Hope Worth Having

Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Listen to Preaching Part 1. He will be reading out of Acts 17:11-15.

When you’re searching to see if those things are so that you distinguish what is a preference and what is a principle, what is in the Bible, you are measured not by the preferences of the teacher. You are measured by God’s holy word.

Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders. Welcome you to the Hope Worth Having Radio program. We’re broadcasting from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and we are really honored that you are with us. And today we’re going to be starting a new series, and it’s how to listen to preaching.

Now in Acts chapter 17, we’re introduced to the Berean believers, and they were unique because of their ability to hear the word of God and to obey it. So let’s learn how we can emulate that in our own life.

Let’s grab our Bibles. Let’s get to Acts chapter 17, and let’s continue this study. If you have your Bible, I want you to join me in Acts chapter 17. We have been going through the book of Acts, and last week we started in chapter 17, and we didn’t get to cover everything, and so we’ll be in it again.

Anyways, Acts chapter 17, I want to just cover verse 11 through 15. While you’re turning there, I want to tell you I heard a story about a frustrated judge, and he was preparing to hear about a divorce case.

And the judge asked, why do you want a divorce? On what grounds are you getting divorce? The wife replied, all over. We have an acre and a half. No, no, said the judge, do you have a grudge? Yes, sir, if it’s two cars.

I need a reason for divorce, said the judge. Does he beat you up? Oh, no, I’m up at six every day to do my exercises, and he gets up later. Please, said the exaspt. judge, what is the reason that you want a divorce?

Oh, she replied, we can’t seem to communicate to each other anymore. Well, listening is an important part of all relationship. It’s an important skill. The Bible tells us that he who answers a matter before he hears it, it’s folly and shame to him.

Listening to people is valuable in your life. But let me tell you something that’s even more important, is listening to God. Listening to God has eternal significance in your life. Jesus said, therefore, take heed how you hear.

Take heed how you hear or listen. In our text this morning, we are introduced to a group of believers who took listening to God’s message very seriously. I want you to pick up with me in verse 11 of Chapter 17.

The Bible says that these were more fair-minded or more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness and searched the scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.

Therefore, many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men. But when the Jews from the Thessalonica learned that the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea, they came there also and stirred up the crowds.

Then immediately the brethren sent Paul away to go to the sea, but both Silas and Timothy remained there. So those who conducted Paul brought him to Athens and receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him with all speed, they departed.

Now tucked away in these set of verses is a very important lesson for us. And that’s learning how to listen to the teaching and the preaching of God’s word. Remember Jesus said, take heed how you hear.

Every one of us this morning is going to be accountable for what we hear from God’s word. And therefore, as we look at the life of these Berean believers, we can understand how we should hear, how we should listen to a sermon, listen to a message, listen to a Bible lesson or a Sunday school lesson.

As Paul was preaching the scriptures to the Bereans, Luke gives us three statements about how they reacted to his message that he gave. If you like to take notes, I want you to write these three words down because this is our emphasis this morning.

Number one, they received. they examined and they believed. That’s what they did. They received, examined and believed. So let’s look at that first word, received. After the apostle and his team had a short ministry in Thessalonica, if you were paying attention, they were there for three weeks, three weeks.

But you know, I told you a few weeks ago that wherever the apostle and his team went, it was either a revival or it was a riot. And that’s what happened. There was a riot because of a revival, because people were getting saved, coming to Christ, spiritually awakened, that all of a sudden, those within Thessalonica were getting upset.

And so it was at nighttime that Paul and Silas had to sneak out of the town so that they would not have to suffer any more physical persecution. And so then the Bible tells us they came to this place or verse 10, that they came to and arrived in Berea.

And what did they do? Remember, we know the Apostle’s strategy because we see it time and time again. He goes to the synagogue. He goes to the synagogue, gets a hearing. Verse 10 says that when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews.

And while he is there, what does he learn? That there were these group of people who were more noble and they were more fair-minded than the Thessalonicans. Not that the Thessalonians were somehow, the church was a bad group of people because we know later that the church would become a model to other churches, but the community of people were very resistant to the gospel.

And so Luke makes the contrast of the Bereans to the Thessalonians, the different communities of people. That’s what you’re witnessing in chapter 17, is you’re seeing this narrative unfold of a contrast of those who rejected the truth and those who were receptive to the truth.

The Bible tells us in verse 11 that they received the word with all readiness. They received the word with all readiness. When the Bible refers to the word, it’s not just the Old Testament. It’s not just talking about the New Testament.

It’s not just talking about God’s word. It’s talking about really in essence the gospel of Jesus Christ, in that they were receptive to this message that the apostle was teaching them, that Christ was the fulfillment of all that the Old Testament prophets had declared and that he was the one who was to come and to die on the cross for our sins and he would rise again three days later and that one day he will return and establish his kingdom on this earth.

So this reception. that was given by the Bereans, first of all, we see that it was certainly a welcoming reception. Better than maybe some places, even in our own communities and our own families and our own country.

We have a country that’s not very receptive to God’s word, would you agree? I mean, they’ve already said, you can’t have it in the public schools. You can’t have God’s word in the courthouse. We can’t have the 10 commandments up anywhere.

That would be horrendous. And that might be a microaggression on somebody. But anyways, they have all these things. They want to push God’s out. People say, pastor, what’s wrong with America? You see, God, He can take a hint.

He can take a hint. You don’t want God, you push Him out of your life, you put everything else before God, He can take a hint. And you see, America enjoyed the blessings and the protection and all of the favor of God upon her.

But I’m telling you that when you push God out, He withdraws. And the Bible says that in Romans 1, He gave them up. It says it three times that He gave them up. And you see, I’ve always said this, and I know that sometimes some of you get upset when I say these kind of things, but it’s true that if you want to be stupid, God will get out of your way.

And if America wants to make a mess of its life and try to do it on its own, how many times have you raised your children and they refuse to listen to you, you try to show them what to do, but they are persistent and they are bullheaded.

They’re gonna do it their way. And what do you do? You just step back and say, okay, go ahead. And that’s what God does. But here what we see is that the Bereans were receptive. They were welcoming to the word of God.

They were welcoming to God’s truth. They were welcoming to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the Bible says with all readiness of mind, the word readiness has the idea of promptness or eagerness. There was an earnestness in their hearts.

They were ready to receive and to hear what God’s word had to say. So I wanna challenge you this morning in this reception that each of us are called to be, as we come together as believers, as we come, we’re to be receiving the word of God, that we have to cultivate a sense of expectancy when it comes to hearing God’s word.

Now, there’s a few of you that you like sports and you know that if you were to go to a football game, maybe a college football game, or you were gonna go to a professional football game, you would have a high sense of eagerness and a high sense of expectancy.

You’d get all ready and you’d probably, maybe weeks before you’d be getting things together and you’d be like, well, it’s gonna be cold out there. I’m gonna make sure I got this ready and I’m gonna make sure I got that ready.

And you know, I gotta make sure I gotta have a few snacks and you know those hot dogs, they’re like 10. box now. So I’m gonna sneak in a little bag of peanuts and I’m gonna maybe have a water bottle and I’m gonna make sure that we’re in good shape.

I’m getting ready. There’s a sense of expectancy that I’m cultivating. Let me ask you a question. When you come to hear God’s Word, do you cultivate that expectancy? Do you say, oh man, it’s Sunday. I was hoping that it would be Saturday and I could sleep in today, but it’s Sunday.

Do you find it like a drag to come to church and man, I just hate to have to be here. If I don’t go, my parents are gonna be on me or my spouse is gonna be upset at me. Or do you come and say, you know what, I am ready to receive God’s Word.

I am cultivating that in my heart and that I am preparing for that. Which is my next point to you is that not only do I cultivate an expectancy in my heart, is that I need to prepare myself to come, to receive.

the word of God. I need to prepare myself, that’s what was going on, is that there was not only this desire, but there was a follow through on the desire. There was a decision that we’re gonna not only are we looking forward to going and hearing God’s word taught to us, but we are going to follow through on it with a decision in preparing our hearts.

You see friends, many make the mistake that they’re preparing to go to church on Sunday morning at the last minute. And you really need to start way earlier than that. I remember that when our children were little, we were always getting things ready on Saturday so that Sunday would not be a train wreck.

And I know what some of you are saying because we had the same experience. It didn’t matter, did it? Well, I tell you that it did help, especially as the children got older, that having things already ready on Saturday made things run so much smoother on Sunday morning and getting ready to come and be at the house of the Lord.

But you know, there’s not only a physical preparation, but there’s a spiritual preparation. Think about that. I mean, you might get ready to go watch a football game, make sure you got all the stats and you know who’s the quarterback and you don’t wanna cheer for the wrong team.

I took my boys many years ago to a football game down in West Virginia. We were the opposite team, Oklahoma State against West Virginia. And by the end of the game, the West Virginia fans had become, we were in the student section because I was too cheap to buy a good ticket, amen.

But I was in the student section and they were so drunk that they were cheering for the Oklahoma State Cowboys. It was like it was a home game for us. How wonderful is that? But we were prepared. We had everything ready.

Physically, we wanted to be ready for this game. And I wanna tell you that when it comes to being ready to receive God’s word, you need to prepare yourself spiritually. And I would say, say that begins always with prayer.

It always begins with prayer. Honestly, you should be praying for the service throughout the week, and especially on Saturday, praying that the Lord is putting things together. You wouldn’t believe the kind of things the devil’s always trying to do to wreck the service.

It could be sickness, it could be something’s not working, it could be that the computer, the technology crashes. It could be, as one lady told me, it’s too cold in here, Pastor, and if you don’t get it warmer in here, I’m not coming back.

Okay, I’m doing my best, okay? I’m not a heating and air conditioning man. Nothing I can do relating to that, doing everything we can, but here’s what I want you to understand. Rather than saying, hey, here’s what I don’t like about this or that, are you praying?

Praying for the pastor, praying for the sermon, praying for those who are coming, who are gonna hear the gospel for the first time, praying that visitors who come and check out the church that they’ll…

a sense of welcome and that they’ll sense a warmth in here, not just physically, amen, but spiritually. But we’re praying that God would speak to our own hearts, that we would be ready to receive God’s word, that we would not have a wall up, that we would not be resistant to what the preacher, the pastor has to say as he opens the word of God to us, but rather that we would be receptive.

So we are praying, we’re praying for someone who needs encouragement. You don’t know what everybody’s walking through in their life and you don’t know what the challenges that people are facing day to day in their life, and so they come looking for hope, they come looking for help, they come looking for the strength and the blessing and the encouragement that you can find.

Listen, for this place, for some people it’s the only place where they find a hug, a smile, a blessing, a word of encouragement. Some of you are blessed with wonderful homes, wonderful families, and I’m grateful for that, but not everybody has a functional family, right?

Not everybody has everything going great. And so I want you to understand, when you start thinking about the big picture, somebody walks in and they’ve just lost a loved one, and they’re really struggling, they’re grieving in their hearts, and they’re looking, and that’s why we’re praying, church, as we are praying that we are receiving, but that God is blessing and God is ministering and God is working.

How else can I prepare myself? I think confession is important, a part of that. We don’t like to talk about confession because we think it’s some liturgical thing that we’re not supposed to be doing, but the truth is we are to be confessors.

The Bible says if we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to do what, church? And to cleanse us from all of our unrighteousness, and so we’re called to be people who are confessing our sins. We’re grateful that we can confess our sins.

Jesus Christ. There’s one mediator between God and man. We don’t have to go to the pastor, we don’t have to go to a priest, we don’t have to go to any religious figure. We can go straight to the Lord Jesus Christ in our prayer time confessing our sins and maybe there’s something you need to confess.

In my preparation I want to confess to God, Lord is there anything in my heart that I need to bring to your attention? Is there anything any sin that I need to bring to you and confess it to you and agree that it’s wrong in my life?

That’s what it means to confess. It means to agree with God. I’m agreeing with God. A lot of us, we like to argue with God. You know I talk to some people it doesn’t matter. They just always like to argue.

It doesn’t matter. They’ll argue about anything, okay. I can say hey it’s raining out there and they’ll argue with me. They’ll argue with me and that’s just the way it is and you just say okay you do you.

If you want to live your life like that and be arguing mad at the world that’s fine but here’s what we need to understand with God we can’t be like that. You can’t argue with God. You gotta agree with God because see, God is, he’s always right.

God is always right. And when he brings it to our attention that there’s sin in our life, we need to confess that. There might be an attitude that we need to change. We’ve had a bad attitude. Maybe God is calling us to change that, confess that to him and make that right.

And so we’re not only called to confess to God, but we’re called to confess to others. It doesn’t mean you have to get up in front of a church service and bear your soul to everybody. What it does mean is that if I’ve hurt you, offended you, and I’m aware of it, I need to make every effort to try to make that right with you.

And that’s what’s the key to growing relationships is to be able to confess our faults one to another. As the scripture says, confess our sins to God. But let me tell you a third way to be prepared is to read your Bible.

The first time you hear God’s word read should not be in our service. It shouldn’t be in Sunday school. It should be your time with the Lord this morning. And I know some of you got out of bed at the last minute, you rolled in here and you just made it and you say, isn’t that good enough, pastor?

Well, I understand and I appreciate that step, but that’s not where I want you to end. I want you to be a next level Christian. I want you to go farther for God. I want you to be stronger for God. And I want you to be that person who rises early and calls upon the name of the Lord in the morning, that person who spends time with God, that person who’s already read the word of God.

And you are just hearing from God all the time through his word and you are ready. You’re coming in here ready to receive God’s word. You say, pastor, why would I need to read the Bible? Let me tell you, the Bible is the only food that can fuel a believer’s growth and faith.

You see, you’ll never be able to be that optimum Christian without the word of God. You have got to be in it. in God’s word, feeding on it, and you have got to spend time in it, and it has got to become a priority in your life.

And let me tell you something about this, this challenge of a habit of reading your Bible. It is a battle you’ll have all your life. You see, all your life. You know why, because the flesh, the world, the devil, always battling against you and saying, you know, you don’t need the Bible, and you know, that Bible, it’s out of date, or that Bible is good, you got it, you got it all.

But the truth is, we need a daily dose of God’s word in our life, and it helps us that when we come to hear Bible study, we come to hear the teacher, we come to hear the pastor, the preacher, whatever the situation is, we are ready to receive the word of God.

The Bible says they received the word. But I want you to see also that they researched I want you to go back and look in verse 11. It says, not only with all readiness and search the scriptures, how often?

Daily, daily to find out whether these things were so. You see, you thought, man, just coming in, hearing the Bible taught, isn’t that good enough, pastor? Isn’t that good? I mean, don’t I get a pin for that?

Shouldn’t I get some points with God for that? And we’ll see, God is calling us through His grace to not only be receivers of His word, but to be researchers of His word. And the Berean’s response here is powerful because this is an important principle you need to learn as a believer, it is a distinction and a uniqueness of a church like ours.

And that is that as we look in this text and we see, they searched the scriptures. Who searched the scriptures? Again, it wasn’t a pastor who searched the scriptures for them. It wasn’t a priest who searched the scriptures for them.

It was not even any kind of a religious figure or some kind of a Bible scholar, but it was them. They searched, the Bereans searched the scriptures, which is what is often been referred to by Bible scholars as the priesthood of the believer.

What is the uniqueness of our faith in Christ is that we believe that you are a priest and that you can come directly to God and that you can understand the Bible and that you can through the power of the Spirit of God, understand the deep things of God, that you don’t have to have a Bible college degree.

I’m not against that, amen. And you don’t have to have all of this religious training to somehow understand the Bible, but you can understand God’s word. Now, you might find that, well, that’s not too profound, Mike, but I’m telling you, there was a time in the world when people were told that only the priest could read the Bible, and only the priest could understand the Bible, and only the priest could interpret the Bible.

But yet, there came along a generation of mighty people for God, like Martin Luther, and Calvin, and Tyndale, and these great men and women who were willing to understand that God has called us as believers to have a personal relationship with God.

And that’s why I want you to see that, is this research is something that is your responsibility. It is your job to search the Scriptures and to see if what the pastor is saying is true. Isn’t that something?

Because in these times that I was talking to you about, it was considered, you know, only the priest could know and that the priest was never wrong. And yet they started teaching a false doctrine that you had to work your way to heaven.

People didn’t know any better because they were so ignorant to the word that they became, you know, they just became numb to it and they just did whatever they were told and it became religion and it became a ritual.

And they just kind of went through the motions. There was no vitality in their faith. There was no connection with the Lord in their faith. And as a result, people thought they were okay with God. But the truth is they were on the wrong path and that they were not truly believers and they were not truly living for Christ.

So I wanna encourage you to understand that you have this personal responsibility to not only receive the word, but to research the word, to evaluate what is taught in your Sunday school classes and what is taught in your Bible studies, what is taught from the pulpit at the Open Door Church to make sure that that aligns with the word of God.

Jesus said in John five, verse 39, you search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life and these are they which testify of me. Jesus was not upset that they searched the scriptures, but that just that they thought because of the Pharisees and their religion, they thought because they were the arbiters of truth and they were the only ones who knew the truth that that would give them eternal life.

But what he’s saying is that when you open the scriptures and search it, what you’ll find is that the Bible from Genesis to Revelation teaches us about the person, the nature and the work of our Lord and savior, Jesus.

Can God’s people say amen? You want to know Christ? You want to know God? You do not have to stay up all night eating pizza and drinking root beer and look on a billboard sign to see Jesus. All you gotta do is open your Bible and Jesus is revealed to you.

From Genesis to Revelation, I wanna encourage you to be people who are evaluating the scriptures, who are searching the scriptures and so we see that they were passionate about it. They were diligent about it.

They were dedicated. It wasn’t just a casual, hey, we’ll get to the Bible around Christmas time or we’ll get to the Bible when things slow down, when we don’t have sports and we don’t have dance and we don’t have ballerina and we don’t have drama and we don’t have all these other things and I’m not against any of those things, okay?

I don’t want you to be upset, but let me tell you something. God. needs to be number one in your life. And if you neglect His word, what you’re gonna find is it’s gonna impact your family in a very negative way.

What you see here is the Bible says they search the scriptures daily, every day. In our day when the Bible is always being attacked or people are trying to undercut it or discredit it, it is more important than ever that you be a daily consumer of the word of God.

And that you understand that the Bible says faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God. That is not only as you are in the word, reading it, as you are searching it, as you are researching it, as you are validating what is true, that you are hearing God’s word, your hearing is truth, and that is affirming your faith, that is sustaining your faith.

The reason that many believers, hear me, are vulnerable to the attacks of the devil. And the Bible tells us to put on the full armor of God every day, why? Because we know there are fiery darts out there that He’s firing off to us.

He’s trying to discourage you. The number one tool of the devil, listen, is discouragement. Well, listening is an important skill, the Bible tells us he who answers a matter before he hears it is folly and shame to him.

So God wants us to learn how to listen. And I don’t think there’s anything more important than listening to the preaching and teaching of the word of God. And so what we see in the Berean believers is an example, a model, a model, a model for all of us.

And I pray that we will continue to emulate this model and seek for different ways to be better at listening to the teaching and preaching of the word of God. I want to encourage you to remember that we are streaming live every Sunday on our website or our YouTube channel or Facebook channel and know that you can catch up.

And we’re not trying to take you out of church. We want you in a local church. We want you plugged in with the people of God and we want you serving and supporting your pastor and the elders and deacons and all who serve there.

We want you to do that. But we also know that there are times that maybe you’re not able to be there. And if your church doesn’t have a streaming program, I want you to know that Hope Worth Having has one that can be a supplement to your faith.

And so check us out live every Sunday morning at 11 a.m. Or if you want, you can go to our YouTube channel and catch up with what was taught that Sunday morning. So we are praying that God is working effectively in your life.

And we’re grateful for your prayers and your support. And this is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.

The post How to Listen to Preaching Part 1 first appeared on Hope Worth Having.

Pastor Mike will be speaking on Changing the World for the Gospel Part 2. He will be reading out of Acts 17:1-10.

Our message is not social reform. Our message is not political reform. Our message is not we’re going to fix the world. Our message is the death, burial, and resurrection. Welcome to Hope Worth Having.

This is Pastor Mike Sanders from the Open Door Church, and we are delighted to have you with us. Thank you for tuning in and being a part of the program today. We’re going to continue our study, Changing the World for the Gospel.

Acts 17 is our study. We’re pretty excited about learning how God worked in and through the apostles and how He can work in and through us today as we continue to impact people day by day. So let’s get our Bibles and let’s get into the Word today.

And if you have ever doubted whether God loves you, just look to the cross. The full manifestation of God’s love is demonstrated in that Christ gave His life and paid the penalty of sin for you and for me.

But we are not only called to be people who operate in the power of the Lord and the love of God, but of a sound mind. In the Greek, it has the idea of being balanced. We understand that sometimes we can get in that mindset that we are saying, what if?

What if? What if? And it only strangles us. It only causes us to be fearful. But a sound mind is a balanced mind operating in the constant faith and confidence that God is in charge. It does not call us to be foolish.

It does not call us to be reckless. It does not call us to abandon reason, but rather just the opposite. That if we are to be a courageous people that we must be a people who have a sound mind and that we operate in this faith that is balanced, a faith, a mindset that is based upon the truth rather than rumors, innuendos, or theories and philosophies that only end up to be a dead end road.

Now this call to be courage, to be courageous, we see in the apostle. I want you to go back to verse 2 and I want you to see that right at the outset it says that Paul as his custom was. What was his custom?

His custom was that he went to the synagogue. We come down to verse 10 and the Bible says again the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea and when they arrived they went into the synagogue.

of Jews. You see, this was the plan. This is how the apostle operated. He’s already faced opposition. He’s already been chased out of several communities because of the power of the gospel, has so upset those who do not believe the gospel that their very lives were threatened.

But does the apostle give up? Does he quit? Does he hang up and they say, I’m done. I’m not going to do this anymore? No, he shows great courage. He regroups, he huddles, and he gets back at the task.

He is on mission for God. He stays true to his calling, and he shows great courage by keep going back to the synagogue, going back to be a witness for God. One of the reasons many people do not witness is because they’re fearful of what people might do to them.

They are fearful of what might happen. But friends, God has called you and I to be bold and not operate in the fear of people. The Bible tells us that the apostle claimed to the Galatians that if he lived in the fear of people, that he would not be a true servant of God.

You have to understand that God has not called you to be a person who lives in the fear of others. We fear God. That’s a healthy fear. We revere God. We have all for God. We have great reverence for our God.

We recognize him as holy and righteous. We recognize him as high and lifted up in a mighty God. But when it comes to people, we operate in the power of God, the confidence of God, the strength of God, and we refuse to back down from the truth because we know that Jesus said the truth will set you free.

Yes, it will. all the boldness of Peter and John and perceive that they were uneducated, untrained men, they marveled and they realized that they had been with Jesus. That’s a key. That we are to be with Jesus and that this fuels the boldness and the courage.

God has not called you to be obnoxious, hateful, or rude, but He certainly has called you to be courageous, to take a stand for what is right and to speak up, stand up and do not be afraid of what the world can do to you.

The Apostle continued for the Lord despite great opposition and terrible persecution. People who do not understand the gospel sometimes react in emotional ways and they get very upset. Just jump down to verse 23 and I want you to see something here real quickly.

Verse 23 of chapter 17 of the book of Acts. here the apostle has stood up and he is helping them to understand that their religion will not save them but they happen to have this great list of idols or gods and one of them is named the unknown god so we pick up in verse 23 for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship I even found an altar with this inscription to the unknown god just in case we got the wrong god we got an unknown god to make up for the wrong god how about that one that’s the way they operated and so the apostle continues and says therefore the one whom you worship without knowing him I proclaim to you what a beautiful opportunity that the apostle takes in verse 24 says that god who made the world and everything in it since he is the lord of heaven and earth does not dwell in the temples that are made with hands now let’s jump down to verse 29 verse 29 therefore since we are of the offspring of god we ought not to think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone something shaped by the art and man’s devising the apostle is trying to help them understand what it means to have a relationship with god and he’s not afraid to tell them in the midst of a large crowd in the midst of a dominant society that worships multiple gods and everybody pick your own religion and just in case we got the wrong religion we got one over here it’s a backup plan and it’s called the unknown god what does the apostle do he steps into the gap and he steps up into the vacuum and he speaks up and says hey this unknown god let me tell you about him his name is jesus christ that’s how powerful and courageous the apostle is so you might ask how do i build courage into my heart let me give you three things real quickly three things how do i I build courage into my heart,

pastor. God is calling me in these unique times to be courageous, like the apostle to speak up and stand up for him. Let me give you three things. First is faith. And when I say faith, I mean trust. I mean trust in God.

I mean trust in God. I want you to take your Bible this morning and I want you to jump back to the book of Psalms. Psalm 27, many of you know this wonderful passage of scripture, but I just wanna read a few of them.

Come with me to Psalm 27. There’s nothing like visualizing the reading of the scriptures. Psalm 27, we’re gonna read verse one through three together. I want you to make sure you mark this and take time to spend more time in Psalm 27 this week.

The Psalmist says, the Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Whom shall I be afraid? afraid when the wicked come against me to eat up my flesh, my enemies and foes, they stumbled and fell.

Though an army may encamp against me, my heart shall not what, church? The war may rise against me. In this, I will be confident.” Now there’s much more to be said and we certainly can’t take all of our time on this chapter but I want you to know that we are encouraged over and over in the Bible to have faith.

You could maybe say trust or even confidence. You gotta have confidence in God. You gotta have trust in God. Now the only way that I can have trust in God is get to know God, is to spend time in His word, it is to spend time in prayer, it is to have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

The more you know God, hear me, the more you’ll trust Him. Have you ever met someone the more you know them, the less you like them? I’m not talking about your spouses, okay? I’m sorry they didn’t tell you everything up front before you got married, but here we are.

But I just want you to know this, the more you know Jesus, the more you will love Him. You will never be disappointed. People will let you down in life but Jesus never does. And I wanna be real with you that there may be times that in my frailty and my selfishness and sinfulness that I may let you down, but Jesus will never let you down.

So I wanna encourage you to have that kind of faith. Here’s another one, how to build courage is purity in my life. It is purity. Again, I want you to take your Bible and go to 1 Peter chapter two. That’s in the back of the New Testament, certainly not in the book of Revelation but you can back up from the book of Revelation, 1 Peter chapter two.

Again, I want you to see this because I think it’s important in helping to build courage in our life, 1 Peter chapter two verse one and two. 1 Peter 2, verse 1 and 2, verse 1, therefore laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby.

You see, if my heart is filled with filth, if my heart is filled with sin, it’s hard for the milk, the purity of God’s word and His truth to infiltrate my heart. That’s why the Bible says lay some of those things aside, that malice, that bitterness, that deceit, that hypocrisy, that envy, that evil speaking about others, put it all aside, get it out of your life so that there’s plenty of room in your heart that the pure milk of the word of God,

there is nothing that will help build courage in your heart that win your heart. is in alignment with God almighty. You don’t want a heart that is filthy. You don’t want to have a heart that is dysfunctional.

You don’t want to have a heart that is tainted with the sins of the world. Rather, God has called us to keep short accounts with Him and to repent daily of any sin in our life and to make things right with God and to make Him right with others.

You will be more courageous when your conscience is living in a clear, pure way before God and before others. When you are making things right with others and making things right with God, He is gonna use you in a courageous way in your life.

Let me tell you a third way how to build courage in your heart, and that is through hope. That is through hope. Again, I know you’re tired, but hang in there with me. Romans, go to the book of Romans, right after the book of Acts, Romans chapter five.

You say, Pastor, can’t you just throw these verses up there? I think you’re getting a little lazy. So I’m gonna have you exercise your fingers today. Romans chapter five, I love this, verse one. Romans five, verse one, therefore having been justified by faith, not by works, not by religion, but by faith in Christ, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have accessed by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in what?

Hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations knowing that tribulations produce perseverance and perseverance, character, and character what? Hope. And if you didn’t know enough about hope, how about verse five?

Now hope does not disappoint. Doesn’t let you down. The hope of God. Because the love of God has been poured out into the hearts by the Holy Spirit. Spirit who has given to us. So these things help us build hope into our hearts.

The apostle was driven. He’s a driven man to carry the hope of the gospel to as many people as possible. It didn’t matter what he had to endure personally, physically, emotionally. He just wiped the dust off his feet and he just kept plowing forward for God.

I want to give you a second characteristic of those who changed the world, and that is a message, meaning the right message. We go back to Acts 17. You got to have the right message because there’s nothing more disheartening than someone to have the wrong message.

But the right message in verse 2 and 3, we see that the apostle spent time reasoning, explaining, and demonstrating what was the message that Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead. that Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ.

Jump down to verse 11. He’s now in Berea, having been chased out of Thessalonica because of the riots. He’s now in Berea, verse 11, these were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica. How about those people?

In that they received the word with all readiness and searched the scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. Therefore many of them believed and not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well, as men.

So he goes on to tell us that there was great results and why is there great results? Because there is the right message and the message for us church, hear me, our message is not social reform. Our message is not political reform.

Our message is not somehow that we’re going to fix the world. Our message is the death, burial, and resurrection. I know you want to fix people. I know you want to fix these things that exist, but hear me, you can’t.

Only God can change your heart. And God changes hearts through the power of the gospel. So it’s important that you understand that you have the right message because what a person believes determines everything that they become and do.

What a person believes, the Bible says, as a man thinks, so is he. My attitudes, they are the ones that drive my actions. My character influences my conduct. And so I want to make sure that my thoughts, my beliefs, they impact my behavior, and I want to make sure that those are in alignment with the right message.

We see that Paul explains. He proves. Paul does not just get up there and emotionally rattle off some kind of a new religion but ravage. he proves, he defends, he is the one who’s making sure that as he is explaining and reasoning with the unbelievers that all their questions are answered to prove that Christ did suffer and that he did die on a cross and he did rise again.

Now the natural response of the human heart is get out of here, that’s unbelievable. That’s unbelievable. But yet you and I are called to explain the scriptures and that’s the key, that when Paul was reasoning, when he was explaining, when he was demonstrating, he was using the scriptures to help people to understand because here’s what I want you to know, church, faith comes by hearing and hearing the what?

So do not underestimate the sufficiency of the Bible, do not underestimate the power of the Bible. Okay, you may try many other means to persuade minds, but they’ve all been tried and found wanting and the real truth and the real power is in the word of God.

So Paul’s message was logical and it addressed to the minds and the hearts of those who would listen. Do not be discouraged church, that as you are out there sharing this right message and what a profound time to be able to do that right now.

Yes, you will have some resistance. Yes, there will be opposition and there may be some people get hostile and upset, but friends, you keep telling the right message. God will work in hearts, He will open eyes and He will bring spiritual breakthrough in those who are responsive.

His plan, the apostle was wise. He first reached out to those who were already familiar with the scriptures. What did we see? When he went to Thessalonica, when he went to the Bereans, he went where?

The synagogue. They already had a foundation of the Old Testament and then he went to the Jews and he also went to the God-fearing Gentiles. They had a sense of religion and a sense of what the Old Testament taught and Paul used that to build upon his message.

So many times that we’re making the mistake that we’re trying to convince those who have no foundation and I’m not saying we shouldn’t, but I’m also saying don’t forget that the first plan begins with those who have the foundation.

They have the foundation of the Bible. They have the foundation that they respect God in their hearts. They may not have a relationship with the Lord and they may not know Christ as their savior, but they have some kind of a foundation.

That’s why your family is where it starts. That’s why it starts with those that you know. That’s why. You want to share Christ at that beginning and then watch that ripple out, watch that have an profound impact upon others’ lives.

Now, how can a Christian know God’s word in such a way they could use it effectively? Well, let me just give you three things here real quickly. Be diligent in your Bible study. Look, church, you gotta stay in the Bible every day.

You gotta walk with God. You gotta spend time reading, studying the Bible. You gotta carve out that time. I know. I mean, look, some of you, I mean, you know everybody’s posts. You know who posted what, and you could tell me for the last five months who posted what and what they posted.

But let me ask you something. Do you know the Bible? Because you see, you’re not measured. God’s not holding you accountable about how much time you’re spending on social media. But we as believers are accountable.

to how much time we spend in his precious word. There’s no better post than the post that was made in God’s word. Nothing better. I’m not against social media. You’ll find Pastor Mike there. I put a post up and I get out of there before the devil gets me.

They bad? And sometimes someone will say, well, did you see that post? I have to be honest with you. I rarely scroll down looking for somebody else’s posts because most of it is everybody just venting about their issues.

Okay, don’t vent on social media. You got to move forward in your life, okay? I mean, that’s like hanging your dirty laundry out. Don’t do that. You got to be a person who is positive and joyful and full of hope.

Now, be diligent in your Bible study. How can I use God’s word effectively? Be committed to live the Bible. Now see, if you sit there and claim to be a Christian, but your life does not match up, it’s not that God wants us to be perfect, but certainly the direction of our life is that we’re striving to be as real and authentic with our faith as possible, right?

What turns people off is hypocrisy. What causes people to reject the gospel is they see some kind of a different life and what you and I need to strive to do. Now look, some of you parents, you’re gonna make mistakes.

I have made mistakes as a father and we make mistakes, but you got to be honest with your children. And when you fail, don’t be afraid to apologize. When I call you to authenticity, I’m not calling you to perfection.

I’m calling you to be real. And if you said something you shouldn’t have said, if you did something you shouldn’t have done, and if you promised something you never fulfilled, then be real and say, look, I blew it.

And I’m asking you to forgive me and I should have been better. I should have been better. Listen, this is what we understand. Redemption is what the Bible is all about, but be committed to live your life as close to God’s word as possible.

Let me tell you. third way, how to use God’s word effectively, teach the Bible to others. I have had so many people tell me, boy, when I became a teacher, when I began to lead a Bible study group, when I led a prayer group, that’s when I really grew in my knowledge of the Bible.

And I want to challenge you to think that way, and I know some of you will never teach a Bible group, and that’s okay, but I want to challenge you, at least try to teach it to your children and your grandchildren, or maybe somebody that you know, somebody’s asking questions in your life, it can be one-on-one, it can be in a group, or it can be in whatever scenario God gives you, but don’t be afraid to teach the Bible.

The third characteristic is multiplication. Now, in verse 4, we see that there was a great multitude that responded in chapter 17. Verse 12, I already read to you, there was many that believed. I want to tell you that what we’re seeing here is the apostle is multiplying.

Himself, those who want to influence the world for Christ must recognize they cannot do it alone. That’s what we see Paul doing. He’s not doing it alone. And we love that great verse in 2 Timothy 2.2 that says, the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

Who are you mentoring? Who are you discipling? Who are you trying to influence? You say, well, I don’t really have a big platform. You don’t need a big platform and you don’t need to be a great influencer on tikki takki.

All you gotta do is be genuine and notice that there are many people that are in need of a mentor. I stand here on the shoulders of others because people took an interest in Mike Sanders as a young boy, as a young man.

And they said, let’s do our best to be a positive influence in their life. So I’ve told you this before, write it down because you were sleeping, you didn’t pay attention. You forgot your notebook. So pull out your Walmart receipt or some of you go to Target, wherever you go and write this down.

You need three relationships in your life. You need an apostle Paul, a mentor. Pray, God, give me a mentor. Get plugged into a Bible study, get plugged into different ministries and build these relationships where you can have mentors.

I asked people, would you be a mentor to me? That’s what I did. I asked people, would you be a mentor to me? And I still have mentors today, but you also need a mentee. You need a Timothy in your life.

You need someone that you can pour your life into, that you can be that discipler, that you can be a positive influence in their life, that you can help them to make great choices and good decisions.

And then thirdly, you need a Barnabas. You need an encourager in your life. I mean. I mean, you walk through life and you get dragged down, you end up in the mud and you get beat up a little bit and you wonder, man, how are we gonna make it?

Man, isn’t it wonderful to have an encourager in your life? When you come to church, don’t be complaining. Don’t complain. I want to challenge you. Don’t find anything that you see to complain about.

Refuse to do it. Say, God didn’t send me here this morning to find fault. He sent me here to bless others. Amen. I want you, you see, you found a lemon. Let’s make some lemonade, amen. Let’s be positive.

Let’s encourage God’s people. Let’s find ways. Well, you know, this didn’t happen. And you know, that didn’t happen. Or that was the most boring sermon I’ve ever heard in my life. I know, I hear you, buddy.

You don’t have to be the one that has to deliver the most boring sermon. You know me? This will be my final point, endurance, and I only have a few thoughts. Now, what we see here is that Paul kept enduring.

We must not allow opposition to stop our witness. The remaining verses show the response of many to the gospel, and it’s because Paul wouldn’t quit. If Paul would have given up in chapter 16, we wouldn’t have chapter 17, and we wouldn’t have chapter 18.

And if somebody would have given up and said, you know what, you know, I told you church that I was a bus kid, and I know you’ve been wondering what’s wrong with me, it’s because I’m a bus kid. I got saved through the bus ministry, but I guarantee you there were times they got up and somebody forgot to put the gas and the fuel, and somebody maybe forgot to warm the bus up or maybe they had to scrape the window to get the ice off.

But they kept enduring and they kept picking up Mike and they kept picking up my brother and my sister. And today, because they wouldn’t give up, we’re all connected to Christ in a local church, serving God, married to Christian families, have beautiful children and spouses.

And all I’m trying to say is that someone down the road wouldn’t give up, and so in order to have a chapter 17, there had to be a chapter 16, and there had to be these people who just kept enduring. And here’s what I want to leave you with, church.

Galatians 6, 9, let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not. Would you pray with me, church? Last week, we proposed the question, what characterizes a person who changes the world for the gospel?

And we learned that it was beginning with courage, and that’s what we see in the apostles. They were courageous men who were not afraid to stand up and to speak up for the gospel of Jesus Christ. But we also learned this week that courage is to be coupled with the right message.

It’s not enough for us to just be courageous. We’ve got to have the right message, and the message is not politics. The message is not social gospel, but the message is the true gospel that calls every person to repent and to believe in Jesus Christ.

It’s this message that turned Nineveh on its head and caused the king to call for a citywide repentance. And so I pray that today that God will use each of us to help change the world for the truth of the gospel and to bring glory to His name.

I want to encourage you to check us out on our website, hopethhaving.com. And in hopethhaving.com, we have a list of the different TV times and radio times that we are broadcasting. And so if you’d like to keep up, no matter where you’re hearing us, you can keep up with these different times.

And we’re pretty excited because we’re now launched in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and we welcome all of our new listeners there and hope that you’re enjoying and growing as we minister through the Word of God to you.

And this is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.

The post Changing the World for the Gospel Part 2 first appeared on Hope Worth Having.

Pastor Mike will be speaking on Changing the World for the Gospel Part 1. He will be reading out of Acts 17:1-10.

God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. The antidote to any fear and anxiety in your heart is always rooted in the strength or the power of God and the love of God and the sound mind.

Are you ready? This is Hope Worth Having. I’m your host, Pastor Mike Sanders. We’re looking forward to sharing the hope of Christ with you today. So I want you to grab your Bibles and join me in Acts chapter 17.

We’re starting a new series entitled Changing the World for the Gospel. And I hope that that’s your heart, that you want to see people change through the power of the gospel. So let’s grab our Bibles, maybe a pen, a piece of paper, and let’s continue to study together.

If you have your Bible this morning, I want you to turn to Acts chapter 17. Those of you that have been with us consistently, you know that we’ve been studying the book of Acts. It is easy to sometimes look at the book of Acts and we see some extraordinary events that happen, sometimes almost unbelievable.

And we have in our hearts that we feel the need to replicate those events. But really the book of Acts is a narrative of how the ministry of the apostles, but more specifically in the section of we’re in, the Apostle Paul’s ministry and his missionary team, how that all unfolded, how it began the inception of Christianity throughout the world, how it quickly spread.

Our goal is that as we are reading the Scriptures, we are looking for commands and patterns that we want to certainly emulate. as believers. As you and I live in these unique times, God is calling us more than ever to be committed to changing the world.

But I want you to understand that God is not calling you to change the world for politics, for finances, or perhaps even the business, or some kind of technological new discovery, but rather He is calling you to change the world for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The good news of Christ. One might ask, what is the good news? The good news is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We’re taught that in First Corinthians chapter 15 verse 1 through 3.

And the good news, my friends, is not that you and I have some other kind of a religion that we can follow, but rather that we can, through Christ, have a relationship with God. The invitation of Christianity and the celebration of the coming of our Savior Jesus to this world is not to add more religion to your plate, but rather it is that you may know God and that you would experience His forgiveness and His grace in your life,

that you would have a connection with our Savior, that you would have a connection with your Creator, and that you would know Him in a very personal way. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father but by Me, and though that may seem to you very exclusive, and you may struggle with the lack of plurality that Jesus speaks, but I want you to know that He is very direct and He cuts through all the noise and voices of the world,

and He speaks straight to our heart and reminds us that there’s only one way to heaven, and it is through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The job of the church is not to reformat the message, it is not to try to make the message more palatable.

The job of the church is to proclaim that message, that we continue to reiterate what God has already proclaimed in the coming of a Savior who has come to this earth, and He did not abandon us in our sufferings or our struggles, but rather unlike any other religion in the world, God sent His only begotten Son, and Jesus came and walked among us and lived a sinless life, thus qualifying Himself for not only fulfilling all that the law had required that was given in the Old Testament,

but He would be qualified. to go to the cross and to pay for the penalty of our sins and then the Bible says three days later he would rise again. Jesus went to that cross to take care of our past and he came out of that grave to take care of our future.

From beginning to end, in a relationship with the Lord, we are cared for and we are taken care of. Our God is not distant. He is not a God that we cannot speak to nor that He does not even hear us. But we have a Heavenly Father who knows us and He sent His Son and Jesus is the full manifestation and revelation of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

And now you and I can walk in unity and harmony with our Savior and we are a people that are blessed. But how is it that we are going to be able to change the world for the gospel? We understand the world is not as it was when God created it.

Now, some would say the world’s not like it was, Pastor, 10 years ago or 30 years ago or 50 years ago or 100 years ago. I think that’s pretty obvious. The measuring stick is not the past of the world, but the measuring stick is God’s word, and we look and see how God created Adam and Eve, and He created, if you will, this utopias world, this great Garden of Eden, this place where Adam and Eve could flourish and that they could walk in the cool of the day with God Himself in sweet communion and fellowship,

all that the heart longs for is found in a relationship with Jesus. The world will not satisfy you as you pursue it. The money will never be enough. There’s always going to be somebody who has a bigger house and a better car and more technology than you.

You’re in a rat race. You’re a dog chasing the tail. But if you want to experience real peace, real joy, real forgiveness, well, that’s found in a relationship with Christ. But unfortunately, Adam and Eve, not created robots, not robots who could only do whatever God says, but rather created with a will that could make a choice so that when they chose to love God, it would be authentic and real, not something forced upon them.

Unfortunately, they chose to disobey God. It is from that moment that sin entered the world. And the manifestation of a sin sinful world is what we have seen unfolded throughout all of history. There are times that mankind has been great, and there have been times that mankind has dipped into the deepest depravities known to the heart.

But either way, we’re still a sinful, selfish people. We are a flawed people. We are limited. We bear the burdens of our sins and unforgiveness. We carry the weight of our guilt, and we strive to find answers that are out in the world to resolve these issues that are within.

In our observation of the world that we live in, the time span that God has granted us to be alive. We certainly, as believers, would say that our world is… turned upside down. Why the prophet Isaiah had said that there would be a time when good would be called evil, and that evil would become good.

The Bible chronicles a period of time, even in the nation of Israel’s history, in which every man did what was right in his own eyes. And if these do not personify our times, not from the perspective of the world, but from the perspective of Scriptures, you and I are witnessing some of these perilous times that the Bible describes.

And when we come to our text today, we find that the Apostle Paul, that he was a man who was living in perilous times. He was living in times when there were many gods and many religions, and many people seeking rest in their hearts, only to find that the religion and the things of the world could not bring true peace to them.

And so the Apostle shows up in a town called Thessalonica. Thessalonica was a port city with major Roman roads running through it. It was really a community of a melting pot of ethnicities and nationalities.

And the Jewish people, the Jewish population, had already been very effective in prostilizing and evangelizing many of the Greeks to come to follow Judaism, as well as many influential and leading women in the community of Thessalonica.

We understand the Jewish teaching centered around the keeping of the commandments of the Old Testament. With the ultimate goal that one day the Messiah would come and he would be the king and he would reign in Jerusalem.

That achieving righteousness with God in the mind of the Jewish people was simply a matter of climbing a religious ladder. Follow the commands, become good enough, and you’ll be accepted by God. It is against this backdrop that the Apostle Paul shows up into this community and when he comes he brings the startling and earth-shaking message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A message as we’ve taught you that Jesus is that Messiah that has been prophesied. That he has fulfilled every prophecy in the Old Testament relating to his coming as the Messiah and that he also would fulfill all that was proclaimed about him as he lived a sinless life on this earth, and that we know that one day, as we read in our scriptures, and we are waiting on his second coming to this earth,

one may say, why would Jesus come? Aren’t things so wonderful, pastor? Because people continue to make a mess of not only their personal lives, but the world. This place is going to consummate into destruction, but Jesus is gonna come, and he is going to rule and reign in Jerusalem, and he is going to set up a millennial kingdom, and that is our hope, and that is our anticipation.

But when Paul comes to a community of not only Gentiles, and Greeks, and Jewish people, he sends a very powerful and thought-provoking message, a message that is contrary to what religions say, because really there’s only two religions in all that we see unfolding.

You either believe that you can be good enough, work hard enough to be accepted by God, and to have eternal bliss with God, or you believe that Jesus Christ has done all that is necessary, and he has been accepted by God, and by faith in him, and what he has accomplished on the cross and through the resurrection, that you and I have eternal life.

It’s either one or the other. You can put whatever labels you want on it, whatever church signs you might have, but you either believe that Christ paid the penalty for our sins, and did all that was necessary for us to live a life of grace, and forgiveness, and hope, and peace, or you believe it.

believe it’s up to you, it’s up to you, to the strongest, to the fastest, to those who are morally the best. But we find that even the moral among us find out that sometimes their morality is rudderless and it leads them down paths that are sinful and degrading to humanity and disrespecting the dignity of life and that no matter how intelligent and how scientific that they become, that they would embrace belief systems that would actually murder people.

And I know that you say, Pastor Mike, what are you talking about? How about up there in Canada where they’re now making it possible for every citizen to be euthanized if they want. You don’t think that these things that are going to infiltrate our societies?

These are true. How horrible that is. How horrible it is. But the point that I want you to see this morning is that the gospel is the true answer. If we’re going to change this world, it’s not going to be through politics, and it’s not going to be through technology, and it’s not going to be through religion.

If we’re to change the world, it is going to be through the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so then, we are called to be a people who literally turn the world upside down. I want you to pick up with me because we see this emulated in the life of the apostle in chapter 17, verse 1.

Now, when they had passed through Amphiphilus and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. Then Paul, as his custom was, went into them, and for three Sabbaths, he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, this Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ.

And some of them were persuaded, and a great multitude of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women joined Paul and Silas. But the Jews who were not persuaded becoming envious, took some of the evil men from the marketplace, and gathering a mob set all the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.

But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason, and some brethren to the rulers of the city, crying out, these who have turned the world upside down. the world upside down have come here too. Jason has harbored them, and these are all acting contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying there is another king, Jesus.

And they troubled the crowd and the rulers of the city when they heard these things, so when they had taken security from Jason and the rest, they let them go. Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews.

Wherever the apostle went, it was either a revival or a riot. Wherever he went, he was constantly turning the norms upside down. He was turning people’s lives upside down. You remember in chapter 16 and we learned about the fortune teller and how she was owned by masters who were profiting off of her fortune telling and how that when she finally came to God, they were upset because now their money making machine and system had been depleted and destroyed and they were upset and they began to attack the apostle.

We come to chapter 17, the apostle shows up and he is shaking things up when he shows up. He’s not shaking things up intentionally in the sense that he’s trying to cause a riot or that he in the way that he is trying to create mobs to disrupt the normal activities of life but rather he is just proclaiming the gospel message of Jesus Christ.

And I want you to see this morning the characteristics or perhaps we could put it like this. What is it that characterizes a person who changes the world for the gospel? What is that? Well let me give you a few of these this morning and I want you to write them down as we analyze this chapter together.

First I would submit unto you courage. I would submit unto you courage we talked about in verse 1 and 2 how the apostle again leaves one city and he heads to another city. Now if you have had time and maybe you haven’t but you can later, you know that when the apostle in chapter 16 that he was beaten, he was mistreated, he was thrown into jail.

Remember the Philippian jailer? Remember that he came to Christ? Remember that Paul and Silas rather than whining and crying about their circumstances, they sang hymns unto God and they rejoiced in God.

They prayed to God and when the Bible says that when they were singing and praying that the earth shook and that they had the ability to expand. escape, and rather than escaping, they chose to stay, and they so impacted those that were responsible for watching the prisoners that they said, what must we do to be saved?

But Paul and Silas, wherever they went, they weren’t always accepted. And so having been beaten and having been thrown in jail, now they’re moving on to the next town, and we see in their life that they have an incredible amount of courage.

No one will ever influence the world for Christ who lacks courage. No one will influence their family, their friends, their neighborhoods, their communities without having courage in their life. The Scriptures teach us that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

The antidote to any fear and anxiety in your heart is always rooted… in the strength or the power of God, and the love of God, and the sound mind. Let me just help you understand what that means practically in your life.

We talk about the strength of God. We cannot operate in our own strengths. For when we operate in our own strengths, we find that it is limited, and that it can only go so far, but the strength of the Lord, it is what keeps encouraging us.

It is what keeps enabling us to be able to be all that God has called us to be, even when we face opposition, even when we face pushback in our life, that it is the strength of the Lord that works effectively in our lives.

We’re taught that we’re not given a spirit of fear, but rather power and love. The apostle John would later teach us love casts out all fear. And we’re talking about a love for God and a love for people, rather than operating in fear of others and fear of God, we are called to operate in the mode of love.

And why is it that we can love? Well, the scriptures tell us that we love Him because He first loved us. And that is manifested in that one succinct verse that we know so well in John 3 16, that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

You and I have the capacity to love others unconditionally. And we have the capacity to love people, even through trials, differences, disagreements, that you and I can still love others because God has loved us.

And if you have ever doubted whether God loves you, just look to the cross. The full manifestation of God’s love is demonstrated in that Christ gave His life and paid the penalty of sin for you and me.

and for me, but we are not only called to be people who operate in the power of the Lord and the love of God, but of a sound mind. In the Greek, it has the idea of being balanced. We understand that sometimes we can get in that mindset that we are saying, what if, what if, what if, and it only strangles us, it only causes us to be fearful, but a sound mind is a balanced mind, operating in the constant faith and confidence that God is in charge.

It does not call us to be foolish. It does not call us to be reckless. It does not call us to abandon reason, but rather just the opposite. that if we are to be a courageous people, that we must be a people who have a sound mind, and that we operate in this faith that is balanced, a faith, a mindset that is based upon the truth, rather than rumors, innuendos, or theories and philosophies that only end up to be a dead end road.

Now this call to be courage, to be courageous, we see in the apostle. I want you to go back to verse two, and I want you to see that right at the outset, it says that Paul as his custom was. What was his custom?

His custom was that he went to the synagogue. We come down to verse 10, and the Bible says again, the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of Jews.

You see, this was the plan. This is how the apostle operated. He’s already faced opposition. He’s already been chased out of several communities because of the power of the gospel, has so upset those who do not believe the gospel that their very lives were threatened.

But does the apostle give up? Does he quit? Does he hang up and they say, I’m done? I’m not gonna do this anymore? No, he shows great courage. He regroups, he huddles, and he gets back at the task. He is on mission for God.

He stays true to his calling, and he shows great courage by keep going back to the synagogue, going back to be a witness for God. One of the reasons many people do not witness is because they’re fearful of what people might do to them.

They are fearful of what might happen. But friends, God has called you and I to be bold and not operate in the fear of people. The Bible tells us that the apostle claimed to the Galatians that if he lived in the fear of people, people that he would not be a true servant of God.

You have to understand that God has not called you to be a person who lives in the fear of others. We fear God, that’s a healthy fear. We revere God, we have all for God. We have great reverence for our God.

We recognize him as holy and righteous. We recognize him as high and lifted up and a mighty God. But when it comes to people, we operate in the power of God, the confidence of God, the strength of God, and we refuse to back down from the truth because we know that Jesus said, the truth will set you free.

Yes, it will. We see this again, exemplified in Acts chapter four, verse 13, when the Bible says, now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated, untrained men, they marveled and they realized…

that they had been with Jesus. That’s the key, that we are to be with Jesus and that this fuels the boldness and the courage. God has not called you to be obnoxious, hateful, or rude, but He certainly has called you to be courageous, to take a stand for what is right, and to speak up, stand up, and do not be afraid of what the world can do to you.

The apostle continued, for the Lord, despite great opposition and terrible persecution. People who do not understand the gospel sometimes react in emotional ways, and they get very upset. Just jump down to verse 23, and I want you to see something here real quickly.

Verse 23 of chapter 17 of the book of Acts. Here, the apostle has stood up and he is helping them to understand that their religion will not save them, but they happen to have this great list of idols or gods, and one of them is named the unknown God.

So we pick up in verse 23, for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. Just in case we got the wrong God, we got an unknown God to make up for the wrong God.

How about that one? That’s the way they operated. And so the apostle continues and says, therefore the one whom you worship without knowing him I proclaim to you. What a beautiful opportunity that the apostle takes.

Verse 24 says that God who made the world and everything in it since he is the Lord of heaven and earth does not dwell in the temples that are made with hand. Now let’s jump down to verse 29. Verse 29, therefore since we are of the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divine nature is like gold.

Truly, we have seen a lot of changes in our world, and we would say that we live in an upside-down world. But think about this, that when the apostles were out there preaching the gospel, they turned the world upside down with the gospels, and the apostles shook things up wherever they went.

And that’s what we see in Acts 7. We see them changing the world through the power of the gospel. And I hope that today’s message will continue to inspire us to be bold in sharing our faith and recognizing that hope is a powerful force, and that it can help us to overcome obstacles and achieve God’s truth into our life, and that we can accomplish what the Lord has called us to do.

I want to remind you that we have a YouTube channel, and on that YouTube channel you can pick up some of our podcasting, you can pick up some of our videos, some of our sermons, and we also have interviews and different discussion topics and Q and A.

So I hope you’ll check out our YouTube channel, go to Hope Worth Having, just sign up or subscribe, and we hope the channel will be a great inspiration to you. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.

The post Changing the World for the Gospel Part 1 first appeared on Hope Worth Having.

Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Turn Your Obstacles into Opportunities Part 3. He will be reading out of Acts 16:11-40.

When everything’s wrong in your life and nothing is coming together as you had hoped it but you still choose to sing praise to God and you still choose to worship Him and you still choose to pray to Him that’s when you get the attention of the world.

Welcome to Hope Worth Having radio program. I’m your host Pastor Mike Sanders and today we’re going to be talking about hope. We’re going to be talking about the gospel. We’re going to be talking about how to turn your obstacles into opportunities and we’re continuing our study in Acts chapter 16 and we’re learning how the apostle dealt with opposition.

So let’s grab our Bibles and let’s continue to learn and grow together. If you have your Bible this morning I want you to join me in the book of Acts chapter 16 several weeks ago. We started this study on how to turn your obstacles into opportunity.

I want to remind you that wherever the apostle Paul went he either had a revival or it ended up being a riot and that’s what we see taking place in chapter 16. The apostle and his missionary team are headed into the city of Philippi and they are preaching the gospel but they end up being in jail.

We read that in verse 24. The Bible says that having received such a charge he put them into the inner prison and he fastened their feet in the stocks. The gospel message will always be met with obstacles but God has the ability to turn each and every obstacle into an opportunity.

We must remember as God’s people that as the gospel spread opposition will increase. Jesus taught us in John 15 verse 18, if the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. And so at the very outset an understanding of why someone would resist the gospel and someone would be against the salvation of souls, it is at the heart that they are resisting Jesus Christ Himself.

It is our job as His disciples to not take it personal but to recognize what is really going on. The Apostle Paul was preaching the gospel in this great city Philippi, which we have shared with you, was a gateway to Europe and would eventually become the gateway to the gospel spreading throughout all of Europe.

But as he preached it, he faced physical suffering. In these past few weeks we have learned a few principles to help us. How to turn our obstacles into opportunities. The first thing that we learned a few weeks ago was that we must work where God is working.

What you have to remember is that even when there is opposition, even when there is an obstacle in your life, God is still working. We seem to think sometimes that when there is trouble that God is not working.

That somehow this is not a part of God’s plan, but just the opposite is true. God is always working and the Bible teaches us that the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost. So Christ has come to seek sinners.

God is always drawing people to Him and He uses the circumstances of life to open people’s eyes and to help them to see the truth. So how do I turn my obstacles into opportunities? It is first to work where God is working.

Second of all, we learned that we must expect obstacles. As soon as the Lord starts blessing in our life, as soon as He starts working in divine ways, I want you to know the devil is going to be fighting.

The devil is not taking a vacation. The devil is not going to say, well, look, I’m going to just take a step back and let the work of God and the cause of Christ to move forward. No, just the opposite.

We see this in verse 14 of chapter 16 that a certain woman named Lydia, she heard us. She was a seller of purple. This is where God was working. He was working in the life of Lydia and she was from the city of Thyatira who worshiped God and the Lord opened her heart.

So Paul goes to Philippi. God is working in this small group of women and they are meeting for prayer. Paul shows up at the prayer meeting and the Lord opens her heart when she hears the gospel and the Bible teaches us that she came to Christ.

But then we see the opposite in verse 16. God was working in Lydia’s heart. She and her family came to God to believe in the Lord. But look at verse 16. Now it happened as we went to prayer that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling.

And so she was going around sarcastically and deceitfully trying to convince others that these men were servants of the Most High, which was true. But the problem is, as we’ve taught you, that she was trying to gain trust with the believers and the disciples so that she could suck them in to false teaching, that she could suck them into fortune-telling, that she could be that charlatan that would take advantage of their genuineness,

their authenticity, and she would make money off of them. What does the Bible say in verse 18? And she did this for many days. But Paul greatly annoyed, turned and said to the Spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.

And he came out of that very hour. This upset her handlers because she had other people who were using her, this fortune teller, to make money. And so they became upset, we see in verse 19, that they seized Paul and Silas and they dragged him into the marketplace to the authorities.

What is the result? Look at verse 24. Having received such a charge, he put them in a prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. So here, people are being saved. Then there’s opposition. There’s an obstacle here.

What does the apostle do? Well, that’s the third thing I want you to learn on how to turn your obstacles into opportunities. And that is to keep planting seeds in your life, to keep planting seeds. You know, most of the time when we face an obstacle, what do we do?

We give up. But I wanna remind you that God turns every obstacle into an opportunity if we will respond the way he is calling us to respond. And I want you to look at verse 25. Remember verse 24, don’t forget that.

You can’t understand verse 25 until you understand verse 24. And that is that they are in the inner prison and they are in stocks. Their hands are chained and their feet are chained and they are hardly able to move.

Now friends, it’s not like our jails and prisons. This prison is not fancy where they have three square meals a day and everything is clean and they have big TVs. And you say, how do you know these things, Pastor?

But I just want you to know, administering and trying to reach out, we’ve been there and we see some of these things. But here’s the thing, I want you to see what they’re dealing with, what their circumstances are and how they respond, how they keep planting seeds for the sake of life.

of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now look at verse 25. But at midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God. And the prisoners were listening to them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken.

And immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were loosed. And the keeper of the prison awakening from sleep and seeing the prison doors open, supposing the prisoners had fled, drew his sword and was about to kill himself.

But Paul called with a loud voice saying, do yourself no harm, for we are all here. Then he called for a light and he ran in and he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. And he brought them out and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved?

So they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household. Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and he washed their stripes.

And immediately he and all his family were baptized. Now when he had brought them into his house, he set food before them. And he rejoiced, having believed in God with all his household. And when it was day, the magistrates sent the officers saying, let those men go.

So the keeper of the prison reported these words of Paul saying, the magistrates have sent to let you go. Now therefore depart and go in peace. But Paul said to them, they have beaten us openly, uncondemned Romans and have thrown us into prison.

And now do they put us out secretly? No, indeed. Let them come themselves and get us out. And the officers told these words to the magistrates and they were afraid when they heard that they were Romans.

Then they came and pleaded with them and brought them out and asked them to depart from the city. So they went out of the prison and entered into the house of Lydia. And when they had seen the brethren, they encouraged them and departed.

What a powerful passage of scripture. Now in this passage of scriptures, I want to teach you how to keep planting seeds. Yes, you got problems in your life. You got struggles in your life. You got circumstances that are not perfect and things are not coming together just as you had planned.

But I want to tell you something that God wants you to keep planting seeds. He wants you to stay on mission for him. He wants you to keep moving the ball forward for the cause and the glory of Christ.

Here we find the apostle. He was overflowing with joy. And when he realized his situation, he recognized he had a ministry opportunity. He realized that even though there was an obstacle, there was an opportunity to advance.

the cause of Jesus Christ. The Apostle wrote to the Philippians, and he said, I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. Have you ever thought about that?

How that God allows circumstances in your life that you might be able to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ? Have you ever considered that God may put you on a difficult path so that your path would cross with other people who need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ?

You see, here they were in a prison, and they had unexpected problems, and certainly this was not what they had planned on. But what did God do? He had opened a new door, and God has other plans sometimes, plans that are not ours, plans that are different so that we might be able to fulfill His will.

Think about this, the Bible says that man plans his ways but the Lord directs his steps. You get up every day, you got a schedule, you got an agenda, you might even have a calendar and you have a plan of things you want to get done and you got a to-do list of things you need to achieve this day but you know what?

God throws a wrench in all of it and it’s a big mess and you find out that you’re on a detour but God uses that detour so that you could advance the cause of Jesus Christ. How do I keep planting seeds?

How do I do that, pastor? Number one, I want you to write this down, you need to choose joy. You need to choose joy. Would you recall with me in this passage again that after being beaten by the Roman guards, their muscles were aching, they were stiffening up, they were put into a smelly inner cell that was filled with darkness, there was nothing but cold and darkness and hopelessness in the room.

I’m sure that we would have been okay saying, you know what? It’s okay to be mad at God but instead of cursing God, Paul and Silas chose to pray and sing songs of praise. I want to ask you a question, what would you have done?

I have to be honest with you that if I was in a prison, I’m not sure that I would be praying and I would be singing songs to God but that’s exactly what Paul and Silas did. They were praying to God and they were praising God.

They had chosen that they would be joyful people. They would be joyful people and that’s what I’m challenging you to do this morning is that you have the joy of the Lord in you no matter what your circumstances are.

So many people are striving for happiness. And we know that happiness is not out there, friends. Happiness is not in the world. Happiness, or if we could say this, joy is in a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Life is about relationships. And if you can’t get relationships right, you can’t get anything right in your life. And that ought to be the priority of your life. When you come to the end of your life, you’re not gonna say, boy, I wish I had another hour in the office.

Let me tell you something, friends. I’ve been by many people that God was ready to promote out of this world. And I tell you that every one of them, what they want is their family around them. And they want to know that their faith is real.

You see, life’s about relationships, my relationship with God and my relationship with others. And that’s why that has to be the priority of my life. And you might think, well, Pastor Mike, what are you trying to teach us?

I’m trying to teach you what Jesus taught us. And that is that we are to love God and we are to love people. You love God and you love people. And that’s the key. to you having a joyful life that is the key of you living an abundant life the psalmist said the lord will command his loving kindness in the daytime and in the night his song shall be with me a prayer to the god of my life you see friends if you want to be able to sing in the night if you want to sing in the difficult circumstances of your life if you want to be a person of prayer then you’ve got to have a relationship with the lord jesus christ jesus said the thief comes not but to steal and to kill and to destroy i am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly why did jesus come that you and i might have life that we might have eternal life and let me tell you something about eternal life it’s not just the quantity of life that you’ll be forever with jesus yes but it is the quality of life and i’m not talking about the fact that you’ll have everything perfect in your life i’m talking about that you’ll have the peace of god and the joy of christ in your heart that no matter what you face in life that you are going to be able to put your focus on christ even in those difficult circumstances and you’re gonna have an abundant life jesus christ is the reason to have a song in your heart let me tell you something god’s people have always been a singing people music is not the source of your joy jesus is the source of your joy and music and singing is the outgrowth of a relationship with jesus christ and when you’re feeding that every day when you’re spending time with the lord every day when you’re in the bible every day when you are praying every day listen when you face a bump in the road when you face times of darkness when you face those difficulties in your life you’re going to be like paul and sylas you’re going to be singing at the midnight of your crisis and i would encourage you to have a strong relationship listen to what jesus Jesus said in John 15,

verse 11, these things I have spoken to you that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be what church for? You see, God doesn’t want you to just have half joy. He doesn’t want you just to have a little bit of joy, but he wants you to have his full joy.

Doesn’t mean that you’re always slapping everybody high five. It doesn’t mean that you’re walking around giving everybody hugs, but what it does mean is that even when you’re grieving, you have the joy of the Lord in your heart.

Why? Because your hope is not in this world and your hope is not in the circumstances of your life and your hope is not in how people respond to you or treat you, but rather your hope is in your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and you know that he’s come, that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly, that you might not only have the quantity of life, but that you might have the quality of life in knowing the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior.

What does Jesus want from me? That we would exhibit joy in every circumstance of our life. The psalmist said in Psalm 5.11, but rejoice all who take refuge in you. Sing for joy forever and may you shelter them that those who love your name may rejoice in you.

I am confident that the grace of God can make and help and strengthen each of us to sing even when we are suffering. You as the follower of Christ should never be ashamed to sing the songs that God has put upon your heart.

Songs that remind us of our relationship with God, and songs that grow out of our relationship with God. So I wanna encourage you this morning to choose joy. And at the heart of not only praising God and singing is your prayer life.

Consider this church that people that are joyful, people that are quick to praise God even through trials, are people of prayer. Because let me tell you something about prayer that you need to understand.

It is more than just a discipline. It is more than just a spiritual act. It is the mean by which God imparts his sustaining and sufficient grace to you. When you are filled with the grace of God that has been channeled to your heart through the means of humbling yourself before God Almighty and praying to him consistently and constantly I tell you that what will happen to you when you are facing the trials and darkness of life,

you will sing the praises. of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That’s why prayer is important to your life. Now the second thing that I want you to learn, we’re learning how do we keep planting seeds.

We choose joy in all of our circumstances. But number two, we are ready to give an answer. Yes, we are ready to give an answer. I want you to go back to verse 25. I don’t want you to see something here that I think’s important for us to remember this morning.

We already noted that Paul and Silas in difficult circumstances were praying, they were singing. But did you catch the last of that verse? We often focus on the beginning of the verse, but have you ever thought about the last few words there?

The prisoners were listening to them. You see, I want you to understand something. There’s a world that’s watching you. They’re not impressed with your God that blesses you when everything’s going right in your life.

They’re not impressed that you praise the Lord and you get up and go to church on Sunday and that you fail. safely serve the Lord, that you sacrifice for his cause. But here’s when the world takes note and is watching you, when everything’s crashing in your life and everything’s wrong in your life and nothing is coming together as you had hoped it, but you still choose to sing praise to God and you still choose to worship him and you still choose to pray to him.

That’s when you get the attention of the world. But I want you to know that the Lord uses our suffering to open doors of witnessing for him. And it’s our responsibility to be ready to give an answer.

So we come down to verse 26. The Bible says, suddenly there was this great earthquake and so that the foundations of the prison were shaken and immediately all the doors were open and everyone’s chains were loosed.

Now remember, they were all listening to Paul and Silas. The keeper of the prison awakened from sleep seeing that the prison doors were open. He supposed the prisons had fled and drew his sword and was about to be killed.

Why would he do that? Because Roman soldiers who allowed a prisoner to escape were executed and therefore they just said, look, if this is our fate that we’re gonna die, we might as well just take our lives then to suffer the consequences.

But did you see what the apostle did? He said in verse 28, Paul called out with a loud voice saying, do yourself no harm for we are all here. Not only are people listening, but people are watching how you handle your problems, how you respond to your circumstances.

They could have all been very selfish and said, let’s get out of here. God has caused this earthquake, let’s get out of here. And I know that many of you are trying to run from your problem. You’re trying to run from your circumstances and you’re trying to run from that relationship and you’re trying to run from that person and it’s easy to run, it’s easy to hop churches.

and it’s easy to go from this person and that person and that place, it’s easy to do all that stuff rather than have to deal with the reality what God is calling you to face. Are you with me, church?

What did Paul do? He did not run, nor did his team. They did not run, but look at verse 29. The Bible says he called for a light. He ran in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas and he brought them out and he said, sirs, what must I do to be saved?

Isn’t that glorious? Let me ask you a question. If somebody asks you, what do I gotta do to be saved? Could you even explain it to them? Are you ready to give an answer for the hope that lives within you?

Are you able to explain the gospel to someone? Are you able to present the plan of salvation? Are you able to walk somebody through the Romans Road and show them that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God?

Are you able to explain to them that God commends his love towards us yet while we were sinners, Christ died for us? Are you able to show them that the Bible says whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved?

Are you able to present the answer that the world is looking for? Could you answer this question? It’s a good question and it’s a beautiful question when God brings someone to that point for God has ordained that humans would proclaim the gospel to humanity.

God has chosen to use you and he has chosen to use me and he has chosen to use all of us church that we might answer the one question what must I do to be saved? What we witness in these verses is a miraculous conversion.

We see a hardened jailer humbly come to faith and to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and not just the jailer but his whole family. What must I do to be saved? Well friends you might be asking that question this morning.

You may have trickled in here and you may be wondering what must I do to be saved? Let me tell you something, it’s not about religion. It’s not an invitation to be more ritualistic. It is an invitation to have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

You see there’s no magical formula but there is this wonderful person Jesus and Jesus said that I am the way, the truth and the life. And no man comes to the Father but by me. Salvation comes through faith when we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is a matter of what we believe and who we believe in. The gospel is the object of our faith, but the gospel message, its focus is upon Jesus Christ. If I wanna be saved today, I must be willing to humble myself before God.

I must be willing to be honest before God and say, Lord, I’m a sinner. Now that’s a big step because I wanna tell you something powerful in your life that you should never forget. You can’t change what you won’t acknowledge.

If you’re not willing to admit that you’re a sinner, you won’t become a saint. You won’t become a person who has the wonderful blessing of receiving the forgiveness of your sins. So it starts right there.

I have to admit that I’m a sinner. Second of all, what do I gotta do? I gotta believe. that Jesus died on the cross for me, not just that he died for the world. The Bible says that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not what, church?

But have everlasting life. I still want you to know that if you’re here today and you’d like to know what to do to be saved, I want you to know that not only do you have to acknowledge that you’re a sinner and believe in Christ, but you have to call upon the Lord to save your soul.

You have to call upon Christ to forgive you of your sins. I tell people that getting saved is as easy as A, B, C. Acknowledge, believe, and call upon the Lord. But I want you to understand something.

When I was a little boy, 11 years old, and the preacher got up there and he preached on John 3 16, and he told me that I was a sinner, I didn’t even know I was a sinner until I came to church. Nobody had ever told me that I was a sinner.

I didn’t know I had sinned against the holy God. I didn’t realize that my God was righteous and that the only way I could go to heaven was to have his righteousness. And the only way that I could have his righteousness was to admit that I was a sinner.

I didn’t know that. And I was just 11 years old. But I want you to know when he told me that Jesus Christ went to the cross and died for my sins, and if I would believe in him, that I could have eternal life.

And I was like, well, if you’d stop preaching, I would get saved. I didn’t even know what to do. But he just said, if you’ll believe, I was ready to believe. Didn’t know what to do. And that’s the kicker.

That when he finally said, call on the name of the Lord, and he invited anyone who wanted to be saved to come forward, and I came forward, my brother came forward, my sister came forward, and I know this is crazy and it’s unusual, and it just seems the way that God worked in our lives, I’m not saying he does this for everybody, but in that first time that we heard that we were sinners and that Christ died for our sins,

and that if we would just call upon the name of the Lord and be saved, we were ready. Now some people are hard-headed, amen? This lady in the church, she said, pastor, would you meet with my husband?

And for seven weeks I did, and he finally came to Christ, praise the Lord. Listen, on that day, for me, my brother and sister, we came to Christ on the first time, and we went to the altar, and there a man was ready, and he showed us how to call upon the name of the Lord.

And I wonder how many of us would be ready. You just never know when somebody wants to know what they gotta do to be saved. As the gospel spreads, opposition will always increase. Jesus reminded us, if the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.

So I pray that today, these principles will be applied to our hearts, and we’ll always see great. opportunities in the obstacles that we face, and we ask that you will continue to remember that in Christ there is hope worth having.

The post How to Turn Your Obstacles into Opportunities Part 3 first appeared on Hope Worth Having.

Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Turn Your Obstacles into Opportunities Part 2. He will be reading out of Acts 16:11-40.

Here’s how the world works. When they cannot debate you about the truth, they start attacking you. They make accusations that are not accurate. They try to discredit you. They create a narrative that characterizes you as someone who is against the people.

Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders, and I’m delighted to welcome you to the Hope Worth Having Radio program this week. I’m excited to share God’s word with you as a source of inspiration for your heart.

And today we’re going to be in Acts chapter 16, covering verses 11 through 40, continuing our study on how to turn obstacles into opportunities. So let’s grab our Bibles and let’s get right into the Word of God this morning.

Well, if you have your Bible this morning, I want you to join me in the book of Acts chapter 16. We’ve been studying this chapter, and I’ve been teaching you how to turn your obstacles into opportunities.

Now, you recall that in the book of Acts, over and over, back in chapter four, back in chapter five, there was much opposition to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. There were those that did not agree with the good news of salvation, coming to those who repent and believe in Christ.

Jesus reminds us in the gospel of John chapter 15 and verse 18 that if the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. At any opposition or any pushback that we see for the things that are honorable and godly and righteous from this world that we see pushing back against those things, we know that it’s even deeper than just that they are upset with us.

or that we would stand for truth or we would stand for righteousness. That it’s deeper. There is a hatred in the world towards the things of God. There is a hatred towards Jesus Christ Himself. And you and I must recognize that.

When we come to chapter 16 we see the Apostle was teaching and preaching that this brought about physical suffering in his life. That not everybody was receptive When we started out in Acts chapter 16 we learned first of all that if we’re going to turn our obstacles into opportunities that we must be working where God is working.

That as believers we must be sensitive. Remember that Jesus said that the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. God is seeking. He is seeking sinners and He is drawing. In our own lives we think about personally where we’re at spiritually.

And perhaps you were just kind of going along in life and really not even thinking much about God, but there was a spiritual breakthrough in your life. There was something that brought you to that moment.

You may not have been looking for him, but God has always been seeking you and he has always been drawing you. We must recognize church that that is happening multiple times, not only in our families and our communities, but literally around the world.

And that’s why the apostle had to be sensitive because the Spirit of God forbade him to go one direction so that he would go another direction that he might join God where he is working. You’re familiar in what we learned last week that the apostle showed up at a Jewish prayer meeting and that there was a lady, her name was Lydia, and that she would come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And you can read about that later in your own personal time. That is in verse 14 and 15. How she not only became a believer, but she was baptized into the faith and that she was one whose heart was opened to the things of God.

And God had worked effectively. We pick up in verse 16, and I want you to see that we are to expect obstacles if we are going to continue to see those opportunities. Look at verse 16 of chapter 16. Now, what happened is we went to prayer that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination, met us who brought her master’s much profit by fortune telling.

This girl followed Paul and us and cried out, saying, these men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaimed to us the way of salvation. And this she did for many days, but Paul greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, I command you in the name of God.

of Jesus Christ to come out of her and he came out that very hour. But when her master saw that their hope of profit was gone they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to the authorities and they brought them to the magistrates and said these men being Jews exceedingly trouble our city and they teach customs which are not lawful for us being Romans to receive or observe then the multitude rose up together against them and the magistrates tore off their clothes and commanded them to be beaten with rods when they had laid many stripes on them they threw them into prison commanding the jeller to keep them securely having received such a charge he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.

When you and I start serving God and join him where he is working guess what? When the Lord blesses, Satan starts fighting. I want you to be alert to this as believers, that Satan’s not just gonna take a day off and say, hey, I’m gonna let the church march forward, or I’m gonna let the church continue to reach out and to bring salvation to others, but yet we need to be alert, and we need to expect that there is gonna be opposition.

There are gonna be obstacles. The Apostle Peter taught us in 1 Peter 4.12, and he said, beloved, do not be surprised. At the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though something strange were happening to you.

Sometimes we see that opposition. It can be in the workplace, it can be in the family, it can be in the community, but we see it, and the Bible is teaching us not to be shocked and not to be startled, because this is the natural process.

Paul’s ministry in the city or the town of Philippi was now experiencing opposition, and Satan was sending obstacles, and Satan is always at hand to oppose the work of God. Now, what kind of obstacles or opposition was present?

I want you to note there in verse 16 and 18, it was unwanted publicity. Unwanted publicity, you say, Pastor, what do you mean? Well, go back to verse 16, and I want you to see that verse 16 says there was a spirit of divination that met us.

And then I want you to jump down to verse 17, that this girl who was possessed of this demonic force, that she was crying out, these men are the servants of the Most High God who proclaimed to us the way of salvation.

When you see that phrase, a spirit of divination, it’s literally in the Greek, a python spirit. And this is referring to the mythological Greek gods in which there was the Greek god of Delphi that had this python that was a symbol.

of protection and wisdom to the God of Delphi. And so literally what we are learning here is that this spirit, this demonic force, possessed this girl and she began to cry out, the Bible says, the Most High God in the Hebrew, it’s the idea of El Elyon, which means in the Hebrew that it is the absolute sovereign one.

She is crying out that Paul and his team of ministers are serving the absolute sovereign God of the world. Now, if you were out there trying to win the lost and somebody came up and told everybody that you were sent from God and that you were serving God, you might say, yes, I want people to hear that.

But Paul takes a different response and the Bible tells us he, in verse 18, was greatly annoyed. And he turned and said to the Spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” Here’s what I want you to remember, church, that when you are dealing with opposition and obstacles in your life, even praise of the gospel can be deceitful and misleading.

I want you to see this, I want you to understand that the Bible says even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. It’s sometimes difficult to know who’s on what team and who is trying to help us and who’s trying to hurt us, who’s trying to advance the cause and who’s trying to hinder the cause of Jesus Christ.

One author writes that when Paul and Silas began to minister in Philippi, that Luke reported that this slave girl seemed to be favorable to the gospel and that she was proclaiming the authenticity of the gospel, but behind it all, beyond her words, was the motivation that she wanted through this demonic spirit to be able to attract people and gain trust with them and to be able to use her fortune telling skills that were given to her by this demonic spirit that she may lure people away from the true cause of the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ,

that she would be a demonic instrument, that the devil would use to draw people away from the truth. Now, hear me, church, that this is happening all over the world and that it is your responsibility as a believer to be alert to these kind of things, to not just be a person who just believes everything that is out there.

So many times as believers, we think, boy, if Jesus’ name’s on it or if somehow it’s religious, it’s gotta be from God. But I wanna tell you friends, everything you see is not what it really is. The Bible tells us in 1 John 4, 1, beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Do you see that this demonic lady who is being controlled by her masters, and they are using her to take advantage of others and making a prophet off of it, that she is speaking things that are positive and beneficial to the gospel, but the apostle sees beyond it, for he knows that she just wants to lure them away.

She wants to gain trust with them so that she can lead them down the path of fortune telling, and they eventually are deceived of the truth. That’s why the Bible says to test every spirit. That’s why we’re taught in Thessalonians to test all thing.

God has not called us to be a naive people, but rather, He has called us to be a discerning people. That we’re to have our antennas up, and that we’re not to be drawn away just because we are impressed with the style.

The key is that you and I are alert to the substance. We see this all the time, whether it’s in politics, or we see it in businesses, or corporations, or even sometimes in sports and athletics. We see all the rah, rah, rah about the style.

But then when it comes down to the substance, how many times have you and I seen maybe a football game, a baseball game, and everybody’s saying, hey buddy, this is the team, and boy, when they get out there, they’re gonna, but listen, the game is not won in hype and marketing.

The game is won on the field. Do you agree with that? And so it is in the Christian life. There’s a lot of hype out there. There’s a lot of people claiming things that are not necessarily true, but what is the substance?

Now I know that you’re saying to me, Pastor, how do we discern, how do we test? Well let me just give you two things that’ll help you. How do we discern and how do we test? And I wanna tell you that I think the two big areas that you have got to apply these principles into testing is first of all to the messengers or the teachers that are out there.

Now Pastor Mike’s not one who thinks he’s the only one that’s right. I would never think like that. There’s a lot of good Bible believing churches in our community, and yes, even the world. So don’t misunderstand me.

But I also know there’s a lot of false teaching out there. But it’s not just in those who are proclaiming the gospel in teaching the Bible, but I need you to be discerning in relation to even music. Because so many of you are sucked in by the style that you’re forgetting the substance.

So let me give you two things that’ll help you to test all things, to test the spirits. Two things, they’re simple, they’re not complicated. First is that you need to evaluate the message that is being proclaimed.

Evaluate the message. Does the message line up with the Bible? Does the message line up with Christianity? Does the message line up with what our savior taught us? That’s why you need to be a student of the Bible.

If you’re not reading, studying your Bible on a regular basis, no wonder you’re easily led astray. No wonder you’re gullible to the style. No wonder you get caught up. So let’s make sure the message is right.

Now when we look here in Acts chapter 16, the message is right, isn’t it? The message is right. Go back to the message. I want you to see this because I don’t want you to lose focus here. Verse 17, these men are the servants of the Most High God who proclaim to us the way of salvation.

But Paul said, he got annoyed at her. So it’s just beyond the message. Here it is. Here’s the second step when you are testing the spirits. It is the character of the messenger, the character of the musicians, the character.

of the person. Now, Jesus said this in referring to false teachers, you will know them by their fruits. You will know them by their fruits. Jesus said, you can’t have good fruit come out of a bad tree.

And his point is that you gotta look at their life. Here’s what I wanna say to you, church, is never expose yourself to a so-called ministry, teacher, or music in which their life does not align with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now, we’re not talking about perfection, but we’re certainly talking about the direction of our lives. There’s nobody perfect, and if you’re perfect, would you please stand up? Just lookin’. Anybody wanna say I’m perfect?

None of us are perfect. The only perfect one is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen? But what’s the direction of your life? Listen, there are many messengers out there who are using religion to profit off the most vulnerable.

Now look, during COVID, there were charlatans out there on TV, religious, quote, leaders, saying if you would send them $1,000, they would send you oil that would protect you from COVID. And you know what?

There were millions of vulnerable, naive people who did it. You understand that? You see, there is a righteous indignation. There is a righteous anger. And when is it that Jesus turned over tables? Not because somebody’s life was messed up, or bad choices, but when religious so-called people took advantage of the weak and the vulnerable and the poor.

That’s when Jesus got upset. And there is a time to have a righteous indignation. Now, I don’t want you to turn over any tables, okay? I’m just telling you that there ought to be a time when we stand up and say, no, we’re not gonna tolerate this.

We’re gonna step in and say something. And that’s just an example, it’s the same thing. I can continue to go on. But look, the lives of these individuals that are proclaiming a message that looks good on the outside, but on the inside.

And I could give you stories after stories after stories. And some of you say, well, Pastor, how come we don’t sing this song? How come we don’t sing that song? I’ll tell you why, though it is in the Christian top 10 list, I know things about some of these groups.

I know how they’re taking advantage. I know their lifestyles. It is not anything that is private knowledge. It’s all public. You need to be discerning. You need to be careful because there can be somebody like this lady who is saying, these men are the servants of the Most High and they proclaim to us the way of salvation.

And then Paul turns around and says, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And so what was the obstacle? It was deception. And now Paul is addressing this. And in verse 19 through 21, we see that as a result of him standing up for what is right, and even though he has confronted this deception, look what happens in verse 19, because this reveals the true motivation.

But when her master saw that, their hope of profit was gone. They seized Paul and Silas and they dragged him into the marketplace to the authority. So what we see here, what takes place is unjust accusations.

You see, here’s how the world works. When they cannot debate you about the truth, they start attacking you. They make accusations that are not accurate. They try to discredit you. They try to create a narrative that characterizes you as someone who is against the people.

And so whenever the gospel starts threatening economic interests of charlatans, I promise you there will be opposition. While Christianity is not an officially recognized religion by the Romans here in the Roman Empire, the owners of this slave who they were using because she was possessed of a demon was losing money.

And so look what they said in verse 20. The Bible says that they brought them to the magistrates and said these men, being Jews, exceedingly trouble our city. Did you see they attacked their nationality?

They attacked their race. They attacked who they were. Being Jews, they exceedingly trouble our city. The work of the devil is to try to create division within a nation, within a family, and within a people over race.

You must be alert to that because the gospel teaches us that God loves every person on this planet. Do you believe that church? Yes, we do. But look what they’re doing. They’re trying to create division and they’re upset because they’re losing money and so they accuse them of their race.

They accuse them of their ethnicity. They accuse them of their nationality and they say they are troubling our city. I am for the laws of the land being obeyed. I am for there being proper processes and everything being done decently and in order as the scriptures teach us.

But church, be careful that you don’t get caught up in the vitriolic language of demeaning people who are loved by God, that Christ went to the cross and gave his life, that they might have eternal life.

Do not get caught up in the racist language and creating division and dividing families and individuals based upon their ethnicity. What is that, the heart and the problem that goes on with lawlessness?

Sin is. that we’re all born with a sinful nature. It has nothing to do with the color of our skin, but it has everything to do with our heart. The heart can only be changed through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

You can pass all the laws you want, but what needs to take place is the redemption of the heart, and I want you to be careful that you are not like these dividers who are trying to hurt and cause division and that you would use this type of terminology to attack, because this is how the devil works.

He not only tells us in verse 20 that they’re troubling our city, but look at verse 21. Now, they’re going back to their nationalism. Look at verse 21. They teach customs which are not lawful for us being Romans to receive or observe.

How did these charlatans create anger in the hearts of the people and the leaders? They attacked Paul and his team’s nationality, their ethnicity, but they also attacked their unwillingness to do it the Roman way.

And what is the response when the people hear this? The multitude rose up together against them. The magistrates tore off their clothes and commanded them to be beaten with rods. You see how they’ve stirred the people up, and now they are upset as they are attacking.

But I wanna preface what I’m gonna say with this. I love America. I appreciate every one of you that have served our country so I can stand up here and teach the gospel. But what’s more important than the American way is God’s way.

It’s God’s obedience, and there have been many things that were the American way, but that didn’t make it the right way. And praise God, we live in a country where things can be corrected, right? Where things can be changed.

We look back in our history, and it’s not that our history has always been perfect. Thank God for our forefathers who wanted a country of freedom, but we also know that because we are flesh and blood, that mistakes have been made.

and things have been mishandled, but praise the Lord that we have a system that can correct those. Don’t be so blinded by the American way that you can’t see the sins of America, that you can’t see the flaws of America, and you can’t see the things that need to be changed to make America a better country that honors God and takes care of the poor and reaches out to the hurting and blesses every citizen that lives in this country.

I want you to have discernment. I want you to not get caught up in the emotionalism of the style, and I want you to process discernment with the substance. The final part that we see is unlawful punishment.

Verse 22 through 24, the Bible says the multitude rose up, they tore off their clothes, and they beat them with rods. Why? Because all that they did was they did a spiritual work, they cast out a demon in this young slave, now her.

profiteers, her charlatans couldn’t make money off her anymore. And because they couldn’t make money, they brought them in and they made false accusations about them and tried to make it look like they were against the nation and that they were people who were not to be accepted or received.

And now they’re being beaten up. They were commanded to be beaten. Then we see they were suffering. The Bible says in verse 24 that having received such a charge, meaning the jailer, he put them into the inner prison and he fastened their feet in the stocks.

What did they do wrong? We know that even in the Roman system and the Roman legal process that it was illegal to beat a Roman citizen without due process, without a trial. They were immediately thrown in to prison.

They were not given this opportunity to defend themselves and to make their case. We’ll see how the apostle takes advantage of that later. But here we see this unfolding that they are put into jail and then they are put into the inner prison, not just the outward prison where they kept different criminals, but into the inner prison so that they would not escape.

Yes. Here’s what I want you to understand church, that as we live for God, as we stand up for righteousness, I can’t promise you that everything’s going to be fair. I can’t promise you that there’ll be no obstacles in the future, that there’ll be no challenges in trying to do right.

I can’t promise you that every person will abide by the law or that they will follow the proper legal way of dealing with things. But I can promise you this, that the trials that we go through in life, no matter how they evolve in our life, that they are not designed by God to punish us, but they are designed by God to make us sharper and better believers for Jesus Christ.

The trials and the struggles are only purified. our lives. That what God is doing in the life of the Apostle and his team is that he is refining them and God is refining us when we struggle. He is refining us when we face trials and we find that things are not fair.

He is refining us that we may come forth as pure gold. The Bible says in the book of Job that he knoweth the way that I take and when he has tried me I shall come forth as gold. God understands what you’re facing and God knows and he’s very much aware of every detail of your life and just as he saw that the Apostle Paul’s team was unjustly imprisoned, they were punished for things that they had never done or for the situation that they were dealing with.

They just happened to be there they’re trying to do some good work and now all of a sudden Satan is opposing them and he is using people to have him thrown into jail. You might wonder and you could consider.

I wonder if Paul thought, God, you told me this is where I was supposed to go. You told me that this was your will. You forbade me to go the other way. And you told me that by the Spirit, I’m to go to Macedonia.

And there may have been decisions and choices that you have made that you believe with all your heart. That was the right thing to do. This is what God wanted you to do. But now all of a sudden you’re dealing with one trial after another.

And it seems so unfair. It seems so unjust. And you’re saying to yourself, God, do you see what I’m going through? Why? Why are you allowing this God? I want to assure you this morning that God does care and that God is alert.

And that just because you face opposition and just because you have problems in your life doesn’t mean that you are not smack dab in the center of the will of God Almighty. That even through our trials and even through our struggles that God has a perfect plan, that He has a perfect will, and that He is working in our life.

God uses our trials to shape us. He uses our trials to shape our life. Every one of you. It is experience that has shaped your life. It is what you’ve been through that makes you the way you are. Sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad.

The problem is not your challenges. The problem is not your trials. The problem is not your circumstances, hear me. It’s how you respond to your problems. Your problem is not your problem. Your problem is how you respond.

This morning my challenge to you is that here, we’re gonna see later on next week as we come together again, we’re gonna see how did Paul and Silas respond when they’re thrown in prison. You can read ahead and you’ll find out that they were singing.

They were shouting joy. They were giving praise to God. When you have a problem, do you cry out and say, God, why? Or do you say, Lord, what are you teaching me? When you have a problem, do you get…

mad at God and do you get mad at everybody around you and do you become a bitter and angry person or when you have a problem do you strive to be better and stronger. Every trial in your life has these two possible outcomes.

It can either be a stumbling block in your life that sets you back for many years or it can be a stepping stone that helps you to step up and be all that God planned and intended for your life. I want to remind you that Hope Worth Having has a Facebook page and I would love for you to check that out and to make sure that you take the opportunity to learn more about our radio program by going to our Facebook page and like us and then learn more about it and check out all the posts that we’ve made and keep up with us and I know the Lord will work in your heart.

This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ, there is hope worth having.

The post How to Turn Your Obstacles into Opportunities Part 2 first appeared on Hope Worth Having.

Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Turn Your Obstacles into Opportunities Part 1. He will be reading out of Acts 16:11-40.

And I want you to understand the invitation to come to Jesus is not an invitation to be religious. It’s an invitation to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. It is to have a relationship with Christ. More important than anything in your life, but it is a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders and you are listening to Hope Worth Having radio ministry. Today, we’re going to be in Acts chapter 16, verse 11 through 40. We’re going to talk about how to turn your obstacles into opportunities.

When we think of the book of Acts, one of the things we note that as we study the latter part of the book of Acts, focus is on the ministry of the apostle Paul, a person that we could really learn from and how he handled obstacles and turned them into opportunities.

So let’s get into the word of God today and begin our study. If you have your Bible this morning, I want you to join me in Acts chapter 16. We’re going to begin a new series that I want to share with you the next few weeks on how to turn your obstacles into opportunities, how to turn your obstacles into opportunities.

If you have been tracking with us through the book of Acts and you have been with us and learning chapter by chapter, you know that the apostle Paul and his team have arrived in the city that is called Philippi and they were expecting great things.

After all, they had been clearly sent to Philippi. You remember that back in verse 6, the Bible tells us of chapter 16, now when they had gone through Phrygia, the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia.

A stunning statement there. We jump over to verse 9 of chapter 16. The Bible says, a vision appeared to Paul in the night. a man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him saying, come over to Macedonia and help us.

God works in mysterious ways. And sometimes what seems to be what our plans are, God puts detours in our lives. And he sends us a different direction. This is exactly what we have already taught you on.

And so here we find when we come down to verse 16 that Paul is in Philippi, that he is establishing a church in this city. Philippi was the city within the province of Macedonia. You might think of in terms of like how we have states in the United States.

And there are cities within those states. Philippi was a city within the province of Macedonia. And when he came to Philippi, the apostle would face much conflict, obstacles and problems. He describes some of these, challenges in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 2 when he says that even after we had suffered before and were spitefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we were bold in our God to speak to you the gospel of God in much conflict.

Yes, the gospel message is often met with obstacles. Yes, when you and I are serving God and we’re out there trying to make a difference, trying to impact, whether it’s in our family or it is in our community, I want you to know that there’s going to be obstacles.

There’s going to be opposition. Not everybody loves God. You know that. And I don’t want you to be under the delusion that somehow when you start serving God, the devil just takes a vacation and he decides, you know what, I’m just going to let them have free reign.

No, just the opposite, my friends. One of the ways you know that you are doing the will of God is that there will be opposition. There will be pushback because the devil is fighting hard to stop the work of Christ taking place in your home, in your family, in your church, in your community.

But I want to remind you that whenever there is an obstacle, God has the ability based on our response to that obstacle to turn it around into an opportunity for the advancement and the cause of Jesus Christ.

So that’s what we’re going to be talking about in the next few weeks. Yes, there are obstacles. But let us remember church on a big perspective. And this is really helpful as you are wrestling through the challenges of your day, as you are trying to push forward for Christ.

I want you to keep in mind that the Father has called a people, His people. He is called a people to salvation. And the Son, Jesus Christ, went to the cross and He purchased their salvation. and he gave his life for our sins to be paid for.

I want you to remember that the Holy Spirit is working and that he is drawing people to him. You say, how do we turn our obstacles into opportunities? Well, it begins with this simple statement, church.

I want you to hang off this. I want you to work. Here it is, work where God is working. I want you to work where God is working. You see, what is Paul doing? He is working where God is working. You see, he was headed to one place.

The Spirit of God forbade him. The Spirit of God said, that ain’t gonna happen. You’re gonna go over here. God gave him a vision of a man crying out for help, and so the apostle assembled his team and said, look, we gotta go a different direction.

We’re punting over here. and we’ll come back to this location and we’ll share the gospel, but now the Lord is leading us over here and I want us to move forward. And so the apostle was sensitive to work where God is working.

Why should I work where God is working? Because God is seeking sinners. Did you hear me, church? You may question why you are in this situation. You may wonder why you’re dealing with this circumstance.

You may wonder why you are in the midst of this test and why you are dealing with these particular problems. But I’m here to tell you that the reason God has you where He wants you is because God is working in the hearts of your family and He is working in the hearts of your coworkers and He is working in the hearts of the people that live in your community and He is calling you to be that instrument because He is seeking sinners.

Remember what Jesus said in Luke 19.10. He said that the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. You see, don’t forget that it is our God who takes the initiative to reach out to us and He uses each and every person who loves the Lord to fulfill that initiative.

But it all started in John 3.16 when Jesus taught us that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. He was intentional. He took the initiative. He didn’t sit back and say, we’ll just see how things pan out.

He jumped into our messed up world and the Bible tells us that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting what church? Life, yes. Not just the quantity of life that the gospel is teaching us but about the quality of life.

Everlasting doesn’t have to do just with the duration of life but the depth of life. And so when you come to Christ, you not only live with God and you not only have eternal life in the sense that you will be with Him when you leave this world but you will have the greatest life.

Jesus said, I’ve come that they might have life and that they might have it more, what church? Abundantly, that’s right. Now listen, that doesn’t mean there aren’t obstacles. That doesn’t mean there aren’t problems.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t sorrows in your life. But I tell you that God, when he saves us, he changes us and he does something miraculous within us and the quality of our life supersedes the quality of any life that follows the world and the flesh and the devil.

You see, Jesus came seeking each and every one of us when we were not even seeking him. We’re reminded in the scriptures in Romans chapter three and verse 11 that the Bible says there’s none who understands.

There is none who seeks after God. I wish every mom and dad could understand that. The most powerful principle you can learn about your children in raising them is that they’re sinners in need of a savior.

I mean, parents are coddling them and they’re trying to baby them and they’re trying to make their world perfect and that this kid will never have a bump and he’ll never have a bruise. It’s not reality.

But if you focus on the fact that my child is a sinner in need of a savior, that we do not in our human flesh naturally seek God, we do not even understand God. You wonder what is wrong with my kid. I’ll tell you what’s wrong.

They’re sinners. They need Jesus. That’s what’s going to change your children. And when you start with that premise, then you will begin to be that missionary to your child. You will begin to bring the plan of salvation to that child.

And so when we come to the book of Acts chapter 16, what we see is everything that I just taught you being played out right before us in a lady whose name is Lydia. Turn with me to Acts chapter 16, pick up in verse 16.

Now it happened as we went to prayer that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us who brought her master’s much profit by fortune-telling. Now this lady here, she is in contrast to what I want to show you with Lydia.

And I want you to see back in verse 14 that there’s a certain woman named Lydia who hurt us. Here, Paul is wanting us to see the contrast between Lydia who comes to Christ, believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, and a person who is a slave girl who’s possessed of a spirit of divination.

And she is a part of a fortune-telling scheme. What the Bible shows us here is God is working when people respond to him that we can see the powerful work of Christ in people’s life. And what is taking place here is that we see that Paul is at Philippi, which was a strategic city.

because it was the gateway to Europe. Some of you may say, why? Why Philippi? Why was God wanting Paul and his team to be in Philippi on the second missionary journey? Why would he want them? Because this is how God was working.

He would send Paul’s team to these major metropolitan cities and then from there, as they would plant the churches, the gospel would just spread like wildfire throughout the continent. Philippi was located 10 miles from the port city of Neopolis.

It was a Roman colony. It was a city that was named after Alexander the Great’s father, Philip the Second, and he wanted to honor the Philippians for their loyalty to Alexander the Great. And so the Bible says in verse 11 of chapter 16, therefore, sailing from Troas, we ran a straight course to Samathras and the next day came to Neopolis and from there to Philemon, Philippi, which is the foremost city of that part of Macedonia,

a colony, and we were staying in that city for some days. And on the Sabbath day, we went out of the city to the riverside where prayer was customary made. And we sat down and spoke to the woman who met there.

Now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira and who worshiped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul. And when she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay, though she persuaded us.

Here what we see is that a small group of women had gathered together on the riverside and they were wanting to come together as Jewish believers to worship God. Now why were they meeting in the riverside?

Because there was a rule in Judaism that you cannot have an official synagogue unless you have 10 men available to start a synagogue. So these women did not have this ability and so they just met together and the Bible says that they were coming for prayer and they were coming to worship God.

Lydia, she was a business woman. She was a professional woman and she was a woman who was selling purple, which meant that simply there was a dye that they would use in the fabrics and they would sell this.

So she was kind of traveling, if you will, the world and different parts of the world and selling this product. She knew, apparently because she had maybe been there before, but that she knew these women gathered and she knew that they prayed and so her wanting to be a person who was faithful to what she believed in, which was Judaism, she showed up and she began to…

to meet with these ladies. She was a wealthy woman. She was not only a business woman, but she was a religious woman. And so it was that she was reaching out to these women to connect with them, but the Bible says something interesting.

I want you to look at verse 14. The Lord opened her heart. The clue to Lydia’s conversion was that God opened her heart. Yes, she was religious. Yes, she had a tender heart towards the thought of God.

And yes, she had good thoughts and intentions of coming together to meet with these women, to pray and to worship God. But here’s the problem. She did not have a relationship with God. And I want you to understand the invitation to come to Jesus is not an invitation to be religious.

It’s an invitation to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. It is to have a relationship with God. Christ, more important than anything in your life, and more important than anything in the life of your children, is not your religion, it’s not your rules, it’s not your rituals, but it is a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

I wish parents cared more about the heart of their children than they do the hair of their children. This lady, her heart was opened, and the Bible says that not only was her heart open, but her home became open, and then her mouth became open as she confessed God through baptism.

And then finally, here’s what it is, the entire continent of Europe would become open to the gospel because of one lady named Lydia. That’s the power of the gospel. That’s the power of God’s work. And so the key that I want you to see here is that God opened her heart.

But how did God open her heart? Let’s go back to the text, a certain woman named Lydia, she heard us. What did she hear? Well, look at the end of the verse, the Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul.

What was Paul speaking? Do you think Paul went in there and said, hey, let’s talk about politics? You think Paul went into that group of ladies and said, hey, let me tell you how to be a better person?

You think he went in there and he had a strategy of how to do this or how to do that? No, the apostle Paul went in there. Let me tell you what he did. He gave them the word of God. He gave her the power of the gospel.

That’s why the Bible says in Romans 10, 17, so then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. You see, I want you to understand this morning that God has not only ordained the message, but he has ordained the means.

This is where we get off track in our parenting. This is where we get off track in our families. This is where we get off track in our churches, is that we think… We’re gonna try every other means outside of God’s word to reach our family, and to reach our children, and to reach our grandchildren when the truth is, faith comes by hearing the what, the word.

Now either God lies, or he tells the truth. You understand that? So people say to me, they say, Pastor, well, we wanna do this, and we wanna do that, and that’s fine, you all do that fancy stuff, but let me tell you something.

The only way people are gonna get saved is through the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. She could see that God’s plan of salvation was clearly articulated by the apostle. She could see that Jesus Christ was our substitute on the cross, that he had gone to that cross, and rather than us being punished for our sins, Jesus was punished for our sins, and Jesus gave his life for us.

She could clearly see that Jesus went to the cross for sinners, that she was a sinner in need of a savior, and surely the apostle Paul taught her that if she would believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, she would have everlasting life.

How did God open her heart? How is God gonna open the heart of your children? How is God gonna open the heart of your neighbor? How is God gonna open the hearts of masses of people around the world? It will not be, hear me, it will not be by the razzle dazzle.

It will not be by entertainment. It’ll be by the power of the proclamation of God’s word. And I know some of you struggle with that, but that’s okay. You do you, but I’m gonna stay on track with God.

The Bible says in John 20, verse 31, but these are written, what was written? The Gospel of John, that you might what? Believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life through his name.

You want to ignite faith in the hearts of people around you. You want to ignite the hearts of those who are unbelievers. Feed them the word of God. You know, a young man was talking to me just the other day, and he said, what should I do?

And I said, look, you should read the Gospel of John. Well, why the Gospel of John? Because these things were written that you might believe. And I want you to understand that the power of God’s word, getting him to go through the Gospels and to see the power of Christ and to see the Gospel clearly portrayed before him through the life of Christ and through the work of Christ.

on the cross would have a greater impact than be handing him any book or be handing him any particular podcast or whatever it is. I want you to understand that it is God’s word. And sometimes I am afraid that in this contemporary world that we live in, that we have forgotten about the power of the word of God, and we have forgotten about the sufficiency of the word of God.

And so we’re grasping for straws, we’re grasping for everything else out there. And having been tried, what do we find? We live in a more messed up world today than our forefathers who stood strong on the inerrant, infallible word of God.

Are you with me? Oh yes, I understand. But I want you to understand that faith is ignited in the heart by the word of God. That God is working out their church. Jesus said, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day, so I want you to know that God is drawing people to him.

It’s not that people are not responsive to God. And you say, well, they don’t, listen, Mike, it’s boring. Nobody wants to listen to the Bible. Nobody wants to hear what God has to say. Hey, listen to me.

When Lydia came, she thought she was gonna do a religious ritual. She thought she was gonna go through the motions. A man showed up to this little prayer group. He taught him about Jesus Christ. He proclaimed the gospel to him.

The Bible says that the Lord opened her heart. And she believed. God was drawing Lydia. God was working. The Apostle Paul joined where God is working. The other day, I was picking up my car. This lady, she was frustrated at what the mechanic said it was gonna cost to fix her car.

And she screamed out, and God, forgive me. She said, Jesus, like in a derogatory way. I looked at her. I said, he loves you. Whenever people use God’s name in vain, Pastor Mike’s right there. I don’t care where I’m at.

I finish it out because I think perhaps they misunderstood. But this is the name above all names, amen? This is our Lord and Savior. And I’m certainly, I know, you say, well, Mike, that’s not gonna help win people to Christ.

But I’m just telling you, it irritates me. It bothers me when people shame the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, when people drag it through the mud, and when people degrade it, there’s something that makes me want to stand up and defend the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And I know I got issues, and I know I need to be in counseling, and I know I need a lot of therapy in my life, but I’m just telling you, it just busts out on me. And I said, he loves you. She started to cry.

And I held her hand, and I talked to her, and I listened to her. And the poor guy that wanted to get me checked out and get me on so he can get the next customer, he was a mess because he didn’t know what to do, and he was just witnessing God working.

She hadn’t been back in church. since COVID. And I said, you need to get back in church. God is at work. You just don’t know where he’s working and who he’s working and I can stand up here church and tell you stories after stories after stories, okay?

That just happened in my life day to day, week to week, and they’re happening in your life. You’re just not seizing it. You’re just not jumping on the opportunity. You see every obstacle as it’s time to defeat, quit and give up and fold our chair up and call it a day.

But I’m saying to you church, God is at work. He is working every day in your home. He is working every day at your job. He is working every day in your community. And what you need to do is you need to realize that he is drawing people to him.

And he was drawing Lydia. And as a result of this one woman’s conversion, think about how many people have come to Christ in Europe. And then when it left Europe, it jumped into America. And you think about all the great awakenings that America has happened.

And people think that in the next few weeks that we’ll fix America. You’re not gonna fix America in a couple weeks. What you’re gonna do is you’re gonna just try to pacify one side or the other. But let me tell you the true answer to America.

It is Jesus Christ. It is for us to get back to God. And I wanna encourage you, church, to be sensitive to that every day in your life. Remember what we learned in 1 Corinthians 3, verse 6. The apostle Paul told the church, he planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.

He gave the increase. You see, that’s how it works, church. You just go around spreading seeds. You just go around planting the gospel. You just go around planting good seeds into people’s lives everywhere you go.

You get up every day and you recognize, I’m either planting a seed today or I’m watering a seed. I’m getting up every day and God’ll give the increase. And you say, well, I don’t see thousands falling down and giving their lives to God.

It doesn’t matter, church. God’ll give the increase. And how does God work? Sometimes God works in the most insignificant ways. While we’re all looking for the big and the profound, God is working in some of the most smallest ways you have ever seen.

It was this massive city of Philippi, a gateway to Europe. And it wasn’t the big political buildings that were built. It wasn’t even the pagan buildings that were built of religious worship. It was a small group of women on a riverside meeting together to pray and to worship God from what they understood.

It was that small group of women that the apostle showed up. He shares the gospel. Lydia gives her life to Christ. It becomes a profound impact upon Europe that leads to America, that leads to you and I eventually coming to the Lord Jesus Christ.

But I wanna tell you, when God gives the growth, when God gives the increase, it is very profound. Now after she followed her step of faith in Christ, the Bible says that she was baptized. I want you to see how she was baptized.

The Bible tells us in verse 15 that when she and her household were baptized, she begged us saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay. And so she persuaded us.

You see, what was her next step? After she came to Christ, she was baptized. You see the Apostle Paul, when he led people to Christ, he didn’t just leave them out there. He didn’t just say, well, that’s another notch in my belt.

But he followed up on people and he made sure that they followed the Lord in obedience to be baptized. And this lady was baptized. And you know, I think it’s so important because I meet so many Christians who have never followed the Lord in baptism.

Baptism is the outward sign of an inward change in a person who has placed their trust in Jesus Christ. If you have never been baptized and you are a believer, then you are living in disobedience to God.

And you know, when our children were young, we taught them not only about salvation, but after they came to Christ, we taught them about the importance of being baptized. We took that time, and we made sure that they understood what it is, why it is, and how it’s an outward sign of our faith, and we would explain it to them like this.

When our children were little, they loved to play soccer for the CVS, and they wanted to wear their uniforms the night before. They wanted to sleep in them. We’d say, no, we’re gonna do that in the morning.

No, no, we gotta sleep in them tonight. We want to be on the Blazer team. That’s what they love. They love to identify with their school soccer team. Hear me, when I get baptized, we just witnessed it this morning, amen?

And what we’re seeing is not only someone saying, I’m a believer and I’m not ashamed to follow Christ, but we’re witnessing someone who is identifying with Jesus Christ. You understand that, church? That’s why if you have not been baptized, you need to make that commitment today.

And moms and dads, what are you doing? You’re talking about everything else, about the sports and football and basketball and soccer and yada yada? But you’ve never sat down and taught your children about baptism?

Hello? Come on. Be the priest of your home, dads. Step up. You wonder what’s wrong? It’s because you’re not spiritually leading your children. You’re leading them in sports. You’re leading them in activity.

You’re leading them in academics. You’re leading them in every area, but then the one area that determines between heaven and hell, the one area that determines their eternal destination, and that is their spiritual life.

And that’s why more than anything, God wants you to be a spiritual leader in your home. That’s what we need. We need spiritual leaders in our homes. And so she was baptized. She was illustrating the gospel.

And I want you to know at the Open Door Church, we practice believers baptism. We don’t baptize little babies because they cannot express faith. We baptize people who put their faith in trouble. trust in Jesus Christ for salvation.

That’s why we call it believers baptism. You say, well, Pastor Mike, I was baptized as a little baby. Well, that’s an expression of what your parents believe, but it’s not an expression of what you believe.

And if you have come to the Lord Jesus Christ, you need not be ashamed and you need to be willing to follow the Lord in obedience and be baptized. Why is that essential to you? Not only because God commanded it, but because it is the gateway to your spiritual growth.

Wherever the Apostle went, It was either a riot or a revival. And that’s really true. We see this illustrated in the Word of God. And that’s because some people, when they respond to the gospel, their hearts are melted and they are receptive.

Others, their hearts are hardened and they are rebellious and resistant to the Word of God. And so I’m so grateful that God has led us to be able to understand the gospel, to receive the gospel, that our hearts have been responsive.

And I hope today that is your heart and that you will continue to grow in your faith. And when we begin this journey, there’s gonna be problems, but we always remember God is working. And I would encourage you to stay faithful.

Don’t forget to check out hopeworthhaving.com. There’s many wonderful opportunities for you to expand and grow your learning. And also you might check out the devotion book that I wrote and you can get that book for a donation of any amount.

We’ll be glad to send it to you and that’ll help you to stay faithful and walk obedient for the Lord. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ, there is hope worth having. Thanks for watching.

I’m Mike Sanders, and I’ll see you next week.

The post How to Turn Your Obstacles into Opportunities Part 1 first appeared on Hope Worth Having.

Pastor Mike will be speaking on God’s Strategy for Successful Service Part 2. He will be reading out of Acts 16:1-9.

It is our responsibility to come alongside our brothers and sisters and to strengthen them because when the devil is firing his darts, they are darts of discouragement that are designed to defeat us as believers and cause us to become so despondent that we want to quit and to give up.

Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders from The Open Door Church. Today we’re in Acts chapter 16 and we’re covering verses 1 through 9. And one of the things that I thought was interesting that we learned last week is how the early church was always mentoring and preparing the next generation, how important that is.

And I hope today that as we continue in the study of God’s strategy to successfully serve, that you and I can continue to see the value of investing in other believers. So let’s get into God’s word today in Acts chapter 16.

It just so happened to tie in the fact that I would be preaching on this text. But it was very reflective and affirming in my heart to know that there are others that have poured into me. But I just want to ask you, who are you pouring into?

I’ve said to you before, church, I’ve learned it from someone somewhere. I mean, you know nothing’s new under the sun. But I just want you to know that I want to encourage you that every one of us need a mentor.

We all need an Apostle Paul in our life. And you need to find those mentors. And sometimes those mentors take on different influences upon us, meaning that one mentor may be good in this area and another mentor may be good in another area, but they are pouring into our lives.

But not only do we need an Apostle Paul, we need a Timothy. We need to be pouring our lives into someone else. And we also need a Barnabas, an encourager. They’re just certain people who are gifted. It doesn’t matter.

Every time you are with them, everything’s wonderful. I mean, the whole world could be collapsing, but it’s wonderful. They’re just encouragers. It’s not that they’re lying, it’s just that the way they see the world, they’ve just been designed by God to be an encourager.

And if you need to be lifted up, you just need to hang around some of those Barnabas that are always coming alongside others and encouraging them. We need these people in our lives, and if we’re gonna see this happen, we must be intentional.

We must be intentional. It must be a goal that we would find these mentors in our life. But also, number two, we must take the initiative. And I’ve always, and in pursuing mentors, I have always taken the initiative.

Usually, mentors don’t come running to me and say, Mike, I wanna pour my life into you. But I go to them and say, hey, can I have 10 minutes? Can I take you to lunch? Hey, I got some questions and the relationship just evolves from there and God blesses.

Some doesn’t evolve, but some it does. And I love it when I get to meet with other young pastors and helping them. And I tomorrow have an appointment. I won’t be available from, well, I got the radio station, then I got to drive to…

I know you’re not going to believe this, but I have a breakfast meeting. That cracker barrel, I don’t know why these people always want to go to cracker barrel. But anyways, with a young pastor, first year pastoring, and he wants to sit down and we meet once a month and we talk about ministry and we talk about problem solving and different ways that can help him.

One of his deacons called me one time and said, thank you, Pastor Mike. Thank you for pouring into our pastor because every time he comes back, he has 100 new ideas. I promise you, I don’t give people a lot of ideas, I just try to give them principles.

But the thing is this, all of us need to do it. And I only share that with you because I want you to know I’m not standing up here telling you to do something I’m not doing. And we all need to find people that we can pour our lives into and that we can be a blessing to.

And that is part of God’s success strategy. We cannot wait, church. We cannot wait. Our church has dropped over 30 some volunteers. We just had a little staff get away and we walked through our numbers and the number of volunteers since before COVID into now has just dropped drastically.

Now, our attendance is coming back and it’s pretty exciting to see how God is pulling his people back into the fold. There’s a few that still haven’t come, but I’m not sure they’re ever coming back and there’s nothing I can do.

I’ve done everything I can to bring them back, but everybody has to seek the Lord and whatever they believe. is right, but here’s what I want you to understand is that when we think about how are we going to make up that gap I’ll tell you what it’s gonna be it’s gonna be each one of you not only volunteering and stepping up and I’m doing things that it’s not that I said hey I love this or I want to do this but it’s got to be done but also it’s us training the next generation it’s training the young people and the new believers and the new families coming into the church it’s training them and helping them to get engaged and you do that by this way never do ministry alone never do ministry alone whatever God has called you to do you pick up the phone and you call somebody or you text them and you say come alongside let’s do this together I want you to know that when I was a young man in my small church that I came to Christ to believe in that the pastor there Like,

we didn’t have this big mentoring program, and we didn’t have all these classes and all these Bible studies, and I’m not against any of that, okay? So don’t walk out of here upset and send me an email this afternoon, because I’ll be watching football and falling asleep, okay?

I’m just being honest with you, okay? But here’s the thing. The pastor just said, “‘Mike, I’m gonna go make some visits. “‘Would you like to come along?'” Sure. “‘Mike, I need to go run an errand. “‘Would you like to come along?'” Sure.

“‘Would you like to help me on this project? “‘I gotta do some things at the church. “‘Can you help me with this project?'” Sure. Glad to do it. Now, of course, I was a new believer, hungry, desiring, wanting, and growing, and wanting to learn more, and probably drove my pastor crazy and just asking him so many questions about what I read in the Bible and what in the world that that meant, and how that applied to my life.

But what I wanna say is this. Here was a pastor who never did ministry alone. And that’s your mindset’s gotta be, is that as you are training the next generation, is that you’re always thinking about who can we get.

It’s not just that we sit and drink coffee, that’s good, but we serve together, and we train these young people and these new believers and new families, and we get them engaged in training the next generation.

The second thing that I want you to see out of this passage is that we must strengthen the faith of existing Christians. Look at verse four and five. Again, we see as they went through the cities, they delivered to them the decrees to keep, which were determined by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem.

So the churches were what? You can do better. The churches were what? So the churches were strengthened in the faith. They were strengthened. This is our role, church. This is God’s success plan, is to strengthen other believers.

Now let’s back up a little bit, understand what’s going on in this. This text in verse four, we’re reminded that the apostles, they brought, they delivered a decree for them to keep or to obey or to follow.

The ruling that was given by the Jerusalem Council is what they were delivering. So let’s go back to chapter 15. Again, it’s good for you to see everything in context and understand what is happening and not just rush through the text and not fully grasp what God is trying to show us here.

We go back to verse 11, chapter 15. Remember, there was this debate. Did new believers, Gentile believers have to follow the customs of Judaism? Did they have to follow the rituals and the ceremonies of Judaism?

What was that conclusion? We look at verse 11 of chapter 15, but we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved in the same manner as they. Meaning, you don’t get saved differently in the kingdom of God.

that just as the Jews were saved by the grace of God, so shall the Gentiles be saved by the grace of God. Now jump down to verse 19 of chapter 15. Therefore I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God, verse 20, but that we write to them to abstain from things that are polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, and from things that are strangled and from blood.

And what was the purpose in that last part? It was not to be offensive that the gospel may go farther and reach more people, that it was not to be offensive to the Jews in their dietary laws that they had and their customs that they had, but that they were to understand that the gospel was to go out and that they would believe in the true gospel of salvation by Christ alone.

That’s it. That’s it. The problem with legalism and liberalism is they’re always adding to the gospel. They’re always adding something to the gospel, and you and I gotta be careful about these lists that we make, these lists of dos and don’ts, because they do not define the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now all of us are called to be examples, and all of us are called to live a life that is honoring to God and not be a stumbling block to our brothers and sisters in Christ, but when it comes to salvation, it’s Christ and Christ alone.

Twice Luke uses the word here in chapter 15 and 16 that the brothers were strengthened, that the family of God was strengthened in the faith. It’s the idea of being made strong or established. Some translations have that word established.

They were made firm in the faith, and what is interesting is that when you come down to verse five, when the Bible says the churches were strengthened, it’s in the continuous action verb, it’s continually happening, it’s ongoing, it’s not just a one-time event, a big rally day, a big day, and the church was strengthened in the faith.

No, day by day, week by week, month by month, the task of strengthening God’s people in the Word, in their faith, helping them. So we see that there were three things that they were strengthened. They were strengthened and established in the truth of the salvation of the gospel by Christ alone.

If there’s anything you can do to communicate to our brothers and sisters in the fellowship and the family of God, not only locally, community-wide, regionally, internationally, there’s only one way to heaven.

And that is through Christ. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father but by me. This is critical church because in a pluralistic society where people believe there are many ways to heaven and that there may be many gods, but we’re all serving the same God, and all of this is the lies from the devil.

And therefore, we need to be that sounding voice to our children, to our grandchildren, to our brothers and sisters in Christ establishing Him in the truth of salvation. But number two, they were established or strengthened in being steadfast in their labor for the Lord.

To continue on, day after day, that they would continue to serve God, that they would stay faithful to Christ, that there will be problems, there will be challenges, but we cannot be weary in well-doing.

We cannot let people, problems, circumstances set us back to the point that we give up on advancing the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is our responsibility to come alongside our brothers and sisters and to strengthen them because when the devil was firing his darts towards our hearts and minds, they are darts of discouragement.

They are darts of trying to get us distracted. They are darts that are designed to defeat us as believers and cause us to become so despondent that we want to quit and to give up. And therefore, it’s our job to keep establishing and make strong our brothers and sisters to stay steadfast.

But the third thing we see is that they were to continue to be strengthened in reaching more and more people for the Lord. Did you see that? Did you see that in verse five? The Bible says they increased in number.

daily. They were strengthened. They were not just strengthened in anything, but they were strengthened in the faith, which is a journey that requires us to stay at it, to be steadfast. But they were established and made strong in reaching out.

The job of evangelism and reaching out to others never stops church. As long as you and I have breath, our methods may change. The styles may change. Our means to get the gospel to people. We may be in the old day, we knocked on a door, and we kind of just went right after the person to share the gospel.

That may have been effective one day, but today we use shoeboxes. I don’t care. Don’t get caught up in styles, don’t get caught up in methods. Just be the kind of person that wants everybody to come to Christ and you’re open to all available means to reach all available people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I remember, many of you may remember, Dr. Herbert Fitzpatrick. He preached here for us and for Dr. Bedrone and Dr. Fitzpatrick, pastored in upper Marlboro, just outside of Baltimore. And he would say, Pastor Mike, and I pastored the church in Indiana that he had started.

And he would say, I came to town and I didn’t even have a license. And people would sit out on their porches and I would just walk up and down the streets, sit down and talk to them and tell them about Jesus, lead them to Christ, they’d get saved.

I said, buddy, if I showed up on somebody’s porch, they might just pull out a gun and start shooting at me. What’s wrong with you? He said, it’s so different, Mike. It is different. But the need of spreading the gospel is not.

And we must find different ways that we can do that church. And so we must be in the business of strengthening the faith of existing Christians. Unfortunately, in the vocabulary of Christians, that the terms build up, strengthen and edify are vacant or void.

But we must make them a part of our understanding. And we must strengthen our fellow believers. Remember what Paul said in Romans 16, 25, now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ.

You see, as we proclaim his truth, whether it’s one on one, small groups, Bible studies, or large groups, teaching and preaching Jesus, it is establishing people in. the faith and what is the result of strengthening people in the faith did you see that in verse 5 they increased in number daily it is God who adds to the church when the church is vulnerable and anemic in its faith when the church is shallow in its faith it cannot make an impact but when the church is rooted and it is established God adds to that church and God can say I can trust that church to teach the true gospel I can increase their number I can bring more people into that fellowship now it’s not gonna be that you and I just sit on the couch and eat potato chips it’s that we’re out there we’re engaged we’re sharing the gospel and God is using our lives to reach others now my final point we’re talking about a strategy for success it begins in training others the next generation it is to strengthen the faith of existing Christians but it is finally to follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

Look at verse six through eight. Now when they had gone through Phrygia, sorry, and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia, and they had come to Mysia.

They tried to go to Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them. Would you underscore that in your Bible? The Spirit did not permit them. So passing to Mysia, they came down to Troas, and a vision appeared to Paul.

In the night, a man, a Macedonian, stood and pleaded with him, saying, come over to Macedonia and help us. Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.

Paul was divinely prohibited from carrying out his plan to minister in Asia Minor. The Bible tells us man plans his ways, but the Lord directs his steps. When I was growing up many times, my children would say to me, dad, you promised, and I always remind them, no, I didn’t promise.

I told you a plan, God willing. If it comes together right, this is what we’re gonna do. And sometimes my staff will say to me, well, pastor, you promised. And I say, no, I don’t make promises, I make plans.

Plan is to do this. And so last week, my plan was that on Monday, I might catch a little sleeping in because I had been putting in a lot of time. And I might rest a little bit in the morning, but then one of our bus drivers had a heart attack.

And so they called Pastor Mike and said, we need you to drive a bus. I had a plan. but God changed those plans and what I’m trying to tell you is believers that there are times we have plans the way we want our lives to go and sometimes people say to well that’s not the way I planned it pastor well I just want you to know man has a plan but the Lord directs his steps we have plans in our lives on how we do things but it is the Lord that directs our steps we see in Acts chapter 13 and Acts chapter 16 that the Spirit of God is the director of God’s work it is the Spirit of God that leads us and directs us in the way that he wants us to go and what we witness here is that God is sovereignly redirecting the Apostle in a way that would bring salvation to the people at Thessalonica This was what God wanted.

It’s not that he would not come back later and reach the people at Ephesus. It’s just that in God’s timing, and God’s way, and in God’s perfect plan were to follow. And what I admire most here about the Apostle is that he was willing to lay aside his own plans so that he could do the will of the Lord.

God uses circumstances to get our attention. He communicates with us in unique ways. And sometimes God will say to you, No, that’s not what I want you to do. That’s not the direction I want you to go.

He will direct your paths to the place where he wants you to serve him. Romans 8.14 says, For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the children of God. We need to be more sensitive to God’s leading in both the prohibiting and directing of our lives.

There are times God closes doors in your life, and you need to be sensitive to that. Let me share with you four things. How do I know the leadership of the Spirit, Pastor? How do I know? How do I follow that leadership of the Spirit?

Real quickly, it’s real easy. It always begins with prayer, Church. Write that word down, prayer. When Terry and I have prayed and said, Lord, what is your will? We’ve always asked him that if it’s not his will, please close the door.

Every opportunity is not God’s will in your life. Every time something comes along and you might think it’s bigger, it’s better, you know, you’ve got all these wonderful things. That doesn’t mean it’s God’s will in your life.

It’s not what God wants. So we would always pray, God, if it’s not your will, At your will, please close the door. I remember that in my early days, as I had concluded my time at Bible College, that there was a church up in Michigan that wanted me to come up and candidate.

So Terry and I tracked up there, just outside of Detroit. A very nice church, a very wealthy church, a very formal church. And I got up there. If you guys think I’m crazy now, you should have seen me when I was 20.

You should have seen me in my 20s. If you think, man, I mean, you’re lucky. You got the refined mic. And that isn’t too refined. But you should have seen me back then. And I was up and down the stage all over the auditorium, and those people were horrified at what they had just witnessed.

I really appreciate it. I feel sorry for the chairman of the pulpit committee. He came by to see me and said, Pastor Mike, you’re a good preacher. But it’s not gonna work here. And you know, actually, I’m praising God because all that snow up there, hello.

But anyways, I want you to know, God shut that door. It’s okay, it’s okay. God opens doors, God closes doors. How do I know the leadership? How do I follow it? Number one, prayer. Number two, peace. You see, God is not the author of confusion, but a peace, the Bible says.

Now the Bible tells us that God will give us a peace that passes all understanding. I can’t scientifically measure it for you. I can’t tangibly explain it to you. I can just tell you that when you pray and you’re seeking the will of God and you’re trying to understand the leadership of the Spirit that He will give you a peace that passes all understanding.

And if you don’t have that peace, don’t move. Don’t make a change. Don’t go in that direction. That you need the peace of God in your life. It’s not just that we need to make peace with God and that we need to be saved and we need to surrender our lives to God, but we need to have the peace of God as His people.

You need to have the peace of God in your life believing that this is what God has for you. And the Spirit of God will give you that peace if you seek for that peace. God is not the author of confusion.

If you’re confused, it’s not from God. If you’re confused, it’s either from the world, the devil, or your own flesh. And people say, Pastor, I’ll just follow my heart. No, please don’t do that. The heart is deceitful, who can know it?

And there’s been many people who have followed their hearts and made bad decisions in their life. The third is principles. I wanna tell you that the leadership of the Spirit of God will never, it will never be in contradiction to the principles of God’s word, okay?

It’ll never be in contradiction. So, you might say, I’d say, well, God wants me to rob a bank. The Spirit of God, and I’m being extreme just to make a point, okay? But the Spirit of God has led me to rob a bank, pastor.

No, he hasn’t. Okay? He is not, because the Spirit doesn’t lead you to do something that violates the word of God. Well, please remember that. And then finally, it’s people. The Bible says that there is wisdom and there is safety in a multitude of counsel.

God’s people, not the people who will agree with whatever you say. But I’m talking about godly people that you can come to. It could be elders, pastors. It could be your parents. It could be people that are spiritual mentors in your life and just bounce things off of them.

And if they’re saying, ah, I’m not seeing it, I think that’s, you know, listen, God uses people. Now, sometimes we don’t like what people say. We want the people to say what we want them to say. And many times I feel like people come to see me and they just want me to affirm whatever they wanna do.

You know, and I’m just like, hey, if you just wanted me to affirm, man, just send me a text message. And I’ll say that a boy. Hang in there, keep going. We can move forward. But if you really want how I see it objectively from God’s word, then this is what I think.

But here’s the thing, is that God uses people in your life, sometimes like a warning sign. And sometimes those people might say to you, the bridge is out if you go down that path. That’s a bad direction.

And you might say, well, I don’t agree with that. It makes me feel excited and it makes me this and that. But you know what, they have wisdom. They see things that you don’t see. And so I want to encourage you, never make a move, never make a change, never make a major decision in your life without seeking the counsel of godly people in your life.

God aligns all this together to help you to follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit in your life and to help you to know what God’s will is. God is calling all of us to be successful. There’s gonna be opposition church, there’s gonna be disagreements.

But God can override it all to accomplish his great purpose. And the key for us, don’t stop. Just keep training that next generation. And keep investing and strengthening other believers. And keep following the leadership of the Spirit in your life and what you’ll see is God will use your life uniquely and he’ll use your life specifically to bring the gospel to many hearts.

God has called us to strengthen our fellow believers, and we do that by not only giving them the word of God, but to coach them, to mentor them, to encourage them, to support them, and to help them to work through some of maybe the obstacles and challenges that are in their life.

And that’s what you see going on in the early church consistently over and over and over. So, I hope that today’s message has continued to kind of give you a pattern or a template that you can use as you’re trying to encourage and mentor others in the family of God.

Well, I want to remind you that Hope Worth Having is a ministry that has a newsletter we put out on a regular basis, and if you’re interested in signing up to receive our newsletter, you can go to HopeWorthHaving.com, hit the newsletter button, and sign up for that newsletter, it’ll come right to your house, or if you just want to email it, we can do that as well.

We can email it straight to your inbox. So take advantage of that opportunity as you continue to learn more and grow in your faith and let the Lord encourage you. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.

The post God’s Strategy for Successful Service Part 2 first appeared on Hope Worth Having.

Pastor Mike will be speaking on God’s Strategy for Successful Service Part 1. He will be reading out of Acts 16:1-9.

And when you tell the young people they’re the church of tomorrow, they’ll sit back on the sidelines and they’ll wait for tomorrow, but the devil will get them before tomorrow ever comes. The key is today.

Get the young people involved. Today pour your life into somebody. Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders from the Open Door Church, and we welcome you to the radio program of Hope Worth Having. We’re excited to learn the Word of God together.

Today we are starting a new series in Acts chapter 16, God’s Strategy for Successful Service. And as we dig into the Word of God, we continue to see great examples of the early church and how they functioned and how they ministered.

And so I want us to open our Bibles and begin to study together in Acts chapter 16. We serve a great God, and we are grateful to be able to gather this morning and to be able to share God’s Word with you, and we’re going to be in Acts chapter 16.

This morning, Acts chapter 16, while you’re turning there, I want to share a story I read in Sports Illustrated, and it says most people haven’t heard of the pro football running back named Tony Richardson.

That’s because his primary role involves helping other running backs succeed. He blocks so that they can run. Over the span of 17 pro football seasons, teams have often paired Richardson with some of the best backs in pro football.

In 2001, he was slated to be the main running back, but instead he went to his teammate Priest Holmes, and he told him, it’s time for me to step out of the way. You need to be getting the ball, and I’m going to do everything I can.

to help you. Holmes went on to lead the league in rushing, but Richardson never grew envious or resentful. As Holmes would report, he used to call me up and say, I just saw you on SportsCenter. He was happier for me than I was for myself.

All of the running backs that Richardson helped succeed content that his influence went beyond blocking for them. He would constantly talk to them through the game, advising them, pushing and encouraging and inspiring them.

In a recent interview, Tony Richardson said, I can’t explain it, but it just means more to me to help someone else achieve success. There’s something about it that feels right to me. And this morning I want to talk to you about God’s strategy.

for successful service, and I think it really aligns with what that story encompasses, that God is calling each and every one of us, not only to think about our role in the kingdom of God and our responsibilities that we have, but to be thinking about others and how it is that we could help them to be successful, to achieve what God is calling them to do.

Now for context purposes, let’s again go back to chapter 15, because a couple of weeks ago you remembered that we shared with you how to agree to disagree, and you recall that Paul and Barnabas, two great men in the church were getting ready to launch out on what is referred to as the second missionary journey of the early church, yet they had a dispute, they had a difference of opinion.

In verse 39 of chapter 15, the Bible says, then the contention became so sharp that they parted from one another. The idea of this word contention is a strong disagreement, and the disagreement was over a young man named John Mark, for he had already been on the first missionary journey, but for some reason not known to us, it is only speculative of what it could be, but that John Mark had left in the middle of the journey,

that he had departed, whether it was personal, health reasons, perhaps it could have been spiritual, perhaps it could have been other things that were going on in his life, but whatever it was, it was so significant that it influenced the apostle Paul to say no, we cannot bring John Mark because there is no reliability, but Barnabas feeling so much different about that, wanted to take John Mark, and I want you to imagine these two great men who have been strong in their leadership in the church,

and they have impacted the lives of many people in the church. The ripple effect of this disagreement that these two men have made. Luke under the influence of the Holy Spirit, he does not pick sides.

He just gives us a narrative of what took place. And the Bible says in verse 39 in the middle, And so Barnabas took Mark, and he sailed to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and departed, being commended by the brethren to the grace of God.

And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. I left you with this thought a couple weeks ago that I think is important for us to reaffirm in our hearts again as we launch into what I want to share with you today.

that our God is a sovereign God and that He is a God who is bigger than all the differences of opinions between His servants. That God is big enough to overcome the disagreements that God’s people might have with one another and that though Barnabas and Paul could not see eye to eye on this matter relating to John Mark which I shared with you was very redemptive in its nature because it would all come full circle in which the Apostle Paul would say send me John Mark for he is profitable for the ministry.

God works in different ways even in our disagreements even when we can’t see eye to eye. Our God is still working out His purpose, His plans, His mission of reaching the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ and that’s what we’re left with when we come to verse 41.

We see now we have two teams going out. It’s Barnabas’ team with John Mark and it’s Paul’s team with Silas. We come to chapter 16 and here we see the work of the Apostle Paul. He is continuing this work of going out to spread the gospel but I want you to see in verse 1 it says then he came to Derbe and Lystra and behold a certain disciple was there named Timothy.

The son of a certain Jewish woman who believed but his father was Greek he was well spoken of by the brethren who were at Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted to have him go on with him and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in that region.

For they all knew that his father was Greek as they went through the cities they delivered to them. the decrees to keep, which were determined by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and increased in the number daily.

Do you see that church? Do you see that when we go back to verse 41, we see that the churches are strengthened? Do you see that in verse five, that we see again the churches are strengthened and that the number of believers and followers of Christ is increasing, not just on a monthly basis, but daily?

That God is working effectively, not only in the life of Barnabas’ team, because we know that to be true, though it is not, it is not recorded in great detail like Paul’s ministry. But we see the outcome of John Mark, who did have some struggles, but here is Barnabas, an encourager, coming alongside John Mark and pouring into this young man, and that he would eventually be that person that the apostle,

who being a type A personality and being a very driven person and very committed to the task that God had given him, would say, send me John Mark, for he is profitable for the ministry. What I want you to see is that even in the differences that our God is bigger than all this, he’s bigger than every difference you have with other believers, he’s bigger than any maybe perspective that you have, that God is still going to achieve the ultimate purposes of redeeming mankind and bringing glory to his wonderful name.

And so let’s learn this morning how God can use us in his strategy for successful service. The apostle is gathering additional team members to continue his work that God has called him to. And the first thing that I want you to see in this text is that we are called to train the next generation of leaders.

Again, whether it is that Barnabas is training John Mark or it is that Paul is training Silas and Timothy, we know that God is working and that God is calling all of us to train the next generation of leaders.

We know that Luke is a part of this team that Paul has because though that Luke has been relying on many witnesses to share the unfolding events of the early church, he is also a part of this team and he himself is a witness.

We come down to verse 10 and we see that in chapter 16. Now after he had seen a vision referring to the vision that the apostle had received, immediately we. Well, who’s the we? Obviously. Luke is on that team.

Luke is the human author under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, penning down the words. Immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.

Verse 11, therefore, sailing from Troas, we ran a straight course. And so what I want you to see here is, again, over in these set of verses, Luke is revealing that He is on this team, this missionary team.

Yes, there was a difference, but now there’s another team, and God is using both teams to accomplish His purpose. But for us this morning, what we need to remember is that God is calling us to train the next generation of leaders.

We come back to verse 1, and we see this phrase, a certain disciple. His name was Timothy. Timothy is referred to as the Apostle’s son in the faith. and Timothy would eventually become the apostle’s right -hand man.

He would be an important part of the missionary team. If we go to 1 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 2, we see that as the apostle is writing to the young pastor, Timothy, he says, to Timothy, a true son in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.

Timothy joins Paul and Silas and Luke. He joins this team to serve, but he was very much like a son in the faith to the apostle, and he was a valued member of the team. He would serve as a pastor at the church at Ephesus.

Timothy had been developed, he had been trained, he had been encouraged, he had been discipled by the apostle Paul. We see in 1 Timothy chapter 1 verse 3 that as I urged you, again Paul writing to Timothy, when I went into Macedonia, remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach you no other doctrine, so Timothy was equipped.

He was equipped by the apostle that he might be able to push back on the false teaching and that Timothy might be this bold leader that would continue to guide the church, this important church at Ephesus that would have huge effect upon the region.

What kind of a man was Timothy? The Bible tells us in chapter 16 of Acts that the son of a certain Jewish woman who believed but his father was a Greek. We know in 2 Timothy that Timothy as a young man was raised in the gospel, that his mother and his grandmother taught him the word of God.

And you remember the Apostle said to Timothy that he had learned the scriptures that were able to make him wise unto salvation. Verse 2, we see more about his character. He was well spoken of by the brethren who were at Lystra and Iconium for the needs of what the Apostle had, for the needs of what he would encounter, what we will see in the next few chapters, the challenges that would face this team going out on this second missionary journey.

It was essential that he had a man like Timothy. He is a man of good character. Timothy is well spoken of. His reputation extended beyond his own community, his own family, and other believers recognize that he was a strong leader.

Philippians 2, verse 22, describes this. When Paul was writing to the Philippian leaders, he begins to describe the character of Timothy, and he says, you know his proven character, that as a son with his father, he served with me in the gospel.

The apostle would send Timothy out to address problems in churches, to deal with issues, to be an advisor to the elders and the leaders of the local congregations. Not only did he serve in Ephesus as a pastor, but he served as the apostle’s right -hand man, and so that they would listen to this man, Timothy.

Paul says his character is proven, and he has been loyal and served with me in the gospel. I want you to understand that what we’re seeing is the outcome of a life, the life of Timothy. That a man who has been trained, a man who has been poured into, a man who has been equipped, and that reminds me that our success is not measured.

Every one of our success as believers is not measured by what we have done, but by what those we have mentored have done and achieved for God. I want you to think differently in the kingdom of God. So many times it’s about us, and it’s about what we do.

But I think God is calling us, even in these unique times, to train the next generation. You’re familiar with 2 Timothy 2 ,2, which says the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses.

And trust these two faithful people who will be able to teach others also. This word and trust means to deposit a treasure, to commit this treasure to the people, the things that you have learned, this gospel, the things that you have learned.

from others. Every one of us stands on the shoulders of other people. We are where we’re at because of the influence and the impact of people upon our life. It was Paul’s continuing mentorship of Timothy throughout his ministry that resulted in Timothy not only being a great man of character but being a catalyst in transitioning from the early church from the Apostles into elders and pastors who would lead the church and it would be Timothy that would be at the spearhead of all of that transition that would pour in to many other great leaders who would continue the work of Christ.

You’re familiar with Proverbs 27 verse 17 that tells us that iron sharpens iron and so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. I ran across this statement I did not have down in my notes who said it, but I really believe it.

Older believers who don’t invest in new believers soon become stagnant believers. This morning, my challenge to you as brothers and sisters in Christ, that as we are observing the transition of a conflict into the success of God’s work continuing on, that we recognize our responsibility to train the next generation of leaders.

It was always the Apostle’s heart that he would be able to invest in others. He said in Colossians 1 .28 that him referring to Christ we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

You and I have this responsibility not to live our lives unto ourselves, but to be thinking about the next generation. I often hear people say, well, the young people, they’re the church of tomorrow.

No, they’re not, they’re the church of today. And when you tell the young people they’re the church of tomorrow, they’ll sit back on the sidelines and they’ll wait for tomorrow, but the devil will get them before tomorrow ever comes.

The key is today, get the young people involved. Today, pour your life into somebody. Today, take under your wings new believers and young believers and to begin to train the next generation of leader.

When I think about my own life, not that in any way it’s somehow a perfect life, but I just want you to understand that as I stand here today, it’s not because of my own achievements, it’s because of other people who have poured their life into me.

Some of those that… you may know and others you may never have heard of but all critical to the development of Mike Sanders. I’m taking this course on pastoral ministry and the question that the professor proposed to us was to write down all the people that have influenced us for ministry.

And it was very reflective and it just so happened to tie in the fact that I would be preaching on this text. But it was very reflective and affirming in my heart to know that there are others that have poured into me.

But I just want to ask you, who are you pouring into? I’ve said to you before church, I’ve learned it from someone somewhere. I mean you know nothing’s new under the sun but I just want you to know that I want to encourage you that every one of us need a mentor.

We all need an Apostle Paul in our life. And you need to find those mentors, and sometimes those mentors take on different influences upon us, meaning that one mentor may be good in this area and another mentor may be good in another area, but they are pouring into our lives.

But not only do we need an Apostle Paul, we need a Timothy. We need to be pouring our lives into someone else. And we also need a Barnabas, an encourager. They’re just certain people who are gifted, it doesn’t matter.

Every time you are with them, everything’s wonderful. I mean, the whole world could be collapsing, but it’s wonderful. They’re just encouragers. It’s not that they’re lying, it’s just that the way they see the world, they’ve just been designed by God to be an encourager.

And if you need to be lifted up, you just need to hang around some of those Barnabas that are always coming alongside others and encouraging them. We need these people in our lives. And if we’re gonna see this happen, we must be intentional.

We must be intentional. It must be a goal that we would find these mentors in our life. But also, number two, we must take the initiative. And I’ve always, and in pursuing mentors, I have always taken the initiative.

Usually, mentors don’t come running to me and say, Mike, I wanna pour my life into you. But I go to them and say, hey, can I have 10 minutes? Can I take you to lunch? Hey, I got some questions. And the relationship just evolves from there, and God bless us.

Some doesn’t evolve, but some it does. And I love it when I get to meet with other young pastors and helping them. And I, tomorrow, have an appointment. I won’t be available from, well, I got the radio station, then I got to drive to, I know you’re not gonna believe this, but I have a breakfast meeting.

At Cracker Barrel, I don’t know why these people always want to go to Cracker Barrel. But anyways, with a young pastor, first year pastoring, and he wants to sit down and we meet once a month and we talk about ministry and we talk about problem solving and different ways that can help him.

One of his deacons called me one time and said, thank you, Pastor Mike. Thank you for pouring into our pastor because every time he comes back, he has a hundred new ideas. I promise you, I don’t give people a lot of ideas, I just try to give them principles.

But the thing is this, all of us need to do it and I always share that with you because I want you to know I’m not standing up here telling you to do something I’m not doing. And we all need to find people that we can pour our lives into and that we can be a blessing to and that is part of God’s success strategy.

We cannot wait, church. We cannot wait. Our church. has dropped over 30 some volunteers. We just had a little staff get away and we walked through our numbers and the number of volunteers since before COVID into now has just dropped drastically.

Now our attendance is coming back and it’s pretty exciting to see how God is pulling his people back into the fold. There’s a few that still haven’t come but I’m not sure they’re ever coming back and there’s nothing I can do.

I’ve done everything I can to bring them back. But everybody has to seek the Lord and whatever they believe is right. But here’s what I want you to understand. Is that when we think about how are we going to make up that gap, I’ll tell you what it’s gonna be.

It’s gonna be each one of you not only volunteering and stepping up and I’m doing things that, it’s not that I said, hey, I love this or I wanna do this. But it’s gotta be done. But also it’s us training the next generation.

It’s training the young people and the new believers and the new families coming into the church. It’s training them and helping them to get engaged and you do that by this way. Never do ministry alone.

Never do ministry alone. Whatever God has called you to do, you pick up the phone and you call somebody or you text them and you say, come alongside, let’s do this together. I want you to know that when I was a young man in my small church that I came to Christ to believe in that the pastor there, like we didn’t have this big mentoring program and we didn’t have all these classes and all these Bible studies and I’m not against any of that,

okay? So don’t walk out of here upset and send me an email this afternoon because I’ll be watching football and falling asleep, okay? I’m just being honest with you, okay? But here’s the thing. The pastor just said, Mike, I’m gonna go make some visits.

Would you like to come along? Sure. Mike, I need to go run an errand. Would you like to come along? sure would you like to help me on this project I gotta do some things at the church can you help me with this project sure glad to do it now of course I was a new believer hungry desiring wanting and growing and wanting to learn more and probably drove my pastor crazy and just asking him so many questions about what I read in the Bible and what in the world that that meant how that applied to my life but what I want to say is this here was a pastor who never did ministry alone and that’s the your mindset’s gotta be is that as you are training the next generation is that you’re always thinking about who can we get it’s not just that we sit and drink coffee that’s good but we serve together and we train these young people and these new believers and new families and we get them engaged in training the next generation the second thing that I want you to see out of this passage is that we must strengthen the faith existing Christians.

Look at verse 4 and 5. Again we see as they went through the cities, they delivered to them the decrees to keep, which were determined by the Apostles and elders at Jerusalem. So the churches were what?

You can do better. The churches were what? So the churches were strengthened in the faith. They were strengthened. This is our role church. This is God’s success plan, is to strengthen other believers.

Now let’s back up a little bit and understand what’s going on in this text in verse 4. We’re reminded that the Apostles, they brought, they delivered a decree for them to keep or to obey or to follow.

The ruling that was given by the Jerusalem Council is what they were delivering. So let’s go back to chapter 15. Again it’s good for you to see everything in context and understand what is happening and not just rush through the text.

And not fully grasp what God is trying to show us here. We go back to verse 11 chapter 15. Remember there was this debate. Did new believers, Gentile believers, have to follow the customs of Judaism?

Did they have to follow the rituals and the ceremonies of Judaism? What was that conclusion? We look at verse 11 of chapter 15, but we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved in the same manner as they.

Meaning you don’t get saved differently in the kingdom of God. That just as the Jews were saved by the grace of God, so shall the Gentiles be saved by the grace of God. Well this strategy of serving is something that we see in the life of the early church and the apostles and how they effectively shared the gospel and they were willing to take it to wherever they could and of course we think about those early men of God like Philip in the Bible who were not ashamed of the gospel and they were bold in their faith even though they faced a lot of pushback.

We are grateful that you and I can learn from their examples and we are encouraged that they have stood so strong and so I hope today that as you look at the Word of God and you can find this model and this example that’ll help you in these unique times that we live in.

Well I want to encourage you to make sure you check out our Hope Worth Having website, hopeworthhaving .com. We have a contact button up there on the right. I’d love for you to share your prayer requests so if you have a special prayer request just hit that contact button on the website and we’ll be able to hear your requests and then be able to pray for you.

We not only want to share God’s Word but we want to continue to help in praying for you so I hope you’ll take advantage of that.

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Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Agree to Disagree Part 2. He will be reading out of Acts 15:36-41.

When there are conflicts in your marriage, and conflicts in your job, and conflicts in the church, don’t run, but grow. Get better. Get stronger. Yes, there’ll be scars, but know that God is making you more like Christ.

Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders, and this is Hope Worth Having Ministries. Today, we’re continuing our study in Acts 15, verse 36 through 41. We’re learning how to agree to disagree. There are times that you and I have conflicts with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

The Bible teaches us that Paul and Barnabas had a contention. It was a disagreement that resulted in them having to go different directions. But there was reconciliation, and so I want you and I to learn together through this process how God works and how we can agree to disagree.

Here we see a disagreement between Paul and Apollos. Paul says, you need to do this, and Apollos says, nah, that’s not going to be what I’m going to be able to do. The apostle Paul says, it was not his will to come now.

Now why do people sometimes disagree? You write these down, okay? Write these down. Number one, because there’s personality conflicts. Now I could solve 90% of your marriage if you could just understand each other’s personality.

90% of your marriage problems are personality problems. They are. And that’s why it’s important to learn about the different personalities of people. And the Bible teaches us that there are different personalities.

And we see these personalities come through as they’re sharing the stories of the different things that they have done. But one of the reasons people disagree is because they don’t like one personality over the other, or vice versa.

that they just rub each other the wrong way just the way it is number two perspective I don’t know if you understand but people have different perspectives on things you see it one way they see it another way and sometimes we disagree it’s not because it’s wrong but it’s because we see it differently now let’s just imagine and I don’t want this to happen but let’s hypothetically imagine that on the way out somebody drives off our campus and they have a fender bender that I’m on one corner of the street and you’re on another corner of the street and the police officer comes and he asked for us to describe what happened and I tell one story and the other person tells another story and it’s like two different stories but it’s really not it’s the same story with two different perspectives Sometimes when you read the gospel,

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they’re telling the same story, and sometimes you’ll compare them and you’ll say, whoa, look at these differences. Is one of them lying? No, it’s the same story with two different perspectives.

It’s possible for somebody to have a legitimate perspective that is different from yours, to see something totally different. The things that impact our perspective sometimes can be the way that we’re raised.

It can be the culture we live in, the trauma we deal with, the tragedies that we face in life, and all these things impact our perspective. What’s another way that causes disagreement is priorities. We have different priorities.

Now, when I first came to the Open Door Church, there would be people to say to me, now, Pastor Mike, we need to send all the church money up to the Christian school, because that’s really where it’s happening.

And then another person would come up to me and say, now, Pastor Mike, we need to pour all our money in the youth group, because they’re the future of the church. And then another person would say, no, we need to give all our money to the missionaries, and they would say, that’s what we gotta do to get the gospel out.

And then another person would say, well, I’m tired of supporting foreign missionaries, let’s support local missionaries. And it wasn’t that any of them were wrong, it’s just that they all had different priority.

Are you with me? And there are times in ministry, there’s times in your home, and there’s times in the workplace that the reason we’re having conflict is because you might not have the same priority as the other person.

Here’s another reason that we disagree. We have different philosophies. We have different philosophies. I tell people when Dr. Dino Padron was here, he was like an evangelist who was a pastor, and he was having crusades every Sunday.

is having big rallies every Sunday, and God was using that in a great time. There was a great time of harvest. But not everybody has that philosophy. One time Dr. Padrone told me that he had 10 ,000 people in church, and I said, Dr.

Padrone, I don’t mean to be mean, but that’s impossible. You don’t have 10 ,000 parking spots. You don’t even have 5 ,000. And you don’t even have 2 ,000 parking spots. How could you get 10 ,000 people?

And he began to explain to me how he actually was counting people at different places across the state. And that’s fine, I’m not against that. But that was his philosophy. And we have different philosophies.

Different pastors, different philosophies. Different homes, different philosophies. How about this one? We have different preferences. Some of you like it one way, another person likes it another way.

You might like a certain ball team and I like another ball team. You may like music and can’t stand sports and I like sports and can’t stand music. I’m not sure what its point is. But we have different preferences, doesn’t make anybody bad, doesn’t make anybody evil, but we have different preferences in our life.

And again, so many factors can impact our preferences. You might like Walmart and somebody else might like Target. All right, so we have different preferences. Matthew Henry, who was a great Puritan, Bible commentator, preacher in his day, here’s what he said relating to this fact that godly people will sometimes disagree.

He said, even those that are united to one and the same Jesus and sanctified by the one and the same spirit have different apprehensions, different opinions, different views and different sentiments in points of prudence.

It will be so while we are in this state of darkness and imperfection, we shall never be all of a mind till we come to heaven where light and love are perfect. All he’s trying to state is the obvious church.

Don’t go into any relationship thinking we’ll always agree. And that the only way we can get along is if we’re 100% in agreement. That’s just an impossibility. It’s just an impossibility. And I know that there are many Christians that are on the sidelines today that they’re not involved in a church because they could not handle disagreement in the church.

They couldn’t handle it. And now they just burn that bridge, shut down, and don’t want to be a part of any church. The second principle I want you to learn this morning is that you got to realize that in many disagreements, each side is valid.

Each side is valid. life is made up of judgment calls. I want you to go back to verse 38 of chapter 15. The Bible says that Paul insisted that they should not take with them the one who had departed from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.

I asked you the question earlier, which one was right? And in my paper, I concluded they both were right. They both were right. Paul had to have somebody on his team who was dependable. He was going out on the missionary journey and he was doing a very difficult task.

He was doing something that was gonna require stamina, determination, endurance, the ability to handle opposition. Remember that on the first missionary journey, the apostle Paul, that they were so upset with him for sharing the gospel that they threw stones at him and they left him for dead.

They thought he was dead. They drug him out to the city limits and they left him there to die. So if it doesn’t take much, and you’re John Mark, and you get a little pushback, and all of a sudden you fold your tent up and said, I’m out of here, I’m taking my football, and I’m gonna go home, it’s not gonna work with the Apostle Paul.

But yet we also understand that somebody’s gotta invest in John Mark. Somebody’s gotta get him to the next level. Somebody’s gotta encourage him. Somebody’s gotta come along and equip him and strengthen him.

They are both right, and they both had valid reasons of why they made the judgment call that they made. In life, hear me, in life, the heavens are not always gonna part, and God is not always gonna say, you do this, or you don’t do this.

This is how God works, my friends. He blesses you with principles in the Bible. He blesses you with the wisdom of the Father. He blesses you with the mind of Christ. He blesses you with the leadership of the Spirit, and you are called within the context of your personality, and the context of your preferences, and the context of your priorities to make the best judgment call that you can make.

And you gotta live with it. You gotta live with it. For the Apostle Paul, he felt like that was the best judgment that John Mark not come. I can’t rely on him. For Barnabas, he felt like we gotta invest in this guy, and we can’t give up on him, and I believe that he could become a great leader down the road.

They’re both right. Many disagreements are valid on both sides. There is diversity in the body of Christ. What’s important to you may not be important to me, but that’s okay. What you’re passionate about may not…

be what I’m passionate about and vice versa, but that’s okay. We don’t always have to agree on every little thing, and we don’t always have to see everything just right, and it’s okay. We might have a disagreement, but both sides are valid, and that’s important.

Third principle I want you to learn, that when you have a disagreement, you need to reach out to those you disagree with, personally and privately. But when I have a disagreement with someone at a level that it’s affecting me, now let me just put this out there.

Okay, I didn’t even put this in my notes, but I just feel that I should tell you this, that when I have a disagreement, one might ask the question, when do I have to personally talk to them about a disagreement?

Because, you know, if we spend our life trying to confront everybody and talk to everybody about a disagreement, I’m going to tell you something. That’s all we’ll be doing in life. Okay, I mean there are times people say I mean one time I came into the church and the lady said I don’t like your haircut Hey, I’m just trying to hang on to what I got much less you like what I got.

Hey man Okay, honestly, I didn’t even give it I just kind of walked off and I said appreciate the input Okay, and I just moved on in life. Okay. I mean sometimes people tell me crazy stuff You just wouldn’t believe it and I learned this from dr.

Dina Padrone. He told me Mike You don’t have to argue with everything just say that’s interesting So if I’m in a conversation with you and I say that’s interesting, that’s your cue. He doesn’t agree with me He just trying to move me along Amen, isn’t that interesting?

But when do I take that time to talk to somebody? Let me share it with you when it affects you It’s affecting your spiritual life It’s setting you back spiritually Number two, when do I talk to somebody when it affects other people spiritual life?

It’s setting them back personally Number three, I know I need to talk to someone if it is affecting the kingdom of God It’s affecting the work of God. It’s affecting the people of God because there are sometimes Disagreements are among people that it’s spreading throughout the community of faith and it’s causing a negative reaction Those are the three times that we need to try to do our best to work it out so that we can get the better Outcome and the cause of Christ can move forward.

But here’s the point I want to leave you with Matthew 5 23 verse 24 says therefore if you bring your gift to the altar and there Remember that your brother has something against you leave your gift Therefore before the altar go your way first be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift The word first in the Greek means priority And so he’s saying that the priority is first before you bring your sacrifices to God our Sacrifices of praise our sacrifice of service our sacrifice of worship our sacrifices to God that we should first go make it right with our brother and our sister in Christ.

And there are times that that is necessary. How do I know why? I just told you three ways that you know. But the Bible gives us guidance on our relationships. And there are times that we do need to work it out.

We need to make sure that we handle it. The Bible says in Matthew 18, verse 15, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. So we always start one on one. We always start privately.

We always start personally. That’s the way confrontation should always be. Even when you confront your children, even when you confront your teenager, even when you confront someone in the church, it should always be done.

Personally and privately. Now, if it’s a gross sin that’s affecting you and them and the church, yes, we have to get others involved because we want to correct that problem. We understand that. But I want to tell you that when it comes to your marriage, when it comes to your relationships, all relationships in the church, the work, you should always seek restoration.

That should be your goal. Your goal is not that you’re the policeman, not that you’re here to correct everybody, not that you’re here to change everybody, but that you want restoration. That’s why in Ephesians chapter 4, the Apostle Paul taught us, don’t let the sun go down on your anger.

And what I’m trying to tell you is that if you’re going to make it in your marriage relationships, you can’t go to bed angry at each other. You can’t go to bed with all this festering in your heart. I’m going to tell you it’s going to affect you physically, it’s going to affect you mentally, it’s going to affect you emotionally, and most definitely it’s going to affect you spiritually.

And so if you’ve got to stay up till 3 a .m. to work it out, work it out, because that’s what God wants. Do everything you can to restore your relationships. Number four, refuse to assassinate people’s character.

In this process of disagreeing, did you note that Paul never assassinates the character of Barnabas? Did you note that Barnabas never in any way tries to discredit the ministry of the Apostle? Did you note that the Bible says at the end that the church confirmed the Apostle Paul and blessed them as they were sent out?

Why? Because Barnabas didn’t take it personal, and Barnabas didn’t make it a crusade, and he didn’t make it the focus of his life, that he was going to do whatever he could to destroy the Apostle Paul’s ministry.

And I want to tell you that in life, you’re going to have to learn that there are people that you disagree with, and that it may cause… a separation but you gotta let go and you gotta give them to God and let God do his wonderful work in the heart of that person and you can’t spend your life chasing after that poison to hurt them.

Because like I told you before that trying to get revenge on someone and refusing to forgive them is like drinking poison and hoping that they die. But the truth is that while you’re bitter angry and mad at that person you’re dying.

You’re dying inside. People notice it all around you. You’re negative, you’re critical, you’re hateful, you’re rude, you’re difficult because you’re messed up inside and your relationship with God is wrong and your relationship with others is wrong and you are slowly dying.

What you really need to do is say you know what? I give that person to God. Some of you need to give your children to God. You’re struggling with them. They’re making decisions that you’re not happy with.

They’re making decisions that are dishonoring God. They’re making decisions that are creating friction in the home. Now look, you can spend the rest of your life trying to change them, and you can spend the rest of your life trying to correct them.

But I want to tell you, it’s better to pray for them and give them to God. Give them to God. You can’t pound on them every time you pick up the phone. You can’t pound on them every time they stop by the house.

You can’t pound on them every time there’s a birthday party. You gotta give them to God. Well, I just wanted to say, in 1 Corinthians 9 -6, we see later, after this disagreement, here’s what Paul again says to the Corinthians, do only Barnabas and I have not the right to refrain from working?

And what I just wanted to note is that, tucked inside this bigger picture of teaching how the church needed to support Paul and Barnabas, but Paul and Barnabas chose not to be supported by the church because they wanted the monies and energies to be used to get this church going and off the ground.

Notice who he’s partnering with later on. He never burned the bridge to Barnabas and they came full circle back together. You don’t know how God’s gonna use a disagreement to change someone and how he’s gonna use it to bring you back together.

Number five, now look, there’s only six points, so we’re on number five. Number five, resist becoming bitter. I’ve already talked a lot about it, but I just simply wanna say that conflicts in all of your relationships in the church, in the workplace or in the home, conflicts are opportunities for you to grow and for you to change and for you to experience revival with God.

Every conflict that I’ve had, I know this is hard to believe, but there are some people that do not like Mike Sanders. Aren’t you shocked? I was too. I didn’t know. I thought everybody loved Mike Sanders.

And somebody said, thank God there’s not two of them. Amen. But I want you to know that every time that I’ve had a conflict, a disagreement, and sometimes they’ve led to sharp disagreements, but God has used it to make me a better pastor, to make me a better Christian, to make me a better person, to change me, and literally to revive my heart, to help me get closer to God, and to help me to seek Him and put my attention on Him.

I’m not saying God’s out there causing conflict, and I’m not out there saying God’s looking forward to you having a conflict. But I am saying that when there are conflicts in your marriage and conflicts in your job and conflicts in the church, don’t run, but grow.

Get better. Get stronger. become more enduring. Yes, there’ll be scars, but know that God is making you more like Christ. I mean, if they didn’t like our master, how much more would they not like the servants?

Do you understand that? Now, I want you to see something beautiful. I want you to see the redemption of this relationship that we read about that Luke gives us. In Colossians 4 .10, the Bible said, this is the Apostle Paul writing, Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner greets you.

Mark, I think we heard about Mark, didn’t we? That’s John Mark. That’s John Mark. Turns out he’s the cousin of Barnabas concerning whom you have received instructions. If he comes to you, make his life difficult.

No, that’s not what Paul said, is it? But listen, welcome him. Isn’t that a beautiful story of redemption? You’re burning bridges, but Paul’s building bridges. You’re cutting people off, you’re done with them, but God’s bringing it all full circle, and he’s growing Paul, and he’s growing Barnabas, and who knows that now they’re working together, and now, I mean, after that separation, if you had that separation with Paul and said,

hey, would you send me a letter of recommendation? I’m going to the church at Colossae, and I need you to recommend me. Well, the average Christian, that wouldn’t happen because they’d already be burning bridges, never talk to each other, hate each other, and they’d be on social media attacking each other.

But here’s what Paul did. Somewhere, someway, somehow, they got back together. They worked it out, and he said, let me recommend you to the church at Colossae. By the time Paul wrote Colossians, it appears that there was mending, there was redemption.

There was restoration, and he is recommending to the congregation that the congregation welcome him. I’m not done with this redemptive story. We get to 2 Timothy 4, 11, and the apostle writes to Timothy, the young pastor, Luke alone is with me.

Get Mark. Well, who’s Mark? John Mark. And bring him with you, for he is very what? Useful to me for ministry. Don’t you remember the reason why? Don’t you remember the reason why Paul said he can’t come?

Don’t you remember he couldn’t rely on him? And then in this beautiful story of God’s redemption, he’s saying, hey, guess what? John Mark’s useful. Get him over there because he’s a guy you can depend on.

He’s a guy that’s going to get the job done. Now, look, unless you think that this redemptive story is even finished there, I want you to know, guess who wrote the Gospel of Mark? Hello, John Mark, John Mark.

I guess Barnabas did a pretty good job, didn’t he? Aren’t you thankful for encouragers? Aren’t you thankful when you fail, you falter, you messed up that there’s a Barnabas in your life? Picks you up, encourages you.

So I’m encouraging you finally to resolve, to always agree to disagree. The disagreements can exist in the family of God, and sometimes, unfortunately, they cannot be resolved immediately. Takes time, takes healing, takes restoration.

What we see here is that at the end of this narrative that Luke gives us, that Paul takes Silas, and he goes out with him, and Barnabas takes John Mark, and they go out. And here’s something I want you to know, that God is sovereign even in our conflicts.

That God doubled his effort. I want you to remember this, and I wrote it down, that the cause of God, remember this church, in your conflicts, the cause of God will triumph through all the weaknesses, all the failures, and all the conflicts that exist with his people.

The gospel will march on, just because Mike can’t get along with a personality, God’s not gonna stop his work. Just because I have a different preference than you, God’s not gonna stop the gospel going to the ends of the earth, church.

What I want you to see is that this is a beautiful story of redemption. It is a beautiful story of restoration, and you might be here in the midst of a conflict. You may be at the beginning of a conflict.

You may be a wounded soldier after the conflict. What I want to encourage you to is get to Christ. because there’s no one who heals your heart like Jesus. Whether that conflict was within the whole, in the church, or it is on the job, I want you to avail yourself to an almighty, sovereign God who has a purpose and a plan and that even in our conflicts he wants to heal our wounds and he wants to strengthen our hearts and he wants the gospel to march forward for him.

Can God’s people say that? I got a great story and I’ll let you out of here. Hundreds of years ago, there was a legendary feud between the Hatfields and the… Believe it or not, recently their families got together for a reunion.

They decided to leave the shotguns behind. One person said we’re gonna… Be on our best behavior. He was the chairman of the McCoys. His name is Bo. Believe it or not, Bo’s a minister. And he talks about how this happened and it left 12 people dead in the families, this conflict.

2 ,000 people descended on this special reunion and others came to just see if there’d be a fight. The governors of Kentucky and West Virginia got together to be a symbolic gesture of restoration. The only confrontation this time was during a tug of war and a softball game between the two families.

And as I read that story, I said, if the Hatfields and McCoys can solve their problems, surely the people of God can do even better. We can agree to disagree. Hey, people say, pastor, what are you doing in Chambersburg?

I like to tease them and I say, I’m a missionary for the Dallas Cowboys. I’m trying to win these Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles over to the Cowboys. Now, you know, this guy right here already said it, it ain’t gonna happen.

We can agree to disagree and still get along, can’t we church? We can still love Jesus. We can follow these patterns, these guidelines, and we can still see God’s redemptive work in our hearts. Let’s pray.

Well, the Bible says there was a sharp disagreement regarding John Mark between Barnabas and Paul, and yet God would use this in a powerful way to bring John Mark back into the ministry and working with Paul, as the apostle would later say in Colossians that John Mark was profitable to the ministry, and this is the way God works.

Sometimes there is conflict. and differences but we cannot let these stop the movement and the cause of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So I hope you’ve learned some lessons that will help you not only in your family but your church family as well as in your community of faith in walking and talking to other believers.

We hope you are encouraged. I don’t know if you’ve checked it out but on YouTube we have a Hope Worth Having channel. Make sure you subscribe to our channel and make sure you hit the notification button, like those different videos.

They’ll be notified every time a new one is uploaded and we try to put a new one up almost every week so that you can continue to be growing in your faith. There’s also interviews on the YouTube channel.

There are some Q &A’s on the YouTube channel so take advantage of those and I know it’ll help you continue to grow in your faith.

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Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Agree to Disagree Part 1. He will be reading out of Acts 15:36-41.

God is not always going to say, you do this. This is how God works, my friends. He blesses you with principles in the Bible. He blesses you with the leadership of the Spirit, and you are called to make the best judgment call that you can make, and you’ve got to live with it.

Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders, and you are listening to Hope Worth Having, radio broadcast. Thank you for tuning in today. When we come to the end of Acts chapter 15, verse 36 through 41, we see there is this confrontation in the church between the apostle and Barnabas, and we’re going to learn some principles.

What do we do when Christians disagree? How do we handle that? What is the way forward? So, I want you to grab your Bible and join me as we study. You have your Bible this morning. I want you to join me in Acts chapter 15, and we’re going to be covering verse 36 through 41.

While you’re turning there, I know that you have the unfortunate experience of having a pastor who likes Charlie Brown. And so, you get to hear stories about Charlie Brown and Lucy, and of course, you’re familiar with the Peanuts cartoon.

And one day, Lucy was talking to Snoopy. This is the little dog, if you’re not familiar. Those of you that are young enough that you have no clue who Snoopy is, then I want you to Google him. He is on YouTube and all that wonderful stuff, and that’s when times were good.

Good cartoons there. But anyway, speaking of time, Lucy said to Snoopy, she said, there are times when you really bugged me. But I must admit, there are also times, Snoopy, when I feel like giving you a hug.

Snoopy looked at Lucy, and he said, that’s the way I am. I am huggable and bugable. And so it is. with our relationships. Each of us know that we need each other, and yet there are many times that we annoy each other, if you’ll be real and honest.

There was a poet who wrote, to live above with the saints we love will certainly be glory, to live below with the saints we know. Well, that’s another story. One of the marks of a mature Christian is the ability to disagree without becoming disagreeable.

We see this in Acts chapter 15, in verse 36 through 41. Chapter 15 was the opportunity where the church leaders came together to reinforce their commitment that the gospel would be the death, burial, and resurrection, and that salvation would be imparted to all people by faith.

that there would be no strings attached, there would be no rules, there’d be no rituals that would be required in order to be a Christian, but that you would come to Christ by faith alone. At the end of that great conference, Luke, who is the human author under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he gives us a narrative of a scenario that takes place you remember if you’ve been studying with us through the book of Acts that Paul and Barnabas had launched out in Acts chapter 13 on the first missionary journey.

And they had completed that journey and they were updating their churches on how things were doing, what God was doing and the impact of the gospel upon people’s lives. And they stayed and they were teaching and they were preaching.

But then we come to verse 36, the Bible says that after some days, Paul said to Barnabas, let us now go back and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.

Now Barnabas was determined to take with them John called Mark. But Paul insisted that they should not take with them the one who had departed from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.

Then the contention became so sharp that they parted from one another. And so Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus but Paul chose Silas and departed being commended by the brethren to the grace of God and he went through Syria and Cilicia strengthening the churches.

Interesting here scenario. Note that in verse 36, the apostle is led of God to… to go see how the churches are doing. Paul had recognized that he had a responsibility to not only birth people into the kingdom of Christ and leading them to Jesus that they might know Christ and believe in Christ, but he had a responsibility to disciple them, to help them to grow in their faith.

He wanted to go back and check on them. Many of these believers were in Galatia. You might be familiar with the Bible in which one of the letters that the apostle wrote was to the Galatians. And this was a region that existed in the Roman Empire.

And we know that Paul spent much time preaching the gospel, planting churches in that region. Barnabas was excited about going, but he wanted to take John Mark with him. And Paul said, absolutely not.

If you’ve been following with us, let you know that John Mark… was on that first missionary team. We’re not ever told what or how or why John Mark left the team. But whatever it was, I can tell you that the Apostle Paul was not happy about it.

So much that he said no, he’s not coming on the second journey. We see this great dilemma that you’ve got Barnabas and if you remember back in Acts chapter four, he was the encourager. That’s what his name means, the son of encouragement.

He was always building people up and he was always trying to build relationships and build bridges and get people connected and get them to the next level. We see that even as he was helping Saul, who would later become the name Paul, but the early church was afraid of Saul because he harassed the church.

He dragged people out of their homes. He persecuted the church and when Saul suddenly declares that he’s a Christian, they’re like, yeah, right. He’s a spy. He wants to just kind of infiltrate us and catch us off guard and take advantage of us.

And so it was Barnabas who took that lead to connect Saul to the church. It was Barnabas who would bring Saul to the church at Antioch because he knew that Saul already in his faith was blossoming and growing so fast that he would be a great teacher in the church.

But the Bible says here, there was a sharp disagreement between Paul and Barnabas over this young man, John Mark. Paul was a task -oriented guy. He had a job to get done, things to get accomplished. He was probably very much a strong personality.

He was pretty much a guy who put a plan together and he worked the plan. And he certainly didn’t want to have to depend upon somebody who might ditch him in the middle of the plan. or somebody who might leave them in the middle of the plan.

He needed to surround himself with people who were servants and people who were faithful and people who had endurance and patience and were willing to make it through the persecutions of life when it came to sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ.

John Mark was a young man. He left. He left. He left. And unfortunately, he made a young man’s mistake. He left the job before it was done. And that irritated Paul. It frustrated him. The Bible says in verse 39, go back to chapter 15 if you will, because I want you to see that the contention became so sharp that they parted.

This sharp disagreement resulted in two great men of God, Barnabas, and Paul separating from each other. And you might ask the question, which one was right? When I was in Bible college, I had to write a paper on this passage of scripture.

Which one was right? And I want you to know that when you read the text, you know, Luke doesn’t help us out here. Luke doesn’t cake sides. He just shares what happened. He’s like a historian who is just writing down the facts, and he’s just giving us the facts, and he’s helping us to see what took place.

And of course, we understand that it’s easy for us to wanna take sides. It’s easy for us to say, well, I’m more of a Barnabas guy. And others of you might say, well, I’m more of a Paul guy. And we take sides and we say, boy, this is the way it should be.

And so really, I want you to know that there’s no sides to take. I want you to see the bigger picture of why Luke would include this in the narrative in the book of Acts. Remember, the church is growing.

And whenever the church is growing, whenever people are coming to Christ, whenever God is doing a mighty work, guess what, the devil goes to work. And he likes to divide. He likes to separate. He likes to cause problems.

He likes to cause people to become annoying and as Snoopy said, buggable. Do you ever think that Pastor Mike would quote Snoopy? Oh, buddy, we’re in for trouble, aren’t we? Well, I wanna share with you some principles on how to agree to disagree.

I think principles that we can lift out of this text that help us to understand how do we agree to disagree because let’s just be honest, not only within the church, within ministry, within the community of faith, and even our own families and our friends.

to be disagreements. And so my first point that I want you to note is that remember, even godly people will sometimes disagree. Even godly people will sometimes disagree. And I know that’s shocking to you.

We think, man, God’s people always getting long, always high -fiving, always hugging, always just agreeing together and thinking everything is wonderful, but I’m gonna tell you something, that’s not true.

And if you’re naive enough to believe that you’ll never have a disagreement in the church, or you’ll never have a disagreement with your family, or you’ll never have a disagreement at the job, or you’ll never have a disagreement with your friend, I’m telling you, you are vulnerable to the attacks of the devil.

You are open to burning bridges and destroying relationships and becoming a hurt, bitter Christian. We gotta grow. And as Paul told the Ephesian believers, we gotta grow up, not down. We gotta grow up and part of growing up is learning that not everybody agrees, even in the family of God.

Not everybody agrees. Sometimes these young couples come in and they wanna get married. And so I take them through a process of learning what it’s gonna take to be married. And we like to talk about how are you guys gonna handle disagreements?

And they giggle at me. And they say, Pastor, we don’t fight. I said, well, just get married and that’ll take care of it. Just get married. And they think there’ll never be any problems. And then they call me back two years later and they’re crying and they’re like, I can’t stand the guy.

He annoys me every day. Hey, anyways, now I want you to know, I know some of you probably don’t agree with me, but that’s okay, because we’re talking about how to agree to disagree. Hey, man, what a perfect time.

I do sometimes recommend to couples not to get married. Now, none of them have ever taken it, but I am batting a thousand. They should have never gotten married. Now, it’s not that, you know, and I’m sure some of you are saying, hey, we’ve been married 80 years, Pastor, and they told us not to get married.

And so I’m all in. But I’m just telling you, there’s some things sometimes I can see. But I want you to know that when you get married, when you have children, I want you to know when you go to work, I want you to know when you come to a church that there’s going to be conflict.

When people come to our church from another church, I say to them, if you’re over here because you’re mad at the last pastor that you ran from, I want you to know it won’t be long before Pastor Mike makes you mad.

And they said, well, how do you know that, Pastor? I said, because I make my wife mad. And if I make my wife mad, how much more am I gonna? to make you mad. So if it’s about who I’m mad at, that’s where I determine where I go to church and where I don’t go to church, I’m gonna tell you, you’re never gonna find that perfect church where you never disagree with the pastor.

Are you with me? It’s like, you know, people get, you know, they get married and then they get divorced. They get married and they get divorced. And one time a lady came to me and she was on number five.

And I recommended to her not to get married because the problem probably was not her spouses, but it was probably her. I mean, after five, wouldn’t you just give up, amen? Maybe you’re the bugable person, I don’t know.

But anyways, the Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 16, verse 12, now concerning our brother Apollos, Apollos was one of the pastors at the church at Corinth. And if you’re a student of the Bible, you know that you’re a student of the Bible.

that at the church of Corinth, they all had their favorite pastor, kind of like the open door church. I hear this all the time. Hey, we love Pastor Paul. We love Pastor Peter and we love Pastor Apollos.

And they all had their different gifts and they had their different strengths. And one group said, well, I’m of Paul and I’m of Peter and I’m of Apollos. And then a super spiritual group said, I’m of Jesus, as if they were more spiritual than others.

But here’s the point, here’s what Paul’s instruction is to them at the end of the letter, 1 Corinthians 16, 12. Now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit with you, the other brothers, but it was not at all his will to come now.

He will come when he has opportunity. Can you imagine the apostle Paul calling you on the phone and saying, look, I need you to do A, B and C and you say to the apostle, not right now, I don’t got time.

I got something else I’m involved in. That’s literally what took place. I mean, it wasn’t like a cell phone call, okay? It wasn’t like a phone call text message or anything, but that’s what happened.

And I just find that sometimes when I read the Bible, I kind of just see things there that maybe you don’t initially grasp. But here we see a disagreement between Paul and Apollos. Paul says, you need to do this.

And Apollos says, nah, that’s not gonna be what I’m gonna be able to do. The apostle Paul says it was not his will to come now. Now, why do people sometimes disagree? You write these down, okay? Write these down.

Number one, because there’s personality conflicts. Now I could solve 90% of your marriage if you could just understand each other’s personality. 90% of your marriage problems are personality problems.

They are. And that’s why it’s important to learn about the different personalities. A people, and the Bible teaches us that there are different personalities. And we see these personalities coming. through as they’re sharing the stories of the different things that they have done.

But one of the reasons people disagree is because they don’t like one personality over the other, or vice versa. And there are some personalities that they just rub each other the wrong way, just the way it is.

Number two, perspective. I don’t know if you understand, but people have different perspectives on things. You see it one way, they see it another way. And sometimes we disagree, it’s not because it’s wrong, but it’s because we see it differently.

Now let’s just imagine, and I don’t want this to happen, but let’s hypothetically imagine that on the way out, somebody drives off our campus and they have a fender bender. that I’m on one corner of the street and you’re on another corner of the street and the police officer comes and he asks for us to describe what happened and I tell one story and the other person tells another story and it’s like two different stories.

But it’s really not. It’s the same story with two different perspectives. Sometimes when you read the gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they’re telling the same story and sometimes you’ll compare them and you’ll say, whoa, look at these differences.

Is one of them lying? No, it’s the same story with two different perspectives. It’s possible for somebody to have a legitimate perspective that is different from yours, to see something totally different.

The things that impact our perspective sometimes can be the way that we’re raised, it can be the culture we live in, the trauma we deal with, the tragedies that we face in life, and all these things impact our perspective.

What’s another way that causes disagreement is priorities. We have different priorities. Now, when I first came to the Open Door Church, there would be people to say to me, now, Pastor Mike, we need to send all the church money up to the Christian school because that’s really where it’s happening.

And then another person would come up to me and say, now, Pastor Mike, we need to pour all our money in the youth group because they’re the future of the church. And then another person would say, no, we need to give all our money to the missionaries.

And they would say, that’s what we gotta do to get the gospel out. And then another person would say, well, I’m tired of supporting foreign missionaries, let’s support local missionaries. And it wasn’t that any of them were wrong, it’s just that they all had different priority.

Are you with me? And there are times in ministry, there’s times in your home, and there’s times in the workplace that the reason we’re having conflict is because you might not have the same priority as the others.

and the other person. Here’s another reason that we disagree. We have different philosophies. We have different philosophies. I tell people when Dr. Dino Padron was here, he was like an evangelist who was a pastor and he was having crusades every Sunday.

He was having big rallies every Sunday and God was using that in a great time. There was a great time of harvest. But not everybody has that philosophy. One time, Dr. Padron told me that he had 10 ,000 people in church and I said, Dr.

Padron, I don’t mean to be mean, but that’s impossible. You don’t have 10 ,000 parking spots. You don’t even have 5 ,000. And you don’t even have 2 ,000 parking spots. How could you get 10 ,000 people?

And he began to explain to me how he actually was counting people at different places across the state. And that’s fine, I’m not against that, but that was his philosophy. And we have different philosophies.

different pastors, different philosophies, different homes, different philosophies. How about this one? We have different preferences. Some of you like it one way, another person likes it another way.

You might like a certain ball team and I like another ball team. You may like music and can’t stand sports and I like sports and can’t stand music. I’m not sure what its point is. But we have different preferences.

Doesn’t make anybody bad. Doesn’t make anybody evil. But we have different preferences in our life. And again, so many factors can impact our preferences. You might like Walmart and somebody else might like Target.

All right, so we have different preferences. Matthew Henry, who was a great Puritan, Bible commentator, preacher in his day, here’s what he said relating to this fact that godly people will sometimes disagree.

He said, even those that are united to one and the same Jesus and sanctified by the one and the same spirit have different apprehensions, different opinions, different views and different sentiments and points of prudence.

It will be so while we are in this state of darkness and imperfection, we shall never be all of a mind till we come to heaven where light and love are perfect. All he’s trying to state is the obvious church.

Don’t go in to any relationship thinking we’ll always agree and that the only way we can get along is if we’re 100% in agreement. That’s just an impossibility. It’s just an impossibility. And I know that there are many Christians that are on the sidelines today that they’re not involved in a church because they could not handle disagreement in the church.

They couldn’t handle it and now they just. burn that bridge, shut down, and don’t wanna be a part of any church. The second principle I want you to learn this morning is that you gotta realize that in many disagreements, each side is valid.

Each side is valid. Life is made up of judgment calls. I want you to go back to verse 38 of chapter 15. The Bible says that Paul insisted that they should not take with them the one who had departed from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.

I asked you the question earlier, which one was right? And in my paper, I concluded they both were right. They both were right. Paul had to have somebody on his team who was dependable. He was going out on the missionary journey and he was doing a very difficult task.

He was doing something that was gonna require stamina, determination, endurance, the ability to handle opposition. Remember that on the first missionary journey, the Apostle Paul, that they were so upset with him for sharing the gospel that they threw stones at him and they left him for dead.

They thought he was dead. They drug him out to the city limits and they left him there to die. So if it doesn’t take much and you’re John Mark and you get a little pushback and all of a sudden you fold your tent up and said, I’m out of here.

I’m taking my football and I’m gonna go home. It’s not gonna work with the Apostle Paul. But yet we also understand that somebody’s gotta invest in John Mark. Somebody’s gotta get him to the next level.

Somebody’s gotta encourage him. Somebody’s gotta come along and equip him and strengthen him. They are both right and they both had valid reasons of why they made the judgment call that they made. In life, hear me, in life, the heavens are not always gonna part and God is not always gonna say, you do this or you don’t do this.

This is how God works, my friends. He blesses you with principles in the Bible. He blesses you with the wisdom of the Father. He blesses you with the mind of Christ. He blesses you with the leadership of the Spirit and you are called within the context of your personality and the context of your preferences and the context of your priorities to make the best judgment call that you can make.

And you gotta live with it. You gotta live with it. For the Apostle Paul, he felt like that was the best judgment that John Mark not come. I can’t rely on him. For Barnabas, he felt like we gotta invest in this guy and we can’t give up on him and I believe that he could become a great leader down the road.

They’re both right. Many disagreements are valid on both sides. There is diversity in the body of Christ. What’s important to you may not be important to me, but that’s okay. What you’re passionate about may not be what I’m passionate about and vice versa, but that’s okay.

We don’t always have to agree on every little thing and we don’t always have to see everything just right and it’s okay, we might have a disagreement, but both sides are valid and that’s important. Third principle I want you to learn, that when you have a disagreement, you need to reach out to those you disagree with, personally and privately.

But when I have a disagreement with someone at a level that it’s affecting me, now let me just put this out there, okay, I didn’t even put this in my notes, but I just feel that I should tell you this, that when I have a disagreement, one might ask the question.

when do I have to personally talk to them about a disagreement? Because if we spend our life trying to confront everybody and talk to everybody about a disagreement, I’m gonna tell you something, that’s all we’ll be doing in life, okay?

I mean, there are times people say, I mean, one time I came into church and the lady said, I don’t like your haircut. Hey, I’m just trying to hang on to what I got, much less you like what I got, amen?

Okay, honestly, I didn’t even give it, I just kind of walked off and I said, I appreciate the input, okay? And I just moved on in life, okay? I mean, sometimes people tell me crazy stuff, you just wouldn’t believe it and I learned this from Dr.

Dina Padrone, he told me, Mike, you don’t have to argue with everything, just say, that’s interesting. So if I’m in a conversation with you and I say, that’s interesting, that’s your cue. He doesn’t agree with me.

He just trying to move me along, amen? Isn’t that interesting? But when do I take that time to talk to somebody? Let me share it with you. When it affects you, it’s affecting your spiritual life. It’s setting you back spiritually.

Number two, when do I talk to somebody when it affects other people’s spiritual life? It’s setting them back personally. Number three, I know I need to talk to someone if it is affecting the kingdom of God, it’s affecting the work of God, it’s affecting the people of God because there are sometimes disagreements among people that it’s spreading throughout the community of faith and it’s causing a negative reaction.

Those are the three times that we need to try to do our best to work it out so that we can get the better outcome and the cause of Christ can move forward. One of the marks of maturity is the ability to disagree without being disagreeable.

It’s gonna happen in the church. You’re gonna disagree with people and sometimes that’s gonna… rise to a level where you’re gonna have to figure out what you’re gonna do. And this is what happened to Paul and Barnabas, but yet God uses this in a way to help expand his kingdom, but also to help both of these men to mature and be more sanctified in their faith.

So every disagreement in our life shouldn’t be looked as a negative as much as, God what are you teaching me through this and how can I be more like Christ as a result of this? So I hope that this has been a great encouragement.

We’ll continue studying this next week. Let me remind you that Hope Worth Having is on Facebook like us and keep up with all the things going on in the church as well as on the ministry and you can live stream from the Facebook page of Hope Worth Having.

So if for any reason you can’t be in your local church or sick or you’re having some challenges relating to your health or something, feel free to pull us up and listen to us live as we teach the Word of God.

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