Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts 21, highlighting Paul's arrival in Jerusalem and the subsequent persecution he faces. He emphasizes that obedience to Christ often comes with a cost, as seen in Paul's willingness to suffer for the sake of the gospel. The sermon encourages believers to view suffering not as a sign of failure but as an opportunity for faithfulness and a platform to share God's grace, urging them to respond to interruptions in life as invitations to witness rather than inconveniences.
Welcome and Church Information
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. What a wonderful job, young people. Love that song, a new rendition of what an awesome God we serve.
If you have a young person who wants to be dismissed to Children's Church, that's available for you at this time. If you have your Bibles, we'll be in Acts chapter 21 today. Acts chapter 21, we're going to finish Acts chapter 21. It's a lengthier portion of Scripture,
but we do want to try to get through it today
in a timely manner. So we'll be reading 17 through 40. Because it's so many verses, I'm not going to have you stand. Just follow along with us in your copy of God's Word. Also, they'll be on the screens as well. But we'll read all of these verses this morning in way of introduction.
The Bible says in verse 17, When we reached Jerusalem, the brothers and sisters welcomed us warmly.
The following day, Paul went up with us to James and the elders that were present.
And after greeting them, he reported in detail what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. And when they heard it, they glorified God and said, You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are who have believed.
And they are zealous for the law. But you have informed about that you are teaching all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to abandon Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or to live according to our customs. So what is to be done? They certainly hear that you've come.
Therefore, what do we tell you? We have four who have made a vow. Take these, purify yourselves along with them, and pay for their heads to be shaved.
And then everyone will know what is told about the amounts of nothing. But you yourselves are careful about observing the law.
Verse 25, With regard to the Gentiles who have believed, we have written a letter containing our decision that they should keep themselves from food sacrificed with idols, from blood, from what is strangled, and from sexual immorality.
So the next day, Paul took the men, having purified himself along with them, and entered the temple, announcing the completion of the purification days with an offering. That would be made for each of them.
When the seven days were nearly over, some Jews from the providence of Asia saw in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd, and they seized him, shouting, Fellow Israelites, help!
This is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against our people, our law, and this place. What more? He has also brought Greeks into the temple, who has defiled this holy place.
For they have previously seen in Tromophius the Ephesian in the city with him, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple. The whole city was stirred up, and the people rushed together. They seized Paul,
dragged him out of the temple, and at once the gates were shut. As they were trying to kill him,
word went up to the commander of the regiment that all Jerusalem was in a chaos. Taking along soldiers and centurions, he immediately ran down to them. Seeing the commander and soldiers, they stopped beating Paul.
Then the commander approached him and took him into custody and ordered him to be bound with two chains and asked who was he and what he had done. Some of the crowd were shouting one thing and some another. Even the crowd couldn't agree.
Since he was not able to get reliable information because of the uproar, he ordered them to be taken to the barracks.
When Paul got to the steps, he had to be carried because of the soldiers, because of the violence of the crowd. For the masses, people followed yelling, get rid of him.
And he was about to be brought to the barracks. And Paul said to the commander, am I allowed to say something to you? And he replied,
you know how to speak Greek. Aren't you the Egyptian who started a revolt some time ago and led 4,000 men of assassins into the wilderness? And Paul said, I am a Jewish man from Tarsus of Caesarea,
a citizen of an important city. And now I ask you, let me speak to the people. In verse 40, and after he had given permission, Paul stood on the steps and motioned with his hand to the people. When there was a great hush, he addressed them in Aramaic. Father, we love you.
Understanding the Cost of Faith
We thank you for the reading of your scripture. I know it's a lot this morning.
I pray, God, that you'd give us wisdom and guidance as we cover this topic of what it means to the cost of often that comes with following you. I pray, God, that you'd give us wisdom and guidance. Help us today to serve you. In your name we pray. Amen.
Thank you for reading along with us. I know that was a lengthier portion, but trying to get through this and understand the passage here.
There are many, many stories that I could give you of martyrs and modern day martyrs who have been persecuted for their faith to sort of go along with this. But I had heard of this story years ago and the Lord reminded me of it this week. But in 1985,
a couple of years before I was born, I know I'm not as old as I seem.
The white hair on the sides are coming in. Most of it is from Miss Allison, but I am not as old as I probably look sometimes. But in 1985, Pastor Richard Wurmbrand stood before the U.S. Senate. Wurmbrand stood there wearing just a simple suit.
And while he was in front of the Senate, he removed his shoes. And when he did this, the room fell silent.
You can imagine you're in front of some of the most powerful leaders of the world. And as he removed his shoes, the cameras began to go toward him and everyone began to look at his feet. And his feet were covered in deep, deep scars.
And these scars were from years of torture in a Romanian prison. His crime was very simple. They kept him in prison for simply preaching Christ under a communist rule. For 14 years, Wurmbrand was beaten.
He was starved. And he kept in solitary confinement. Guards mocked his faith and demanded that he denied Christ.
Instead, what he would do is he would whisper scripture through the cell walls to other prisoners that were there. One later asked him why he did this. And he said, our suffering was not too great a price to pay for the privilege of preaching the gospel.
When that was, when he was finally released, he fled to the West and some Christians began to doubt his story. Some people began to say, this is something that's made up. This would have never happened in our society, in our culture, in our time. They questioned his choices.
And some even asked, why didn't you flee earlier? Why did you provoke the government? And all through this, Wurmbrand didn't defend himself. All he simply said was, I wanted to keep pointing people to Jesus.
The scars that day told a story of a man who was misunderstood, mistreated, and yet through unwavering faith decided to continue on.
And I think in our faith, we can look at what Paul has done here in Acts 21, and we can see that same obedience that didn't lead to applause. Oftentimes, we do what we do so we can get recognized. And part of that's a good thing, right? We want to recognize our veterans.
We want to recognize those who have done service for the Lord and other things. But in this moment, Paul didn't get that applause. What he got was accusations and false accusations. And God used the faithful suffering of this saint to advance his gospel.
When I think about men like Richard here, I'm reminded that the obedience of Christ often comes with a price. It often comes with having to sacrifice something.
The world rarely understands this faith of the truth of suffering and what it looks like.
But what stands out to me most, that even in prison, even while Richard was in prison, and this is something that I struggle with even in my own mind of thinking about, is he never got bitter at anything. He never looked at what was going on and he never said,
God, why is this happening to me? But yet, his heart was so centered on the gospel and so centered for the love of Christ that all he could do was whisper through the cells to the person that was beside him, hey, do you know Jesus?
Hey, do you know this man who I love and who I serve and who I'm giving my life for? Do you know this person, this man? This is what we see in Acts chapter 21.
Paul as a Servant Leader
Paul arrives in Jerusalem, not as a celebrity, not as someone who is going to be lifted up, but someone who was a servant. And he was there not to argue or prove himself.
I think this is a good thing for us to understand is oftentimes in our life, the unity of the believers is to give the glory back to the gospel of Jesus Christ and back to God and ask ourselves, as we looked at it in Sunday school,
is what we're doing glorifying God or is it glorifying self?
And begin to ask ourselves, what are our motives of our actions and what are we doing as we begin to go through our life? So I want us to look at this first one of verses 17 to 25 and ask ourselves and look at and examine and see the unity through the gospel.
The unity through the gospel.
The Bible says that when they came to Jerusalem, the brothers greatly received him with gladness. These were Paul arriving as a missionary,
as someone who had done the work for the Lord, not as a celebrity of someone in part who was going to be lifted up and put on national television or put on a big spotlight. And yet he was a servant eager to lead them.
This was something that we looked at last night in our devotions as we were leading our family in Psalm chapter eight, as we were reading through it. Oftentimes we get in this mindset where we have to be first, right?
How many of you here like to be first? This is the question I asked my kids. I'm bringing you into our house devotions last night.
How many of you like to be first? And my oldest daughter or Jade raised her hand and Hudson raised her hand,
raised his hand. And so we begin talking through this. Some of you raised your hand in here and it says here in Psalms chapter eight, it says that God made him a little lower than the angels so that Christ could come to serve us.
And it continues on in verse five, I believe it is. It says that as Christ was lowered, God glorified him greater than the people could. And I said, oftentimes as we serve others and we put others before us, Christ will begin to glorify himself through our actions.
And we have to ask ourselves, are we eager to serve and love other people for the sake of the unity of the gospel, for the sake of the gospel being spread? And we see this in two different ways. The first way is this, the celebration of fellowship.
You can imagine James and some of these other disciples, they hadn't seen Peter or Paul in a couple of weeks.
Or months or even years at this point. And he has been going out and he has been reaching and preaching people to people. And all of a sudden he comes back and it says that they gladly received him. This is the image of that picture that I showed on the video of a soldier coming home.
And the kids are running to him and they're grabbing their father or their mother.
And they're so excited to see him because they haven't seen them in so long. And all of a sudden they are so excited to see Paul in that same way. They have been divided and separated for a little while. But the gospel unites hearts beyond our backgrounds.
And you can meet someone in Walmart that you just know there's a common unity between you and them because of the Holy Spirit. And all of a sudden you strike up a conversation.
And this is what happens in this moment. Paul begins to rehearse and tell them all the great things that have been done. What the Lord has been working among the Gentiles. And he makes this very clear.
And I think this is a good point for us to understand. He tells them all the Lord has done. And he says that it's not because of me, but it's because of God.
And he says it's because of what the Lord has done in their lives. I am turning all of this wonderful things back to God and giving him the glory, not myself. It's almost like a missionary coming home from a foreign field who's been gone for a while.
Or a soldier who's been gone for a while and comes back and gives a testimony of the safety and the security that the Lord brought them through. And he begins to say, you know, it wasn't because of what I had done.
But it was because the Lord went before me and prepared my steps before me and brought this protection among me. And this is what Paul is doing. And he is preaching the gospel of grace so that we can see what this looks like in a fellowship of celebration.
A couple of questions I want to ask. This is when you hear God's work in another place, when you hear the Lord working somewhere else, do you celebrate it or do you compare it? I was talking to a friend of mine just a couple of weeks ago. We went to Nicaragua together.
His name is Brett and he's a pastor. And he said there was a guy he went to college with in Tennessee and he is now pastoring a church in Missouri. And he said this church he's pastoring has blown up. I mean the numbers are,
they merged with another church and they got a new church building and they went through a renovation. They put a balcony in the church and they went to two services. And he said I went to the same Bible college. We graduated the same year together.
And he said I'm tempted when I look at what he's doing to get jealous. To say, God, we graduated together.
Why are you not blessing me that way? And oftentimes in the ministry and in life we compare ourselves versus celebrating one another. Versus saying, hey, I'm glad the Lord is doing something great for you.
I'm glad that the Lord is working in your life and working here and working there and beginning to celebrate the goodness of God through all of us. This morning I was in my office and the Lord just laid upon my heart to send a message to every pastor in our association.
Hey, I'm praying for you this morning. Preach the word and love your people.
And I had a couple pastors send back and say, you know, that was such an encouragement because we as churches get to celebrate one another.
It's not this comparing of seeing how great we are, what we can do or what they can do. But what can we do for the sake of the gospel and for the glory of him? Are we more interested in protecting our traditions or promoting the truth that God has for us?
I made this statement multiple times and it's one of those that I just sort of live in is methods are many and principles are few. The methods may change, but the principles never do.
As we go through our ministries, we go through our life. Are we asking ourselves as we look at this next one, what are the methods are we doing?
And how is the gospel being lifted up through those things? Because as we see, they celebrate this friendship and this fellowship.
But then there's a group of people that come in and you're going to see this everywhere you go. You're going to have a group of people that celebrate some things. And then you have this group of people that come in and begin to debate over methods. Now, I love to debate.
I love to sit down and converse over different opinions and different theological ideas.
And I love to challenge our thinking through that. I've got guys that will send me questions often of, hey, do you believe this or do you believe that? Or why do you believe this? Or where are you at? I love it. I love just talking through things and debating some things.
And we see that even in the moment of celebration,
Tensions Among Believers
tension comes in and tensions arise. And the Jewish believers, the Bible says they were zealous for the law. And they misunderstood what was going on here. They had this idea that grace and the law was not compatible.
That's why I believe James, through the book of James, writes this, Faith Without Works is Dead, as we begin to study and look through that a little bit. But you see here that Paul's message was this is all about grace.
And the elders, including James, suggested a path of humility. And I think it's really, really important to understand that Paul doesn't buck this. He doesn't push back on it. What he simply says is, I respect your customs. I respect what you're doing.
I'm not going to be bound by it. But I'm going to respect that. I'm going to submit myself to you. And it's a good point of, we talked about this more in Sunday school, of humility and humbling ourselves before God and saying, God, how can you work in this situation?
So I read this somewhere. I don't remember who it was. But it said this, sometimes peace in the church requires personal sacrifice, not doctrinal compromise. Peace in the church requires personal sacrifice, not doctrinal compromise.
And what that simply means is, there are things that I may want to be done my certain way, but as long as they don't compromise in the gospel and the doctrine of the clarity of the church, I'm okay
with it being done a certain way, or a different way, or a way that you want to do it.
Or as long as the gospel has still been put forth, as long as the gospel is still going to be preached,
souls are going to hear the gospel, and souls are going to come to know Jesus, it doesn't matter how we do it as long as God's word has been lifted up.
It would be like this illustration, and I've shared this illustration before. I was in band as a young person. My mom made all the five of us go through band in middle school. The worst class that I went through. I hated band.
Mom made me go, and I'm like, Mom, why do I have to go here? One day you're going to need to know how to read music. Mom, I'm never going to need to know how to read music. I'm like, no, son, one day, you never know. You may need to read music.
Now I have to read music almost every Sunday. Thank you, young people, for leading today, because I didn't have to. And so I went through these things, and I remember sixth grade band class. It was like chaos.
Everyone got their sheet music. Everyone got their band instrument. And the teacher's like, okay, let's just warm up a little bit.
And everyone's playing all different sounds. I don't know how even the people in that hallway where I would even have class because the sound was atrocious. But then all of a sudden, as the weeks and months went on, the teacher would get up and say, okay, we're going to go through our scales. Everyone play G.
And all in unison, we all played. And it was just this wonderful moment where chaos happened one moment, but we began to get through unity.
We began to get through our struggles, and now we began to sound in one accord. And now it's beautiful, and we have a band concert, and all of a sudden the conductor gets up, and everyone plays in harmony because we're all on the same page. Now we're all playing different instruments.
We all have different jobs. Some are playing the percussion, and some are playing the brass, and some are playing the woodwind instruments, and someone's back there on the guitar tearing it up, and it sounds great, and everyone's coming together in this wonderful moment
where at one point it was chaos and confusion, but through one person coming together and saying, this is the direction we're going, it brought everything together. This is the idea of this debate, and Paul understood this, and he said, I would rather be reconciled than rather be right.
I would rather in this moment for the sake of my brother concede in something so that we can come together for the sake of the gospel. And this is what has happened in this situation here.
And sometimes it's wise for us to lay down our own personal preferences and say, God, I want to do this for the sake of the gospel. So not only do we see the unity through the gospel, but we see suffering for God's glory. Verses 26 through 36,
this moment that is hard to read, it's hard to study. Paul, this man who loved Jesus, who followed after Jesus, who gave his life for Jesus in this moment, the Bible says that all the city was moved, and the people who were against him ran together against him.
They were in unity against the gospel. The calm of the cooperation turns into this chaos of conflict where the entire city is in an uproar.
The entire city is looking around, and they're saying, oh my goodness, what is going on?
And the obedience of what Paul was doing led to open doors, but it was in a way that he didn't see fit.
You see, Paul knew that he was coming, but I want us to sort of put ourselves in this mindset. You're coming in, and you're telling the church about what's going on, and you're ready to preach.
You're ready to do some things, and all of a sudden, this crowd comes in. They start attacking you.
They start beating you. The Bible says that they were trying to kill Paul in this moment,
and the moments of obedience led to the opposition of the people that were around him.
Responding to Accusations
It's a good reminder for us that not everyone's gonna agree with what we're doing.
There are gonna be some that as we're following Christ, and we're living our life in a way that is gonna be glorifying God. There's gonna be others that are gonna say, I don't like what you're doing,
and I'm gonna oppose you, and I'm gonna come after you, and I'm gonna pursue you, and I'm gonna make your life, if you can bear with me in this statement, a living hell, because you're following Jesus.
And this is the idea that Paul was at. He's coming in celebration. He's coming to worship Jesus. He's coming to encourage the church.
And now we get the first one, the false accusations, verses 27 through 29. Paul is accused of defiling the temple.
It's an untrue and unfounded claim that he did not do this. He loved the Gentiles, and for this reason, he was bringing them in to purify them, and the mob's hatred toward him, and the mob's hatred toward the people that Paul was trying to reach began to bring up false
accusations. There's another person that we find in scripture that was falsely accused. His name is Jesus. Jesus stood before the crowds. The Bible says he didn't open up his word.
He didn't open his mouth at all, and as the accusers came before him, they falsely accused him of doing things that he didn't do. They falsely accused him of eating with sinners and how this was a wrong thing, and they said, how can he be the savior?
He's healing on the Sabbath, and they began to twist the things he was doing, and they began to slander and accuse him of things that he didn't do. And Paul, I see here, is in good company. He is with the same people that accused Jesus is now accusing him,
and it's an encouragement for us to know that faithfulness does not always shield you from slander and does not always shield us from things that are going to be said about us, but we have this strength in knowing that we are secure in Christ.
We are secure in who he has created us to be if we're standing firm in what he has called us to do.
If we are following the will of the Lord, if we're doing the things that God has called us to do, again, there's going to be some that come against us. There's going to be some that don't like it.
There's going to be some that say things that isn't true, and our responsibility is just to stand in the truth of the gospel, is to stand in the truth of what God has called us to do.
Two questions that I began to think on this week is, have you ever been misunderstood for doing what was right?
Have you ever been misunderstood for saying something that was the right thing to say or doing something that was the right thing to do, and someone maybe protruded that to say, and I think I said the wrong word
there, misconstrued that to say, well, you're just attacking me because you don't like what I'm doing, but yet what you're doing is right. Another question is this, how do you respond when lies begin to threaten your reputation? When someone begins to look at you and say,
I don't think that what you're doing is right, and maybe it's a lie or someone has told them something and now your reputation is at stake, how do you respond in those situations?
I could give you a couple of illustrations for sake of time, I can't, but I'll give you one word of encouragement for this is, those that are right
typically stay and do the right thing. Those that are doing the right thing are typically going to go through the hard times as we see with Paul here, he doesn't run from the accusations, he doesn't run from the beating, he just stands and he begins
to say, you know what, this is what God has called me to do, I have been told for the last couple of months as we looked at for the last couple of weeks that persecution is going to come,
I understand this is part of my journey, I'm going to stay faithful to what God has called me to do. And the false accusations will begin to let, see themselves out in that way.
We see the next couple of verses here in verses 30 to 36 as I quickly go through this, the furious attacks. The furious attacks that came against him.
I wrote it this way, there's three things that suffering brings, I didn't put it in your notes, the Lord sort of gave it to me this last night as I was studying through this again. Suffering brings pain. Suffering brings pain in our life and we don't like pain.
The Pain of Suffering
Listen, I've got a high pain tolerance, my wife has a high pain tolerance, she gave birth to three kids by C-section, she's the strongest woman I've ever met in my entire life. But suffering will bring pain in your life and we don't like pain.
Our body is naturally designed, when pain happens, we run from it. When we touch a burner,
there's signals in our mind that says, hey, you idiot, what are you doing? Stop touching the burner, you're burning your hand and we pull back and we run back from the pain that's there. And when we think of the word of suffering, oftentimes pain is involved in that and we don't like pain.
We've been taught not to experience pain and so we pull back from pain in our life and oftentimes when we do this, we pull back from some blessings that God has for us.
I want you to imagine for a moment, Jesus who is the suffering servant who has come to die for us and to pay our penalty for sin, pain begins to happen.
He is going to suffer for the sins of the world so that we can experience the glory of God and we can experience reconnected fellowship with God and all of a sudden, pain happens and he says, I really don't want to go through pain.
He's in the garden and he's praying for you and for me and the sweat drops of blood are coming out of his face and the agony and the pain of what he knows is about to happen and yet he says, Father, not my will
but your will be done. Father, I know this pain is going to be unbearable. I know I'm not going to be able to get through it
but I'm going to keep going for your sake. I'm going to keep going so that you get the honor and so that you get the glory and so suffer brings pain. The mob dragged Paul out and they were intending to kill him. Suffering also brings persecution.
The Romans' commanders intervened, not out of compassion but out of confusion. There was so much going on. There was so much persecution. The entire city is basically coming against Paul in this moment.
They have to come and they have to bind Paul out of his own safety because the persecution is happening and when we go through suffering, when the attacks come, persecution is going to incel in part of that as well. But the hope of this is this. Suffering brings the providence of God.
Paul is bound. His faith is what remains free in his life.
There is this providence that we see in God through working through this and it's sort of the precursor to what we're going to look at next week but God in his providence
binds Paul, saves him from this persecution to give him a better platform that he never thought was possible. God's hand was unseen in all of this. You can't look and say, oh, I can see God's hand there.
You can see it but what happens is all of a sudden through all of this God is working in the background to position Paul to a greater platform that he ever had and ever would have and as we look at the last couple chapters of Acts,
Paul stands before kings and Roman authorities and gets to stand up and proclaim the gospel in places he never even thought possible or imagined but the suffering has to come first. Without the suffering, Paul doesn't get this new platform,
Paul doesn't get this new protection from the Lord, Paul doesn't get what God has for him if he doesn't go through the suffering and we don't like the suffering, we don't like the pain, we don't like this and we push back and we say, God, I don't
really, it's not comfortable in what you're giving me and I'm reminded of a diamond that was once a coal and that coal is put under pressure and heat
and all of a sudden is sculpted into a place where now it's a beautiful diamond on a ring that we give our wife and our fiance and all of a sudden it is a display of a wonderful, glorious thing that had to suffer in order for the glory to come out
and we in that same way sometimes, I'm not saying always and I'm not saying go out and look for suffering but when suffering comes do you see God's providence
or are you just seeing the pain? I'm guilty of just seeing the pain. I'm guilty of just saying, God, why is this happening? Why are you doing this? These are my plans. These are what I have planned for me.
These are what I have for my family and all of a sudden this is not what I want. God, why is this happening? Instead of saying,
God, I'm going to trust in you. I'm going to trust that what you have in this moment is better and greater than what I have planned. And how are we living our life when the suffering and pain comes in our life? Number three, Paul's sermon after suffering.
Now we're not going to get to the sermon. We're going to lead up to the point of the sermon and then next week we're going to look at the sermon.
Hope you come back because this sermon that he preaches is like no other sermon that Paul has preached up until this point but Paul stands on the stairs and beckons with his hands on this new place where he's at for the people to come.
Finding Purpose in Pain
So I want you to get this picture. He's bound. He's just been beat almost to death and his first thought is this, how can I share the gospel?
Is that how we respond when things don't go the way we want them to go? Lord, you've put me in this situation. It's not where I plan to be yet. Who is here that I can tell someone about Jesus? Paul says, I am going to find every opportunity not to defend myself. Right?
All of a sudden the soldiers are like, hey, you're the guy that led this revolution that led people into these assassins into Egypt and this is you. He doesn't defend himself. What does he do? Hey, this isn't me but can I share something with you? I'm from a pretty important city.
And all of a sudden he declares Christ in a way that is unimaginable in the situation that he's in.
All of a sudden we see the platform of the pain. The platform from the pain I should say. The platform from pain that Paul now is living in. This tribute mistaked Paul for a rebel. Paul calmly explains.
I mean, how many times have we been falsely accused of something and were we calm in that moment? No, we lashed out and we yelled at them and we got mad at them.
Paul calmly tells them what is going on and all of a sudden he uses this moment to say, hey, can I have a moment to speak and to address the people that are here? And all of a sudden this trial becomes a pulpit for him.
This trial of pain and suffering and difficulty becomes a pulpit for him to stand and all this nation, all these people that are around now gets to hear of the gospel of Jesus.
There's a missionary named Ironheim Judson. He went to Burma and this is what he said. He said, the future is as bright as the promises of God.
While he was in the Burmese prison, he said that the light of Christ shines brightest in dark cells.
And could you imagine being in a prison of a third world country in Burma away from your friends and away from your family and writing and saying, the light of Jesus is brighter here than anywhere else.
We get this platform to share the Christ that has saved me with other people and all of a sudden God's work begins to spread. This is the question that I have
struggled with all week long because I've been studying this message. Do you see interruptions as inconveniences or invitations to witness to others? Do you see your interruptions in your life as an inconvenience?
That's me. God, why does there a wreck on the interstate? I'm trying to get from point A to point B in as quickly as an amount of time. Why is this happening? This is an interruption. This is not what I planned. I'm going to be late for my meeting.
I'm not going to be where I'm supposed to be.
It's an interruption in my life and we begin to lash out and not take a moment to step back and say, God, why am I being slowed down?
Why is it this is not the way I planned and who is it that you're going to put in my path because I am slowed down to be a witness to? Okay, and let me give a practical illustration of this. You're in a hurry.
You're walking through the greatest place on mankind, right? Walmart. Everyone's dreaded place to go.
I don't like Walmart and I really don't like Walmart during holiday season time because holiday season time, everyone's in there.
You're all rustling around and bustling around. You're trying to get out. I mean, it's like a war inside of a war inside of a building that you can't get out of because there's buggies everywhere. It's chaos.
And all of a sudden, you've been frustrated and you get to the, you finally get to the checkout line because maybe you decided not to go to the AI checkout with the self-scan and you wanted to go
to an actual human and the actual human is there and they're checking out your stuff and the lady that's been behind the register for five or six hours is just standing there and she's received every tongue-lashing that
you can imagine and now you've been set back and you had all of your plans right and now you're 30 minutes behind schedule and you get up there and you throw your stuff up there and you have no
care of the person that's in front of you. She's beaten up.
She's beaten down or he could be the one and all of a sudden, you have this opportunity that the Lord slowed your life down in order to meet this person to share an encouraging word with them and what do you do?
Oh, I can't believe it's taking so long. Why is this not ringing up?
And all of a sudden, we have lost our testimony before we ever had the opportunity to share the gospel with someone
and God said, maybe I slowed you down just enough and maybe the lady in front of you is struggling with just something to where you can say, hey, Alice, I see your name is Alice. I'm weird like this.
I see people's name tags. They have a name tag on for a reason. So I call them by their name.
Allison hates it. I'll walk out, Alice, great to see you today. And they're like, how do you know my name? Jack, hey, good to see you, Jack. I'm just weird like that. And all of a sudden, Alice, hey, how's things going today? Is there anything I pray for you about? I promise you,
when I do this, and typically it's alone because I've got kids that are running around crazy and they begin bawling their eyes out. I've been here for six hours and no one has even cared to ask me how my day is going. I have a statement that says, how are you today?
I don't know if my name tag and no one has even had the idea to say that back to me.
And all of a sudden, the suffering and the pain that we went through that we thought was the end of the world, now we can turn around and say, hey, how can I bless the person that's in front
of me? How can I use this as an opportunity to say,
this is something that God has given me this area where I can just pray for you and I can say a blessing over you and I'm going to continue on but now all of a sudden you have shared
goodness with them through the Lord Jesus Christ that has blessed us and all of a sudden we see these interruptions as inconveniences.
And God says, how can you use this in a way to bring the gospel to light? So the platform of pain but also the proclamation of grace. Verse 40, Paul addresses the crowd in Hebrew.
He was once in Greek and now he's in Aramaic and Hebrew and this is showing that he respects and loves them. He cares about them. We're going to be going back down to Nicaragua in a couple of months.
I just got off the phone a couple of days ago with our missionary and he gave me a couple of days to look at and I am on day 100 and I'm really proud of myself. 100, I'm going to brag a little bit, 153 days of Duolingo trying to learn Spanish. Spanish.
I barely know English people. You have seen my handouts, you have seen my slides and how horrible I butcher the English language.
You can imagine a redneck from North Carolina from Rowan County who barely knows English is now trying to learn another language of Spanish but what does this show someone when we show up there and we tell them something in their language,
hey I care about you, I respect you, I love you and this is what Paul was doing. He is speaking in their language not out of bitterness. These are the people that just tried killing him
and he stands up on this platform and he says I'm burdened for you and I'm not going to speak of retaliation. I'm not going to speak of how the Lord is going to come down and smite each and every one of you. No, he gets up and he preaches this message of redemption.
This message of I love you and Christ loves you and I don't care what you just did to me, I just want to tell you about what Jesus has done. The Bible uses this wonderful statement where it says as he got up and as he made this statement the entire city came to a hush.
True servants of God don't let persecution silence them. They allow the word of the Lord and their message to silence other people and as Paul gets up and he's about to preach they understand something big is about to happen I don't know what it is and the
Holy Spirit comes in and works in this situation to silence them for him to now begin to spread the gospel with them. I drink coffee.
You guys know that I'm a big coffee drinker. My family, they love juice. Orange juice and apple juice. I like apple juice as well but I'm reminded of an orange. We'll use a lemon. I used to work at Chick-fil-A. Emma knows this well.
At Chick-fil-A we squeeze our lemons by hand and every morning I would come in there and I would have four buckets of lemon and I'd have to cut them and wash them and clean them and squeeze the lemons and this is a crazy thought. You ready? When you squeeze a lemon
lemon juice comes out. Probably didn't know that. I know just shocked some of your minds but when you squeeze a specific fruit that type of juice is going to come out and in our life when we're squeezed when suffering comes when pain comes and we're squeezed
what comes out? Is it the gospel? Is it Jesus? Is it the love that he's given us? Or is it anger?
Or is it vileness? Or is it something that we regret ever saying? Or is it what Christ said here or what Paul said as he is squeezed as he has been persecuted as he has been tormented immediately the gospel comes out.
Immediately it's hey I want to tell you about this man him Jesus.
I know you hurt me I don't care about that I just want to tell you about this man who came and lived his life and died for you and me. As Terry comes as we conclude what comes out of you when you're pressed? Is it complaint? Is it compassion?
Is it compromise? Do you change what you were once doing because now you're squeezed and you don't really want to be on the wrong side of this squeezing and so all of a sudden you begin to ask yourself
I'm being squeezed in this moment and it's going to happen whether it's happening right now in your life whether it happened yesterday or whether it's going to happen in the future you will be squeezed and you will be pressed in what is going to come out.
Unity in the gospel doesn't mean you run from tension. Unity in the gospel means that you're going to choose grace over anything else that happens.
I'm going to display grace I'm going to put grace on the pedestal and I'm going to lift grace up highest as I possibly can so that that is what is going to be lifted up. Suffering from Christ isn't a sign of failure it's a stage of faithfulness.
Often times we think well I'm going through suffering I'm going through hard times it must mean that I failed in my Christian journey.
I'm here to say that often times suffering is more of a purification for us to know that we're on the right path or to correct us so that we can stay faithful for the long haul.
Honoring Faithfulness in Life
I hope you'll be here today for the funeral for Perry because we get to look at a man who was faithful to the very end serving his wife and loving his wife until the very end and he is faithful even through the difficulties that happen.
God can turn your pain into a platform if you surrender. You see the pain happens the difficulties happen and when we don't surrender back to the Lord we just sort of live there.
Or we can say God I don't know why this is happening I don't know why this pain is happening I just want to surrender to you and give you the glory in it and let God work in that situation.
I promise you as you do this God will begin to work in your life it's this big S word of sanctification where we grow to be more like him and we grow to be less like the world.
And through this sanctification process it's painful it's difficult it is sharpening something that was once dull it has to go through the refiner sharpening but it comes out sharper and better on the other end but it has to go through the suffering first.
Are you willing to suffer for the gospel? Are you willing to suffer for God's name to be lifted high
and for others to come to know Jesus? Lord we love you we thank you for what you've done for us. Lord we don't like talking about the cost of something. We don't like talking about suffering or pain or difficulties but we often have to go through it.
Help us to take this message and to tuck it away for when that time does come when the suffering and the pain and the heartache comes we'll be able to have some tools to say God help me during this time help me understand what it is and why this is going on
and help me to respond appropriately as suffering comes. God we thank you for what you've done we thank you for this message in your name we pray. Amen.
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