Go on speaking | Sunday Sermon

So we are in Acts 18 today, and up to this point, we've seen the journey of the gospel, the church continue through from the day, you know, when Jesus ascended to the Father, He sent them to Jerusalem.

They were filled with the Spirit, Peter preached in 3000, all the way to when the church began to spread from Jerusalem and go out to the areas surrounding.

Then the gospel went to the Gentiles.

And last week, actually a couple weeks ago, we began to look at Paul's second missionary journey.

Okay, this is when Paul wanted to go back through those areas where he and Barnabas had gone before and just check on the churches they had planted.

He wanted to strengthen those churches, and they had a letter from the church in Jerusalem for the Gentile Christians.

And so Paul travels throughout the region of Syria and Phrygia and he's strengthening the churches, and then he goes over, you know, around through Cilicia, where his home Tarsus is, and crosses through his hometown, goes up a mountain pass called the Cilician gates.

That would have been his third mountain pass on the journey.

And he gets up to this plateau in the area of Galatia.

He goes back to those Galatian cities that he and Barnabas had planted.

And he goes to Derby and he goes to Lystra, the city where he was stoned.

Okay, he goes to Iconium.

In fact, while he's in Lystra, he meets a young disciple and he goes, This kid's got potential, and he takes him with him.

So Timothy starts to travel with him.

He goes through Iconium and he goes through Pisidi and Antioch.

When he gets done with that journey, we talked about, he's probably kind of like, you know what?

I'm not ready to go home.

What's next?

Who else wants to hear about Jesus?

So they make their way.

Brandon wants to hear about Jesus.

So they make their way across Asia Minor.

They go to Troaz, and they they see it.

Paul gets a vision of a man from Macedonia.

He says, Come over here and help us.

So they hitch a ride on a ship, they cross the Aegean Sea, they went to Neapolis and up to Philippi.

They preach the gospel in Philippi.

Lydia and her household came to Christ.

They are beaten and thrown into prison.

The Philippian jailer is then saved.

Eventually they visit Lydia and then they head out of town and they head to Thessalonica.

Paul preached the gospel in Thessalonica.

And as he's there, the Jews there were hostile toward his message.

They didn't want to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, and they literally basically chased him out of town by night.

He went down to Berea, and the people there were more noble, it says.

Told them the life and the ministry, the death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus, and then proclaimed, This Jesus I'm proclaiming to you, that's our Messiah, says they searched the scriptures to see if these things were so.

But then those other ones from Thessalonica had caught up with them in Berea and chased him out of there too.

So now he took a ship and he was in Athens, but he was in Athens alone, waiting for Silas and Timothy.

And so he's waiting there in Athens.

He's looking at the idols, and we talked about last week that as he looked at the idolatry, the false worship, the temples, the altars, to all these false gods, the image-bearers of God, the one that God had created to reflect his glory to the creation, are giving glory to the things that God created instead of God.

It says his spirit was provoked in him.

And so he begins just reasoning with the Jews in the synagogue.

He goes to the marketplace and is reasoning with whoever happens to be there.

People are just walking by, he's starting up conversations, he's reasoning with them, sharing Christ with them.

It says he even talked to the intellectual people, the philosophers, the Stoics, the Epicureans.

And he goes into the Areopagus, he's taken by the intellectuals to the Areopagus where he stands before the intellectual and uh just uh you know elite of the city and he proclaims the gospel to them.

But at this point in the story, Paul's been on the road for a year to a year and a half away from home.

He's been traveling this entire time, walked over a thousand miles on foot.

He's been beaten, he's been chased out of cities, okay?

He's been imprisoned falsely.

Now he's city been alone in Athens for a while, just away from his ministry companions, his friends, okay, surrounded by people that are more or less, at least in their lifestyle, hostile to his.

And it says in verse 1 of chapter 18, it says, and after this, Paul left Athens and he went to Corinth, Corinth.

Okay?

So the first point I want to make in this sermon is this we're not made to do this thing alone.

Okay, Paul understood his mission.

He understood what he was called to, he understood his purpose, he understood the gospel that he needed to take to the world.

But but Paul had been journeying for a long time.

At this point in his journey, he's exhausted.

He's physically tired.

Okay, he's been chased out of cities where he shared the gospel with people.

They got saved, and they're like these brand new Christians.

It's like they've just been born, and it's like he wants to be there with them and nurture them and help them to grow and understand their faith and the gospel and how to follow Christ, but he gets chased out first, so he's worried about these new Christians and new churches, and these things are on his mind.

And to make it worse, he's lonely.

I remember um, and I think we I may have told you this before, but do you guys remember that really um holy, edifying movie called The Jerk with Steve Martin?

I love that movie.

That's my like confession for the day, you know.

So, anyway, this movie, there's a point when he makes this invention and then somebody sues him because somehow the invention makes you cross-eyed or something, and so everybody who wears it is going cross-eyed, and so he's in this scene where he's writing$1.09 checks to everyone who's ever bought an OptiGrab, right?

And so he's just frustrated, and his wife comes in and she's upset, and they have this big fight, and he's like, That's it, I don't need you, I don't need anybody, I don't need anything, I don't need anybody at all.

Just me.

Amen.

And then he says, he says, except for this ashtray, and he picks up an ashtray and he's like, just I don't need anything, just just this ashtray and me and nothing else.

And he's like, Oh, and this paddle ball, and then he's walking out.

I don't need anything but the paddle ball, the ashtray, and me, nothing, oh yeah, and this lamp.

And by the time he walks out the door, he's got the paddle ball, he's got the ashtray, he's got some matches, he's holding a chair, and he's walking out the door, and I don't need anybody.

Well, sometimes we're like that as Christians.

You know, we're like, I don't need anybody else, I don't need the church, it's just me, just me and Jesus, right?

I don't need anybody else.

Well, maybe the Bible.

Just me and Jesus and my Bible, and I don't need the body of Christ, I don't need the church, I don't need anything else.

Well, except for maybe like the chosen, you know, though just me, Jesus the Bible, and the chosen, and I don't need anybody else.

But the fact is, we're wrong.

Steve Martin was wrong.

He ended up coming back to Bernadette Peters, his wife, right?

And we're wrong.

That God has created us for life and the body in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, it says, For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

In verse 21, it says, the eye can't say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.

Verse 27, he says, Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it.

And so Paul gets to the end of the road in Athens, and he's just tired.

He's lonely, he's worried.

In in actually, he even says in 1 Corinthians, he says, Um, when I was when I came to you, brothers, I did not come proclaiming.

Oh no, he says, Um, I was I came to you in fear and trembling.

Like he was just at a hard place in his life as he came into the city.

In verse 2, it says, And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome.

And he went to see them, and because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and worked, for they were tent makers by trade.

God just knows what we need, doesn't he?

He knows what we need, and we might be going through hard times, but you know, eventually at some point, God is gonna just recognize look, okay, come here, I know you're tired.

I you know, I know what you need.

Do you remember the story of Elijah when he faced off the 400 prophets of Baal?

And he's like, gets to the end of it, and he's just wiped out emotionally, he's he's he's you know faced basically death, right?

And then all the prophets of Baal are slain, and then Jezebel's like, I'm coming after you, sucker.

And he runs and he just keeps running and running and running, and finally he just collapses in exhaustion.

And what did God do?

He sent him an angel to come and bake him a cake and give him a little food.

And then he ate the food and he went back to sleep, and then he woke up and then he went again, right?

Like God knows what we need and he knows the moments that we need it.

And as Paul arrives in Corinth, struggling, his friends and companions are still in Macedonia.

He's waiting to be reunited with them, and as he arrives, he just happens to find these two wonderful people.

And they're a Jewish couple, Aquila and Priscilla.

And it just so happens that they work in the same trade as Paul, making tents.

And it might have been tents or maybe like canvas canopies for shop fronts, that kind of thing, right?

And Emperor Claudius had just recently banished all the Jews from the city of Rome.

And I'm sure this was a big hardship for them.

They had to pull up stakes, probably close up their shop, leave their home.

They were banished, they had to leave Rome and they end up settling in the city of Corinth.

And they might be thinking, you know, we've got to start our whole lives over, what are we gonna do?

This would have been a huge hardship for them.

And so there they are.

And then Paul the Apostle arrives in the city.

And they're there for him to be a comfort to him.

They're there for him to strengthen him in his ministry, but Paul, so Paul is also there for them.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

I want you talking back today, okay?

This is it.

We're gonna, I'm gonna train you.

You need to be talking in church, okay?

Not to each other, but listen, and when you hear something, just say, no, that's not right, Pastor, or you say, Amen, right?

Let's practice.

Say amen.

Amen.

That's right, that's how we do this, okay?

And so Paul's there for their sake too, because they become lifelong friends of Paul.

And when he leaves Corinth, they're gonna go with him.

They settle in Ephesus while he goes and they plant a house church in Ephesus.

And then he comes back there and he does ministry there for three years, and eventually they have a house church in Rome while Paul's there.

And so Paul is strengthened by the companionship of Aquila and Priscilla, and when Silas and Timothy arrive, he's strengthened even more.

And they arrive to him back engaged.

He's focused, he's doing ministry.

And verse 4 says he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks.

And when Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus.

See, God knows what we need in order to accomplish his mission for us in this life.

He knows what we need, church.

We need our brothers and we need our sisters in order to live the life that God has called us to live, in order to become the people that God has called us to be.

It's in that context, in the body of Christ, that we are formed, that we grow and become spiritually mature, that we become equipped for the mission of carrying his message to the world.

But the second thing I want to talk about today is that message.

Okay, because the question is, what is our message?

In 1 Corinthians, it's a couple years later, he writes a letter back to them, okay?

And he's telling them, as I came into the city, this is what I had decided would be my message for you.

Okay?

So in verse 1, it says, And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

So as Paul approaches Corinth, he knows what kind of a city he's walking into because Corinth had a reputation.

They were this city that sat on this narrow strip of land called an Ithmus, okay?

And it sat between the Aegean Sea and the Gulf of Corinth.

And the only way around it was to sail hundreds of miles through dangerous seas to get to the other body of water.

And so Corinth had built this thing called a slipway, where if you had a ship, if you were a merchant and you had a vessel, you could literally go to this area and they would pull your ship out of the water and they would move it along this slipway and they would drop it into the other body of water.

And so this way they could actually just move cargo, move people quickly back and forth safely, and make more money.

And so there's a lot, a lot, a lot of money flowing through the city of Corinth.

And so there's wealth and there's influence and there's greed and there's power, and there's an eye, there's idolatry.

Those who were in the Bible study saw the remains of the city of Corinth.

It's still there to this day, and there's this giant rocky prominence that's behind the city.

On top of that sat the temple of Aphrodite.

And at one point in history, I don't know if this was true in the first century or not, there was a thousand temple prostitutes that would wander the city, okay, at night.

But this was the reputation that Corinth had: a reputation for idolatry, for wealth and money and greed and power and sexual sin, immorality, and prostitution.

And so as Paul's approaching the city, he had to make a decision regarding his message.

What would his message be?

What would his focus be to the people of Corinth?

And so he could have brought a lot of different messages, right?

Could have come and talked about money.

Hey, money, the love of money, is the root of all kinds of evil, you know?

And it can't fulfill you.

You can get lots of money, and it's not going to fill you up, right?

He could have come talking about idolatry.

These vain idols have eyes but can't see, and mouths but can't speak, and noses but can't smell, and hands but can't feel, and feet but can't walk.

You trust in them, but it says that those who make them become like them as do those who worship them.

He could have come with that message.

He could have come with a message about sexual sin and promiscuity, but Paul chose a different message.

He said, I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

He's like, I'm not gonna, I wasn't gonna focus on your greed and your love of money.

I wasn't gonna focus on your idolatry, I wasn't gonna focus on your rampant sexual sin.

All those things are just symptoms of the real problem.

The fact that every man, woman, and child is born spiritually dead, separated from the eternal life that humanity was created to possess, but that we lost when we rebelled against him and were cut off from the source of life.

That life that flows from the fountain of life, God Himself, the one who made us.

This is the problem that's addressed by the cross of Christ.

I'm having conversations more regular.

I've been going to Cerritos College, and as I'm there, I'm talking to students who are there.

And so we have this question on the board.

It says, Are you a good person, right?

And it's just to get a conversation started.

So they'll go, they'll come up and take a dryer race marker, they'll write on the board, you know, their answer.

And there's some that have been around church a little bit and they'll be like, Well, maybe not.

But a lot of them are like, no, I try to be, or you know, yes, I'm a good person.

And so it's a conversation starter.

So we'll go, hey, you wrote, you were a good person, you know.

Hey, what do you base that on, you know?

Well, I try to be good, I try to be kind, I try not to hurt people, you know, and I so I think I'm a pretty good person.

I go, okay, that's cool, you know, that's good.

I try to do those things too, you know, respect, that's amazing, you know.

But you know, the Bible says it's appointed unto man once to die, and then comes the judgment, you know?

And so it's basically saying at one point, any of us, all of us, are gonna stand before the presence of God, and it won't be us determining how good we are by looking at the people around us and saying, I think I'm better than a lot of them.

See, when we stand before him, it's gonna be him declaring whether we are a good person or not.

So I ask him, you know, what do you think?

What do you think when you stand before him?

What do you think he's gonna say?

A lot of them will be like, well, you know, I think he'll he'll be fair and he'll be kind, you know, because he knows I try to be good.

And he, you know, one of the girls was Catholic, she's like, and I I I confess to the priest, and you know, I go to mass, and you know, other people are like, I, you know, I do good things, and and and so I said, you know, he gave us a he gave us a way we can actually know what that is and and and and how we're gonna be judged.

You know what that is?

It's called the Ten Commandments, you know?

So we'll talk about some of those.

Do you know any of them?

You know, anybody know a Ten Commandment here?

Okay, no I d no idols, right?

An idol is anything we give our, put our hope in or our trust in, except for God, right?

Okay, anybody else?

Honor your father and mother.

Anybody in here ever dishonored their father and mother?

My dad had to set me straight when I was young when I would do that.

No other gods before me?

Yeah?

Anybody else?

Do not covet other people's stuff, okay?

What is it?

Don't murder, but but then like we're I always thought, you know, I'm good on that one, right?

I haven't ever killed anybody, but then Jesus goes and ruins it.

He says, Well, actually, if you even hate your brother, you're guilty of murder.

So yeah, you know, have anybody ever hated someone before?

Keep the Sabbath, right?

Okay, yeah, keeping the Sabbath.

There is lying, right?

Anybody ever told a lie before?

And so by the time we get through, you know, it's like they've there's a couple of them.

They said, okay, yeah, I've done that one, you know.

You know, I've done that one a few times.

Okay, so then if you've lied and you've stole something when you were a kid, right, and you've hated someone before, you just admitted it.

You're a liar, a thief, and a murderer, you know?

And the thing is, is like I'm not judging because I am too, because I've done those things too.

So if you stand before God on that day of judgment and he says, you know, why should I allow you to come into my eternal presence and dwell with me forever?

And you point to the fact that you say, I'm pretty good, and I try to do good things.

Yeah, I've sinned a few times.

Guess what?

What's he gonna say, church?

Because it's not enough.

And if it was enough, then Adam and Eve could have just been good back to the garden.

They could have just been good enough and they could have got right back in, right?

But the point is, none of us have been able to do it from the beginning till now.

None of us have been able to be good enough, and there's a reason that God sent a savior.

It says the Bible in Galatians 3.24, it says that the law was given as a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.

Because none of us can be good enough, none of us can be righteous.

God sent his son, and he accomplished two things on our behalf.

The first one is he lived a perfect life that we can't live.

Okay, he lived the perfect life that you and me can't.

He lived everything perfect, perfectly obeyed the law, and when it came time for him to just receive his reward, instead of taking his reward, what did he take?

He hung on the cross and he took the punishment for your sin.

He took the punishment for my sin.

And this is called the great exchange.

He takes my sin in exchange for his righteousness.

He takes your sin in exchange for his righteousness.

And so, if you've been justified by faith in Jesus Christ and you stand before him on that day, you're not being judged by all the good things you tried to do and all the few sins that you just broke, those little white lies you told, you're not, you're not being justified by that.

Because you're not standing in your own righteousness, you're standing in his.

Amen.

And so, Paul, he says, I'm not gonna come and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna come, and I'm not gonna bring you a message of your idolatry and of your greed and of your promiscuity.

I'm gonna bring Christ and Christ crucified.

And Lord, we and church, we live in a in a world that is one giant corinth filled with lust and filled with greed and filled with selfishness and idolatry and hatred, filled with self-righteousness by religious people who look down their noses and wag their fingers and actually believe they're better than everybody else.

But in the church, I see a thousand different messages.

We want to preach a gospel of morality.

You've got to obey all of our rules, you've got to dress how we want you to dress, you're gonna watch the shows we want you to watch.

And if you don't do all of those things, you're going to hell.

We see that we hear a message against sinful lifestyles or against communism or against capitalism or telling everybody how to vote in November or which crooked, rotten, nasty political party we want to pretend that God belongs to.

But every single one of those things are nothing but symptoms of the real problem.

A world that needs to know Jesus.

And so we can preach a gospel of morality, and then the result is gonna be a slightly more moral people that goes to hell.

And we can preach a gospel of politics, and all those good little voters are gonna go to eternity without salvation, and we can preach a gospel of social justice, and the best we can hope for is that we're gonna make people's lives a little bit better for this life, but it gives them no hope for the eternity that is to come.

So Paul said, I decided to know nothing among you but Christ and Christ crucified.

And church, this is our message too.

There are a lot of great messages that we could make our central focus of our lives and of our ministry.

But there's only one that reconciles sinful people to the one that made them.

That's why in Romans, Paul said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.

It's the power of God to salvation for all who believe.

See, we need to understand our mission.

And we need to understand our need for the body of Christ.

And we really need to understand our message.

But there's one more thing we need to understand.

And it's this only God can actually save a soul.

In verse 6, it says, When they, these are the Jews, opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and he said to them, Your blood beyond your own heads, I'm innocent.

And from now on I will go to the Gentiles.

And he left there, and he went to the house of a man named Titius Justice, a worshipper of God.

His house was next door to the synagogue, and Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household.

And many of the Corinthians, hearing Paul, believed and were baptized.

And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, Do not be afraid, but go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.

And so as Paul is faithfully proclaiming his message of Jesus and him crucified, finally the Jews in the synagogue begin to oppose him.

And so he leaves the synagogue, takes the message to the Gentiles, and Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, and his whole family believe, and many of the Corinthians believe and are baptized.

And Jesus appears to Paul in a vision.

He says, Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, Paul.

No more fear, no more trembling.

Go on speaking.

Don't be silent.

I'm with you.

No one's going to attack you.

No one's going to harm you.

And he says, This I have many in this city who are my people.

He says, I have many in this city who are my people.

Who's Jesus talking about?

Believers?

That's a good future believers.

That's right.

Hey, you were at the Bible study this week.

You got an advantage over everybody else because you already know this.

So Paul had just gotten started on his evangelistic mission.

And some had believed, but it wasn't like that many.

So Jesus is not referring only to the few who had already been saved up to this point.

He's referring to the people who have not yet believed, but who will.

And as someone who regularly shares the gospel and cares about the eternal salvation of the people that I love and other people that I meet, this is one of the most comforting truths to me in the Bible.

That God already knows those who are his even before they know him.

Remember what Jesus said in John 10?

He said, I am the good shepherd.

I know my own, and my own know me.

And in that verse, he's talking about those Jewish people who will believe and follow him, but then he said something more in verse 16.

He says, I have other sheep, not of this fold, and I must bring them also, for they will listen to my voice, so there will be one flock and one shepherd.

And so Jesus is basically appearing to Paul and he's saying, just keep on preaching that simple message about me, Paul.

Don't get distracted by the social justice gospel.

Don't get distracted by the morality gospel.

Don't get distracted by those nasty, stinking politics all over your Facebook feed.

He says, Don't get distracted, just keep preaching me.

Because there's a whole bunch of my people, my sheep in this city who are going to hear my voice and recognize the voice of their shepherd.

In other words, your responsibility in the city is just keep telling them about me.

Because you don't know.

You don't know who my people are.

You don't know the ones that are my sheep.

You don't know which ones are going to respond and receive the message.

You don't know who's going to be saved, but I do.

And so to me, this is this is an and to Paul probably, this was an extremely encouraging message.

That I'm not responsible for the results of my preaching.

You're not responsible for the results.

Did you know you're the ministers of the gospel?

Because you want to look at me and say, that's a minister.

No, no, no, no.

You're the ministers of the gospel.

The job of the pastors and the prophets and the evangelists and the teachers is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

Like that's your work, ministers of the gospel.

Okay?

So as you go out and preach, preach with your lives, preach with sharing.

As someone asks you a reason for the hope that is within you, and you share that reason, Jesus Christ and Him crucified, okay, with gentleness and respect, you're not responsible for the results.

You're responsible for faithfully proclaiming with your life and your words the gospel of Jesus Christ.

See, I don't have the power to save anybody.

I'm not eloquent enough to argue someone into the kingdom.

I can't make someone believe.

I can't open up their heart and cause them to repent.

But all of us can love people.

Amen?

Amen.

All of us can reason with people.

All of us can pray for people.

All of us can share Christ with people.

And so this is God's word for us today, church.

Are you receiving it?

Are you receiving his word for you?

The Lord's given us a mission and he's given us a mission field.

He's placed us together in this church for a reason.

We are the body of Christ.

We are the body of Christ.

We are the body of Christ.

Together, bringing his love to the world.

Oh, none of you listened to Salty the Singing Songbook.

Come on.

Yeah, few of us have.

Yep, guilty.

Right?

He's planted us together in this church.

He's planted us together in this community beside Cerritos College, across the street from elementary schools, amongst these neighborhoods, among our own families and out there, our co-workers and our friends.

But there are three things that we have to remember, and one is we can't do it alone.

Okay, I can't do it alone, church.

I can't do it alone.

You are the ministers.

You are the ministers.

You are the body of Christ.

Every part has to do its job.

Every part has to do its peace.

Every member has to take its place.

Every member has to step up and be who God created them to be.

We have to show up and we have to do the things God's calling us to do.

Reach the people God's calling us to reach.

Because we've been called to this life and this mission together.

And we need to remember our message.

And church, it's not politics, it's not morality, and it's not culture wars.

Our message is Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

And we have to remember that only God can save.

And so our role is to love people, pray for people, share Christ with people, and the rest is all up to God.

Amen?

Amen.