muzzle you. Fear wants to come in and say, stop doing what you're doing. Don't speak up for truth. But the power of the Lord comes in and calls us to stand and proclaim the gospel to those that are out there.
What is silence in our witness in our schools? What is silence in our witness in our workplace and in our community as we step out by faith in Jesus? Are we afraid of rejection?
Are we afraid that we're going to fail? Are we afraid that someone's going to ridicule and make fun of us because we are standing for truth? The Bible says, continue speaking everywhere we go, not to be silent.
Do not be fearful for I am there with you. And then we see the companionship from the Lord in verses 10 through 17. We see three quick things here underneath the companionship. We see his presence. He says, for I am with you.
Know that God is with us. Know that in your deepest, darkest times when you don't know what's going on, the Lord steps in and says, I'm with you. We see his promise.
He says, no one's going to harm you or attack you.
He says, in this specific purpose, he said, Paul, you still have a mission here and you still have a mission for the next, as we look here, 10 chapters of Acts where you're going to go through some difficult
things and know that they are not going to take your life from you in this moment. And he says, I'm going to promise to protect you in this moment. And look at the people here.
He says, I have many people in this city. It is very easy to be discouraged as we walk through life and we begin to think. And Paul in this situation was thinking, I'm the only one left. I'm the only one serving the Lord.
I'm the only one that cares about you. And Jesus just reassures him and says, hey, there's many people in this city that believe in me.
You need to go and you need to find them. You need to bring them together.
You need to start this church at Corinth so that they can begin to encourage one another. It reminded me of Elisha and Elijah as Elijah had just called down fire from heaven, as he had just slain the prophets of Baal.
And all of a sudden, Queen Jezebel comes out and says, I'm going to come after you and I'm going to chop your head off. And in this moment, Elijah,
after this, I mean, this wonderful moment where God showed this miracle of consuming up this altar and fire happening from heaven,
Elijah steps back and says, Queen Jezebel's coming after me and I don't know if I can handle it anymore. I'm going to run to the mountains. He runs to the mountains and he begins to cry and say, Lord, no one's here with me.
I'm the only prophet that's left in Israel and life is coming to an end and life is being horrible. And God looks at him and almost, I mean, I can imagine this, almost like this dad reaching down from heaven and smacking him in the head and saying, come on, son,
you know, you're not the only one here. And in this moment, he begins to give Elijah a supernatural vision to be able to see hundreds and thousands of prophets that are in Israel. And he said, you thought you were alone, but look at who I've got here with you. And this is the same thing.
Even as we go through life, we oftentimes feel like we're the only one going through the struggles. We're the only one going through the hardships. And God says, no, I've got people around you who are here to encourage you and I'm going to protect you.
And I'm going to rule over these hostile authorities in things that we don't even understand in life. But we know that God is sovereign and takes care of those things. I think of missionaries like Jim and Elizabeth Elliott who went out into the world and the world persecuted her husband.
And yet she's continued to stay faithful, even though she was surrounded by danger. Fear fades when we remember to walk in the Lord during hostility.
Fear fades when we remember to walk with the Lord and know who's walking beside us. God is there with us.
He cares for us and he wants us to walk with him every day of our life. Not only does Paul continue to go through this and we see the courage without fear and the compassion, but we see that Paul finishes strong. Paul, he doesn't care the cost.
As he goes through this, he doesn't care what happens or what's going to happen.
All he cares is that he's going to continue to faithfully.
In this moment at Corinth, when he was getting discouraged, when he was getting depressed, you can say depressed was here, when he was getting anxious of what was going to happen, he said, God, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I do know this.
I'm going to continue faithfully from this point on. We see as we look through here, there's not another time in scripture from 18 to the end of Paul's life in Acts chapter 28 where he ever has this moment of discouragement again. It's almost like he had to go through this moment of discouragement to say, no matter what comes,
I'm going to continue to serve the Lord. No matter the difficulties that happen in life, I'm going to continue going forward because God is faithful to me and I'm going to be faithful to him.
Faithfulness in Difficult Times
As I title this message, Faithful in the Fray, there's times where we feel like we're the only ones and there are times where we may be the only ones serving the Lord in that situation, but know that we're not alone and God is with us.
We look at verse 18 and we see his love for Corinth. He departs from here with affliction, with affection toward them and he leaves behind a church that was planted in love. One of the greatest things that we can do is love people when they're unlovable.
These people, as he steps into this village, they were unlovable people who were living a way that was contrary to everything he had been taught and yet he comes in with love and admiration to them and cares about them greater than anyone else had ever done.
This is one of the things that I've learned in ministry is as we continue to love people, they continue to follow after us and say, okay, I want to care about what you're doing.
I get phone calls often here and other ministries I was at where because I invested in love, my wife invested in love, they care and they want us to continue to be.
One of my favorite things is when a former teenager who's gotten married will send me a card and say, we're expecting a baby.
We're having a baby shower and you invested in us and these are two people that were in my youth group and now they're getting married and they've got kids and it's a wonderful, beautiful thing because we invest in love and the Lord begins to begin to give us that fruit.
Even after Paul was long gone, we're still talking about the love that he had toward Corinth. The love that he showed to them, the love that he began to give them impacted the way this church existed in this community.
Not only did he have love for Corinth, we begin to see him go through this town of Ephesus. It's where we get the book of Ephesians at and in verses 19 through 21, he briefly mentions this little town, this little place, this Ephesian church.
You see, he reasons with them. He leaves Paul, Priscilla and Aquila there, but he promises to return. Now, Ephesians is one of my favorite churches to look at.
I'm excited that we're going to be able to get to this in a couple of weeks as we look through this church at Ephesians because Paul invests in ministry, not just in the moment.
He sees this church here, he's passing through and he spends some time with them and he begins to give them leadership.
He begins to encourage them in a way that God blesses this little church. And I'll give you a brief little history here.
In two and a half years, Paul spends two and a half years with Priscilla and Aquila in this town. And the Bible says when Paul came to Ephesus,
there were 19, I believe if I'm right, 19 people that believed in him. And in two and a half years, every single person in the town of Ephesus had heard about Jesus. Two and a half years, 19 people stepped out by faith,
stepped out away from fear and said, we're just going to tell people about Jesus. And in two and a half years, the entire town of about a million people had heard about Jesus because of faithful people who love the Lord and were investing in telling others about Jesus.
The Lord continues to even bless as we look at the book of Ephesians as well, where the Lord continues to bless their generosity.
We think of the generosity, oftentimes we think of money and oftentimes we think of giving to the Lord financially, but there is a generosity of serving with our whole life and our whole heart and saying,
God, what can I do in this moment? And how can I carry on the work that's going to carry on after I'm gone? I joked with Roy and Pat and I said, they have to be here for at least 20 more years. And Roy said, I'll be 102.
I said, oh, you'll be young then. 102 is a young person. But think about the legacy that we leave on after this and those that have left a legacy for us. I say this often,
someone sacrificed years ago and put pews in here and TVs in here and air conditioner in here that works, that cools darling down too much, but they invested in all these things so that we could have a wonderful,
beautiful church facility to come in here and work for. What are we investing to leave to the next generation?
What are we investing in so that someone else can look back and say, I want to thank those ones that invested in ministry now so that I can be here for the future.
And our kids and grandkids and great grandkids can worship the Lord here as well. He had leadership at Ephesus and he had labor that was here from Antioch. Verses 22 and 23, as I close, he returns home.
He goes back to Antioch at the end of this little portion of scripture and he begins to report them. He refreshes this church here in Antioch.
And then he says, you know, God, I got to go. I got to get out.
I got to go back onto the mission, but I've got to go out and I've got to go to all the region. The Bible says that he was there for a short space of time. And then he went back out into the region of Galatia and Pergia and strengthened the disciples.
Paul was so about the ministry and so about being on mission that his cycle of faithfulness continues.
Perseverance and Service
Paul didn't quit. He didn't under, he, the, the times got tough and he just pushed through them. And he said, I'm going to continue pressing through. I'm going to continue finishing strong. And I'm going to continue balancing this ministry of rest, renewal, coming back, encouraging others, and then going back on mission.
Is this the labor that we have for the Lord? I know times are tough.
I know difficult times happen in life, but, but Paul was threatened with his life. And at times even his life and the Lord brought him back to life. And yet he was continuing to stay faithful in the Lord.
As Terry comes and I close this down today, I want to remind you just a couple of things. I want to remind you that when we serve, we need to serve with compassion,
serve with love in a way that people look at us and say, how are you even able to serve right now?
I know you're going through these difficult times. I know that you're, you're struggling in, in, in things in your own personal life. And yet you're here and you're serving out of compassion and love.
And I promise you church, if we can serve out of love and serve out of compassion, people will ask those questions. And we get to respond by just saying, the Lord's been faithful.
The Lord's been faithful too long to me for me not to be faithful now. And I just have to continue to serve with love and charity and compassion toward those that are around us. Stand with courage.
The world wants us to back down. The world wants us to say, fade away because fear is going to take grip of everything. But know when the world comes against us, when the culture comes against us, when Satan's arrows, as it says in 1 Corinthians, come against us, the spiritual warfare happens.
God is near to us. Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities of the air. Too many times we're fighting here on earth when the Bible says, stop the fighting, stop the arguments, just serve me faithfully.
Step up with courage and tell them that thus saith the Lord, and I'm going to stand on my word. I'm going to stand on what God says because this is what God wants me to do. And then stay with commitment. Don't quit until the work is finished. I've been to many, many houses.
Been by many projects that are in the upper city.
When I go and visit my brother in Charlotte, and it just feels like years and years and years go on where they begin to build this sky rise. And it's like they ran out of money, and it's just halfway finished. They couldn't finish the project because they weren't committed to finishing the project.
And we must work until the work is done, until the Lord looks at us and says, well done, thou good and faithful servant. And we step into eternity, and we get to worship him for all eternity. We must continue to stay faithful when we're 30,
when we're 60, when we're 80, when we're 90, until we have to give our last breath. Continue to stay faithful to the Lord. I'm not a runner. I've said this many, many times.
But you'll see runners who will be training their whole life to go through a triathlon or a marathon or something, and they'll collapse right before the finish line. Because they lost sight of the goal.
They lost sight of where they're at. And they just, they almost made it, but they didn't quite get to the end. Oh, that we would not be that runner. That we would run with endurance.
And that we would finish our race strong for the Lord.
Lord, when your race is over, and someone stands up and they tell about your life, are they going to tell about your passion, but they didn't quite make it to the end? Are they going to get up and they're going to say, this one finished strong?
This one, even though the times were getting tough, even though the world was coming against them, they continued to go forward. They continued to serve the Lord, and they continued to stay faithful in their race.
Maybe you're here today and you've never even started your race. You've never even started that journey with Jesus.
And you're like, I don't even really understand what baptism is. But, but I want to know more about that relationship. I want you to know today is the day of salvation. Today is the day you can come to know Jesus.
Invitation to Salvation
And Jesus will forgive you of your sins. He, he already has died on the cross and he's offering this free gift of salvation. If we would just trust in him.
Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done for us. Help us today as we respond faithful to you. Help us to remain faithful.
Help us to encourage those that are around us that maybe, maybe there's some around us that we are looking around and we're saying, I don't, haven't seen them in a while. Haven't seen them since COVID or before COVID or haven't seen them in a couple of weeks or months.
Listen, maybe we could be that Aquila and Priscilla that encourages them to come back and be faithful.
Lord, help us to be burdened for those that are in our community, in our schools, and they're in our area of work or wherever it may be that we would reach out and we would say, would you come
to know Jesus? Would you come to a service with me? Would you come to a revival service in a couple of weeks? Would you come to know this man named Jesus who's changed my life? Help us this morning, Lord, as we serve you faithfully, as we honor you faithfully.
You would have your will and way of this situation, in this service. In your name we pray. Thank you again for taking your time to listen to the sermon audio of Pleasant Grove. Please subscribe to get our latest sermons each week.
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