This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark
Waffer, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland, County
of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
The Spirit is the one that draws us to our need of Christ.
This man called for Barnabas and Saul.
So Elimus verse 8, the sorcerer for his name is translated,
withstood them seeking to turn the proconsul away from the
faith. And that's what the enemy does.
You know, the day I don't know who's saved, who isn't, I can
tell by the fruit of people's lives whether they really know
Jesus or not. But that's not my job to judge.
You know that. My job's to teach and to preach.
Jesus said you can know a tree by its fruit.
You ever seen a banana growing on an apple tree?
No, the fruit is the way to identify what kind of tree
you're looking at. The lives of followers of Jesus
are the same. We should be bearing the fruit
of God's Kingdom here on earth as we await our last breath or
Christ's return. Today, Pastor Clark will remind
us how important it is to abide in Jesus so that we will bear
the fruit of the Kingdom. Notice I didn't say to be a part
of God's Kingdom. Salvation comes from faith in
Christ alone, and works are only the outworking of that
salvation. Now here's Pastor Clark in the
book of Acts Chapter 13 with today's edition of Living Waters
of Grace. And sometimes you need to be set
aside like I was for a month to hear some things that I needed
to hear for a long time about my personal relationship with the
Lord. This not as a pastor, but as a
son of God, a son and a daughter of God.
God wants to have this nearness with you and me, and you want to
include the Lord in everything in your life.
As they did, they sought him, they ministered to him.
And this is something I'm learning a lot more about as
well, that the Lord wants to be involved in everything you're
doing. Sometimes you're doing a mundane
task and moms are running house, raising kids clean, and guys
work, wives work. We do all this stuff and it's a
drudgery at times and it's burdensome instead of like at
this dawn of me recently. Hey, Lord, can you hang out with
me while I do this? Can you be with me when I work?
Like really? I sense him being with me and my
marriage and my relationship with you guys and family, that
Lord be with me in the midst of these relationships so that you
can be glorified and how I can also be blessed knowing that
it's really true when it says the Lord will never leave you or
forsake you. You ever feel like he's left
you? Yeah, we all have.
Have you ever felt like he's maybe forsaking you?
Yeah, we all have. But that's not true, is it?
That's called toxic narratives. We have these things that go in
our mind many times that are not even based in the truth.
They're lies. And sometimes we think they're
the truth and we embrace them and they just mess us up because
it's not the voice of God. There's two voices, God's voice,
which is always loving, edifying, merciful, patient.
And then the other voice is condemning and judging and
critical. It makes you feel worthless,
right? Makes you feel like a failure.
God will never speak that way to you or to me as his kids.
And so they're learning all this as they're ministering to the
Lord. And this is approximately 18
years after Paul's conversion, what we're reading about here.
Sometimes when you read the Bible, you think, oh, it was
yesterday, got saved, and today or next week he's doing all this
stuff. No, he spent a lot of time being
broken, being humbled, being taught, just like we all do.
And he's understanding these principles of the Holy Spirit
because the book of the Acts is about the Holy Spirit.
So when we're fasting, we're basically learning to surrender
more to the Lord. That's the purpose of fasting.
It's not to get something or demand something of God if
you're trying to impress him. Oh Lord, I didn't eat today.
Well, he's like, well, So what? I didn't eat for 40 days, 40
days. You know, now when you, maybe
when you do that, we'll have a deeper conversation, right?
But I can't fast for like 1/2 a day.
I got like hyperglycemia. I feel like fainting.
Oh, I'm so weak. You know, that's what you're
supposed to learn when you fast, is that you're weak, that his
strength is made perfect in your weakness, that the power of
Christ would rest upon you. I said to Lewis this morning, I
said, boy, after they prayed for me, you know, I said, I just
feel so weak today. And I looked at him.
I said, I guess that's a good start, right?
So if I came up here feeling I was strong, that's that's not a
good thing. I need to be dependent on the
Lord as much as you guys do. So when we're fasting and in
this case, we see the result of the fast because the Holy Spirit
clarified what it was that the will of God wanted to
accomplish. And so it helps us to be more
open to him. People need prayer.
And so I think one of the wonderful thing that's occurring
here is that anything we are seeing of any kind of spiritual
significance is happening because of prayer.
And you don't need a lot of people to pray.
You just need the people who are called to pray this way.
That's not just by, well, that's a good idea, let's pray.
That's a calling the people to really pray for the movement of
God in this world, in this city, and in the church that we're
part of. We need to pray that God will
get a hold of people and government and our culture
because we were like them at one time, weren't we?
We were without Christ, without any kind of direction.
And I think about people that need healing.
Many of us, we come to churches on Sunday, we hear hopefully
messages that are rooted in the truth of the word.
But maybe we're bleeding inside, we're hurting, we don't know how
to get past it. Or maybe we're too ashamed to
talk about it. You know, we don't know what to
do. So we leave with a :) and
everything's OK. And many times not everything is
OK in any of our lives. So they're sent out by the Holy
Spirit In verse 4, they get down to Seleucia and from there they
sailed to Cyprus. It's an island.
And when they arrived in Salamis, they preached the word
of God in the synagogues of the Jews.
And they also had John as their assistant.
This John is the one that wrote the Gospel of Mark.
We'll study about him. He actually split from these
guys because he couldn't deal with the pressures of the
ministry or whatever. And, and Paul got upset and
says, well, I don't want him working with us anymore because
he wimped out or whatever. Eventually they get in communion
and reconciled down the road. But this is who this John is,
John Mark. And Seleucia was about 20 miles
north of Antioch, so it wasn't a short trip to get there.
They sailed to Cyprus, which is about 40 miles from Seleucia.
And that city of Cyprus was 90% Gentile, only 10% Jewish.
It was a country that worshipped Venus the the sex goddess, Lust,
the goddess of love, lust and evil dark area godless.
So much so that a wife and a daughter at that time was
expected to offer themselves as temple prostitutes at least one
time. So we think about America, where
we are in our morals. It's not good, but it's never
been good on the face of the earth since the fall, has it?
The constant decline of depravity and immorality in the
world is what makes the world what it is today.
The preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the worship of
Christ and the teaching of His Word makes the world like it is
this morning right here in this church, a hospital for sinners.
Then they go to Salamis, which is on the coast of Cyprus in a
very, very dark place. And the apostle and those with
him knew that the only way to turn the darkness to light was
to preach the word of God. And that's how you see the
darkness begin to leave, whether it's in your own life,
personally, or the things you're praying for.
So they're preaching the good news and they go to this island
in Papfos, which is about 90 miles trek walking on the other
end of Cyprus, not a short trip. And so they're having victory.
They're seeing God work by his spirit.
People are getting saved. And now they experience this
here. Now when they had gone through
the island to Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer, a false
prophet, a Jew whose name was Bar Jesus.
What a name, huh? Who was with the pro council?
Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man.
This man called for Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word
of God. So the reputation of the
ministry at that time was causing people to want to get in
the presence of these missionaries.
But what happened was this Sergio Paulus, who is an
authority in the empire at the time, a lot of influence, the
Holy Spirit was beginning to work in his life.
Convict him, show him his need of of Jesus, right?
Well, isn't it interesting? Anytime someone gets close to
salvation, the enemy is always trying to turn him the other
way. That happened to me when I first
heard the gospel. Those people are fanatics.
They're crazy. You know, they're going to,
they're trying to ruin your fun. You, you can't do this, do that
anymore. You know, I mean, it was like
crazy. And this guy Sergius is being
drawn by the Holy Spirit. He's not in any church.
He's not in any synagogue at the time.
He's just the Spirit is the one that draws us to our need of
Christ. This man called for Barnabas and
Saul. So Elamas verse 8, the sorcerer
for his name is translated withstood them seeking to turn
the pro council away from the faith and that's what the enemy
does. You know, the day I don't know
who's saved who isn't. I can tell by the fruit of
people's lives whether they really know Jesus or not, but
that's not my job to judge. You know that my job is to teach
and to preach. So this this guy.
It's like the parable to Sir, you know, the seed sown and then
all of a sudden you read in that parable, it's always the enemy
trying to take the seed out and prevent the real growth, the
conversion, salvation. You might be here today, here
and stuff, and the Spirit of God is convicting you and you know
it's true because it's God's word.
And you're got a battle on inside and you're, you know,
yeah, I understand, I need Jesus.
But you know, it's the enemy that would want to prevent you
from being a believer, right? The enemy, he always wants to
take the seat out and steal it. So he withstands this
conversation and he's seeking to turn this guy away from the
faith. So here's Paul in verse 9, Saul,
who is who is also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit,
looks intently at him and said, Oh, full of all deceit and all
fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will
you not cease perverting the straight ways of the Lord?
He didn't say that calm. He was yelling it.
Where are you trying to do here? You're you're an enemy.
You're you're a wicked man, you're unrighteous and there's
times to be angry in regard to the work of the enemy and what
he tries to do to keep people from knowing Jesus Christ,
right. He didn't go up and say, Oh,
you're, I know you mean well, but you're you know, there was
nothing that kind of conversation.
Paul knew through discernment that this guy needed dealt with.
And so Paul being an apostle and we don't see these kind of
things common among us today, but nonetheless, God still does
bring judgment when he says enough's enough.
In God's heart, we see the Lord turning the money tables upside
down. Speaking to the Pharisees.
He was angry at times, wasn't he?
There's like this righteous indignation, not self judgement,
but like this is wrong and someone is messing with someone
you love. You tell them in a very firm way
you do this and you and I are going to have problems.
There's a time you turn the cheek and there's a time you
don't turn the cheek and we see that in the Lord's life.
So what's he do? Verse 11 and now indeed the hand
of the Lord is upon you and you shall be blind, not seeing the
sun for a time. Now who does that remind you of?
There was a period of time where Paul was blinded right for three
days. So Paul knew that something can
happen when you're blind for supernaturally blind, you start
to not see anything, but you begin to hear things that you
need to hear By the Spirit of God, I guarantee if that
happened to us, we'd be screaming out, Lord, what is it
you want us to know? I want to get it.
I want to do it. I want to be faithful.
I want to be responsible with with the truth now that you've
given me. So it's powerful to know that
God is aware of the evil that's in the world.
He's against the evil. He has a plan to deal with the
evil, and eventually he will completely eradicate the evil
when he sets up his new heavens and earth.
In the meantime, we stand on the truth of the Word of God.
And I'm sure there's been people in your life that you would like
to be able to say this kind of thing, see the result, and then
they wake up and they realize I got to change my life.
But that's the work of the Spirit of God through the word
of God, right? That's what he does.
One day you hear it and you say, that's me.
I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean lips, and I
dwell in the midst of an unclean people, and I need Jesus.
The best day of your life will be when you come to the
realization that you need Jesus to save you from your sin.
You get saved. You're not perfect.
You're still flawed, you still have struggles, but you know
you're forgiven and you know where you're heading when you
leave this world. And then you begin to become an
influence to other people, salt and light.
You begin to see them impacted by your testimony and who you
who you are in Christ, what he's done for you.
One of my favorite experiences in Spain was we're in this big
corporate room, about 40 of us, and we're given 2 minutes to
tell a little bit about ourselves, how we got into this,
what do we do, what's our hobby, whatever.
And you, that's the worst thing you can say to a pastor. 2
minutes, that ain't going to happen. 2 minutes turns into an
hour now. So I'm telling them my story,
how I got into it and, you know, the purpose of it, to actually
have an opportunity to do more ministry outside the church with
people I see every day that have all kind of issues that are
going on in their lives, be able to speak into their lives.
I said, yeah, my, my hobby and my passion is the word of God
and the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I'm a pastor.
And, well, they pretty much all knew I was a pastor because that
gets around, you know, he doesn't get drunk like we get
drunk. You know, doesn't mean that you
can't have a glass of wine or a beer and, you know, be OK.
But most people, when there's free booze, they don't know when
to stop, do they? They just go on and on.
After all, you're like, OK, I have enough of this, I'm going
to. But the Lord said, no, you're
going to hang with these people. You're going to listen to them,
you're going to talk with them. You're not going to hide in your
room, which is what I usually like to do.
And I I got to have these amazing conversations with
wonderful people, good people that have had events occur in
their life is broken up. So there I am.
I don't know if I'm the only believer.
No one came up to me after I said, Hey, you Christian, I am
too. No one said that.
So that's always fun when that happens.
At least you have a partner. But it was me alone.
But nonetheless, you know, seeds were were planted.
So what happens to this guy? Immediately a dark mist fell on
him and he went around seeking someone to lead him by the hand.
Now the scriptures never get back to this guy.
What happened to him when it was his sight, you know, temporarily
taken or how long or did he come to the realization like Paul did
that he needed to be saved? You know, pray that that was the
case for him. Then the pro Council, this is
the government official, verse 12, it says believed when he saw
what had been done, but it wasn't the miracle of this man
becoming blind in God's judgement that got this man to
believe. Pay attention to the last part
of this verse, being astonished at the teaching of the Lord.
That's what brought him to salvation.
He was astonished at the teaching of the Word.
And that's what's happening to us every time we gather.
I trust that somehow in the midst of the sermon, I see
people nodding off. And that's why I raise my voice
every once in a while. I I do the same thing as you
guys. I'm at a pastors conference.
Oh, it's so good. Lord, I need this all next time.
I know well who's put me to sleep.
It's a Sandman the devil. I don't want you to get too
serious about this stuff. Right.
So the gospel and the teaching of the Lord brought this man the
faith in Jesus Christ, just like it has for you and me.
Now, as I begin to conclude, I know some of you better than
others because I've hung out with you or had coffee or
whatever. But I know as I meet with
people, every one of us has a story, right?
Broken things that didn't go the way we wanted them to go in
life, tragedies, it's difficulties, broken
relationships, whatever. It's part of life and it can be
very, very painful, as you all know.
So who can save us out of our lives that have been perhaps
ruined because of sin and rejecting God?
What needs to happen to bring Christians to a deeper, closer
repentance, closer relationship with Jesus?
Surrendering our lives to Jesus. What do you want, Lord?
When we're in situations we don't like, we want them to be
fixed immediately. We don't like to have
discomfort. But Jesus, the Bible's profound
verse. Jesus learned obedience by the
things he suffered. Now Jesus is perfect.
He's God Incarnate. What did he have to learn?
He was in our human skin. He experienced rejection,
persecution, all this. He felt the human emotions that
we feel and he had to learn in the human frame clearly what it
was like to not know God and to live in sin.
Of course, he never lived in sin, but he did experience
briefly what it was like to be separated from God the Father
and the Holy Trinity. That's why he said, we don't
have a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling our
infirmities, our weaknesses, but was on all points tempted as we
are, yet without sin. He says, therefore you can come
boldly into this throne room of grace that you might find mercy
and grace and help in your time and need.
Someone said to me recently, and it wasn't a criticism, it was
just a question about altar calls.
And I've been in churches where every week it was an altar call
and you felt if you weren't upfront, then you weren't
serious about God. This is how the pastor rolled
it. So you go up, you know, OK, you
know, how long is this going to be today?
Because the Steelers are coming on at 12:30 and I want to see
the kickoff. That's what I'm thinking as I'm
at the altar. There's nothing wrong with that.
Just being human right now. If I knew the guy was going to
like just let the spirit work for a couple minutes, whoever
were compelled to come, then it's the church is dismissed.
That's that's more easy to to deal with, right.
But if being in that church, you know, it was almost like he was
like playing with our heads. I'll see if you're really
committed to Jesus, you won't be thinking about the Steelers.
That's ridiculous stuff, man. We, we still live life.
We have hobbies, we like to travel, we like to have fun, we
like to have stuff with family. It it isn't, you know, 24
mindset hours of this idea that I need to get right with God.
You have been made right with God through the cross and the
sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Nothing you can add to that.
Nothing you can do to make it better.
It's the simple what must I do to be saved?
The Bible says believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall
be saved. It isn't coming up front.
It's believing in Christ and ask Him to forgive you of your sin
right in your seat, in your car, wherever you are.
But sometimes you need some brothers and sisters to come
around you to pray for you. You don't need to get into
detail what it is you're doing or going through or struggling
with or failing. You can just come up and you can
just be there. And someone might come up and
just lay their hand on you back or pray for you.
And as that begins to happen, the Holy Spirit begins to do
things that we don't anticipate. You would feel the burden
lifted, or sometimes there's a physical healing, or sometimes
there's a touch of God that lets you know it's going to be OK.
It's not fixed right away maybe, but it's going to be OK.
I need that as much as you do. Thanks for joining us on today's
edition of Living Waters of Grace, a ministry of Calvary
Chapel, Westmoreland. Today, Pastor Clark is teaching
about the Book of Acts, And as we learn more about Acts, it
becomes clear that the early church didn't miss a single
opportunity to share the gospel. In nearly every chapter, you see
apostles like Peter and Paul stepping into conversations,
crowds, and crises with boldness, ready to proclaim the
name of Jesus. Their example challenges us to
consider how we might step into gospel moments in our own lives.
What doors might God open this week for you to speak truth,
offer hope, or live out your faith in a way that points
others to Him? The story of Acts reminds us we
are part of the same mission. Today, let's live with eyes open
and hearts ready to respond. We hope you are challenged by
today's message. If you're in the Greensburg, PA
area, we'd love to see you in person this Sunday at 10:30 AM
at 400 E Pittsburgh St. Unit 6B.
For more information, visit calvarychapelonline.com.
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