Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts chapters 23 and 24, emphasizing the theme "Faithful God, Faithful Witness." He highlights God's faithfulness in times of confusion and chaos, illustrating how Paul, despite facing false accusations and imprisonment, remains steadfast in his witness for Christ. The sermon encourages believers to trust in God's unseen protection and to be faithful witnesses, even in challenging circumstances, as they share the gospel with others.
Welcome and Housekeeping
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. Thank you, men, for singing.
If you have a child who wants to be dismissed to Children's Church, that's available at this time.
Right after the service, if I could have just a couple of guys to help me move the pulpit right after the service, that'd be great for the singing tonight. Tiger's asked just to have an open stage, and so it's going to be a great time for them.
If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in Acts chapter 23.
If you looked at your notes ahead of time, you will see that we're going to cover a lot of Scripture today, wanting to get through this portion of Acts.
Next week, we're going to go into, Lord willing, a Christmas series entitled The Characters at Christmas, and we're just going to look at a couple of different characters over a couple of weeks there in December.
So I wanted to get through this portion of Acts, and then we'll finish up the book of Acts at the beginning of next year, Lord willing. But I wanted to look at these passages. I've entitled the message today, Faithful God, Faithful Witness.
And we're not going to read all of the Scripture this morning. We're going to read a portion of each portion of this.
Of this, I'll sort of give you the summary of it as we go through it. So if you would read with me, stand with me, of course, and we'll read. We're going to read 12 through 16, and then we'll jump down to 23 through 24,
and then I'll tell you where we'll be at from there. So let's stand.
We'll read out of the Word. It'll also be on the screen. Verse 12 of Acts chapter 23. The Bible says, We're going to jump down to verse 23.
It says, And he summoned two of his centurions and said, Get 200 soldiers ready and 70 cavalry and 200 spearmen to go to Caesarea at nine tonight.
Also provide mounts to ride so that Paul may be brought safely to Felix the governor. And we're going to jump down to chapter 24, verse 14 and 15. The Bible says,
And then we'll read the last portion of the scripture, verses 24 through 27. Several days later, When Felix came with his wife, Jerusalem, who was a Jewish,
He had sent for Paul and listened to him on the subject of faith in Christ Jesus. Now, as he spoke about the righteousness, self-control, and the judgments to come,
Felix became afraid and replied, Leave for now. But when I have an opportunity, I'll call for you. At this same time, he was also hoping that Paul would offer him money.
So he sent for him to quite often and converse with him. After two years had passed, Porchus Festus succeeded Felix and became Felix.
And because Felix wanted to do the Jews a favor, he left Paul in prison. Father, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. We thank you for your blessings. We thank you for who you are and what you've done this season.
As we think of you coming as a baby in a manger, but also as we look forward to you coming back one day to gather your saints together in the resurrection that we just read of in Scripture. Lord, I thank you for what you've done. We thank you for your blessings.
We pray that your message would be delivered to your saints. In your name we pray. Amen.
You may be seated. Lots of Scripture today. Lots of context that we're going to go through as we walk through this message this morning.
Understanding Faithfulness
But I want us to understand, as we say here, the opening title, Faithful God for a Faithful Witness.
And as we have been teaching in Sunday school, as Scotty's been teaching over the last couple of weeks, looking at the interruptions that happen in life and how God is faithful to be with us through those interruptions. Oftentimes we don't like those interruptions to come in.
Oftentimes we don't like, I liked how Scotty said it this morning, and I was going to say this, and so I'm going to interject here this morning. How many of you in here enjoy when things change? Raise your hand.
You like just change happening all the time. Okay, I see my son is the only one that likes change in here. There was a statement that I heard years ago, and it helped me understand this about change. The statement was this, you like what you know, you don't really know what you like.
And I'm going to illustrate that by saying this, we all in here love the song Amazing Grace, right? Roy says it every time. Greatest song that's ever been written. We know that song, so therefore we like it.
When a new song comes out, Gold City just put out a brand new Christmas CD, a Christmas album we're listening to on the way to church. The whole time, I'm through like six songs. My skin's crawling.
I don't really know the songs. Like I'm texting it for John, and I said, I don't really like these songs. They're not great. They're not good Christmas songs. Why is that? Because I don't know them.
After I listen to that album five or six or seven times, I'm going to know that, and I'm going to enjoy it because I begin to know what those songs are. And so in the idea of songs, we don't really know what we like until we like what we know.
And so as we go through these things of life, when change happens and God works in our life, we can get to the point where we struggle with what is going on. And God says, no, listen, I'm going to be faithful.
I'm going to still be the same God yesterday, today, and forever. I need you to also be a faithful witness for me. And this is Paul's life in this passage as Paul walks through this.
I'm going to illustrate it in a story like this. I want you to imagine you've ridden down the same road every single day. Maybe this is to go to work, or maybe this is to go to church, or maybe this is to go to a family member's house. And you've done this drive.
You could do it with your eyes closed. As you're riding, you know where the old mailbox used to be.
And then they moved and got a new mailbox. And you remember that so-and-so used to live here, and then they moved, and now a new couple has moved in. And you just know this path. You've done it so much.
I mean, you truly think that if your wife or your husband were to blindfold you, you would be able to do this completely blindfolded. But there's a day where you're riding, and all of a sudden, a fog begins to come in.
And the day was just a little bit different than it was before, because now you don't really know where it is and what's going on. And suddenly, you can't really see in front of you.
You turn your lights on, and you're trying to see, and you sort of move forward, because the landmarks that you once knew, that there was this tree, and I've got to take a left at this tree, they're disappearing
in the fog that is around you. And now you're beginning to sort of get this knot inside your chest, where you're starting to forget some things. You begin to slow down. You grip the wheel. You begin to lean forward as if somehow leaning forward closer to the windshield.
You're going to be able to see what's in front of you a little bit better. You start whispering to yourself, where am I?
Am I starting to drift? Am I starting to go off the side of the road? Am I starting to cross the lane? I don't know what's going on here. Am I still even on the right road? You see, the road hasn't changed.
The road is the same road that you've ridden on hundreds of thousands of times. The destination hasn't changed.
You're still going to your dad's house. You're still going to work. You're still going to church.
Nothing in that destination has changed. But what has changed is your confidence in who you are and what is going on in that moment. Because you can't see your next step in front of you. You can't see the road that's ahead of you, and you begin to doubt your own confidence.
See, this is the life that Paul is going through right now. Fog is rolling in spiritually. He doesn't understand what's going on.
The people that he once trusted are turning on him. He begins to question his own motives, and he begins to question his own self, and he begins to surround himself with problems that he never even created.
We often can get to this point where we look up to the Lord and we say, Lord, I can't see five feet in front of me. What are you doing right now? God, what is going on?
Navigating Life's Challenges
Why is this happening? What is the reason for this in my moment in my life?
And as we look at Paul through these two chapters here, he's on the road God put him on.
He is exactly where God has put him, and the fog begins to come in, and there is this secret plot that begins to form behind him. A plot that is lies that are spoken about him,
powerful men that are playing sort of this game with his life, and he begins to say, what is going to happen in my life? And nothing feels clear.
Nothing feels stable. God, I feel like I'm on shifting, seeking sand every moment that I walk through my life. And God steps in and says, in the fog, I'm faithful.
I'm here for you, Paul. I'm here with you. You may not understand what's going on, but I am going to be here with you every step of the way.
And this is where this passage picks up as life doesn't make sense, and we oftentimes can be in this moment where we're holding fast for God to return as we look at the advent, and we look at the
baby coming into the manger, but also looking ahead to God coming back to take his children home, and we're sort of in that not yet and in between, and we say, God, I'm waiting for you. I'm ready for you, but yet we're in this waiting period.
And so I've broken this into two separate verses, two separate points with some sub-points. The first one is this, God's faithfulness when life doesn't make sense.
You see, there are times in our life where life just doesn't make sense. If you're like me, I'm a type A personality. I'm a planner.
I have to have everything scheduled out. I just tore off my November calendar, and I began putting all of my December stuff on there, and I'm planning when my bills come out.
I'm planning when my kids have sporting events. I'm planning our mission trip. The Lord has blessed with an opportunity for me, my brother, and my two sons. We're going to go to the Dolphins game here on the 15th, a Monday night football game in Pittsburgh. I'm putting that on my calendar. I'm planning these things out.
Everything is being planned, and yet oftentimes things happen, and it's not the way we had planned them. It's not the way we had dictated it to happen in our life, and God says, hey, I'm faithful, even when they don't make sense in your life. God is not absent when the world feels chaotic.
Then he is quietly steering the storm, and he is there with us, and he tells us, I am going to be there with you.
He tells us that there are times in this story that we're going to look at, this moment of Paul's life where if you can wrap your mind around it, he is in prison.
Remember two weeks ago, he was been beaten to death. He stands up. He preaches the gospel. He goes before his trial.
He's trying to figure out where he's at, and now he gets word that these people have made a vow to kill him, and now he is having to say, God, what are you doing? And all of a sudden, we see some really cool things happen here. The first is this,
God's faithfulness through hidden protection. God's faithfulness through hidden protection in our life.
You see, there's conspiracies in the shadows, but what happens is they're met by God's care in the shadows. People are beginning to plot around him. Forty Jews get together. Forty people of religious people bound themselves under a curse, a demonic curse to kill Paul. God exposes this plot to Paul through Paul's nephew.
Now, I think this is very interesting because this is the only time that I can find so far in Scripture that Paul mentions his direct family.
This is his sister, who we have not heard of up until this point, who has a kid, his nephew, who comes and hears of this plot, which tells me he was probably part of the Sadducees, just like Paul was.
He came to him and said, hey, Paul, there is this plan that's coming after you. They're coming after you.
What is going on? I'm letting you know what's happening. And this tells me that this was the right person who was in the right place at the right moment for God to use for his glory. Now, we don't know why Paul's nephew was there.
We don't know why God had ordained this. But what I do know is there's no coincidences with God. There are no such thing as coincidence. God has put people in the right places at the right time to help someone else out.
And when we begin to go through our life and we begin to figure out what is going on in our life, we have to ask ourselves, God, why have you placed me here in the year 2025 in December,
close to the end of the year, at this specific place, at this specific time, and who is it around me that I can begin to be a blessing to?
Who is it around me that I can begin to use the things in my life to help someone else out? There's an old hymn that was written back in 1905.
The hymn is called God Will Take Care of You. You ever heard that song? God will take care of you. It was written by a mother who was dealing with the sickness herself.
Her husband was a pastor and a preacher and was beginning to speak in different locations.
And he had been trained under Harvard Bible School. There was up in Harvard. Very intelligent man.
And she was getting to the point where she was writing some songs. And some say that she was influenced by Fanny Crosby and some other things. But she began to write and even speak.
And she had an opportunity to go and speak to thousands of people. And that afternoon, she got really, really sick.
And what happened was, is she didn't have a lot of money during this time in the 1900s.
And she was fearing, God, are you still going to use me in what's going on? And in this moment, in the sickness, in the struggle that she was going through, she began to write down, God will take care of you.
This song came to her heart as she was later recalling, her son later recalled that God always supplied for their family, even if it was at the last moment.
That God was there and he was working in the back stages of life to take care of what was going on. And as she's going through her life, she begins to write down, God, take care of me. God, you're going to work in my life.
God, you're going to work through my life. God, help me to be the person that I need to be so that I can take care of the things that are around me. Lead the right people in my way.
Lead the right people around me that I can begin to be a blessing to them. How many times has God protected you without you ever even knowing it?
How many times have you looked back, and this happened to me just a couple of weeks ago, and I shared the story of the accident that happened over here on Summers Road, 8 o'clock, normally when I go through that intersection.
And just a couple of weeks ago, an 18-wheeler or a car ran into the side of a truck, and it killed the mother and father, and the children were lifted to Baptist Hospital. And God took care of that for me, but tragically, someone else had happened in that accident.
And I pray for them often as I go through that intersection, but that could have been me.
It just so happened that Jade had an emergency doctor's appointment that morning that I had to go to. Just so happened, right? Coincidences.
No, there are no such thing as a coincidence with God. God works these things out in our lives, and He protects us without us ever even knowing it. Number two, God's faithfulness through secular authority.
Oftentimes, we look at the secular authority of the world, and we say, how can God ever use this? And the Bible says that even the hands of the king,
even the hearts of the kings, God controls with His hands. And so God can use unbelievers to accomplish His purpose.
As the passage goes on, we didn't read this. You can look through this, but Claudius Lysias steps in with a decisive plan. A pagan commander uses and becomes God's instrument to rescue His servants.
There's a book that I read. I read often this book every couple of years. It's called Instruments in God's Redeeming Plans.
And it just walks through how we can be an instrument in God's redeeming hands of work, and how we can use our life to work in a mighty way if we just submit to God's will. And how often does God intersect in a way that we wouldn't have saw fit?
A pagan commander who works in this way that used unexpected people to deliver unexpected channels to deliver God's man in this way.
I mean, he does some things that is above and beyond to protect Paul.
Now, we're reading the story, and you read through here, and you see that there are 40 people who are ready to kill Paul who have come. And now, all of a sudden, Paul in his life and his journey has been protected by these wicked people that God uses.
Proverbs 21.1, I mentioned this earlier, God bends the hearts of the kings. God works in ways that we don't even see and we don't even notice.
And He puts us in situations where we are able to share the gospel in unexpected ways if we would just be obedient to what God has done. And there was a time where I was working at a hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas. My boss was an Indian.
His name was Patel. Yogi Patel was his name. And there were opportunities where he knew I was a Bible college student.
He knew I was in ministry. And for some reason, he really liked me and my personality and who I was.
And he entrusted me with a lot of stuff. But every day, multiple times a day, he would go into his office and he would have this, he would open a door and there'd be a little Buddha set up in there. And he would kneel down, he would pray.
And he would tell me, hey, James, I need to meet with you. Come on in here.
I would get to the door and he'd say, hey, wait up. Take your shoes off.
What? Take your shoes off. He said, yeah, yeah. He said, this is my church inside this room. And so I'd weirdly take my shoes off. We'd walk in and we'd talk. And one day, this opportunity where I said, Yogi, I said, what are you doing over here?
What is this? What are you worshiping this God? He said, this is my God and this is my church, just like you go to church on Sunday. And through this interaction, I began to share the gospel with him. Now, he had heard the gospel.
His daughter went to school with my wife and they went to Christian school together. And so he had heard a lot of that.
But it was an opportunity where God used me in that moment to witness to a Hindu, to witness to an Indian that was from India that had lived his life and went through this.
Now, Yogi's never accepted the gospel, but I pray for Yogi often because I had the opportunity to step into his life for a moment and share with him.
Who is the unlikely person in your life that God maybe just is using you to impact something in their life?
Maybe it's an unbeliever. Maybe it's someone in your family as you go through the holiday season time where you're going to be in a room with someone that maybe you haven't seen for a year. And now you get to use your life and your testimony to encourage them.
Number three here underneath this, number C, letter C, God's faithfulness to overwhelming protection.
It's faithfulness to overwhelming protection. As we walk through the end of this chapter, we didn't read it, but I want to give you the flow of what is going on here. Really, God doesn't just simply protect him, but he overprotects.
God knew that Paul's life and his journey wasn't over with. And so he used this king, this authority to overprotect him.
The Bible says that it reached to where there was 470 soldiers transporting one man down to Caesarea at the Caesarea Maritime.
And it took Paul from Jerusalem to Caesarea, which is about an hour and a half drive in a car today, which would have been about five or six hours then on horseback. And so Felix, he looks at this situation and he says, I'm going to take this moment to overprotect.
I want 470 people, 10 times the amount of people that were plotting to kill Paul. God over delivers and God overprotects.
And Paul ends this chapter in the safety of Herod's judgment hall. I've stood in this hall. I've stood in the place where Herod's kingdom was at Caesarea Maritime.
Caesarea Maritime, it's a beautiful facility, a beautiful place. I've walked into the jail cells where they say that this is most likely where Paul would have been in this passage as he's down there. And what it begins to look at is oftentimes we go through our life and this overprotection comes.
I want to illustrate it like this. Imagine a mom and dad who go to send their child off to college. Okay. How many of you have sent your child to college before? Okay.
And as you send them off, there's tears. And maybe this was you as a parent. I don't know. I'm just sort of giving you an illustration. My parents were not like this. Okay.
I'm not saying this was my life. My parents said, you're going to Hot Springs. Here's a couple hundred bucks. Hopefully you get there. Pat on the back. Took off down the road.
14 hours later, I showed up at Hot Springs. I moved into a friend of mine's house. And what I want to illustrate is maybe this.
And I've seen this before in my days of a youth pastor where a kid will go off to college and it's like 40 kids show up to the dorm room.
And they've all got hands ready. They're unloading stuff. They're going up and down stairs. And they're setting up the bedroom. And mom and dad are there taking pictures. And it's just an exciting time. It's like, it's really overkill.
You didn't need 40 people to show up to unload one small truck with a bed and a couch and maybe a table. And all of a sudden you've got all these kids that are helping and you see the love and the experience that happens.
But it's like, mom, did you really have to send this many people here?
But it's because mom loved and mom cared and mom wanted to see these things that she was an overboard amount of love, an overkill amount of love that God sort of shows here in this picture. God doesn't just barely get Paul there. It's not like Paul shows up.
Remember, he's just been beaten to death. The Roman soldiers were about to beat him. And God sort of says, listen, Paul, I'm directing your path. And in this situation,
I know there's been situations in the past where you almost died. But this situation, you're going to get there untouched, unharmed. And I'm going to deliver you in this situation. Oftentimes, we expect God to work in small ways.
I've often said this and often thought this. We put God in a box. We put God in this little small compartment.
And we say, God, this is how I want you to work. And if you don't work the way I want you to work, then you're not really God in my life. And God says that there is nothing that can contain him. There is nothing that can control him.
He is outside of the box. He created the box that we're holding.
And he is bigger and better than anything we can ever ask or think. And oftentimes through scripture,
the Lord shows us that he often acts in huge ways to get our attention, to help deliver, to be an encouragement to someone else. I want to ask you, what would change if you began to trust God's abundance instead of fearing God in the scarcity?
I've been through the scarcity moments of life. I've been through where I begin to say, God, are you even there? Are you even working in my life? What is going on? Why are you leading me through this pathage?
Why are you leading me through this desert season of my life? And God says, if you would just trust me, if you would just begin to look at what I've done in the past and begin to trust me in the future, I would work in a mighty way in your
Faithfulness in Trying Times
life. Second thing we're going to look at in passage of chapter 24 is our faithfulness in trying times. See, God is faithful and has his faithfulness when life doesn't make sense. And then he sort of gets us to this point where he says, now it's your turn. I'm faithful.
I'm going to show that I'm faithful. I'm going to deliver you, Paul, as you hear the evidence of what's happening and you've got people that are coming against you. Now I've delivered you and now it's your turn.
Are you going to be faithful to me? And this is a difficult part for us because God's faithfulness does not excuse us from our responsibility. It empowers us.
And he tells us, because I've delivered you, because I've worked you through this situation, now you have the opportunity to share this goodness and glory to other people. First thing we see is the faithfulness in the face of false accusations.
Paul is falsely accused in verses 1 through 9. The lies begin to spread quickly.
The people begin to come in and they begin to make this case against him. The truth begins to stay steady.
And I want us to encourage us by saying, live in the truth of God's word. Live in the truth of what God has given us because all of a sudden there will be people that spread lies about you. It happened to Paul. It's going to happen to us. It happened to Jesus.
It's going to happen to us. This text begins to walk through Tertullius, who is a polished lawyer.
They say that he is one of the greatest lawyers of this time that other authors have written about. And he comes in and he has this polished slander against Paul. Maybe you've been there where people have slandered you and they've talked bad about you.
Paul has been accused of being a public menace, a theological troublemaker, and a leader of a sect of people that are against all of Jewish authority.
Paul responds with this. And I think it's important for us to understand. Paul responds with clarity.
I've been accused in my day of different things. And oftentimes, I'm not proud of it, but oftentimes I'll respond with anger. I'll get mad. I'll get red-faced. I'm a redhead.
I've got a short temper and a short fuse. It's gotten a lot better over my years as I've gotten older. But there are times where when people will say things, I will respond out of anger or out of frustration. Paul responds with clarity. He responds without compromise. He says, this is the truth.
And I want you to sort of imagine a courtroom situation. Paul was brought into this courtroom situation. And someone who has been innocent has been accused of something that is convincing the other people that are wrapped in emotion, that are wrapped in lies, that are wrapped in falsehood.
They're convincing them of what is going on. And Paul steps up and he speaks truth. And the truth doesn't always take the advantage. It doesn't always sway the court of public opinion.
But what it does is, the Bible says in Romans that the truth will always set you free. The truth will always allow you to live with a good conscience, as the Bible says. As Paul was writing, he said, I have lived with good conscience. I have lived with the authority of the resurrection.
I have lived in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that is the truth that is grounding him.
The question we have to ask ourselves is, is your character stable enough to withstand slander? People are going to come against us. People are going to say things that are false about us. People are going to say things that are difficult for us to even say.
But how are we going to stand when those accusations come against us? And the last thing we're going to look at is Paul's life here in verses 10 through 27. Paul's faithful witness and our faithful witness in every opportunity.
God has given us opportunities in our life to stand and proclaim the gospel. Paul never stopped being a missionary. Paul never stopped being a proclaimer of the good news that delivered him on the road to Damascus. As he's going, his life was changed.
He never forgot that moment where the Lord stepped in and intervened in a moment where he was living as a wicked sinner, as he was living in a way that was an abomination to what God was saying. And God stepped in miraculously and saved him in a mighty way.
And church, we should never forget that about our life. We should never forget the day that the Lord stepped in our life in the moment of our chaos and delivered us from our sins.
And maybe that's today for you. Maybe today you've never accepted Jesus. And the Bible is saying as Paul clearly explains the facts, in the facts that he's explained that he shares the gospel. I often will talk to school teachers.
And there was one lady, she was a teacher in kindergarten at Hidden Eye Elementary School. And I remember talking to her. Her name was Tamara Odom. She played the piano at our last church.
And she would tell me, she said, in the public school, there's a lot of parameters that I have to keep as far as how I can share my faith. And she said, every year at Christmas, it's a beautiful time where I get to share my faith.
And I said, well, tell me how this works. She said, well, I never compromise on the ability of what I've done.
But every year at Christmas time, I'll write on the board, what does Christmas mean to you?
And I'll ask the kids, and I'll say, what does Christmas mean to you? And they'll write presents and Santa Claus. And she said, it never fails.
Someone in that room is going to say the birth of Jesus. And she said, I'll spend the next whole class period just talking about the birth of Jesus. Because that kid brought it up.
And I'm able to share the truth without compromising and use the situation that I've been to share the gospel. How often is it that we're in situations that we get to share the gospel and we sort of pull back from? Paul doesn't fear the gospel.
He shares the resurrection. He shares with a clean conscience. He shares with righteousness. And what happens when he does this is Felix trembles. Felix begins to get nervous. The emperor of this whole region begins to get nervous of what's going on.
The Delay of Justice
And he delays in what's happening here. He delays his trial, get this church, for two years. For two years, Paul sits in prison and remains faithful during this time.
The Bible says at the very end of this passage that for two years, because Felix wanted to do a favor to the Jews, he left Paul in prison for two years. Could you imagine? You've been faithful.
You have served the Lord. You've done everything that God has wanted you to do. He delivered you.
He brought you to this place where you're at now. And then now God says, wait for two years in prison.
If it were me, I'd be like, okay, God, come on. It's been two years. What are you going to do? What's happening?
Paul in this moment continues to stay faithful no matter what. I love the author or the missionary George Mueller.
George Mueller was a fantastic man of the God. And he wrote this in his diary.
He said he wrote that every day of his life, he prayed for five of his best friends to get saved. He prayed every single day that the Lord would work in their life, that the Lord would begin to work in a way that God would deliver them.
And his diary says that for decades, decades he prayed for his five friends.
And in his lifetime, four of his best friends received Jesus. But there was still that one. His commentary goes on to say that at his funeral,
his last best friend got saved that day. Faithfulness, church, is not measured by how fast fruit appears. Faithfulness is measured on how God works in our life and how faithful we are when God works in our life. Oftentimes, we live in a microwave generation.
We want things now. We want things quickly. We want things done. And God says oftentimes there is this waiting period where we've got to live in what we're at and live where we're at. And it's difficult. It's hard. I know it's hard.
But how do we view the difficult seasons in our life? And how do we look at them the way Paul did and say, this is an opportunity, yes, for me to live in a difficult moment. But how can I share the gospel in this opportunity?
Who around me is looking at my life and how can I encourage them and how can I share the gospel with them as I'm going through my life? If I'm going through this difficult time, how can I share with other people?
As Terry comes, I want to wrap this up and sort of bring both sides together and sort of bring these two passages,
these two chapters together. Because God is faithful to each and every one of us. When lies come in, when confusion sets in, when chaotic moments sets in, and even when life is unfair, God is still faithful. God is still working in our life.
He's still writing our story. And our story is not done until the day he puts a period on our story. And as we go through our life, we've got to understand that God is faithful and we must be faithful to him. And because God is faithful, we must remain faithful.
We must remain steady. We must remain honest. And overall, we must remain obedient.
There's a, right now in our teenage life of our kids, I've, Brody, he's a 12-year-old. He's helping with the sound. He's learning all the fun things. That's why the slides have been crazy lately. We've got young people that are learning, which is a good thing.
But as we go through life, I'll tell him often, I'll say, Brody, I know you're obeying what I've asked you, but oftentimes you delay in your obedience. It's five or six times mom and dad have asked you to do something. And you've obeyed, but it's been delayed obedience, right?
Do I have a parent here that could testify that they've got a kid that does that? It's frustrating.
God in his faithfulness, I'm so thankful that he doesn't delay in his obedience to his will. But oftentimes that's how we are. We delay in our obedience.
Yes, we're going to eventually get to it, but it's going to be on our time. And God says, no, the moment that you were supposed to obey was two hours ago. That's when I had the opportunity in front of you. And we must step through those opportunities to obey the Lord.
Deliverance Through Trials
See, Paul wasn't delivered from his trial. But he was delivered through his trial. Paul had to go through this trial.
Paul had to go through this false accusation for God to work in his life and God to go through these things in his life. And God says, I'm there with you through your trial and with you through every step of the way. And oftentimes God does not remove the storm in our life.
He gives us the strength to stay steady in the storm of our life. God is our anchor.
And he says, look to me, the author and the finisher of your life, as Hebrews 12 says, and dig into his faithfulness and dig into his steadfastness so that we can live through the storm that he has given us. Where in your life do you need to rest in God's unseen protection?
There are times where we're going to go through things.
We're going to go through difficulties. We're going to go through trials. And we just need to say, God, I'm going to trust in your protection. I can't see it.
I may not even feel it. I may not even hear your voice. I'm just going to trust in, as the song says, the unseen hand. The unseen hand of God's working in and through our life. See, oftentimes, if you're like me, you want the perfect moment to happen.
You want the perfect moment and the perfect situation to all line up. And you're like, yes, this is it, the perfect moment.
Paul, he didn't wait for the perfect moment. He was being lied about. He was being accused of things. And even in that moment, he stood firm on who God is. And he declared the gospel to people that were around him. He began witnessing to people in the moment that he was in.
Church, we're in a moment. We're in a moment where God is challenging us to share the gospel with other people. Are we going to be faithful to step out of our comfort zone and say, God, I don't, I know it's not the perfect moment. I know I'm not completely ready.
But I just want to be like Paul and be obedient like the disciples were and step out by faith and trust in you in this moment. Whatever the situation that you may be in, how can we encourage and share in the opportunity that God has given us? Father, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done. God, we thank you for who you are. We thank you for every situation of our lives.
We may not understand them. We may not know what they are. But we know that you're still in control, that you're still in the middle of our storm.
Conclusion and Encouragement
And you're still the one that is steering the ship, even though we may not want to go through the storm, even though we may not see the we may not want to go through the fog. As that opening illustration was, we know that you're still behind the helm.
You're still leading. You're still guiding us. And I pray that you would help us to trust in you. In your name we pray. Amen.
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