Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts 18:24-19:10, emphasizing the importance of discipleship and dedication in advancing the gospel. He highlights how Apollos, despite his eloquence and knowledge, needed correction from Aquila and Priscilla to grow in his understanding of Jesus. The sermon encourages believers to be humble, willing to learn, and actively engage in sharing their faith, illustrating that God uses ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things for His kingdom.
Welcome and Announcements
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If you have your child who wants to be dismissed at Children's Church, that's available for you at this time. We're going to be in Acts chapter 18 today. Acts chapter 18, we'll go through the first couple of verses of chapter 19.
One thing I failed to mention, should have mentioned, was we'll be having our revival coming up at the end of the month. We're calling it the Restore Revival, restoring our worship, our marriage, our faith,
restoring just the way we look at the Bible and how we love the Word of God. And so hopefully you can be here for that. It's going to be the last Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of October.
And on that Wednesday, we'll be having a meal beforehand, but it'll be at 7 o'clock each night.
Give you time to get home and get changed from work. Make it here.
I've got a friend of mine, John Hollingfield, who's coming to preach. And then Owen and Reed are going to be leading in the worship. And so they're going to lead all that, lead all the congregational and do some specials as well.
And we'll take up a love offering on the Tuesday for Owen and Reed. And Wednesday, we'll take up a love offering for the speaker. And so hopefully you can be here and have our hearts encouraged, our souls revived,
and invite friends, invite family, invite loved ones to come and be a part of it as well. If you have your place there in Acts chapter 18, we'll stand out of the reading of God's Word. And we'll go through these couple of verses this morning.
The Bible says in Acts chapter 18, verse 24,
Now a Jew named Apollos, a native Alexandrian, an eloquent man who was competent in the use of Scripture, arrived in Ephesus.
He had been instructed in the way of the Lord and being fervent in spirit, he was speaking and teaching accurately about Jesus, although he only knew about John's baptism. He began speaking boldly in the synagogue.
After Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained the way of God to him more accurately.
When he wanted to cross over to Achaia, to the brothers and sisters, wrote to the disciples and welcomed him.
After he arrived, he was a great help to those by the grace that he had believed, for he vigorously refuted the Jews in public and demonstrating through the Scriptures that Jesus is the Messiah.
Chapter 19, verse 1, When Apollos was at Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior regions and came to Ephesus, and he found some disciples and asked them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?
Understanding John's Baptism
No, they told him, we haven't heard of the Holy Spirit. And into what then were we baptized? He asked, into John's baptism. And then they replied, Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance.
I'm telling the people that they should believe in the one who has come after him, and that is in Jesus.
When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord. And when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on to them and began speaking in tongues and prophesying. Now when there were about 12 men in all of them,
Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly over a period of three months, arguing and persuading them about the kingdom of God. But then, when some became hardened and would not believe,
slandering the way in front of the crowd, he withdrew from them, taking the disciples and conducting discussions every day in the lecture hall of Tyrannus.
This went on for two years, so that all of the residents of Asia, both Jews and Greek, heard of the word of the Lord. Father, we love you. Thank you for your reading of your scripture. Give me strength and boldness today as I preach in your name we pray. Amen.
You may be seated. Today we've entitled this, Discipleship and Dedication,
Fuel for the Mission. We all, as we said this morning, Sunday school should be on mission and out on mission and telling others about us, whether we're in the street, in the schoolhouse, whether we're out in our job, whatever we may be doing, we must be on mission telling others about the Lord.
And as I was thinking through this passage and praying over this, there was a statement that kept coming to me when I began playing football in seventh grade there in the West Rowan area.
I wasn't the fastest. I wasn't the strongest. I was a short, stubby little boy that was afraid to get hit by the big eighth graders. There was one guy, his name was Zach, and man, he was a headhunter. And when you got hit by him, you had,
there was no such thing as concussions back then, but I'm pretty sure I had multiple concussions by him. And so I can remember that.
And I would be afraid when I would go up against him. The seventh graders would scrimmage the eighth graders a lot. And I had a coach that came up to me and he said this. He said, James, talent will get you started.
And he said, this man, he, this other guy, he's talented and he's good, but coaching will get you further.
And I began to process that and think through that as a seventh grade, eighth grader of, you know, I may not be the most talented, but I can be, be coached in a way that's going to come in
a different form. And he began to explain to me, he said, some athletes are naturally gifted. They can run faster. They can throw harder. They can hit further than the rest. But raw talent will only get you so far. And he said, in life and in this type of coaching,
correction, training, and discipline will end up wasted the talent if they don't, if they can't take the correction, the discipline, and the coaching that comes their way.
He told me, he said, the best players in the world are the ones that are humble enough to take correction from their coaches. And I began just processing this in my life as a student, as a student of the game, as a student of the sport.
I began to think, okay, I can challenge myself and I can become strong, but am I willing to listen to the coaches' correction when this time comes?
And I'll fast forward to another story. When I was a junior in high school, I was playing and we were doing a defensive pump block drill.
And I thought I could do this and I was going to be able to take care of this. As a white boy, you know, I can jump really high and really far. And they had the mat laid out long ways instead of, or vertically instead of horizontally.
So it was to teach us to jump straight up, to block the punt and not jump out at the kicker. And so I told the coaches, I said, coach, this is not right.
You got to put the mat the other way so I don't clear the mat because I'm going to jump over that mat. No, no, no, James, you got to jump straight up. And I was like, come on, coach, this is not right.
First play, I go up to block it. I clear the mat. I land on my left ankle. I almost tore my Achilles tendon, was out for a couple of weeks with a boot and everything else. And the coach came to me and he said, if you'd listened,
that wouldn't have happened. And it reminded me of this,
sometimes coaching and humility of just listening to what the coach tells us can get us a lot further. And the good news that we have here is in this story, God doesn't necessarily use the raw talents or the most gifted to reach the world.
Paul is telling us and he told us in Corinthians that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and the weak things to show them shame.
And so we must, and that's 1 Corinthians 1, 26 through 29, and we have to look at this and say, God is not looking for the most gifted.
Willingness Over Talent
He's not looking for the most talented. He is looking for the ones that are the most willing to serve him.
Me and John had this conversation a couple of years ago when we were talking through ministry and just getting into ministry.
And he said, he said, James, he said, if you look at my graduating class at Rockwell Christian School, there were, I think, 10 or 12 graduates that had graduated. It was a small Christian school.
And he said, of that graduating class, he said, I was the least likely to do anything in ministry. He said, I wasn't gifted in speaking. I wasn't gifted in athletics.
There was no scholarships that came my way. He said, but through the faithfulness of the Lord, I applied myself and learned from others and began just pouring myself into scripture. And he said, now, he said, I hate to say this, but of all the 11 that graduated, I think there were eight boys.
He said, I'm the only one doing anything in the ministry. All the rest have gotten married and had a divorce and gone through hardships.
And he said, it just reminds us that God doesn't necessarily look out and say, okay, this is the most gifted person I'm going to use him. He looks out and says, who's the most willing to be stepping out into the service of the ministry?
Who's the one that's going to say, God, I'm praying that you give me an opportunity to share my faith with someone. And if that someone comes across my way, I'm going to take advantage of it.
And so we have to be the ones who are going to be willing to step out in ministry. And that's what we see in this passage. Apollos here, he was eloquent, man. He knew the scripture, but yet he still needed correction.
He still needed someone like Aquila and Priscilla to come alongside him who weren't famous, who didn't have their name in the history books for anything other than this, who were willing to be faithful and willing to step up and disciple him.
And then we begin to see his mission and ministry grow because of two people who began to step up.
And so we look at the first thing here in verses 25, 24 to 28, we see the disciple makers. We see the disciple makers because God's work advances through ordinary people who are willing to faithfully shape other people.
This is your Sunday school teachers, your RANGA workers. These are people who are just willing to step up and say, I'm going to help and disciple and work with you and take you out to lunch and take you out to dinner and have you in my home
and begin to work on those other people that are around us because this is the work of the ministry. It is advancing the gospel through just faithfully pouring and stepping into other people's lives.
I can stand here and we could be here till dinnertime tonight if I went through the people in my life who have poured into my life, the Sunday school teachers and the young men and women who poured into
my life in college and my pastors that have poured into my life and the ones that have corrected me in ministry when I did things wrong and I needed to be challenged to do things a better way.
And so these are people who are willing to step up and willing to take a stand for what they believe and also help other people. And this is where we get to the first two people, Aquila and Priscilla.
This is their quiet conviction. These were not famous preachers. The Bible tells us that Aquila and Priscilla were simple tent makers.
But yet, even in their tent making, even their ability to raise funds and provide for themselves, it says they opened their house up to Paul. We saw that last week.
But they opened their homes up also to Apollos and brought him in. And not only did they open their homes, I see they opened their hearts.
They looked out and they saw people that needed encouragement. They saw Paul who was there and trying to do the work of the ministry and said, hey, can we provide some assistance for you? Can we open up our homes? But also, can we just love on you? We see here also,
as we look at Apollos, that they said, hey, there's some things that are wrong in your life.
And can we begin to love on you? The love that we have toward one another is so great. The love that we have begins to take over even our actions.
I was subbing on Friday and there was a book on the shelf where I was subbing. The title of the book was called Love Works. And I pulled it out.
And in the course of subbing, I read 180 pages of the book. I just couldn't stop reading the book.
I told Allie, I said, I'm going to have to go buy the book to finish the book because it talked about how just the attitude of love and showing love toward other people can radically change the way they even view themselves and even view life.
And that's what we see here with Aquila and Priscilla. They took this approach of gentleness and lovingness, and they came to Apollos and they said this,
hey, instead of humiliating you in public, can I bring you aside? Can I take you under our wing for a moment? And the Bible says in verse 26, they took him aside privately to begin pouring into his life.
Now, you may have been in a board meeting or a job interview or something where you saw out and maybe you were at a restaurant where someone did something wrong and the manager came out and just began humiliating this employee in public. And you began to feel bad for them, right?
You began to feel like defensive and wanting to step up, but you know you can't. But you've also seen where someone does something wrong and the manager just quietly takes that person aside and says, hey, you did these 17 things wrong. Instead, they're doing 17 things wrong.
I'm okay with a couple of things you did wrong, but we've got to work on these other things.
Relational Discipleship in Action
And this is what Aquila and Priscilla did. They brought him in through relational discipleship. They corrected him and their correction was wrapped in love.
And when people begin to see how much we love them, when people begin to see how much we care about them, not just in their attitudes or their actions, but their eternal life and where they're at, it begins to radically change the way we influence other people.
I think of the coaches that I've had over the years who were skilled at coaching, but yet they would pull me aside and they would say, hey, I know your form isn't quite right here.
Can you stay after practice for 10 or 12 minutes? And let's just work one-on-one today on this specific issue or this specific thing. Instead of just yelling and berating me in public, this is people who are loving and caring for what's going on.
And those are the coaches that begin to produce champions and teams that excel.
And if that's the attitude, the model of a coach who's doing well, should not that be the model of a church who is wanting to reach the world with the gospel? The question I have to ask us this morning is, who are you patiently shaping in the faith right now?
Who is it that you have pulled aside and said,
hey, can we meet every couple of weeks? Can we meet and just disciple one another?
And you pour into my life and I pour into your life and patiently, lovingly work in their life. Are you willing to also be corrected and well as we go through our life? Because then it brings us to Apollos. Apollos, he was growing in his convictions.
He came in and he had, really there's three things that I didn't put in your notes that the Lord just gave me.
We see his gifts. He was eloquent. He was fervent. The Bible says in verse 24 and 25, he was mighty in the scripture.
Man, he had the gift to just be able to stand up and teach and people gathered and listened.
This could be, if you're one of those people who are weird like me and listen to TED Talks and listen to sermons all the time, like these are the guys that get up and they can just speak. And when people,
when they're speaking, people are just listening. He had this gift to just captivate people's attention, to bring them into the story, to bring them into what's going on. This was his gifting, but there were some gaps in his life. He only knew about John's baptism.
He only knew up until John and what was going on in his life. And he needed to further understand the gospel.
Could you imagine going around and, and only knowing half of how to do something.
And every time you go to, to start the car, you only did half of the instructions to get the motor built.
And then all of a sudden the car wouldn't turn over because you forgot to put the starter on. And you forgot to put the fuel pump in, but you got the motor and you've got everything ready, but it's just not working out. This is what's going on with Apollos.
He's got part of the vehicle there, but he just doesn't have all of it.
But then we began to see his growth. He was humble enough to listen and be corrected.
This is something that is so vital in every age and stage of our life, to be willing, to be able to take correction, to be humble enough to take correction, to be humble enough, to be vulnerable enough to
give our lives over to someone and say, Hey, can you evaluate me on these areas? Can you help me become a better father, a better mother, a better grandparent,
a better worker, a better disciple of Jesus? Will you pour into my life so that I can be better at what I'm doing? Later on in Corinthians, you can read this on your own. In 1 Corinthians 1 through 3,
Paul says that Apollos preached powerfully and became a key figure in the church at Corinth because he was willing to go through this training stage.
He was willing to let Aquila and Priscilla come in and work in his life and begin to do some amazing things in his life.
And now he goes out into this wonderful ability to be able to preach the gospel and be an impactful person in the church at Corinth. With the race coming up today, I was talking to Roy and he said, Pastor James, you got to keep it short today.
We got a lot going on. We got the race in Charlotte today. Like we got a lot of things going on. So, so I began to think through that illustration just in my mind, even today. Imagine just back with me.
I don't know who all the racers are today. I was a Dell, Dell senior fan.
Do it for Dell. He was my hero when it came to racing in my day. Could you imagine them bringing up Dell Earnhardt's car, putting it there in the lineup and say, okay, this is a great car.
It's, it's one of the fastest out. Dell won a lot. So you can go junior Johnson, anybody here. It doesn't matter.
And all of a sudden the, the race begins to start and they never put Dell or junior, whoever it is in the car itself. How great would that car be without a driver?
It's got all the power. It's got all the, the, the specialized equipment to help it to be able to stay on the road and to be able to navigate through the turns and everything that's needed, but it never put a driver in the driver's seat.
That's what happens in our life when we have all the gifting and, and all the instructions of scripture, but we don't apply it to our own life. We are the, the application to the gospel.
We step into the car that has all the functions that has all the power, that's ability there, the, the word of God. And now we begin to tell and to direct and to help influence other people.
And this is what happens when we decide that we are humble enough to be corrected. And we begin to pour into other people.
We'll begin to say, okay, I know I've been wrong and I can take correction, but who can I now begin to help out in their walk?
Who can I begin to walk with side by side as we go through our own convictions and our own growing in our own life? Disciple makers, they, they multiply the impact of the gospel. They, they begin to go out and strengthen churches.
They begin to be faithful in the ministry. And as we look through these two quiet tent makers, we begin to see the impact that they had over these last two chapters in a mighty, mighty way.
But then we begin to look at the dedication to the mission. We look at the disciple makers, but now there's this mission that we must begin to happen in our life. Discipleship. It doesn't end with one conversation.
If you have ever been in a relationship, you know that you don't have one conversation. Now this may have been you. And if it was you, uh, I'm not throwing shame or shade or anything at you, but most people don't have one conversation and then go to the courthouse and get married.
Okay. Some people do shotgun weddings happen, but most people go through this learning process and growing process with one another, where they have conversations and okay, what do you believe about this? And how do you think through this? And what are your future goals?
And you begin to know this person and get to know this person and, and begin to fall in love with this person after multiple, multiple conversations that happen. This is the dedication to the mission.
As we begin to grow in our faith, we begin to be dedicated to serving on mission.
We begin to be dedicated in doing the work of the gospel to do the work of the saints. As Paul shows us three main dedication points that he goes through, verses one through seven, he was dedicated to the disciples of John.
These were sincere believers that were believing in the gospel, believing in part of the gospel.
And yet they were incomplete in their understanding. John's baptism was not the spirit of indwelling. And so Paul came in and he clarified the gospel. He clarified what was going on in their life.
And he began to teach and to train them for preparation, to be able to tell them about the fulfillment of Christ and the gospel.
I began to think back and just imagine in my life, if someone would have told me an incomplete gospel, if someone would have not explained to me the full gospel of salvation, if someone wouldn't have set me down over all my years of training, up until five years old when I accepted Christ.
But even after that, as people began to disciple me as a young boy and, and the young, the teachers that I had, Ms. Deal and Ms.
Burrell, you don't know any of those names, but oftentimes they would kick me out of class because I was the, the rowdy one.
I asked too many questions, but yet the next week they would love on me and they'd bring me back into class. And they'd say, James, if you're going to act up today in class, you're going to be sent out again. And so I wanted to learn about Jesus.
And so I'm trying to learn, I'm trying to go through this. And this is what Paul was doing. He is faithfully teaching these disciples of John.
They understood some things, but there's some things they needed more understanding in. And he began to teach them and they received the spirit of, of the Lord. And they immediately became witnesses of the gospel.
Me and my wife just recently got new, new phones. It was been three years since we had upgraded our phones. And, uh, when they had, I went to the store and I got them and, and I told Allie, I texted her and I said, Hey, your phone's not going to work.
Once I, I make this, this push. So anything you got to do, uh, go ahead and do it now. And so a couple hours later, I came to the school to activate her phone. And she said, my phone doesn't work anymore.
You've got this other phone. And I began thinking through this illustration of a phone. Our phones today, they tell us, I don't know how accurate this is. Uh, I'm sure it's pretty accurate.
It's all over the internet, but they say that the phones that we have in our pocket are more powerful than the very first rocket ship that landed on the moon. We have more power in our phones and our pockets than they had to get to the moon and get back.
It's crazy to think about, but, but imagine buying a phone and never activate it, never turning it on, never plugging it into the charger,
never bringing life to that phone and walking around with the hardware of something that is so powerful to do things, but yet never activating the power of the faith that what that could actually happen. This is the, the life here of the gospel,
knowing scripture, but yet never activated it to go out and to tell other people, never having the faith to go out and tell others about what Christ has done to us and for us and changed our life for the, for the sake of the gospel.
Are you just content with just knowing the knowledge of Christ? Or do you desire to live in the power and the fullness of the spirit of the Lord?
And as you're going through life, the spirit tells you to go and talk to someone and you act upon that spirit and you go out and you tell them about the gospel.
Activating Our Faith
Are you willing to be activated as disciples of Jesus?
Are you just content knowing what's going on and only having a head knowledge and not a heart knowledge?
My mom, she got saved later in life and she told me as she was raised as a Lutheran, she said, James, she said, my whole life I had a head knowledge of the gospel, but I never had a heart knowledge.
I had been told about Jesus in the Lutheran church and I had been told about who the gospel is and what the gospel is, but I had knew all these things, but I never fully accepted Jesus until my mom was in her thirties.
And so she said, I just began to say, am I just going to miss heaven by 12 inches? Am I going to know what's going on and know how to reach heaven, but never fully trust in the Lord?
Or am I going to take that step of faith and step out by faith? And we, in the same way, we have a knowledge of Christ and the power, the Bible says, but we lack the power thereof. And oftentimes we know about Jesus.
We've been told the stories since we were children. We've come to church, but yet we've never acted out in faith and said, God, I need to be living out my life, whether it be stepping out and telling others, discipling others are fully committing my life to you, whatever it may be.
Are we like these disciples of John who just knew, but didn't quite know all of it. As we continue on, we see in verses eight and nine, we see that he began preaching in the synagogue. Bible says that Paul reasoned and persuaded and taught boldly for three months.
Now there are people and I love history and I've got a book of 21 martyrs who are not martyrs, but 21 influential figures throughout history who, who did some amazing things and, and preach the gospel.
There's one that's coming to my mind right now that he was at a church in England. And there's a, there's actually a story where you would actually purchase your pew. So where Claude Jr.
always sits at the third pew on the right of the ear, that was his pew and his family would sit there. He would buy that pew and he would have a key to lock that pew down.
And so he would be the only one that could sit there. And if his family grew, he'd buy another pew. And that's how the church is organized then in that time.
They got a new pastor and the new pastor came in and started preaching. The people didn't like it, but yet other people from the community were coming in. And the story goes that they were actually locking their pews so that these people couldn't come in and hear him.
It's crazy. The church began to grow. And he, I'm thinking as I'm reading through this, I'm like, dude, how long did this guy stay under this oppression and whatever? The story goes on that he stayed there for 40 years and began preaching and teaching the gospel until finally their hearts were changed. Okay.
The Bible says here that Paul reasoned for three months and the people's hearts were hardened and resisted.
And he began to shift his strategy. He said, I'm trying to go where the people at. I'm trying to go to the synagogue. I'm trying to preach here. The people don't like it. So I've got to begin to shift and change what we're doing. You know, faithfulness is not necessarily perseverance.
Faithfulness is knowing when to pivot what you're doing and knowing how to change some things. I did a, I was talking to a pastor friend of mine in Arkansas,
me and Allison's pastor there. And he, he was talking about how the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, there's about 30, about 3000 churches in the area, in the Arkansas Baptist State Convention. He was at a meeting about six or eight months ago. And the meeting went that about 50% of the churches were under a hundred people.
And he said, that's fine. The heartbeat of Southern Baptist, we're smaller churches who are reaching together and, and partnering together for the gospel. And they went on and they said, of that 1500 churches, about a thousand of them are running under 20.
He stepped back and said, there's, there's some things that are maybe wrong in that. And he said, how many of those thousand are in Garland County, which is the county he lives in? The guy came back and said about 12 of them.
And so he intentionally began reaching out to these 12 churches and said, Hey, what's going on?
How can we help partner with you? How can we do some things that can help your lot, your church bring back life to your community and our community? This morning on October 5th,
their church is partnering with Park Place Baptist Church, which is Bill Clinton's childhood home church where he went to church at 70 years ago. Today, that church started last week. They had seven people in church sanctuary set about 1400 people. They were running about seven.
And he came in and began pouring and teaching and giving life. And, and he said, Hey, can we partner with you and, and begin to revitalize your church? And so today, gospel light in hot springs is partnering with gospel light at Park Place. And they're meeting together for today on their homecoming service.
And they're going to have over 1400 people in that church because gospel light is running about 1300.
They're going to invite people from the community. And they're going to meet in that church. And, and this is, I said, all that story to tell you this. Sometimes we've got to look at what we're doing and say, is there something that I could be doing better? Is there something that we can change to do more effectively?
We're not just using songbooks. We're using screens. We're, we're pivoting the things that we do in order to reach people with the gospel. And we begin to ask ourselves, how are we doing these things? And, and what are we doing? Some things are still effective.
And, and I've been told this in ministry and I fully believe it in my, my 36 years of life, a method that I live by, a philosophy that I live by methods are many and principles are few. The methods that we do may change, but the principles never do.
And when we begin to go through our life and you may do this in your marriage, you may do this in, in child rearing, the way you do things, the methods of the way we do things are going to change as time changes.
As long as the main thing, as long as the principle of the gospel never changes, as long as the principle of doing what God has told us to do never changes.
With the advent of tractors, with the advent of automobiles, with the advent of the assembly line, the way that farmers plant things and harvest things have radically changed throughout the years. And we must be willing to change for the gospel sake to reach others. If Claude Jr.
was planting and he came across a, a section of his farm that was just littered in concrete and he could never get the corn to grow.
He could never get anything to grow there. He wouldn't just continue to grow, try to plant seed there and waste the seed. He would either dig up the concrete and change what he's doing.
Or he would say, okay, I'm not going to plant seed here anymore. I'm going to put a building here and I'm going to plant seed over here. This is what happens in our life.
We've got to begin to look and evaluate and say, what can I do to move to more fertile soil? And Paul here saying, I'm not giving up. I'm just moving so that the gospel can grow.
We have to ask ourselves, what is it that God is telling us to maybe change or do so that the gospel can go forward? And what happened was the Bible says in verses nine through 10 that he began to rent this hall of Tyrannius.
This was a massive hall, a massive building where everyone in the region would come.
The synagogue was sort of in the, in the rural area of the town. The Tyrannius's hall was in the dead center where all the marketplace was at.
And it said that he began to daily rent this thing out for two years. This was a strategic move to be in a public space where those who were seeking could gather.
He was trying to put this gospel message in a place where those that were trying to hear something great would come.
And this is where different theologians and different philosophers would get up and they would, they would begin to teach and, and they would begin to tell their community what was going on.
And maybe they had this new revelation that if you take two apples and you add two more apples, then the equation is going to be the answer to four.
And they would begin to eloquently talk about this. And so Paul said, Hey, I want to be there. I want to be teaching and training that area. And I want to give the gospel to those who are seeking. And the results is phenomenal.
If you look at verse 10, this started out with 12 people.
The Bible says there were about 12 men that were there in verse seven. And then in verse nine, verse 10, it says, this went on for two years. He taught in this hall for two years.
And so that all the residents of Asia, both Jews and Greeks had heard the word of the Lord.
He transitioned in this way to say, listen, what's working over here is not working anymore. Let me go to this new location. Let me try to figure out what's going on. And let me begin teaching over here.
Impact of the Gospel in Ephesus
And in that process, 12 men who began preaching and teaching reached the entire region of Asia here in Ephesus and here in all the area that the entire area had heard the gospel.
Oh, what it would be said of us with 80 or 90 people here this morning that in a matter of a couple of years, every single person in the Ronda Clingman area would have heard the gospel because we were willing to step up and tell others about the gospel.
Would we not be a place where when people come in, they're going to hear this and they're going to be a life changing moment where we are investing in other people and we're going to tell others about him so that our lives will be changed, so that their lives will be changed.
If Paul used the lecture hall, what kind of hall is God giving us today?
Is he giving us a workplace? Is he giving us a podcast?
Is he giving us a dining room? Is he giving us a location to just simply be able to share the gospel with those that are around us? As Terry comes and plays, I want to conclude by sort of recapping what we've seen today. As we look through this, we see the gospel advancing,
not just through the most talented. You may sit here and say, Pastor James, I'm not gifted in the speaking that Apollos had. I don't have the mind that Paul had. Paul was a brilliant man. Paul had the entire Old Testament memorized.
He was a Pharisee of Pharisees, the Bible said, which means if you were to open up your Bible to a random passage in any area of the scripture, and you began reading, and then you stopped, he would be able to pick up where you left off and
continue without looking at the Bible. He would know these things. He was gifted in his speaking. He was gifted in his knowledge.
But we began to see that there is these people with willing hearts that are willing to step up and say, I want to go out and I want to tell the message of the gospel. I want to impact those that are around me.
This is why later on in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, as I mentioned earlier, the Bible says that not many wise,
not many mighty, not many noble are called, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. God is calling us to simply just go out and share what God has told us to do. God delights in taking ordinary people,
willing people who are used in extraordinary ways, so that the glory of the gospel can go out.
When someone who was forsaken, when someone whose life was given up on, when no one saw the value in them,
and God pulls them up and says, this is the person I want to use, what happens is, is they have this ability to say, it's not what I've done, but it's all for the glory of God. It's not my own speaking ability.
If you would have asked me as a teenager, do you think you'd get up and preach one day, the answer would have been an emphatic no. I did not like public speaking. I love it now. I did not like a confrontation. I love it now. I didn't like one-on-one conversations with people.
I love it now. God has begun to work in our lives to mold and mend us into the person that God has called us to be for his glory alone.
Not for my glory. Not so that I can get up and say, look at what I have done, but I can say, look at what God has done. And look at what God is doing in our area, in our community.
So I've got three basic questions to ask you as we close. Are you willing to be coached like Apollos?
Are you willing to allow correction? Maybe someone coming into your life and saying, hey, do you truly know the gospel? Have you truly accepted Jesus this morning?
I know you've been in church your whole life, but do you truly know the gospel of Jesus, not just the gospel of John? Are we willing, number two, to be discipled by others?
Are we willing to allow an Aquila and Priscilla to come into our life and say, hey, your marriage, there's some things that are wrong. Can I begin to help your marriage become stronger?
Your kids aren't doing these things. As my son just got disciplined for jumping off of the stage as we were singing, and Allie went and took care of him. She's teaching him, hey, this isn't acceptable. These aren't the right things to do.
And so she's got to quietly discipline him away so that he will understand that that's not allowed. And so these are the things that we must do in your life.
And as parents, we do these things, but are we willing as adults to also have that same correction and say, hey, these are some things that you might need to work on in your own life. And are you willing to declare yourself on mission like Paul?
Are you willing to say that whether that means going into the synagogue, whether that means going into the lecture hall, whether that means sitting at my kitchen table and discipling those that are around us, I want to do
that. You see, the baton of the gospel, if you take this runner's illustration, has been passed down from generation to generation to generation for over 2,000 years. It's been given from one generation to the next.
It's been given to our fathers and our grandfathers and been given to them, and now it's been given to us, and one day we're going to give that baton off to someone else. It's in our hands right now. And are we taking full advantage of the gospel,
and are we fully saying, God, I'm willing to serve you so that when the next generation comes up, I can give them that generation that baton because they've been discipled, they've been trained to lead in that way. Whatever it may be in your life this morning, whatever you may be desiring to do,
ask yourself, Lord, spotlight this, show it to me clearly, and give me the desire to follow you more fully today.
God's Plan for Our Church
God has a plan for each and every one of us. God has a plan for this church that is greater than we will ever imagine or know.
And I fully believe God is at work, and I want to ask us and challenge us, what are we doing to say, I'm ready for it, God.
I'm ready for you to do what you did here at Ephesus so that everyone is going to hear and that this lecture hall is filled, and so that your name will be lifted high.
Whatever it may be in your life, I challenge you to pray that God will do that amazing work in your life. Let us pray. Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. We thank you for your blessings.
We thank you for your son, Jesus, who came to die for us and to die on a cross for me, just a redheaded, freckle-faced,
snotty-nosed boy who made lots of trouble and caused people lots of problems, but Lord, you've used me in ways that I never even saw fit. And God, I'm just thankful that you're still using ordinary people to do extraordinary things for the gospel.
Help us, Lord, to trust you, be with the decisions that are made today. In your name we pray. Amen.
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