Living Waters of Grace 11.26.25

This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark

Waffer, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland, County

of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he

continues teaching through God's Word.

And if we are salt and light, we will have an impact on the lives

of people that don't know Jesus. So you know, to become a

pro-life becomes a work of the spirit in someones heart.

Well, maybe they were pro-choice before, and all of a sudden

their worldview changes. I can't kill babies.

I can't kill creations of God anymore.

And I'm not going to be that way, right?

So all of a sudden the votes change and the commitment of the

people and you know, and the world doesn't seem like it's

going to hell and in handbasket. You might think you're just one

person and there's no way you could make a difference in your

school, but if you organize a time of prayer on campus, I bet

others will come alongside you. If you take a stand against some

agenda at work, you better believe some others likely will

too. Sometimes it just takes a person

who has a little courage to help others remember that they can be

brave in that situation, too. Pastor Clark teaches today about

Paul and others in Ephesus who took a stand.

Now here's Pastor Clark in the book of Acts Chapter 19 with

Acts 19 · chapter mention

today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.

Well, as a result of this happening in the community in

the city of Ephesus, there was less people buying these things.

So if you made good living by making these things, maybe

you're selling, you know, 1000 a week or something.

And all of a sudden you look at your numbers and now they're 600

a week and then they're 400 a week and then they're three.

You know, you're, you're starting to get bothered, right?

Because you know that what's happening in the city now is

impacting your livelihood. So this is the purpose of why

Demetrius is beginning to get this crowd together, because he

made these silver shrines of Diana and it brought a lot of

money to the Craftsman who were involved in it.

It says in verse 24 he called them together with the workers

of similar occupations. So he's getting all the people

in the union together to tell them about what's going on and

why the numbers are down and why the revenue is a lot less than

what it once was, because they probably didn't really quite

grasp the impact that Christianity was having in the

city of Ephesus. So he calls them together and he

says, man, you know that we have our prosperity by this trade.

This is how we make our livelihood.

Moreover, you see in here that not only at Ephesus, but

throughout almost all Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned

away many people saying that they are not gods which are made

with hands. Now, Paul never once picketed in

front of the temple of Diana. There's no indication that he

was there with signs and, and, and telling everybody, don't go

in there and don't do this. Don't do that.

He was just teaching the word. And whenever you teach the word,

it has an impact on lives. It, it changes your thought

process, it changes your worldview.

It changes what your priorities are and what you invest and

spend your money on you. If you're doing things that

aren't right, the Holy Spirit convicts you and speaks to your

heart inwardly and says, you know this isn't cool.

You know, you know, you really need to let this go.

You need to move away from this, this idol or whatever it might

be. And idolatry is fashioned in

many ways today. We don't have shrines and

temples of, of some ridiculous Pagan deity around our necks.

At least I hope we don't. But idolatry's in the form of a

lot of other things. It can be our material wealth.

It can be something we own that we love and that every time we

see it, we just smile and say that's mine, you know, and I'm

going to give ours a day to whatever I think is important.

That's mine. And so we begin to become

consumed and controlled by metal and, and, and leather and tires.

And those cars are the biggest idols for all of us.

When you first get it, you know, you're excited and there's

nothing wrong with having a nice car, but it can really overcome

you, can't it? Especially when someone wrecks

into it. You just bought it.

Like it happened to me. I'm in Philadelphia and someone

knocks my mirror on my Sienna and I'm like, you got to be

kidding me. You know, I was just like, I

just got this thing. Well, Lord, said Clark, it's

just a piece of metal and it's a means to an end.

It's how you make your livelihood.

It's how you stay safe and drive around.

But I, I had to, I had to sort of like repent a little bit.

John's an auto body guy. He likes it when we wreck.

That's good for your, your prosperity.

But you know, I had to think like, well, you know, it's just

a car, right? But things can control our

hearts at times, can't they? How about our houses?

Nothing wrong with having nice houses, but when they begin to

have problems, how can it begin to make us depressed or upset or

uptight? Or, you know, it's, it's

interesting. I love sports.

Many of you do too. But if my whole life was like,

well, you know, I'm not going to go to church today because I'll

miss the kickoff. And, and I actually did that

when I was younger. The Steelers were kicking off at

like 12, man, I was, I was the first one out the door at 11:30.

Cindy, come on, we got to go. Where are we going?

What's the game? It's starting at 9.

You know, that pastor's going to go on and on and on.

Let's get out of here. One pastor, he like tortured us.

He'd have an older call, especially in a a big stealer

day. And I knew, man, we were going

to miss like at least 1/2 an hour to have the game.

But anyway, you know, you don't where your treasure is, your

heart is, I'm not like, you know, no guilt trips here.

But if there's anything in your life that is above God, then get

it right and say, Lord, forgive me and put it in right position

so that I'm not worshiping whatever that is above you.

That's always the issue of whether something becomes an

idol or not an idol in your heart.

So these guys are really upset about this issue.

And he says their prosperity is being affected.

And this has happened throughout Asia.

So it's so exciting to know that this school that Paul was

teaching in over 2 years, people like you and me and hopefully

like we're going out into the world that a culture sharing our

faces, we have opportunity that maybe the city of Greensburg

would change a little bit, right?

Maybe there'd be a few less nightclubs or no casinos aren't

going to shut down because they generated a lot of money for it

upstate. And, you know, so everybody has

reasons why they do what they do.

But I mean, there's this element of a salt and light that impacts

and and pushes back darkness. So I talked a little bit last

week that we can't be apathetic, complacent or indifferent as

Christians because the power of God is in US.

And if we are salt and light, we will have an impact on the lives

of people that don't know Jesus. So you know, to become pro-life

becomes a work of the spirit in someone S heart.

Well, maybe they were pro-choice before and all of a sudden their

worldview changes. I can't kill babies.

I can't kill creations of God anymore and I'm not going to be

that way right. So all the sudden the votes

change and the commitment of the people and you know, and the

world doesn't seem like it's going to hell on in handbasket.

We begin to get excited because things can be changed, whether

it's through people who are running that have godly or the

votes change or whatever. The the most important thing to

understand is that you and I right now in 2023 are

responsible for what's happening in the world.

Whether we stand up for truth or we zip our mouths and not say

anything right, we're going to be held accountable by the Lord

one day in the judgement seat of Christ where we're judged for

our works, not for our sin, that we live our lives fully for the

purposes of why Christ saved us. Were we ashamed of the gospel or

we we're bold to preach the gospel?

Do we care enough about people and love them enough to want to

tell them about what the Lord's done for us?

Or we just didn't want to get involved in a conflict or an

argument. I mean, that's the challenge all

the time. Well, they won't listen.

Well, how do you know they won't listen?

And even if they act like they don't listen, maybe they are

listening and they're thinking about what you said and they're

giving it some thought and consideration and maybe believe

later on. And so now the, the, the crowds

are growing and this area that they went to, this arena held

about 25,000 people. This wasn't a small move or mob

issue. This was a big deal, and this

guy's saying that Paul is the one who's responsible for all

this. Well, he isn't.

It's God who's responsible for this.

They could kill Paul, but the work of the of the Kingdom of

God will go on and it has gone on without Paul, without you,

without me. God always raises up new people

to continue to, to proclaim the word.

So verse 27. So not only is this trade of

ours in danger of falling into disrepute, but also the temple

of the great goddess Diana may be despised and her magnificence

destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worship.

Now this guy could care less about her.

He wasn't a follower of this ridiculous deity, but he knew

she this concept and this worship, this false religion

made a lot of money for them. And so now he's trying to get

these people who are devoted to Diana to be upset, saying that

the testimony of the power of her influence in the nation's at

the time is going to be a greatly diminished.

So these people in verse 28 now when they heard this, they were

full of wrath and cried out saying great is Diana the

Ephesians. So the whole city was filled

with confusion and rushed into the theater with 1 accord,

having seized gay eyes and our Tarkas, Macedonians, Paul's

travel Companions. So it's a, it's a mob scene.

It's dangerous. No one's standing to reason.

If you've ever been in an environment where there's been a

riot, it's it takes on a life of its own.

And all the sudden people who are in the midst of the crowd

all the sudden become infected. And next thing you know, they're

on board with whatever the ridiculous thing is that

someone's upset about. That's what happened at the mob

rule. Whenever Jesus was Pilate and

they asked Pilate asked who should we release Jesus or

Barabbas? And they all yelled Barabbas.

And then they started yelling at crucify him, crucify him.

And all the people that were yelling crucify him probably

didn't even want him to be crucified, but they were caught

up in that atmosphere. It's demonic and it begins to

take people over. It's like what happened on

January 6th, right? There was people there that just

wanted to have a, a reason to stand up for thing they felt was

important. And next thing you know, people

are breaking barriers down, going into the buildings of

government and all of a sudden, you know, guns and all.

I mean, it was, it was anarchy, lawlessness.

This is what's happening in our nation right now.

Lawlessness. That's what happened with these

police officers, lawlessness, beating and brutalizing this

young man. This is going on right now.

And we need to pray by the power of the Holy Spirit that the Lord

would circumvent this and put a protective, protective hedge

around all of us, the churches, the people of God, and that the

law enforcement officials would be people who are standing for

justice and not injustice. The consequences of what people

do need to be dealt with it. You just can't be behave this

way. It's barbaric.

And this is what's happening here though they grab this,

these two guys that serve with Paul, thank God they weren't

martyred or killed. Paul's travel companions.

And when Paul found out about this in verse 30, he wanted to

go into the people and the disciples will not allow him.

Then some of the officials of Asia, these people weren't even

believers, but they respected Paul, who were.

His friends sent to him pleading that he would not venture into

the theater. Paul would have went in there.

He would have probably been martyred at that time wasn't his

time to be killed yet. So he didn't go in.

So therefore some therefore cried one thing and some another

for the assembly was confused. This mass confusion.

There's no no truth in this stuff going on and most of them

did not know why they had come together.

Isn't it amazing, amazing you're there and you're with all these

people and then you look to your spouse or your friend.

What are we doing here? Why are we here?

I'm sure that's probably the thought of some of the people on

the January 6th are probably like, this has turned into

something insane and ungodly and unjust and illegal, and they

drew Alexander out of the multitude.

Now, Alexander was a Jewish guy and the Jews were the ones that

really caused the persecution against the Christians at the

time. It wasn't so much the Roman

Empire. They tolerated different moves

of whatever religion. But in this instance here,

Alexander's motioning with his hand, he wanted to act like he

could control and get everybody calmed down.

He wanted to make his defense to the people, but when they found

out that he was a Jew, all with one voice cried out for about

two hours. Great as Diana of the Ephesians.

So again, nothing is making sense.

This is going on for two hours. This this mass mass confusion.

Now I don't know if you've ever been in a riot.

I hope you're not and never are in a riot, but it, it begins to

become very, very dangerous. And we, we see the aftermath of

some of these things in the streets of our country going on

right now up in the Oregon and San Francisco and, and some of

these other places. I mean, these cities have become

destroyed. They're not safe to walk in.

They're not safe to live in. They're not safe to be in

because we have allowed, for whatever crazy reason, the

extremism against the police. I'd hate to be a police officer

right now having to deal, you know, based upon what's just

happened because everybody's going to think cops are horrible

and and and dangerous to be around instead of realizing that

God raised him up to protect us from injustice.

And so things are really out of control.

Lewis has been teaching in Timothy about in the last days

there will be lawlessness. We see it, we're experiencing it

and what is it that we're going to do about it?

But pray and be a light and be salt in the midst of a crooked

and perverse generation who were supposed to shine his lights.

So then we see God in His mercy and His sovereignty in verse 35.

And when the city clerk, it quieted the crowd.

This guy is sort of like a mayor, but obviously an

anointing upon him to be able to bring some sanity.

And they begin to listen for some reason to him, men of

Ephesus, what man is there who does not know that the city of

the Ephesians is temple, guardian of the great goddess

Diana and of the image which fell down from Zeus?

So he, he goes to their mythology, calms them down

because the majority of the people, this is how they're

wired. This is what they think about

their city. This is the reputation.

Everything's still intact. He's saying, therefore, since

these things cannot be denied, you ought to be quiet and do

nothing rashly. So in other words, don't behave

this way. You're worked up about about

nothing. Nothing's changing right now in

in Ephesus in regard to our Pagan ways.

For you brought these men here who are neither robbers of

temples nor blasphemers, blasphemers of your goddess.

And what a testimony these guys, Paul and his associates and

those who serve with them had done nothing to diminish the

emphasis of these people in regard to what it was they

thought was important. Paul wasn't bad mouthing the

goddess. That wasn't.

We can learn something here, I think today from how we deal

with the culture. You're not going to win any

battles by, you know, hating and having signs defaming gay people

or pro-choice people and these kind of things.

That has no impact. All it does is inflamed people.

I mean, I've driven down Route 30 by Barnes Noble and I've seen

the most horrific signs of babies who are being aborted as

you almost want to wreck your car.

It's horrible. See it?

I don't want to think about that.

I know what's going on. But but but by doing that, what

what is that doing to people right by you think the people

that think it's OK to kill babies and good signs are going

to bother them, just going to make them mad and hate us more.

There's a way of reaching people in regard to these senseless

philosophies and ideologies and worldviews that people have, and

it's the preaching of the gospel.

It's not condemning the pro-choice people.

It's loving them enough to help them get free from the blindness

that the devil has allowed to be on their eyes, that they don't

understand who Jesus is. They're used to people fighting

them, they're used to the people picketing and arguing, but

they're not used to people caring about them and loving

them. And we can't love people like

that apart from Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit,

right? We can't, we can't give people

grace without God's grace in our hearts first.

We have a tendency to be angry as Christians, and it's very

unattractive to the lost. And they think they're getting

their way because the matter we get, and the more upset we get,

the more they invalidate our testimony and the more weak we

become because we're trying to win a battle on the energy and

the power of our human flesh and ability to try to legislate

righteousness. You can't legislate

righteousness as much as we would like to.

Only God can restore righteousness and it comes

through the cross and every one of us here today, for the most

part, I'm sure, had to come through the cross to become, we

all had to come through the cross to become righteous.

When we become righteous, not self-righteous, but righteous in

good position with God, the things that he's concerned about

or cares about, we should care about too.

For God so loved the world. That's everybody in it.

That's the murderers, extortioners, the rapists, the

immoral, the extortioners, the thieves.

God so loved the world, the people in this world, that he

gave of his only begotten Son, that whoever and that's all

those people along with us, whosoever would believe in him,

would not perish, but have everlasting life.

And I love what it says later. God did not send his Son into

the world to condemn the world. We've been doing, I'm not

talking about you, but the rank and foul.

I think of us many times as Christians, we've been doing too

much condemning. He didn't come to condemn the

world. He knew like this is what you

get when you're lost, when you're a Sinner and you don't

have a savior. This is this is your way you

live. You can't live any other way but

a godless way. God did not send his son into

the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him

might be saved. And so he's calming these people

down and he says. Therefore, since these things

cannot be denied, verse 36, you ought to be quiet and do nothing

rashly, for you have brought these men here, who are neither

robbers or of temples nor blasphemers, your goddess.

Therefore, if Demetrius and his fellow Craftsman have a case

against anyone, the courts are open and there are pro councils.

In other words, you guys are bothered you do this legally by

the form of government that we have in the Empire, and let them

bring charges against one another.

But if you have any other inquiry to make, it shall be

determined in a lawful assembly, for we are in danger of being

called in question of the day's uproar, there being no reason

which we may give to account for this disorderly gathering.

He was concerned if the leaders of the Roman Empire saw that he

was losing control as one of the responsible parties in this

city, then they would lose the freedom they have to conduct

their business and their ways according to what they were

allowed to do, according to the rules of the empire.

And when he had said these things, he dismissed the

assembly. There's never any excuse for any

disorderly gatherings. And the interesting point as we

conclude is that the city of Ephesus is no longer like it was

at that time. There is no temple of Diana

there. It was destroyed.

There's some excavation showing that the place was real.

And they got some pillars in a museum in in Britain, One of

these tall pillars, columns there was 125 columns, 60 feet

high that surrounded this, this edifice, this amazing edifice.

But it's no longer there. It's just a memory of history.

The idol makers of Diana are no longer making these things.

They're gone and Ephesus now is more like a tourist stop.

If you're on Bible journeys and that kind of stuff, they'll

they'll take you to Ephesus and show you around.

We know the Book of Revelation discussed the church in Ephesus

that left its first love and you know, these kind of historical

things. But Ephesus is no way an

influential center of commerce, let alone spirituality.

There's only one power that can overcome all this stuff that

we're all dealing with in the year that we're living, 2023 and

onward. And it's not by picketing, it's

not by hating, it's not by revolution.

It's by this as Paul proclaimed it in Romans 116.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, For it is the

power of God, the salvation for everyone who believes, for the

Jew 1st, and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of

God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just

shall live by faith. So when you go out this week,

you live by faith in the truth of the Word of God.

You live by 100% confidence, faith in the gospel of Jesus

Christ. That this is the answer for

conflict. This is the answer for you to

speak to people who are lost or who counterintuitive, they think

differently than you do because they're lost.

And then we love them. We love them enough to share

with them and to pray for them and to care for them.

So May God give us grace as we lift up Christ in our life daily

the best we can with the ability He's given us in the home and

the marriage with the kids, the family, the workplace, the

community, the neighborhood. And that God, as He is faithful,

will turn hearts to himself when His word is proclaimed.

Amen. Thank you for listening to this

edition of Living Waters of Grace.

Pastor Clark is teaching us about the book of Acts in this

series. Acts is a powerful and unique

part of Scripture, not just because it records the spread of

the gospel geographically from Jerusalem to the ends of the

earth, but also culturally. Acts shows us how the message of

Jesus moved beyond its Jewish roots and began to reach the

Gentile world. What started with Peter leading

a small group in the Upper Room became a global movement with

Paul taking the gospel to cities, synagogues, and

marketplaces across the Roman Empire.

Acts captures this vital transition and reminds us that

the good news of Jesus is for all people in every place.

May we be inspired to carry that same gospel boldly into our

world today. Living Waters of Grace comes to

you from Calvary Chapel, Westmoreland.

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