Living Waters of Grace 10.16.25

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.

They were multiplied, they were growing, they were expanding.

The crowds were being drawn to the word of God.

And, and, and that's what is encouraging because Jesus says

if I be lifted up, I'll draw all men to myself.

If Christ is being lifted up in your heart and your daily life

and your activities and your job and your home and your

neighborhood community, you will have divine encounters with God.

You will have opportunities to tell people about the Lord.

It's just going to happen supernaturally.

When you're fully surrendered to God, you'll get to see him move

through your life more. He'll use you if you're

committed to following where He calls when He calls you.

Today you'll be with Pastor Clark looking at the conversion

of Paul. God used a man who once

persecuted Christians to be one of the most influential people

ever for Christianity. It may be in small ways or ways

you never imagined possible, but God will use you too if you let

him. He just wants you to be faithful

to do what he says. Now here's Pastor Clark in the

book of Acts Chapter 9 with today's edition of Living Waters

Acts 9 · chapter mention

of Grace. Paul is being sent back home out

of Jerusalem, or most of the activity is at the time, and

he's going to be there for approximately 812 years,

studying, preparing, perhaps working with some of the early

church plants in Cilicia and Tarsus and Syria, that region.

But the Bible doesn't give a lot of details on that time that he

was there. He was there like I say, 8 to 12

years. So think about this.

He was in the desert for two to three years in a time of

silence, and now he's going to be sent back home and he's

really not going to be able to fully be engaged in what it is

that's on his heart or what he sends God calling them to deuce.

He had to learn patience. He had to learn the trust in in

God's plan and not his own. He wasn't striving.

He didn't argue with these guys. He submitted and humbled

himself. And so he goes down to Tarsus,

it says in verse 31. Then the churches throughout all

Judea, Galilee and Samaria had peace and were edified.

So we remember the church at Pentecost started in Jerusalem.

That's all we heard for a period of time in Acts, the city of

Jerusalem. And now we see that the church

has spread into these other regions in Judea and Galilee and

Samaria. Remember the great Pentecost

that says you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes

upon you should be my witnesses in all Jerusalem, which they

were at Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth.

And this is happening and it says that they had peace and

they were edified, meaning they were built up in their faith.

It would be hard to have peace under persecution.

The Lord got a hold of Paul's life and he was a major

instigator of the persecution. He was endorsed by the governing

authorities to basically take Christianity down.

He was the big influence, the big leader of this, and that is

not happening. So the church, even though

persecution was occurring, it wasn't to the degree it would

have been or was whenever Paul was lost.

And it says they were walking in the fear of the Lord and in the

comfort of the Holy Spirit. Walking in the fear of the Lord.

That's something that I believe we all need to understand more

deeply. What does it mean to walk in the

fear of the Lord? How do we know when we're

becoming more like Jesus? Is it based upon how much we

know the Bible, or how many people we witness to, or how

many people we gave a promise book to or a Bible?

The Holy Spirit tells us that His attributes are Lovejoy,

peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness and

meekness, temperance, self-control.

Whenever the Lord is getting a hold of our lives and we're

beginning to fear the Lord, we begin to be repelled from sinful

lifestyles, sinful patterns, sinful activities that we may be

at one time engaged in to a great degree.

Even after being believers for a period of time.

As we're growing, we're learning to to be holy as He's holy.

It's not an overnight experience where we're being made into the

image and and likeness of Christ, but you can be certain

that you're walking in the fear of the Lord whenever you notice

you're becoming more gentle, less abrasive, when you're

becoming more humble, when you're becoming less critical,

when you're becoming more loving, when you're becoming

more patient, when you have more joy in your life, you can be

encouraged that you are becoming like Christ.

And that's really what it's all about, isn't it?

The church is to feed the sheep that we might become more Christ

like that when we drive down the road after any given message of

wherever we've been in church, that we're thinking about

becoming more like Christ, that that should be our desire.

That should be our heartbeat. When we see the unchrist like

characteristics in our heart, it should bother us and to disturb

us that we don't want to be that way.

We want to be a different kind of people.

We want to live our lives for the purposes of the Lord.

And, and so this fear is not this anxiety or anxiousness of,

of, of God being upset with us or we're being going to

discipline us or, or something. That the fear is a loving,

tender work of God's Spirit where he's massaging our heart

and renewing our mind and talking to us about things that

he wants us to begin to live and does not know about.

And that the fear then causes us to want to change, right.

We don't fear God. We don't care about change.

But when we begin to fear God and we're walking with him to a,

a deeper degree, we begin to hear him more and understand his

ways. We're, we're begin to slowly

become more In Sync with the Spirit who lives in us to want

to guide us and make us Christ like we, we're not interested in

grieving the spirit or quenching the spirit because that's

evidence that there's No Fear of God in US, right?

And so this is all work of God and how he, he changes us and,

and, and transforms us and, and the fear of the Lord, the Bible

tells us is the beginning of wisdom and they depart from evil

is understanding not only the fear of the Lord, but they were

comforted of the Holy Spirit. I think so much anxiety that we

experience in our lives, there's so much nervousness or double

mindedness or, or stress or whatever the term might be,

depression, despondency, all the things that can affect us many

times are a result that if we're not fearing the Lord, the, the

Spirit can't comfort us because we're going our own way, doing

our own thing right, just living the way we think we should live.

And then we have anxiety. If we're not living the way God

wants us to live or we're anxious, there's something in

our soul that isn't restful. We're, it isn't well with our

souls because of this lack of fearing the Lord.

When the Lord looks down upon the planet and he sees his

people, the people he can most use and work through are the

people that are beginning to understand the healthy aspect of

fearing the Lord and begin to become more Christ like.

And what many times we don't even see it in ourselves.

We don't know it that other people pick up on it or they

say, you know, you're different. The wife says to the husband,

you're, you're so much more patient with me.

You're you're, you're, you're more gentle, you're less

abrasive or arrogant or obnoxious or whatever the

comments might be at times. And, and it should encourage us

if our wives say something like that to us, because that means

we're becoming a little bit more like Jesus, right?

Because we know what we're like without Christ.

We know how we live and how we act without the Spirit of God.

And we should know the difference when the Spirit of

God is at work in our heart. And so then we have this comfort

of the Holy Spirit, the, the, the peace of God, because what

we're, we're living under his lordship.

We want to fulfill the, the purpose of our being here on

this planet for whatever long period of time we're here.

It's not for my purposes, It's for his purposes.

And it's, and it's really hard to hear what his purposes are if

I'm not fearing him, if I'm not sitting at his feet and desiring

to listen and to have him have his way in my heart.

And it's as a result of what was happening here in this church,

these churches at the time, because of this experience of,

of the fear of the Lord and also the comfort of the Holy Spirit,

they were multiplied, they were growing, they were expanding.

The crowds were being drawn to the word of God.

And and that's what is encouraging because Jesus says

if I be lifted up, I'll draw all men to myself.

If Christ is being lifted up in your heart and your daily life

and your activities and your job and your home and your

neighborhood, your community, you will have divine encounters

with God. You will have opportunities to

tell people about the Lord. It's just going to happen

supernaturally because God works through vessels of clay like us

that are filled with his life. The the purpose of expansion of

the Kingdom. We have the Bibles that you guys

can grab if you're so inclined, or, or just the promise book.

Maybe the people have the Bible already that has never read it.

But the promise book is a neat little book and what's beautiful

and all the topics in this little book talk about the

struggles of of human life and the issues of life and, and the

verses are all there. You know about belief.

What does it mean to believe? He that believeth on him is not

condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already,

because he's not believed in the name of the only begotten Son.

John 318. John 336.

He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and he

that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of

God abides on him. Jesus says, I am come a light

into the world, that whoever believeth on me should not abide

in darkness. John 1246 Verily, verily, I say

unto you, he that believeth on me hath everlasting life, just

the promises of God. And so someone who who doesn't

know the Lord, or maybe knows the Lord but never got into the

Word, has a chance to go through this, and all of a sudden, you

know, begin to see that the Lord is speaking to them through the

Word of God. Thou hast put gladness in my

heart more than in the time of their corn and their wine

increased. Psalm 4.

Seven. They that sow in tears shall

reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepest,

bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with

rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

Psalm 1/26, 5:00 and 6:00. So we want to expand the word of

God in our community and we can do it one-on-one through these

kind of tools that the Lord's given us.

Now we Segway into Peter. Peter shows up on the scene when

Paul went up to Jerusalem. It tells us in Galatians that he

spent 15 days with Peter at his house.

And boy, that must have been cool.

Can you imagine? Like hearing Peter and Paul talk

have been fascinating. And, and, and Paul's like, I

knew something about you. Weren't you the one that walked

on water and you got afraid and then you started going down?

Yeah, That was me. Weren't you the one that said

that, you know, you didn't know Jesus after you were following?

What was that all about, You know, Well, you wimp.

Paul's all full of the Spirit now.

You're not thinking about, like, denying Christ.

But he probably had some interesting conversations with

Peter. And Peter and Paul were the

foundational guys, along with a few others that the Lord really

used in the early days. But Peter now is interesting.

He's going up to Joppa, up to Light.

I mean, Light is about 25 miles north of Jerusalem.

So he's getting out of Jerusalem.

The Holy Spirit's moving these guys around now.

They're just not hanging in Jerusalem anymore.

And so he comes to pass. Peter goes went through all

parts of the country that he also came down to the Saints who

dwelt at Lyda. Now on the map, you look at Lyda

as Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.

I remember when we flew in there, this would have been the

region that the Peter was was working at.

And so he came down to the Saints who dwelt at Lyda.

So there's believers there. So he's going to, I'm sure, do

some teaching, equipping, encouraging.

There he found a certain man named Ananias who had been

bedridden 8 years and was paralyzed and Peter said to him,

Ananias, Jesus of Christ heals you, arise and make your bed.

Now this is astounding. Peter didn't do any like laying

of hands on this situation here. He just had a word from the Holy

Spirit that Christ was going to heal this person supernaturally.

He had really nothing to do with it other than being there and

telling this man what the Lord was going to do for him.

This man was paralyzed for all these years and wasn't able to

move. I can't comprehend what that

might have been like. And Peter said to him, Jesus the

Christ heals you. Arise and make your bed.

Then he arose immediately. So all who dwelt at Lina and

Sharon saw him and turn to the Lord.

They immediately became believers because of the

experience of seeing the Lord supernaturally touch this person

who was not ever able to move before this miracle that

occurred. And then he goes down to Joppa.

Joppa's about 10 miles from Lyda.

That was one of the first places we saw when we were on the

pastor tour in, in Israel. And, and Joppa was the home of,

you know, Simon the Tanner and Joppa.

There was a certain disciple named Tabatha, which is

translated Dorcas, which means gazelle.

That's the Greek translation. This woman was full of good

works and charitable deeds which she did.

So the thought was that Philip, whenever he was taking the

gospel after the Ethiopian Union got saved, he was in this

general region and he was responsible as one of the people

who were set aside to take care of the orphans and the widows.

And so he had relationships with perhaps some of these people

here and and and believers. And so she had this life of this

being a blessing to people. But it happened in those days

that she became sick and she died, and when they had washed

her, they laid her in the upper room.

So she must have been a woman of some degree of wealth, because

usually when you died in those days, they put you right away.

The body would be decomposing and this kind of stuff.

But she was in this upper room, which would signify there was

some degree of financial, well, wherewithal.

And they washed her. And maybe they knew that Peter

was in the area. Maybe the word got done about

Ananias that was healed, that maybe he's going to come down

here. Who knows?

You can't read too much between the lines.

But they laid her in this upper room.

And since Lada was near Joppa and the disciples had heard that

Peter was there, they sent two men to him, imploring him, not

the delay and coming to them. So they wanted Peter to get down

there ASAP. It's about a day's journey,

about 10 miles. Then Peter arose and went with

them. And when he had come, they

brought him to the upper room and all the widows stood by him

weeping. So that the group of widows,

this, this woman was a real testimony of, of someone who did

many, many blessed works to help other people.

She's a real servant. So Peter's up there and on all

these widows stood by him weeping, showing the tunics in

the garments which Dorcas had made while she was with him.

So she was very gifted in, in sewing and and making things.

We know that Jesus was the one who trained Peter.

Peter was an understudy and he would be invited into these

places to see the Lord do miracles.

He was there in the room when Jesus healed the little girl,

Jairus's daughter and the things that Jesus said he he cleared

the room out. They had professional mourners

there people be paid the mourn, the screaming, yelling, the

crying. In this instance these are

genuine mourners that knew Dorcas and they were all broken

hearted as to what happened. So the first thing Jesus did

when he was with Jairus's daughter was he cleared the room

out of of all the confusion. And this is what Peter is doing

now. Peter puts them out and he

kneels down and he prays and turning to the body, he says,

Tabatha arise. Jesus said to Jairus's daughter

Talithia arise, Tabatha Kume means to to rise and she opened

her eyes. Now this is a day after she

died. Her body would have been

starting to decompose. And we know Lazarus had talked

about the smell of the of the body.

If he came out of the tomb, what was it going to be like after

being dead for a period of time? Already her organs are shutting

down and all these kind of things.

But that doesn't mean anything to the Lord.

When he's going to do a miracle. He does a miracle.

And it it completely defies anything that we would

understand scientifically or medically.

That's why it's called a miracle.

And she opens her eyes. And when she saw Peter, she sat

up, she wasn't groggy. I mean, she dislike immediately

resuscitated. Basically she was dead, but she

was brought back to life. This is not resurrection.

When you're resurrected, you know, you never die again.

Jesus said I am the resurrection of the life he that believeth in

me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.

And he that believeth to me shall never die.

So when when you're resurrected, you don't have to worry about

dying again. You know, you're out of here,

man, it's it's over. But anyway, you know, she was

healed here. And of course, eventually she

would die. You know, just like anybody else

that had the experience of being raised from the dead.

And he gave her his hand and lifted her up.

And when he had called the Saints and widows, he presented

her alive. And it became known throughout

all Joppa and many believed on the Lord.

So it was that he stayed many days in Joppa with Simon a

Tanner. So we're not going to go into

chapter 10, but think about this.

Peter is a Jewish Christian, deeped in the history of

Judaism, understands the issues of kosher and uncleanness, and a

lot of this stuff is just religious stuff, had nothing to

do with real spirituality. But nonetheless, it took a while

to not be uptight about tradition and Jewish customs.

So for the fact that Peter is staying with a Tanner who would

be represented as someone who's in a industry that's very

unclean, and they said that you have to be so many miles outside

the city and you can't be around like uncleanness.

Well, he lived there with this guy.

So Simon would have been, I'm sure, a deep follower of Christ.

He opened his house up to hospitality.

He let Peter hang out there as a base of operation.

Maybe Peter was learning the trade.

He was a fisherman. Maybe he needed to make some

money too, to help for his livelihood.

So he's working with Simon the Tanner in Joppa.

I actually saw that place right on the coast of the

Mediterranean, quite a a view and very interesting thinking

about what who was in that that particular place that I got a

chance to stand in and think about South.

Exciting things in the book of the act.

The most exciting things I think that take away is that it's all

about the works of the Holy Spirit and the work of the Holy

Spirit is still occurring today in your life and mine.

And my prayer is that as we study more of the book of the

Acts, our faith is growing. It's being more dependent on the

Spirit of God and less dependent on our own abilities.

And we're trusting God for great things and with the gospel and

in our families, in our lives, in our ministries, and in the

communities that we're all from, and with the people we get to

minister to and get to serve, the Bible promises us we will

receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon us.

Amen. And may the Spirit of God be

poured afresh upon us today. God the Holy Spirit, Father God,

we thank you today for your word.

We thank you for the history that we can learn.

It builds our faith. It helps us to understand that

the Christian life is is not an easy life.

Many, many times we see what Paul went through in the

challenges in the beginning stages of his ministry.

And Lord, we'll continually read about the persecution against

the church in the book of the Acts.

But it it didn't stop your work. It didn't prevent your power

from being manifest and from you accomplishing your will.

Remind us, Lord, in the days that we live, regardless of what

we hear on media, what we see on TV, what we read.

Lord, it has nothing to do with circumventing your power.

Because, Lord, you have all power.

And Lord, help us to trust in that.

Help our minds to be fueled with the possibilities of the work of

the Holy Spirit in situations that seem impossible.

Help us, Lord, to have the mind of Christ where you tell us in

Your Word that You have given us the mind of Christ, that we

might see this cosmos, this system, that we live in this

world, this universe as one that is controlled by you.

Father, we pray your blessing upon us and pray your blessing

upon your sheep here today. And that, Lord, we would all go

out looking for opportunities this week, somehow, somewhere,

to someone to share You Lord with.

We're so glad you joined us today on this edition of Living

Waters of Grace. Pastor Clark is teaching through

the Book of Acts, which is the only book that chronicles the

history of the early church immediately after Jesus's

ascension. It gives us a front row seat to

how the Gospel began to move outwards, starting in Jerusalem

and reaching into the heart of the Roman Empire in just three

decades. A small group of frightened

ordinary believers became a bold, spirit empowered movement

that transformed the known world.

Acts is not just a history lesson.

It's a reminder of what God can do when His people are

surrendered, obedient and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Their perseverance still inspires us today.

May we follow their example and live faithfully for Christ in

our own time. We hope today's message

encouraged you. Living Waters of Grace is a

ministry of Calvary Chapel, Westmoreland.

If you're in the Greensburg, PA area, we'd love to have you join

us in person. Our Sunday service begins at

10:30 AM at 400 E Pittsburgh St. Unit 6B.

Be sure to visit calvarychapelonline.com to

confirm times and learn more. If you are in the Greensburg

area, you can listen to Grace FM on the new 91.7 frequency.

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Thank you for tuning in and spending this time in God's

Word. Be sure to join us again for

Living Waters of Grace.