back to index18-25-11 Spectacular Goals Through Ordinary Means
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All right, Romans chapter 16, I'm going to be reading from verse 21 down to verse 24, 00:00:12.080 |
"Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you, and so do Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen. 00:00:21.040 |
I, Tertius, who write this letter, greet you in the Lord. 00:00:24.600 |
Gaius, host to me and to the whole church, greets you. 00:00:30.160 |
And Quartus, the brother, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. 00:00:38.560 |
We thank you so much, Lord God, for the rest and the time that we've had with family and 00:00:44.240 |
We thank you, Father God, for giving us time, Lord, to reflect upon your grace as we do 00:00:50.680 |
every single week, but especially, Lord God, as we took time to remember, to be thankful, 00:00:59.120 |
Lord God, not just the temporal things, Lord, that you've given us, but eternal things, 00:01:04.400 |
especially, Lord, the hope that we have in Christ can never be shaken. 00:01:08.240 |
And so for that, we ask, Lord, that you would remind us again of who you are, that our lives, 00:01:13.200 |
Lord, may be aligned to who you are and your grace. 00:01:19.440 |
Again, if you're visiting us for the first time, you might look at this and say, "This 00:01:29.960 |
Typically, again, when we study the Bible, we go through these names or we go to genealogies 00:01:36.120 |
and it's easy for us to just kind of skim over that because there's a bunch of names 00:01:39.640 |
and majority of them we don't know much about. 00:01:42.280 |
And what can we possibly say about the people? 00:01:46.280 |
In fact, there's quite a few things that are in there that, again, we won't even have time 00:01:54.480 |
Of course, Paul doesn't say it in the letter, but looking at the type of people or who that 00:02:00.720 |
was following him, the work, it says a lot about the background information of the gospel 00:02:06.200 |
We saw in the first list that Paul mentioned in the earlier part of the chapter that these 00:02:10.520 |
are people he's saying, these are first Christians, first Roman Christians that he was writing 00:02:17.240 |
And we talked about when we were going through that list, they were most likely the first 00:02:23.040 |
So all the pictures and videos and movie scenes that you've seen of Christians being dragged 00:02:28.080 |
into the Colosseum, being torn apart by lions. 00:02:30.480 |
I mean, the list of names that we saw in chapter 16 were probably the first group of people 00:02:36.280 |
The second group of people that we're looking at is Paul saying that these are my fellow 00:02:44.120 |
And then now he's ending the letter saying, these people who are with me are saying hi 00:02:50.680 |
And one of the first things that we see is that Paul and the other apostles were not 00:02:59.400 |
We don't know how many, and I don't know if we can say thousands, but at least in the 00:03:02.760 |
hundreds, people who were alongside these apostles doing work, carrying the letters, 00:03:10.080 |
running errands, sometimes just being an encouragement to them, providing for them financially. 00:03:16.520 |
And there was a lot of background work that was happening in order for Apostle Paul to 00:03:24.720 |
I want to take some time this morning, just again, not just unpacking every single person 00:03:29.720 |
here because we don't have detailed information about every single person on this list. 00:03:36.200 |
And then there are some people here that we don't know anything about other than the fact 00:03:41.160 |
But one of the things that I want to highlight for us in this text is that how much support 00:03:51.600 |
There's a far greater number of people who gave their lives and sacrificed much in their 00:04:01.880 |
In fact, majority, I would say probably 99% of the people who labor for Christ, when they 00:04:11.560 |
There's no books written about them, other than the fact that their names are mentioned 00:04:18.400 |
No one knows anything about them, but they played a significant role in the spreading 00:04:25.360 |
The reason why this is so important is because we have a tendency to gravitate toward the 00:04:33.000 |
Whenever we hear men and women who have done great things, we have a tendency to venerate 00:04:37.840 |
them and we venerate them to the point where we begin to share their stories and testimonies 00:04:42.440 |
and then eventually they become people that are beyond human. 00:04:47.800 |
I've heard stories when I was younger about Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King, but 00:04:52.000 |
Martin Luther Jr., how he was such a man of prayer and how he preached six times a day 00:05:00.840 |
He woke up at three and he prayed and then when he was busy, he prayed even longer. 00:05:06.120 |
I remember as a young Christian listening to that, I said, "Wow, that's really challenging." 00:05:09.880 |
But all at the same time, the back of my mind is like, "When did this guy ever eat? 00:05:14.480 |
Did he ever have any relationships with people? 00:05:21.240 |
As time went by, as I got older and I started experiencing Christian life, I began to realize 00:05:28.640 |
We tend to venerate people that we honor and then eventually the stories get exaggerated 00:05:34.000 |
and it gets to a point where they're just people that we honor from a distance, but 00:05:41.200 |
The gospel has been spreading through real people like you and me. 00:05:47.520 |
In fact, majority of the people that we venerate, if you take a real closer look at the missionaries, 00:05:54.920 |
at the famous pastors, you will eventually find some flaw just like you do with any human 00:06:01.880 |
Typically, the people we venerate and we honor are people from distances, people in history 00:06:08.560 |
that we can't closely examine, just things that we've highlighted in their lives. 00:06:13.920 |
But the reality is that God uses flawed people, common, ordinary people to accomplish very 00:06:26.920 |
The tension that you and I live in is that most of us eventually will get a nine to five 00:06:34.520 |
The majority of us will get a nine to five job. 00:06:45.200 |
You're not going to invent the next Facebook. 00:06:46.800 |
You're not going to be the president of the United States or the governor. 00:06:51.960 |
And then eventually you graduate and you realize your life begins to look a lot like what your 00:06:55.800 |
parents' life looked like when you saw them at that age. 00:07:00.480 |
And then you kind of go through a crisis, especially as a Christian. 00:07:05.220 |
When you begin to look like that and your life begins to emulate or start to look like 00:07:10.720 |
what you saw, you begin to ask yourself, "Is this it?" 00:07:17.160 |
And then in order to compensate for that, we go on missions sometimes. 00:07:25.860 |
And so we experience short-term missions or we experience doing this and that. 00:07:29.740 |
But even then, it only lives for a short period. 00:07:33.360 |
So there's a lot of people who go on mission trips, whether it's five months, a year, or 00:07:38.120 |
even one time, they come back and they have a hard time adjusting back because they look 00:07:41.680 |
at that life and say, "Well, that was great, but this is not." 00:07:47.640 |
How do I live a spectacular life of Christ in the mundane things? 00:07:55.560 |
When you graduate, your college life was so great. 00:08:02.360 |
You're surrounded by non-Christians and in small group Bible study mentoring. 00:08:10.480 |
So your life looked like a mission field on a day-to-day. 00:08:14.720 |
It was not that hard to stay sober in that context. 00:08:17.440 |
And all of a sudden, you graduate and you get a nine-to-five job and it begins to look 00:08:24.720 |
And then you begin to ask yourself, "Is this it? 00:08:32.520 |
And then you live with this tension of discontent because your life now doesn't look like what 00:08:37.180 |
you thought it would look like if you were faithful to God. 00:08:43.080 |
If you take a closer look at the Scripture, we tend to highlight the spectacular. 00:08:48.920 |
Jesus walks on the water and he does spectacular things for three years. 00:08:52.520 |
But for 30 years, he lived as a carpenter, learning, going to the temple. 00:08:58.600 |
It says that he grew in knowledge and in favor of God, just like any other human being. 00:09:04.840 |
I've heard sermons, people saying, "Oh, Jesus was a carpenter." 00:09:07.360 |
So you can imagine that every table he made was perfect because he was God. 00:09:14.920 |
The Bible says that in every way he was just like us, except he didn't sin. 00:09:20.120 |
So making an imperfect table doesn't make you a sinner. 00:09:23.760 |
So I have a feeling Jesus made imperfect tables, just like the rest of us. 00:09:30.160 |
I had a feeling that his measurements weren't 100%. 00:09:35.800 |
But for 30 years, he lived an average life where we don't know much about him. 00:09:40.000 |
Nothing is written about him because no one was keeping tabs on him. 00:09:43.920 |
30 years, he lived a normal life, just like everybody else, paying their bills. 00:09:50.800 |
And then even the very first miracle that he performs, he's at a wedding and he turns 00:10:03.760 |
He just ran out of wine and people were thirsty. 00:10:07.600 |
And his mom says, "Hey, can you do something?" 00:10:16.160 |
His first miracle reflected more of his first 30 years than the next three years of his 00:10:21.720 |
But we have a tendency to look at the next three years and we want to emulate that. 00:10:25.840 |
We want to look at Apostle Paul going and planting churches, and then we want to emulate 00:10:31.320 |
We want to emulate people who've given their lives and died and people wrote books about 00:10:35.800 |
But when our life begins to look mundane, what do we do with that? 00:10:41.280 |
D.A. Carson wrote a book, a biography about his father, and the title of that book is 00:10:54.320 |
It's about his dad who just served the small church faithfully all his life and how much 00:10:59.680 |
impact it made in his life, but there's nothing. 00:11:03.360 |
You read that book and even as I was reading the book, Ordinary Pastor, I was waiting for 00:11:16.000 |
Came into ministry, planted churches, and for the most part experienced a lot of struggles, 00:11:22.360 |
So my memory of my dad is just a faithful man who was faithful all his life until his 00:11:31.480 |
God uses ordinary people in mundane situations, day after day, year after year, life after 00:11:42.720 |
And that's how majority of the gospel ministry has been spreading all this time. 00:11:48.480 |
It wasn't one guy who picked up his cross and did spectacular things. 00:11:53.000 |
It was a wife who was staying home, faithfully preaching the gospel to their children. 00:11:58.360 |
It was a pastor pastoring small churches that nobody knew outside of their own small churches. 00:12:05.120 |
It's faithful college students who are sharing the faith with their classmates. 00:12:09.940 |
Somebody becomes a Christian and then begins to share the gospel with mom and dad and brother 00:12:13.820 |
and sister or a co-worker who invites people out to their churches. 00:12:18.700 |
And so much of the gospel is being spread in that context. 00:12:21.400 |
In fact, majority of you, if I asked you how you came to faith, you didn't see a light 00:12:28.160 |
You didn't see a spectacular debate or some miracle. 00:12:31.720 |
Just a friend of yours became a Christian and shared the gospel with you or invited 00:12:44.160 |
There's a couple people at our church who became a Christian because their aunt paid 00:12:51.440 |
When they were little kids, they gave them like 10 bucks every time they came to church. 00:12:57.400 |
And they started attending VBS and they heard the gospel and they became Christian. 00:13:05.880 |
I say all of this as a setup for what we're looking at because there's two things that 00:13:09.960 |
I want you to look at just as an overview of the list of these men. 00:13:13.840 |
Number one, God used average, ordinary men and women who are faithful to spread the gospel. 00:13:21.440 |
Paul says in verse 21, "Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you." 00:13:26.600 |
Just as the disciples, when you looked at their character and their background, did 00:13:37.080 |
How were they going to spread this gospel that God's been preparing for thousands of 00:13:40.680 |
years and that they put it in the hands of just fishermen who are not trained? 00:13:45.120 |
In fact, they just failed miserably, their biggest test. 00:13:49.560 |
And yet God gives them the responsibility that the whole world will hear the gospel 00:13:57.040 |
Just as the disciples didn't make sense, the disciples that they discipled didn't make 00:14:02.440 |
Timothy, Timothy was a man that Paul picks up in one of his missionary journeys in the 00:14:13.160 |
Paul was a man who may have been sitting in the Sanhedrin already, but Timothy was not. 00:14:17.800 |
Timothy came from a home where his father may have been a Gentile and his mother was 00:14:29.160 |
In fact, Timothy didn't get converted because of Paul's great preaching. 00:14:35.320 |
Paul says his grandmother Lois first became a Christian and then his mother Eunice became 00:14:40.720 |
a Christian and they shared the gospel with him. 00:14:42.920 |
So basically he became a Christian from his home. 00:14:46.720 |
His grandmother and his mother, and we don't know where the father is. 00:14:52.040 |
So he was probably raised in a single family home, meaning they were financially struggling 00:14:57.120 |
and they weren't able to practice their Jewish faith. 00:15:00.080 |
And in that very mundane, average context, Timothy came to faith and then Paul picks 00:15:08.760 |
And the age gap between Paul and Timothy was maybe about 25 to 30 years. 00:15:12.800 |
So it wasn't like he was able to be productive right away. 00:15:15.600 |
He was a young guy that Paul actually had to nurture and take care of when he was young. 00:15:21.040 |
He gets circumcised, he begins to follow Paul, and then we look at what was it about Timothy 00:15:26.960 |
We're going to make sure that we see potential in this man so that he can grow up and be 00:15:31.680 |
powerful to succeed him when he passes away." 00:15:36.720 |
In fact, when we look at Timothy, we see exactly the opposite. 00:15:40.400 |
Paul says in 1 Timothy 4.12 that he was young. 00:15:46.240 |
And he challenges him by speech, by conduct, love, faith, and purity. 00:15:51.960 |
The reason why he says that is because he was so young that the message that Paul was 00:15:57.120 |
saying, "Go fight against these false teachers. 00:16:01.480 |
Command them to stop them to teach these doctrines." 00:16:04.200 |
And he was concerned that they were going to just nullify him because of his age. 00:16:11.480 |
So they'll listen to the older people, but the younger people say, "You're too young. 00:16:19.240 |
He says, "Don't let them look down on your youthfulness, but set an example. 00:16:23.240 |
They may question your age, but make sure that they don't question your character." 00:16:30.400 |
And maybe that was related to the fact, this concern that Paul had in 2 Timothy 1.7 about 00:16:39.160 |
"For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline." 00:16:44.360 |
He wasn't just taking these characters out of the blue. 00:16:52.900 |
Maybe he saw Paul as an apostle performing miracles and how well connected he was, Roman 00:17:02.000 |
A lot of these men who are leaders in these churches already were prominent people, rich 00:17:08.640 |
And this young pastor coming in there trying to fight for the right doctrine, and he says, 00:17:15.240 |
Your authority doesn't come from your age or your personality. 00:17:20.680 |
That's why Paul says repeatedly over and over in 2 Timothy, to stay faithful to the Word 00:17:25.320 |
because that's where your authority comes from, whether they listen or don't listen. 00:17:33.760 |
"No longer drink water exclusively, but use a little wine." 00:17:43.760 |
Everybody say, "Well, Timothy drank, Jesus drank a little wine for the sake of your stomach 00:17:52.120 |
It's because Paul, again, he was a sickly man. 00:17:55.360 |
He said, "You know, use some of that for medicinal purposes." 00:17:58.720 |
So when you add all of this up, you can see why we might humanly look at that and say, 00:18:04.760 |
"Wow, Timothy doesn't seem like the right person to choose." 00:18:07.840 |
I mean, imagine the context that Paul was in. 00:18:14.760 |
Every synagogue that he goes to, majority of them are hostile. 00:18:18.960 |
So you need a man who is committed, maybe a big guy because they're physically attacking 00:18:26.200 |
Maybe a guy who's just muscular, you know, Samson type of a guy who's going to destroy 00:18:33.160 |
I mean, somebody who's not timid, maybe a bit older, maybe who had better connection. 00:18:41.400 |
Timothy was just an average person, just like majority of human beings, majority of us. 00:18:47.960 |
In fact, Paul goes on to say in 1 Corinthians 16, "If Timothy comes, see that he is with 00:18:56.960 |
Again, he's concerned that Timothy is going to be timid. 00:18:59.880 |
"For he's doing the Lord's work as I also am. 00:19:03.520 |
So let no one despise him, but send him on his way in peace so that he may come to me, 00:19:15.520 |
I mean, he really sounds like a father concerned about his son. 00:19:18.120 |
He's going to come and, you know, I'm going to appoint him to continue to do my work, 00:19:21.240 |
but don't give him any cause for him to be afraid. 00:19:25.640 |
He's not this mighty warrior coming into town who's going to set things straight. 00:19:34.760 |
Can you make sure that he's not afraid because he's among you?" 00:19:39.680 |
All of these reasons are reasons that humanly we would look at and say, "Maybe he shouldn't 00:19:49.120 |
But one thing that Paul says repeatedly about Timothy, despite all of that, was his faithfulness. 00:19:54.320 |
First Corinthians 4.17, "For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved 00:20:02.240 |
And he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every 00:20:08.320 |
He says, despite all of that, despite all the other descriptions of Timothy, he says 00:20:14.980 |
If one thing that I know that Timothy is going to do is he's going to do what I did, he's 00:20:19.760 |
going to teach you what I taught you, he's not going to pervert the gospel. 00:20:25.680 |
Paul says again, a more detailed description in Philippians 2.19-23, "I hope in the Lord 00:20:31.120 |
Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I too may be cheered by news of you, for I 00:20:35.840 |
have no one like him, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. 00:20:42.120 |
They all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ, but you know Timothy, proven 00:20:45.920 |
worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel. 00:20:49.880 |
I hope therefore to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me." 00:20:55.800 |
The only quality that Paul describes of Timothy is that he cares for you as I cared for you. 00:21:04.000 |
He doesn't talk about his great ordership, he doesn't talk about his great knowledge 00:21:12.800 |
The only reason why he commends him is, "I have nobody like him because nobody loves 00:21:21.160 |
I mean, think about if you had a child and you're looking for babysitters, if the mother 00:21:30.500 |
can't watch the child, the next best person is probably maybe grandma, usually. 00:21:37.480 |
And the reason why is not because the children love grandma, they may or may not. 00:21:46.140 |
It's not because she's covered in chocolate, you know, and that's why the kids love her. 00:21:50.920 |
It's because usually, and I'm not saying that this is true in every family, but usually 00:21:56.440 |
the next best person that's going to love that child like a mother is probably grandma. 00:22:02.640 |
Don't get offended, it may be grandfather in some situations, but I'm just generally 00:22:09.200 |
Because you love your child and so you want somebody else who's going to love that child 00:22:17.040 |
And so the greatest quality, and it'd be great if grandma can juggle and she can make balloon 00:22:21.760 |
toys and make the best cakes, all that is great, but the greatest quality would be that 00:22:29.040 |
that person who's going to watch your child is going to love that child like you love 00:22:38.640 |
He said, "I have one person I can commend to you." 00:22:41.120 |
Not because he is a great warrior, not because he knows the Bible better than anybody else. 00:22:50.040 |
See, God typically, God typically will use people who will be an extension of his heart, 00:23:05.280 |
You can have a great mouth, you can have great gift, but if you don't love the church, that 00:23:09.240 |
great mouth can do great damage in the church if you're not careful. 00:23:20.340 |
Lucius might be the Lucius of Cyrene that's mentioned in the Church of Antioch. 00:23:25.440 |
Many people believe that it was Lucius Luke the physician. 00:23:29.660 |
The reason why is because Apostle Paul oftentimes calls Lucius Lucas in other parts of the scripture, 00:23:36.100 |
and Lucas is just another way of saying Lucius. 00:23:38.140 |
Now, we don't know that for sure, but we know for a fact that Luke the physician was a companion 00:23:48.540 |
In fact, 2 Timothy 4.9-11, when Apostle Paul was sitting in prison, and he says, "All these 00:23:53.580 |
people have abandoned me," and then in verse 11, it says, "Only Luke is with me." 00:23:57.980 |
So we know for a fact that Luke was one of his close companions who was doing work in 00:24:03.980 |
In fact, Luke was the one who pens the book of Acts. 00:24:08.980 |
And at the end of chapter 16 and chapter 21, Paul begins to say, "We," instead of Apostle 00:24:17.740 |
He says, "We did this and we did that," because Luke was with them in their journey. 00:24:22.540 |
Now, the reason why I highlight this was Luke was a physician. 00:24:27.220 |
Now, that'd be a great person to have, right? 00:24:31.460 |
If you're doing mission work and being bitten by scorpions, and you break your leg or sprain 00:24:36.340 |
your leg or you have some flu or whatever it is that you have, it's great to have a 00:24:42.260 |
You may think, again, when we think of apostles, I mean, these are guys who are raising people 00:24:49.300 |
Their shadows would fall on people and then they would be raised. 00:24:56.140 |
So you would think, like, what do they need a physician for? 00:24:58.500 |
I mean, because we have a tendency to look at the spectacular things that they have done, 00:25:09.580 |
I'm going to go fishing and take some gold out." 00:25:21.500 |
Because we look at the spectacular things and say, "Oh, we think that that was the normal 00:25:25.140 |
occurrence of everyday life of the Apostle Paul." 00:25:35.300 |
He says, "Tertius," he was a stenographer, he says it later on in this passage, and he 00:25:40.220 |
says, "I, Tertius, write this with my own hands." 00:25:43.220 |
He writes this because it was a common practice at that time, and you can understand why. 00:25:48.440 |
When you type, everybody's penmanship looks the same. 00:25:54.140 |
We rarely write notes, so we don't know what people's penmanship looks like. 00:26:01.540 |
Some of you look like you wrote it with your left foot. 00:26:04.740 |
You can't understand a word that you've put on paper. 00:26:08.900 |
You can understand why, if you're writing a letter that needs to be read and to be spread, 00:26:13.560 |
that there needs to be clarity, that you want the person with the best penmanship writing 00:26:20.820 |
You can see why they would use a stenographer. 00:26:29.060 |
God didn't just imprint this on a stone tablet and say, "Here." 00:26:33.820 |
That's part of the reason why so many non-Christians argue against the inerrancy of the scriptures. 00:26:44.180 |
Stenographers just dictated these things, and all of these things are true." 00:26:49.660 |
What they miss is that consistently, and not just in the New Testament, Old Testament, 00:26:58.060 |
I'm going to get to that later on, why this is important. 00:27:02.060 |
But God used very mundane means, ordinary people, through ordinary methods, to print 00:27:06.620 |
down an extraordinary scripture that we were going to have, that we were going to preach 00:27:16.620 |
We're going to be studying and dissecting every word that is written, and it was simply 00:27:20.060 |
written through a man sitting in prison and stenographer just dictating it, and then a 00:27:25.340 |
common person just taking it over there and handing it to people. 00:27:30.940 |
That's how the Word of God came to us, very ordinary means. 00:27:34.260 |
Not only did he use ordinary people, God used, number two, seemingly difficult situations, 00:27:42.620 |
things that we would think would nullify God's work, God used seemingly difficult circumstances 00:27:52.420 |
Sometimes we have an idea of what God's ministry looks like, and when things begin to go astray, 00:27:58.620 |
when we don't see the response or maybe we see opposition, automatically we think that 00:28:06.420 |
Typically when we say in the mission field, "God opened doors," we mean that finance 00:28:16.380 |
People are, "Hey, can you come and please preach to us?" 00:28:19.700 |
And you've got a group of people waiting for us to go and do the work. 00:28:23.100 |
Typically when we say the doors opened, we mean that every obstacle has been taken care 00:28:27.660 |
of so we can kind of go there and preach and come back. 00:28:30.540 |
That's not what it meant in the New Testament, and that's not what God means when he says 00:28:35.100 |
Doors opened simply means God told you to do it. 00:28:40.540 |
There might be opposition, there might be physical hardship, there might be financial 00:28:44.620 |
problems, but when the doors open, it just means God said to go. 00:28:50.340 |
Jason, that he mentions here, is from Thessalonica. 00:28:54.820 |
Now in Acts 17, 2-9, Apostle Paul, by the time he gets to Thessalonica, he is beaten, 00:29:00.820 |
imprisoned, stoned, and he comes to Thessalonica basically to get away from persecution and 00:29:08.820 |
And then some of the greatest persecution happens in this city. 00:29:11.660 |
In fact, it was so great, he actually has to pack up his bag and leave. 00:29:17.100 |
He gets stoned, they drag him out, they think he's dead. 00:29:21.020 |
When he reawakens, he just walks right back in. 00:29:26.020 |
So you can imagine how intense the persecution was in Thessalonica, that Apostle Paul felt 00:29:31.140 |
the need to pack up his bag and then go down to Berea. 00:29:36.180 |
So the scripture says he was only there for a short period of time, maybe three weeks. 00:29:42.060 |
And that's why he writes 1 Thessalonians, because he's concerned that he left in a hurry 00:29:47.500 |
and that Satan was going to come and teach false doctrines and the persecutors were going 00:29:52.420 |
And then he gets this great news that the short amount of time that they had the gospel, 00:29:59.180 |
Well, Jason was the chief target of this persecution at this city. 00:30:06.540 |
It says in Acts, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but Acts 17, 2-9, Jason invites 00:30:10.660 |
Apostle Paul and his companions into his home because he becomes a believer. 00:30:25.900 |
And as a result of that, I think Apostle Paul ended up leaving in order to protect 00:30:30.700 |
Jason was from Thessalonica, a city that he was only there for a short period of time. 00:30:35.340 |
And all of a sudden, this city that was being beaten up and Paul had to leave became the 00:30:48.180 |
Berea was a city that they ran to because of persecution. 00:30:52.200 |
And then Sopater becomes a Christian in that city. 00:30:55.780 |
Gaius, Erastus, and Quartus was from Corinth. 00:31:00.260 |
If you know anything about Corinth, Apostle Paul entered into that city in fear and trembling, 00:31:05.740 |
in the midst of all this persecution, being chased. 00:31:08.420 |
By the time he gets to Corinth, you can tell Apostle Paul was tired and weak. 00:31:12.820 |
He was tired because he was human, just like any of us. 00:31:19.460 |
In Acts 18, 9-10, it says, "And the Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, 'Do not 00:31:26.260 |
be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you. 00:31:31.700 |
And no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in the city.'" 00:31:35.940 |
Jesus himself has to speak to Paul to encourage him because he was so tired and worn out. 00:31:42.220 |
In 1 Corinthians 2, 1-3, Paul describes himself. 00:31:44.820 |
"When I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming 00:31:51.740 |
For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 00:31:55.620 |
I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling." 00:32:01.860 |
It was in this city where Erastus, Gaius, Portus, they come to faith and actually join 00:32:13.580 |
In this city that we would have often say, "You know, Paul didn't come in his power. 00:32:19.540 |
He wasn't that same guy who entered into Lystra, stoned and picked himself back up, went back 00:32:26.620 |
By the time he comes to Corinth, he comes in weakness. 00:32:29.540 |
And he himself says, "I came knowing nothing. 00:32:31.540 |
I'm just going to preach Christ and I don't know nothing." 00:32:35.700 |
Maybe in the beginning of his ministry, he may have thought to himself, maybe, if he 00:32:40.020 |
was like any other human being, "Maybe God chose me because I was a Pharisee among Pharisees. 00:32:47.180 |
My Roman citizenship is going to come in handy. 00:32:55.580 |
But by the time he comes to Corinth, all of that is beaten out of him. 00:33:02.420 |
The same thing that he was concerned about Timothy, Paul describes about himself entering 00:33:08.660 |
And he says, "I came to know nothing but Jesus Christ." 00:33:13.180 |
It may sound foolish to you, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God. 00:33:18.660 |
It is in his weakness that God showed himself in this city. 00:33:25.580 |
Now the reason why this is so important is because majority of us live in this tension 00:33:29.780 |
between, "I want to be great for the kingdom of God. 00:33:35.940 |
And then we look at men, testimonies of people. 00:33:39.180 |
We hear sermons, read books, and we get intimidated. 00:33:49.700 |
There's a story about this man who's wrestling to connect with God, maybe living with that 00:33:54.100 |
same tension that most of us live in, praying to God, "God, only if I can see you." 00:34:00.620 |
And one day, a huge flood comes into town, and he happened to live in that flood zone, 00:34:06.100 |
and everybody was escaping, and his car wouldn't start. 00:34:12.220 |
Maybe finally I'm going to be able to meet you. 00:34:14.060 |
Lord, if you would just show yourself to me and save me from this disaster, I will serve 00:34:19.540 |
And so he prays and prays and prays, and then he has this vision that God's going to answer 00:34:25.000 |
The next thing you know, you have a pickup truck that comes, "Hey, dude, what are you 00:34:32.680 |
I prayed to God that he would show himself to me, so I don't think that's you." 00:34:38.940 |
Next thing, the water rises, and the boat comes, and he says, "Hey, what are you doing 00:34:46.100 |
I prayed to God that he would answer my prayers, and I don't think this is it." 00:34:52.820 |
And finally, it gets to a point where not even the boat can get in. 00:34:56.020 |
The helicopter, the rescue crew comes, and through speakers, "Hey, get on this ladder. 00:35:03.700 |
And he's on his last leg on the rooftop, and this is the last thing that can come and rescue 00:35:24.780 |
He goes to heaven, and he begins to cry out to God, "God, I prayed that you would show 00:35:31.300 |
yourself to me and rescue me, and it seemed like you were telling me that you were going 00:35:38.020 |
So God answers him, "I send you a pickup truck, I send you a boat, and I send you a 00:35:49.360 |
You may have heard that story before, because I've told it before. 00:35:59.420 |
But the point of that story is so relevant for majority of our Christian lives, because 00:36:07.420 |
we're always looking for something spectacular. 00:36:11.940 |
And I want to ask you, and we need to be careful, that desire for something spectacular, is 00:36:24.920 |
Is that to magnify His name, or you want some of that glory when He is magnified, like the 00:36:32.860 |
We have a tendency that we want to glorify God, but we want to be glorified with Him. 00:36:47.060 |
When the majority of what God desires is mundane, without name. 00:36:54.820 |
And when we die, no one's going to write about us, no one's going to praise us. 00:37:00.140 |
There's not going to be a big church behind your name, or a book that you wrote, or thousands 00:37:07.060 |
You're just going to be faithfully doing your job, and in the midst of that, your faithfulness, 00:37:12.820 |
He ends this section by saying, "Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all." 00:37:18.500 |
And it is always, every letter ends with that, "Grace be with you, grace be with you," because 00:37:23.540 |
it is only by His grace that we can persevere. 00:37:26.940 |
It is only by His grace that we can continue. 00:37:31.260 |
Now I want to summarize this sermon, this passage, with this. 00:37:37.620 |
Remember when we were studying through Leviticus, in chapters 26, was it 25? 00:37:43.540 |
We were talking about the blessings and curses. 00:37:48.620 |
And then we looked at all the blessings and all the cursing, if you don't follow Christ. 00:37:54.060 |
And you looked at the list of the blessings, and all of them were just mundane things that 00:38:02.180 |
He says, "If you follow my teachings and you obey me," He said, "rain will come in season." 00:38:15.700 |
He said, "No, rain will come in season," because that's what He intended to begin with. 00:38:23.160 |
When sin came, it not only did it corrupt man, it corrupted creation. 00:38:26.860 |
So He said, "When you obey and do what I tell you, God's going to restore what He intended 00:38:33.700 |
The natural order of things are going to be restored." 00:38:40.180 |
He said, "When you obey," He said, "there is going to be no enemy. 00:38:46.340 |
There's going to be wild animals that you're going to be able to live side by side with. 00:38:52.440 |
When you plant seeds, it's going to bear fruit like it's supposed to do, and you're going 00:39:01.100 |
Every single one of that was exactly what it was before the fall. 00:39:11.940 |
He just says, "In season, it's going to rain. 00:39:16.520 |
When you work, you're going to bear fruit exactly as God intended." 00:39:27.080 |
Because the point of redemption is to restore what was lost. 00:39:33.240 |
Husbands acting like husbands, wife acting like wives, children acting like children 00:39:46.520 |
Society, community, grandparents, work, rest, all of that is to be redeemed in His name. 00:39:58.120 |
So the point of the gospel and reception of the gospel is to become faithful to what God 00:40:05.300 |
God didn't call all of us to go out to the mission field, I mean, across the sea, and 00:40:12.920 |
Some people will say, "You know, this is not enough. 00:40:17.040 |
God places His heart, "And I want to go do this." 00:40:20.520 |
Majority of us, God has called us to be faithful where we're at. 00:40:32.840 |
You ever wonder, in John chapter 20, 28 through 29, Thomas sees the resurrected Christ and 00:40:39.200 |
he couldn't believe it and says, "Lord, let me put my hands in your scars." 00:40:43.880 |
And then when he finally recognizes that this is the resurrected Lord, Thomas, the doubting 00:40:47.680 |
Thomas is the first one who goes down to his knees and says, "My Lord and my God." 00:40:54.200 |
It's a first direct confession of Jesus' deity from the disciple, "My Lord, my God." 00:41:01.280 |
But Jesus doesn't hear that and say, "Great, you're the first one." 00:41:06.440 |
He actually rebukes him in the next passage, verse 29. 00:41:08.560 |
Jesus said to him, "Because you have seen me, have you believed? 00:41:11.720 |
Blessed are they who did not see and yet believe." 00:41:19.800 |
Of course our faith would be stronger if we saw Jesus resurrected. 00:41:23.960 |
And it would only make sense that Thomas actually put his fingers in his scars and that's what 00:41:32.260 |
"Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe." 00:41:39.880 |
It took me years to figure out what Jesus was saying. 00:41:44.680 |
God put his imprint of himself, it says in Romans chapter one, all over his existing 00:41:54.120 |
But the rebellion of man refused to see that, refuses to see God in it. 00:42:00.360 |
It is man's arrogance to think that even this earth and there's enough oxygen in this world 00:42:05.480 |
and the money that you have, somehow we did it. 00:42:08.640 |
And all God needs to do is just remove himself from this earth and we suffocate. 00:42:19.040 |
I mean, it's man's arrogance to think like, "It just happened." 00:42:25.600 |
You don't come out of your house and see a dent in the side of your car and say, "It 00:42:31.740 |
Everybody would think you're foolish to say, "It just happened." 00:42:34.320 |
But we look at the complexity of the universe and we say, "It just happened." 00:42:41.920 |
Years of education has taught us it just happened. 00:42:51.360 |
The miracle is happening every single day that we live. 00:42:57.160 |
I can tell you I'm going to be somewhere tomorrow. 00:43:10.640 |
And yet God created the universe to sustain our life and every part of his creation declares 00:43:24.680 |
If you require the spectacular to give God the glory, you will always be dependent upon 00:43:33.600 |
But if you see the spectacular in the mundane, you will see God. 00:43:47.080 |
Welcome our welcome worship team to lead us in worship. 00:43:51.280 |
Let's take some time to come and above everything else to connect with our living God. 00:43:57.360 |
If we've been living our lives with blindfolds, looking for something to happen to us or a 00:44:01.400 |
circumstance to change and not recognizing the gift that God has given us in our daily 00:44:06.200 |
lives and as a result of that maybe we haven't been so faithful. 00:44:12.200 |
Let's take some time to come before the Lord and really connect with God and to thank him 00:44:15.960 |
for the mundane things that God is doing in our lives.