Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] All right, let's look at acts chapter 14. And we want to pick up where we left off this morning, go in a completely different direction as far as the subject, but we'll start reading in verse number, verse number 21, the Bible says, and when they had preached the gospel to that city and had taught many, they returned again to Listra and to iconium and Antioch, confirming the souls of the disciples and them to continue in the faith and that we must, through much tribulation, enter into the kingdom of God. You know, I don't like that verse.
[00:00:36] I don't like that verse.
[00:00:40] I don't want tribulation.
[00:00:43] I don't want tribulation like, be it natural tribulation or tribulation that comes from persecution.
[00:00:51] I think all of you kind of understand what I'm trying to say.
[00:00:54] But thus it says, it should not surprise us, the trials and tribulations that we must go through because there is no way to avoid it. There's no way to avoid it. And so it should not affect. Oftentimes, tribulation does cause us to withdraw from the Lord because we get disillusioned. Our hope is deferred. Right. And we were hoping for better days, and we don't get better days, but that does. In other words, the tribulation that we face is not reflective. It does not demonstrate whether God's on our side or not. So we can't say, well, if God's on my side, then good things always happen.
[00:01:40] That is inaccurate, that equation. It's not true. But of course, that's what's taught a lot. Verse 23.
[00:01:48] And when they had ordained them elders in every church and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord on whom they believed. All right, so this is the principle of the independent church, right. The churches that Paul and Barnabas started in iconium and Lystra and Derby and Antioch and Pasidia and those other places that they went once, they commended that church to the Lord. They entrusted that church to God. That church became an independent entity. Now we know we're not completely independent, even as independent Baptists. That's why I say little I independent.
[00:02:28] There is no connection really with other churches except the spiritual connection that we have, being all being children of God.
[00:02:37] It's important because this is an important principle, because there are crazies among the independent Baptists that we don't want to have a part with. We don't want to identify with, associate with. We're not going to. Amen. We're not going to. And then there are some that in some ways we might not agree, but they're real. They're sincere believers, even if we don't agree on every point. And those we want to extend a right hand of fellowship to whatever degree that we can. Right. And that's what it means to be independent.
[00:03:13] That's the core.
[00:03:15] To some degree, I'm getting off track here. You all have to help me. But to some degree, being independent, Baptist has become a denomination by itself. A denomination without a central headquarters.
[00:03:28] But it was never intended to be that and it shouldn't be that. And so as you can see here, even Paul and Barnabas, when they took their hands off and they gave these churches to God, those churches were to function independent of them. Of course, we know they gave guidance and as the spiritual fathers and such, but not denying that at all. But just as the print. This is where one of the places you get this principle. Verse 24, please. And after they had passed through out Pasidia and they came to Panphilia. And when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down to Italia and thence sailed to Antioch from whence they had been recommended to the grace of God for the work which they fulfilled. And when they were come and had gathered the church together, they rehearsed all that God had done with them and how he had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles. And there they abode long time with the disciples. All right, let's pray.
[00:04:25] Lord, thank you for the opportunity to look in your word tonight. Thank you for your people being here listening in. Thank you for the grace of God and the power of God that we have seen work among us in our lives. But, Lord, I pray right now, Lord, that you would manifest your power and do a great work among us both as a church and individually in something that we could in the future rehearse the great works of God that you have done. Lord, don't let us live lives where we have to look for what you have done. Lord, let us be people of faith that trust you to do great things and see you do great things.
[00:05:08] And I pray you bless the message tonight. Lord, you know I don't have any power to help your people. But I ask you, Lord, that you would help your people through your word. In Jesus name, amen.
[00:05:21] So what you see, what I want to start in, in verse number 26 is they and then sailed to Antioch. Now there are two antiochs. Don't forget about that. There's an Antioch in Pisidia which is in modern day Turkey, which is one of the places they went to evangelize. And then there's Antioch in Syria, north of Israel, which is a gentile area, but that is where the church at Antioch which sent Paul and Barnabas out, was located. So if you look at the map, you have turkey here, and then you come down the mediterranean coast. And as you go down toward Israel, that's where Syria is. And that's where Antioch in Syria was. So don't get that confused. So the Bible says in verse 26, and thence sailed to Antioch, and this is the key from whence they had been recommended to the grace of God for the work which they fulfilled. So look back at verse chapter 13, verse one, the Bible says, and there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers as Barnabas and Simeon, that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene and Manion, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, separate me, Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.
[00:06:42] And when they had fasted and prayed, they laid their hands on them and sent them away. Now, notice while we're here, I have pointed this out previously, but I'm just going to remind you, notice in these two verses, two and three, the emphasis, the subject is not Barnabas and Saul. The subject is the church. That's a key thing. In other words, in this process where the missionary is being called and sent, we know the Holy spirit's there, the missionaries are there, but the church is where the focus is. Of course, nothing happens without the initiation of the spirit of God. So the spirit of God does his work. He don't ask anybody. He don't take anybody's counsel. He don't ask any advice. He just steps on the scene and he lets this church know I have a work for Barnabas and Saul to do.
[00:07:32] And it is the church's job to recognize that work. Right. He makes it clear it's our job to say, okay, lord, you're the Lord, you're the lord of the harvest, you're the shepherd of the sheep, you are the pastor. That's the key there. He is, the chief shepherd, the pastor. Right.
[00:07:49] And when he tells us to do something, that's what we do.
[00:07:53] Now, as a church, I'm speaking as a church. And of course, individually, it applies as well. And so their response was, he said, separate me, Barnabas and Saul for the work where unto I have called them verse three. And when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them. They sent them away. Who's they? They is the church. So what you see here is consistent with what you see in verse in chapter 14 is Barnabas and Saul did not go out as mavericks as missionaries. They went out in an listen now orderly fashion. There was a process, there was a method that recognized, number one, God's leadership. But God's leadership was recognized by God's people before they were sent out.
[00:08:46] They weren't sent out.
[00:08:48] It wasn't like this. And this is wrong. I want to tell you, this is contrary to the example of scripture where somebody says, I just believe God told me to do something, I'm going to do it no matter what anybody says, and I'm not going to ask any advice. I'm not going to seek any counsel, and I'm not going to tell the people of God in the church. I'm going to go around that. I'm going to circumvent all of that. That is wrong because it ignores the God established order in his work.
[00:09:21] I say this, and I want to be transparent with you. Even this morning, as I was talking about the importance of being at the church meeting for the exhortation, the confirmation, I feel a little bit shy about saying some of these things. You know why? Because I don't want it to be perceived that I'm saying it for my own self interest. Well, we have a big church with so many people or whatever, or, well, I want everything we're saying. Well, there's a proper order to do this and you should bring it to the church and the church should recognize it because I'm the pastor of the church and that way I have control of everything.
[00:09:58] To be honest, in my heart, I don't like saying some of these things because that's not what it's about at all. It's about God's people. It's about God's church. And this is what God has established. And there is great value, as I was talking about this morning, and this is just kind of another page of that, there is great value in the wisdom and the spirituality and the combined love of God among God's people. We know all of us are on different planes and levels and points of growth, and some of us are more mature than others, and that's the way it's supposed to be. But all of that combined, the collective body of Christ has a great deal of wisdom and spirituality that we get from God as a group, not just as an individual.
[00:10:45] This is the way God has designed it to work. This is why we have things like church discipline. Because church discipline is when the collective says, that's wicked, right? It's a collective statement of condemnation, of some act, right, of some sin. That's powerful. That is powerful. It's way more powerful than just one guy or one lady going to somebody and saying, what you're doing isn't right.
[00:11:14] Way more powerful. This is what God described it, how God described it. And this is the order that God established. All right? The same is true with sending missionaries or any work of God.
[00:11:27] Any work of God. It's when the church comes together with a collective heart and mind, having sought the Lord on the matter, and they look at Barnabas and Saul and they say, God has called these men to do it. We need to help them. We need to send them. We need to do everything in our power. So it's not just God sending them. Notice that in 13, chapter 13, it wasn't just God was sending them. Although that is true, it's mentioned in verse four, sent forth by the Holy Ghost. In verse three, the church sends them. So you have the Holy Ghost sending them and the church is sending them, and both are required. Now, ultimately, we know that churches mess up and churches get out of the will of God. I remember one pastor told us that it was in West Virginia. He was somebody that knew brother Collins.
[00:12:16] And this pastor, when we were at his church as missionaries, he told us that their church had a sum of money. And the Lord laid on his heart to use that money to help a missionary, I think, buy some bibles in a foreign country. And the church overruled him, voted him out so that they could spend it on what they wanted to spend it on. And voting him back in churches do dumb things, right?
[00:12:44] Every one of your faces is like churches. Not just because, just because we're all together doesn't mean we make wise decisions. We need God to be leading us, right?
[00:12:57] So, I mean, there's no question that sometimes churches do wrong. But this idea that we just ignore that, ignore the church's wisdom and God's order in the way he wants his work done, that's not wise. That's not wise. And that's a red flag. You see anybody doing that? It's a red flag. That's why, look, when we send missionaries, and I'll get more into this in a minute, but when we send or support, not send missionaries, that's more obvious. When we support missionaries, it's important that missionary is a part of a local church that is sending them. Why? This right here, it's just that simple.
[00:13:32] There should be a church.
[00:13:35] And remember, we could talk about in these passages. We can talk about the church and people could say, well, I'm part of the church, the church. I don't deny that you're saved. You've been baptized into the body of Christ. There's only one of those, the body of Christ. So you're part of the church. But this is not talking about that. This is talking about a local church, right? That's what we read here. And so even the great Barnabas and Saul, even the apostle Paul, who himself had, unlike you, unlike me, had revelations from God. He wrote scripture. He was in a different category than we are. Would you agree to that? Now? Not Barnabas, but Paul absolutely was. But even Paul submitted himself to the order that God had established with his own local church. That's what you see here.
[00:14:26] The great apostle Paul. That's what you see.
[00:14:32] The church recommended them to the grace of God and they went out again and they went out and did the work. So they were doing the work as an extension of their church. That's the whole thing about laying on of hands. Why it's so important, because when that missionary does the work, it's the church doing the work. You see what I'm saying? That's why it's so important. Mission conference is so important.
[00:14:55] But I'm getting ahead of myself now. Verse 23 of acts 14, we talked about this morning and they had ordained them elders in every church.
[00:15:05] What you see in this, it's not very obvious, but what you see in this is, you see a formal, in 13 and 14, you see a formal sending of missionaries, right? A formal process whereby they're approved, they're formally sent out. And in their work of the missionaries, what do you see? You see a formal process whereby leaders in the churches are established and the churches are organized.
[00:15:35] So it's not just a nebulous group of people kind of floating around.
[00:15:40] It's a distinct body, right? It's not like a cloud, it's like a balloon. It's a distinct body of believers who have been baptized after having believed and they have chosen leaders.
[00:15:58] You see all of this, I mentioned it this morning, but just kind of to read or iterate, it's the principle of the organization of local churches. It's right. It's good. Now you can take the formality too far and I can wear one of those big pointy hats, right?
[00:16:18] Would you all be in favor of that big pointy hat? We're not going there.
[00:16:23] You can over formalize it. Nobody liked my joke. Nobody. Nobody laughed at my joke. It wasn't funny. It just wasn't funny.
[00:16:32] Yes, I got you all to laugh now. Well, he did anyway.
[00:16:40] Here's what I want you to see. Here's all I'm trying to say with this is when you get to verse 26 of chapter 14, they're coming back to that church. You know why?
[00:16:53] They feel an obligation to their church.
[00:16:58] Their church sent them.
[00:17:00] They're connected.
[00:17:02] They're not mavericks. They recognized that sending agency and are returning them to kind of give an answer. Right. To rehearse, show you sent us. This is what we did. And that is so important.
[00:17:19] That is so important.
[00:17:21] This is the basis, really, of what we're going to have in April, which is a missions conference. It's the basis, a partial basis of a mission policy in our church. Where do we form? I know in our day, everything's so complicated and we have rules and regulations and taxes and everything, but the basis for our mission work is found in the scripture and we deal with the more complicated things as we can using the wisdom of God. But let me give an example.
[00:17:50] As far as a missions policy of our church, I'm not going to stay long here. I'm going to move on to something else. Just a minute. All right. Look at chapter 14, verse 22.
[00:17:59] Notice what Barnabas and Paul are doing. Confirming the souls of the disciples and exhorting them to continue in the faith. And that we must, through much tribulation, enter into the kingdom of God. And when they had ordained them elders in every church and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord on whom they believed. What are the missionaries doing?
[00:18:17] Not trick question.
[00:18:19] You know what they're doing? They're preaching the gospel, baptizing people, discipling people, teaching them, and organizing those believers into churches. You know what the word, the term for that is? Church planting, church planting. You know why that's important? Because that is what missions is. You want to know what the great commission is all about? You see it in practice right here, right? This is the great commission with feet on it, right here. This is it. This is the cogs turning, doing its thing.
[00:18:55] Okay? So as a church, that should also be the emphasis of who and what kinds of ministries we support.
[00:19:05] Okay? Now, I'm not trying to throw stones here. I'm not trying to throw stones, so don't take me the wrong way, but listen, since I've been the pastor, I've gotten a number of calls from various groups, and one in particular. I've gotten a number of calls from groups that try and help former military people who have PTSD.
[00:19:32] Okay. They try to counsel them and help them and those kinds of things. Is that bad? No, but is that biblical missions? No, it's right here.
[00:19:44] Right.
[00:19:46] Listen, it doesn't mean we're against them, okay? Please understand. It doesn't mean we're against. Well, I hate you and I hate your ministry, and I wish you would just go away. It's not that at all.
[00:19:56] But we got to choose, right? I mean, we don't have unlimited amounts of money and we have to prioritize where our money goes. Everything that is missions is not missions. That's my point. Okay, so how do we choose as far as a policy of who we support and who we don't support, who we have into the missions conference? Here's the way we just look at what the Bible says and we try to do it. It's just that simple.
[00:20:19] Are other ministries worthy of support? Probably, but it's just a matter of priority where we lay our priority.
[00:20:30] There's another thing we see here, and I mentioned it before, but as it relates to our own church's policy working with missionaries is this. Missionaries must operate within the scriptural order of the church, and that means they have to be sent out of a church. Right. And there's a proper way to do it.
[00:20:54] Listen, just as a practical matter, again, I'm not hating on everybody, but there's a lot of mission groups that someone, they're basically a non government organization, an NGO, a nonprofit, and missionaries joined this nonprofit. This nonprofit is not a church. It doesn't claim to be a church, but it has religious goals. And maybe they have a church they came from, whatever, but they do their mission work entirely outside of any church. It's all related to this nonprofit. You say, well, you're splitting hairs. No, all I'm saying is a church is a church and a nonprofit is a nonprofit, and they're not the same.
[00:21:39] So here's the thing. Do we hate those people? Do we think they're going to hell? Do we think that they're preaching false gospels? No, but again, as a church, we try to do things in the way that is biblical. The best we understand with a clear conscience. That's what we try to do. And so when we're looking at missionaries, we're going to be looking at missionaries that aren't just attached to some organization, but are missionaries who are into a ministry that involves establishing churches and into a ministry that comes out of churches because the church is what God has established. The church.
[00:22:16] Now here you see Barnabas and Saul in verse number 26 returning to their home church, if you will. And verse 27 says they rehearsed what God had done.
[00:22:33] Now, why is this important? This is basically a mission conference, okay?
[00:22:38] This would be the basis for what we have as a mission conference in April.
[00:22:42] Now, this is important for two reasons.
[00:22:46] Number one, it provides accountability to our missionaries.
[00:22:52] Listen, when our missionary, I'm just be frank with you, haven't been a missionary. I don't feel sorry for them. Right? Don't feel sorry for missionaries. Brother Stewart, you say that a lot. I don't feel sorry for you. You're in a ministry. I don't feel sorry for you. But as a missionary, when a missionary comes back on furlough that we support, I expect that missionary to come by here. Well, they have so many churches to go to. I'm sorry.
[00:23:14] I expect them to come by here. We've been sending them money. We've been praying for them. Have we not? Do we not read letters right? Do we not care? Do we not pray? We do. We do all of those things. It is their duty to come back. And you know what? That helps them. You know why? Because it keeps them accountable. They know that there's a church, one little old puny church in Greenville, South Carolina, that's going to be saying, hey, we want to know what's been going on.
[00:23:41] And so we say, hey, brother, hey, we want you to come by. And that's what I do. Every one of our missionaries, if they're in the states, I'm going to ask them to come by without question. Now, I know some pastors and teaches on, but some pastors be like, oh, no, brother, we're good.
[00:23:55] Well, we are not good here. Okay? We want you to come by. This is the reason when, you know, as a missionary, I hadn't been one. When you know that people are going to be asking, it helps keep you. Right, right. It helps keep you straight.
[00:24:12] All right. Number two. So, number one, it provides accountability to the missionaries. This rehearsing what God had done while they were on the field. Right. The second thing is it provides our church with needed spiritual encouragement, with reminders and refreshment and motivation. You know why? Because we hear what God has been doing in other places. And furthermore, it brings that great commission right back up in front of us because we slip, just like I said this morning. We forget things. And so having a missionary come by and remind us of all of these things that that missionary has been doing and working and living that helps us get refocused on what's important. And many, many missionaries, our family being one of them, are called God uses a mission conference and meeting missionaries, he uses that to stir interest, which ultimately leads to that missionary going to a mission field.
[00:25:08] And that's fantastic. That's fantastic. That's the way it's supposed to be. And this is one of the things the Lord wants to do at Choice hills and all of the other local churches of his is when they come back and see that's the whole issue with other systems whereby missionaries are sent out and they don't really have any interaction with local churches. That ain't right.
[00:25:31] It's biblical right here, chapter 14. It's biblical because it helps the church and that's why we have a mission conference, because I want all of you and I want me to meet missionaries. I want you to mingle.
[00:25:46] Come in the next several months, I'm probably going to be asking, I haven't fully decided, but I'm probably going to be asking for various families in the church to volunteer to be host families. Not to host a missionary in your home, but to be the host of hospitality for a missionary family that we're going to be hosting at our mission conference in April. I want you to get to know them. I want you to eat with them. I want you to ask them questions. I want what's in their heart to get in your heart.
[00:26:17] That only happens if they come back and they rehearse what God has done. That's why we show videos, that's why we read letters. That's why we have them come. That's why we have them preach, Lord willing, for the conference this year. A preacher is coming. He's a missionary himself to Sri Lanka. He lives, he is right now in Sri Lanka. He's not coming back just for us. He's coming back for other reasons, but he's going to be preaching. So you're going to hear all about Sri Lanka in his messages. I promise. You're going to hear that.
[00:26:48] That is good. That's the way it should be. So this is what guides our church's missions policy. Okay, so let me turn the page now to something completely different.
[00:27:00] Back in verse 27, the Bible says this.
[00:27:05] And when they were come and had gathered the church together, they rehearsed all that God had done with them and how he had opened the door of faith unto the gentiles.
[00:27:17] This idea of rehearsing they gave, Paul and Barnabas did a personal testimony of what God had done in their ministry.
[00:27:28] A personal testimony, you know, a personal testimony is a powerful evidence of the truth of a know. Our personal salvation testimony is powerful. Paul used his. We should use ours, our personal salvation testimony, not just what led up to us getting saved, but all the things that happened afterward as well.
[00:27:58] This is not something to be looked lightly know. Of course we know. Scripture is what's most important. Any testimony that contradicts scripture is to be rejected. The scripture is true. All right. But if as long as it's consistent with scripture, a personal testimony, hear me now. Is a powerful demonstration of the truth of scripture. It's a practical evidence of the truth of scripture.
[00:28:26] Now look at, in this case, you have, they're rehearsing specifically what God had done and how he had opened the door of faith unto the gentiles. This is going to be very important. Look at chapter 15, verse four.
[00:28:38] When this question comes up later, remember, Paul and Barnabas are not teaching that you have to keep the law and be circumcised and keep the law of Moses in order to be saved, are they not? They're teaching the gospel of grace, which is true. Right. The other thing I mentioned is error. Okay, so they've been out preaching this gospel of grace, which is the true gospel. And these judaizers we're going to learn in chapter 15, come and they want to say, no, it's incomplete. You have to also teach them to keep law of Moses, else they won't be saved. They can't be saved.
[00:29:11] And there's going to be a contention over this, a biblical question that has to be settled, and it'll be settled in chapter 15.
[00:29:20] But in verse four, notice the power of the personal testimony of Barnabas and Saul. And verse four says, and when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that God had done with them.
[00:29:37] Look at verse twelve. Then all the multitude kept silence and gave audience to Barnabas and Paul, declaring what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the gentiles by them. So basically they tell, look at what God did.
[00:29:53] You say that our gospel is incomplete, but look at what God did with it.
[00:29:58] We contend that our gospel is the true gospel. And we have evidence, real life evidence, to back it up.
[00:30:05] Right? That's what they're doing. And you know what? This will be a pivotal point that helps settle this matter of whether the law is required or not. In chapter 15, is the testimony, the personal testimony of Barnabas and Saul?
[00:30:25] Listen, as far as your personal testimony, one of the greatest things you have is your personal testimony of salvation.
[00:30:38] I know this is a complicated matter because many of you were saved when you were younger, when you were kids, and sometimes that complicates what I'm saying.
[00:30:51] But if you were saved when you were six or seven years old, like brother Wallace saved when he was six, the man's 84 years old.
[00:31:01] It has been 78 years since he got saved. Does his testimony count for anything? It sure does. He's lived for God for 78 years.
[00:31:14] 78 years.
[00:31:18] I think that's awesome.
[00:31:21] But the miracle of salvation is the kind of personal testimony that is a clear evidence of the truth of scripture. Let me explain. First of all, we know that the gospel is true, period. Our testimony does not make the gospel true. It was true already, right?
[00:31:43] Secondly, the evidence of the truth as far as our salvation is concerned. Is this radical for those of you that know what I'm talking about, the radical, permanent and complete change of a sinner when he trusts in Christ.
[00:32:02] Now, if you got saved and you were young, listen, your life probably wasn't down in the dregs in actual practice of wickedness. And so you can't look at that and say, well, I didn't do those things. But even a child, God changes a child's heart. Listen, I want to tell you something that is not a small thing either for an adult or for a child.
[00:32:27] There's no human being that you can do something to them and change fundamentally who they are. That's not possible. Like, it can't happen. It is impossible because it deals with the very core of our being, it deals with our spiritual part of us. And you can pump a full of drugs and alter the chemistry in their mind, and that might for a time alter the way that what they do. But you can't change. Can a leopard change his spots? The answer is no. But God does it all the time. In the miracle of salvation, he changes.
[00:33:02] He creates a person new, and that is a miracle.
[00:33:06] And that the evidence and the visible things that manifest themselves because of that are powerful evidences of the truth of the gospel.
[00:33:19] The changes that occur in an individual in this case, deal with the very core habits and personality and values of a person. And those types of things are not easily changed, if possible at all, even over a whole lifetime. You can't change those things about people.
[00:33:39] So when the gospel comes along and just look in a moment, right in one moment, because it's a miracle. It's not something that happens gradually. Salvation is a miracle of a moment. And in that one moment, that pivotal point in that person's life, when they trust in Christ, all of a sudden, that which is impossible to happen happens by the work of God. This is a powerful evidence of a supernatural work.
[00:34:09] And thus the gospel is proven real. It was already real. But remember, the gospel doesn't need our testimony to prove it's true. Right? It's true by itself. Before we were ever born, it was true.
[00:34:25] But now follow me. But seeing it is true, wouldn't you expect to see evidence of its truth?
[00:34:34] Right? If the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, as it is declared to be in romans chapter one, verse 16, wouldn't you expect to see a manifestation of that power in some way?
[00:34:46] And that's exactly what we have.
[00:34:50] Listen to this. These are personal testimonies. One Timothy 113. Paul says of himself, he was before a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious. But I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly and in unbelief. All the times Paul gave his testimony, you know what he's doing? He's saying, this is true. This is real. I'm trying to tell you, and I'm an example of it, because before I hated these people and persecuted them to the death.
[00:35:19] I mean, he says, I was exceedingly mad, which means crazy. I was crazy. I was bloodthirsty. And someone looks at him and says, now you're preaching the faith you once destroyed. That is a powerful. That's not just. You start going to church, right? That's not. You get baptized, or as Pastor Craig used to say, you get slapped across the face with a wet washcloth.
[00:35:46] It's not.
[00:35:48] No, no. This is a basic, fundamental change. And this is something only God can do. That's the only explanation for what happened to Paul, period. Did. There was no other.
[00:36:00] First Thessalonians, chapter one, verse nine. Listen to this. For they themselves show of us. Speaking of the Gentiles, the Gentiles in Thessalonica. For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you and how ye turn to God from idols to serve the living and the true God. Listen to me. You think it's a minor thing for an individual, any individual who has lived for generations, their whole family, all of their ancestors from as far back as you can calculate, have worshipped idols, the same idols. It is integrated in their psyche. It's in their culture, it's in their holidays. It's in their country's laws. It's in the schedule of the months of the year. It's in every part of their life, and they turn from it all.
[00:36:53] That doesn't happen. I'm just telling you, that doesn't happen.
[00:36:57] That is evidence of a powerful work of God.
[00:37:03] The fact that that happens at all is a miracle.
[00:37:10] In acts 19, verse 18. Listen to this. And many that believed came and confessed and showed their deeds.
[00:37:21] Many of them also, which used curious arts, brought their books together and burned them before all men. Now you think, okay, well, they burned. They were involved in witchcraft, right? And necromancy and astrology or whatever. So they burned all the books. Books are valuable in the first century. They're not books printed with a Gutenberg's printing press. Books are handwritten on animal skins and things like that. They're valuable, you think, well, they just burned a mail, whoopi doo. It's like going in my library. I paid, whatever, $5 for a book. And you, you know, WHOOP de doo. Not. So here they got saved, they put their faith in Christ, and such a radical change was made. They took all those books and they turned their back on them and showed it by burning it. They hated it, right?
[00:38:13] And they counted the price of them and found it. 50,000 pieces of silver. Now, I don't know how much, 50,000 pieces of silver is equivalent in our currency today, but I want to tell you, it's a lot of money.
[00:38:27] They didn't care.
[00:38:30] How do you take a human being and change him from somebody who's obsessed with money, who's probably using curious arts to make money? And he turns his back on it so thoroughly that he burns it. He doesn't care how much it costs.
[00:38:44] That's the work of God.
[00:38:46] That is not natural. That is not normal. That is not something that mere psychology can do. It is absolutely a work of God.
[00:38:59] Psalm 66, verse 16. Listen to this.
[00:39:03] Come and hear all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul.
[00:39:13] It's important for us to rehearse what God has done in our lives, to recognize it and to repeat it.
[00:39:25] That's what they're doing.
[00:39:27] I just wrote down a few things I meditated upon to show why this is important.
[00:39:34] By rehearsing what God has done, it multiplies the effect and the influence of that work of God to others. When you keep it quiet, nobody knows about it, and thus the effect of it dies with you. But by talking about it, what God has done spreads to others.
[00:39:52] It causes others to give praise to God. You think, well, who cares about that? Well, that's an important scriptural principle.
[00:40:00] Two Corinthians 912 says this, speaking of giving to the poor saints. It says, for the administration of this service not only supplyeth the one of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgivings to God. God says, by you giving money to these poor saints, they thanked God. And that is a good thing. It's worthwhile just for that reason.
[00:40:23] So when we rehearse what God has done, it causes others to give praise to God, and that's worth it by itself.
[00:40:30] When we rehearse what God has done in our lives, it builds faith in others to look to the Lord for similar works for them.
[00:40:37] That goes back to what I was saying about missionaries. We hear what's happening on the mission field and it stirs those missionaries heart before you know it, or stirs somebody in the church's heart, and before you know it, that person is saying, lord, I want you to do something like that in my life.
[00:40:51] Before you know it, he's on the mission field rehearsing. What God has done leads. It leads ultimately to more works of God among us. You know why? Because we hear the works of God and we cry out to God to do.
[00:41:10] We cry out to God to do in our lives what he has done for others.
[00:41:18] You know what? That leads to more works of God because we're asking God to do it. I want to tell you, this is my prayer before I came out here. I prayed, said, lord, do some wonderful works here. Lord, do some wonderful works in my life. It has been far too long since I've seen you do something miraculous, do something unexplainable that can only be explained by saying God was in it. God did it.
[00:41:59] Do you have things like that in your life?
[00:42:03] That's something we need to rehearse, talk about.
[00:42:07] I thought about some things that when I got saved, I was already going to church, church member, all that stuff. Many of you know that. Some of you know that you knew me as a person who came to church. I was in a youth group and those kinds of things.
[00:42:24] So I was already a person who on the outside had the form of religion. I knew the right things to say and not say that kind of thing.
[00:42:33] So I had the appearance of religion before I knew Christ, before I got saved in August of 99.
[00:42:39] But then all of a sudden, I got saved and what was a religious person turned into a saint of God. Not saint, is in the saint is in the sinner. Saint, saved by grace. Saint.
[00:42:55] I remember my grandmother said, this is probably a year or two after I got saved and the change in my life.
[00:43:04] Remember the starting point was a religious person now, not a drunkard or whatever. A religious person. The change in my life was so evident that my grandmother said to me, you know her, Elizabeth Lib, she said to me, I knew something had happened to you. I knew that whatever you had was real.
[00:43:25] Because before, when you were going to church and I would hear you cuss at my house, I thought to myself, I didn't want to have any part of that. If that's what it means to be saved, I don't have any part of it.
[00:43:38] And I was a member of Choice Hills Baptist Church doing that. What a shame and reproach, right? But even as a religious person, God changed my life. I remember the night I got saved. I went up, it is in a youth camp, and after all, it was over. Several people had gotten saved that night. I went back to the bunk, to the cabin, rather, I was in the top bunk. And I remember just laying in the bed, just awestruck, because for all the religion I had been involved in, I was looking up to God. I was imagining looking up to God as if I had never met him before. And I actually said, when I was with my eyes open, looking up to God, I said, God? I don't know what to say.
[00:44:24] Why? You know why? One simple reason.
[00:44:29] God did it.
[00:44:31] He changed me. He changed my heart. He changed my being. He changed who I was. That is the only thing that explains the last 2024 years of my life. That's it.
[00:44:43] There is no other explanation.
[00:44:45] People think. They look at the outside and they think, well, it's just you got religious or you got whatever.
[00:44:52] It's not that I think of this talking. Listen, all I'm trying to do is talk about what God's done, right?
[00:45:03] This lady in Cambodia, her name was Salet.
[00:45:08] So when we went back to Cambodia in 2016 for our final term, while I was in America, the Lord put on my heart kind of a strategy, because we lived in a town which was the provincial capital of our province, and I wanted to reach out into areas that were outside of smaller towns and things that were around us and somehow try to get the gospel there or witness or what, I just didn't know. So I made a map and I put little red dots. How many of you probably remember the red dots? I remember talking about it here, but I had a map of Cambodia, or rather a map of our province and the neighboring province, and there were red dots all over the map of these villages and towns where there was a population center.
[00:45:58] And so I took that back, and that's when Brother Brown, Matt Brown and I were working together. And brother Matt Hancock, he was helping us, too. And we prayed, man, we prayed. Once we got settled back in, we started praying and asking God to lead us, and we surveyed all of those dots. We went to the towns and we asked people, are there any churches or any christians and those kinds of things?
[00:46:28] After we did all that, we spent two weeks praying. We spent two weeks praying, God, just show us which one you want us to go to first. That's basically all we're praying.
[00:46:42] And two weeks was up. I don't know why we decided it, but we decided to go to the town of. It was called.
[00:46:50] That was the name of it.
[00:46:53] And so we got to the town, and we didn't know what we were doing. I mean, I don't think most missionaries know what they're doing. They just act like they do.
[00:47:05] Brother Stewart's nodding. He's agreeing. We know what we were doing, but we knew we probably needed to contact if there were any christians there. We probably need to do a search and see if we could find them and encourage them and that kind of thing. And so we went to the main market in town, and we just walked up to the stall, one of the stalls, and we said, hey, we're christians.
[00:47:26] We come here. We want to tell people about Jesus. Do you know of any christians in Paiu?
[00:47:33] And we went from stall to stall, and every stall that we stopped at, the person said, in the cambodian kind of toned down way, every person just kind of just said. They just kind of pointed over there, maybe with their lip like that. So I went to the next. I didn't know what we were talking about, so I went to the next stall and asked them, and they pointed in the same direction two or three times, four times, whatever it was. We got to this lady.
[00:48:04] She sold baby clothes, kid clothes.
[00:48:09] We walked up to this lady and we said, once we finally figured out that this was the person that they were talking about, everybody was trying to get us to.
[00:48:19] Now, they were not fond of this lady. Okay? They were not fond of this lady after we found out later. But we walk up to her and we say, hey, we're Christians, and we've come to town because we want to tell people about Jesus. And they tell us that you're a Christian.
[00:48:42] And her reaction was toned down.
[00:48:49] She didn't seem excited, but later she said that. She said it was like my heart was exploding.
[00:49:00] See, what we didn't know, we found out later, is that seleet was.
[00:49:07] She was already a believer, and she had heard the gospel from her husband. She was a widow and her husband, because he had died, but some of his family members had become christians, supposedly since they have actually returned to Buddhism. So that's not the kind of missionary story you would normally, but that's what happened.
[00:49:31] But she heard the gospel through them, and she had gotten saved. She had trusted in Christ, and there came a point in her life where God had brought her to the point where she could no longer hide the fact that she was a Christian.
[00:49:48] And she told us that she was in the market at her stall. And she actually verbally, if I could remember what she said anyway, she verbally yelled out where people could hear her, that she was going to tell people that she's a Christian.
[00:50:09] So she started going to this church, but there was no church in her town of any kind. There had been, but it had closed and it was corrupt, I believe, anyway. But there was a town a few miles away called Batia.
[00:50:28] And so she would ride her motorcycle.
[00:50:31] It was a good little drive on a motorcycle. I'm talking about. Motorcycle is a generous term. This was a piece of trash. It was like a broken bicycle with a motor attached. I mean, it was a piece of trash. But she would ride that thing on this big four lane road, the median big road where all the trucks, they're going fast between the two towns. She would drive to her motorcycle there and go to that church. It was a presbyterian church, and she would go back and forth and back and forth on Sunday. She couldn't go on Sunday night because it was too far and it was getting dark and that kind of thing.
[00:51:10] And she told us that later, that one day, about two weeks prior to us arriving, she was on her motorcycle, driving with her little helmet on, driving that motorcycle, and she prayed to God.
[00:51:29] And she said, I ask God to send me somebody to teach me the Bible in my own town.
[00:51:39] Cool.
[00:51:43] And two weeks later is when we walked up to her.
[00:51:57] We began to teach her. I had to first establish that she understood the gospel, and she did, but she didn't know anything outside of that, nothing. She didn't read the Bible.
[00:52:10] She hadn't been baptized. That wasn't even a thing like she was Jesus, and that's it.
[00:52:19] So once we figured out and understood that she was a true believer, and she knew what that meant we told her about baptism and I baptized her, actually, at the presbyterian church. That's a funny story.
[00:52:30] Their baptistry was only about this deep because they're Presbyterians.
[00:52:36] We actually baptized a couple of people and we had them sit in the water and we baptized them by immersion.
[00:52:46] It's great.
[00:52:48] The Presbyterians, maybe they were true believers there. And they were standing around wondering probably, what in the world are these people doing?
[00:52:57] We explained it to it, but anyway, we began to teach this lady every week, go to her town. It was about.
[00:53:06] How far was it?
[00:53:09] Was it 45 minutes? Some 45 minutes in an hour from our house.
[00:53:13] And we began to teach her. We went through the entire book of Genesis. Went through the book of Romans.
[00:53:21] I think we went through the book of John or Mark. It might have been mark. Anyway, we went through several whole books of the Bible. Just hitting the high points.
[00:53:30] Basically our entire second term. Was that so? Like three years plus. We went to this lady and we went to her house. But her mother was wicked. I mean, wicked enemy of the cross.
[00:53:46] So we would meet at a gas station, sit outside at some tables. They had. We would teach her there.
[00:53:54] And that lady grew. Oh, my goodness. We got her in contact with. She came to our church sometimes, and then we got her in contact with some churches in the capital city. And that lady grew like nobody's business. She would write the Bible out by hand, the text that we were studying, because she had read that the Lord told Moses that the kings of Israel must write out the law. She wrote it out by hand, not the whole Bible, but she wrote it out of her own initiative.
[00:54:25] Lady grew, and we thought we would go and we would go to these red dots and we would make the gospel known. And we did go and try to evangelize at her town and got just almost nowhere. I mean, very little response. And she went with us the whole way, every house.
[00:54:55] But as it turns out, she's still to this moment.
[00:55:00] She is the only Christian in her town.
[00:55:05] She stands alone.
[00:55:11] How can you explain that?
[00:55:15] What explanation do you have? She is actively persecuted.
[00:55:22] There's only one explanation.
[00:55:26] That God has done it.
[00:55:29] That God has done it, I think, of people. I mentioned this in the service last week, on the last day of the year when people were testifying. I mentioned my wife's and her trauma in her childhood. Sister Amy. She mentioned the trauma that she had endured from her family as well.
[00:55:59] Do you know how many people go through that? And it totally obliterates their life.
[00:56:09] The hatred, the seething anger and bitterness in their heart destroys them.
[00:56:19] That's what happens.
[00:56:21] And to have somebody who went through those very same things, no less severe, and stand and say, I'm not angry, I'm not bitter.
[00:56:33] And to come through that, not without scars. With scars to come through that is a work of God. That is nothing short than a work of God.
[00:56:45] That is not something that happens in this world.
[00:56:51] You think of our church's parking lot.
[00:56:55] That's why I asked about it. That parking lot, you remember back in 2021, around the fall of 2021, the parking lot was just a mess, right? You all remember that? And the guys came in and they scraped the asphalt off the parking lot. And then because there were so many soft places, their truck went on it and it sank down like a sponge.
[00:57:19] And so they recommended that we have the soil engineer come out and take core samples to see the quality of the soil that would be underneath the parking lot, to see whether they could do it. And they told us that just to scrape five to twelve inches of that topsoil off and replace it with underlayment, that would support the new parking lot, just that would be $150,000.
[00:57:46] How many of you remember that?
[00:57:48] Not even counting the new black top, which by itself was $75,000.
[00:57:56] And you remember brother Stewart gave testimony to this.
[00:58:01] The man who was over the job, he said, let it sit over the winter, and we'll see in the spring and see how it is. Spring came. We have basically a gravel parking lot the whole winter. Spring came. They came out, and the man said, I have never seen this. We were praying this whole time. And he said, I've never seen this. This is what he does for a living. He says, your soil is perfectly fine.
[00:58:32] There are no repairs that are needed. I have never seen this happen. And the man even said, I gave a testimony in my church about this.
[00:58:45] How do you explain that?
[00:58:49] And what was going to be $225,000 ended up being $75,000.
[00:59:00] That's what God did.
[00:59:03] Last story. I know I've gone long in 2020, in March. Well, in February, Covid, of course, had already started in China, and it, of course, went to Asia first before it got here. So, of course, we were in Cambodia at the time, and everything started to close. The borders are being shut. We had started the online services when that really wasn't a thing we had done, the online. Started online services. So I was doing, like, a weekly service and putting it on the Internet for the people in our church and stuff. And a lot of other things went into that. But just suffice it to say we were already going on furlough that summer, and everything was closing, borders were closing, and, of course, Allison's health issues and stuff, and we didn't know if she'd be able to get to Thailand for her health needs and stuff. So in a very brief amount of time, we prayed about, don't Allison probably correct me, but it's just like a couple of days.
[01:00:05] I just decided. I prayed about it and said, all right, well, we'll just take our furlough early.
[01:00:12] So we booked the tickets. And, man, at that point, man, things was shutting down. They was doing temperature screenings, and these guys didn't know how to take temperatures. And this guy where we were staying, he had the little forehead. What do you call it? What you call it, the forehead doohickey that measures the temperature on forehead. So we got there, we were with some other missionaries, and we got to the guest house, and they wouldn't even let you in the guest house till your temperature had been screened. And we've been riding in a tuktok. Y'all know what? Brother Stewart knows what a.
[01:00:43] You know, it's a rickshaw. That's what it is. It's a rickshaw. I mean, in the sun, it's blazing. I mean, it's going into hot season in Cambodia. It's hot. Okay.
[01:00:53] And we arrived there, sun's blaring, and he's trying to screen our forehead, and it's reading, like 190 degrees or whatever.
[01:01:05] Some of the bishops had a hard time getting into the guest house. Were like, give us a chance to cool off a minute.
[01:01:11] We got into the guest house, and we couldn't even find anybody to take our luggage to the airport. Normally, that'd be easy, but we're white, and they were afraid of white people because of the things that had been in the news in Cambodia. And actually, in our town, people are actually afraid of white people. We finally got somebody to put our luggage, to take our luggage to the. Now, this is a furlough luggage. It's not. A little bit of luggage. A lot of luggage. And we found a guy to put it in the tuktuk thing, and we went and started going to the airport. We were climb on there like monkeys, and people behind us with masks on their motorcycles with masks, saw we were white and had this panic look on their face and would go somewhere else to get to avoid being behind us. I'm not joking.
[01:01:57] I mean, they were temperature screening. I mean, we gave our kids tylenol to make sure they didn't have a fever. When we got to the airport, I mean, we did it.
[01:02:07] I don't regret it.
[01:02:11] We finally got to the airport. We got checked in, we got on the plane, we flew to Japan. Airport's empty.
[01:02:20] Nobody in that airport.
[01:02:23] I mean, this is an intercontinental international airport. Nobody.
[01:02:30] We're flying. We get, we, we get on our flight to Houston, which is George W. Bush Intercontinental. Right? So we get on the flight and we land in Houston. Okay.
[01:02:48] When we land in Houston and we go into the airport, we thought the Japan airport was empty. This place was a ghost town. There wasn't one shop or restaurant open in the whole airport. Not one. We looked at the big, these huge, like, 72 inch or 84 inch screens where they have all the flight information.
[01:03:11] I mean, nothing but blinking red. Canceled. Canceled. I mean, literally on the whole screen. There might have been two or three flights on the whole screen for all of the flight, the departures.
[01:03:25] Our flight was one of them.
[01:03:29] We got on this dumpy airplane. I told my family it was like a school bus.
[01:03:35] It was old. It felt like a school bus. I felt like I was flying in a school bus.
[01:03:40] We got on this plane. I mean, there were no flights. They had all been canceled.
[01:03:45] And we got on this airplane.
[01:03:49] My kid is going to be the witness. How many people beside our family were on that airplane?
[01:03:56] Was it four beside us?
[01:03:59] So it was twelve people on that airplane, not counting the crew to fly to Greenville.
[01:04:08] I'm convinced they did not cancel that flight because of our family. They figured they could break even for the eight of us. Maybe we didn't know it at the time. We didn't know it until we got back to Greenville and started thinking about it. We almost got to a place where we could not get home. Like there would be no way to actually get here.
[01:04:36] But on that big screen, one of the very few flights that still was flying was ours.
[01:04:46] God did it.
[01:04:49] There's no other way to explain it.
[01:04:55] I spent extra time to rehearse some of the things that God has done in our lives and in our church on the mission field.
[01:05:06] Because I want us all, including my self, to have a heart that says, lord, do something in my life.
[01:05:15] Give me things about which I can give you honor, to other people to tell them what you have done.
[01:05:26] Let's pray.
