This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark
Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,
County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
They remembered the words of the Lord.
They did exactly that. They just forgot about it and
moved on. And it says they were filled
with joy and with the Holy Spirit.
So when your heart and mind submits to the issues in our
life, whether we like them or not, and we say, Lord, I'm not
real happy with this right now, but I trust you and what you're
doing in my life. And my heart wants to be soft
towards you and I want to be open and willing to accept what
it is you're doing in my life. But I want to praise you in it.
Have you ever found yourself in a spot where you're completely
stumped on what to do next? Navigating a trial?
Yeah, that's definitely no walk in the park.
It takes up all your thoughts, doesn't it?
So how often do you let go of those anxious thoughts and
simply hand everything over to God?
In today's message, Pastor Clark is here to remind you to put
your trust in God for all things.
Rest assured, everything God brings into your life is meant
for your benefit. Just have faith in Him now.
Here's Pastor Clark in Acts chapter 14 as he begins his
message called persecution. We are in the book of the Acts
studying about the work of the Holy Spirit in the body of the
church. That work of the Holy Spirit
continues today as we live in our own lives in the church,
serving the Lord. And we have to understand that
part of being a Christian is also dealing with adversity and
trials, right? I mean, that's part of how God
purifies us and helps us to grow in a closer relationship with
him. Sometimes we go through times of
dark valleys and we go through despondency or depression, or we
go through times of hopelessness, but we find that
in those times, that's when we cry out through the Lord the
most, and we need Him the most. And so God uses these things to
purify us and refine us. And when we get through them, we
begin to understand, Wow, if this wouldn't have happened in
my life, I wouldn't know the Lord the way I know Him now.
And so He loves us being couraged no matter what.
You might be caring today, what you might be struggling with,
what you might be going through, God is not abandon you.
He's with you. And His word is a lamp unto our
feet, a light unto our path. So let's pray as we get prepared
for this teaching today. Lord, we know and we understand,
Father, the challenges that we go through.
You teach us, Lord, how to learn about You, but also how to
depend on You and to trust in You in ways that we wouldn't
have learned if we hadn't been put in a position where we
desperately needed You, Lord, and all of us have been in those
places. And so, Lord, we are here today
to receive from you what your Holy Spirit has for your church.
And we pray the same for churches all over the world
today where believers are gathering in the Word of God.
Lord, that you would minister through the servants who stand
behind the pulpit. We're ordinary people.
We're broken ourselves. We are also fallen, Lord, yet
you have redeemed us. And Lord, even though we still
struggle, we're tempted, we still sin.
You choose to perfect the Saints through the work of the
ministry, through the teaching of the Word, You're changing us
all into your image and likeness.
We're all works in process. We're so thankful for Your
mercy, Your patience with each of us.
Lord, none of us have arrived. None of us have it all together,
only you have it together. And that's why we come to learn
from you and about you, because as our eyes are upon you, we
change and we become more like you.
So Lord, we just ask now for your favor on your word and
blessing on your people that Lord today you would give them
what it is they've come for. I can't give it to them, but you
can by your Holy Spirit through the word.
So Lord, our trust is in you and we pray these things in Jesus
name, Amen. So the title of the message
today is persecution. Has anybody ever felt like
they've been persecuted to have gone persecution?
We all have. If we're we're Christians, the
Bible says all that live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer what
persecution? And I think when we first come
to Christ and we're new believers, we skip over that.
We don't. Maybe that's for someone else.
That's not for me. But none of us get through it
without dealing with adversity and persecution.
The Apostle Paul and Barnabas are on their first missionary
journey. This is basically the inception
of the Great Commission, where Jesus said to go into all the
world and preach the gospel to every living creature, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching
them to observe all things whatsoever.
I've commanded you, and lo, I'm with you always, even unto the
end of the age. That's the Great Commission.
So they have been in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria.
Now they're spreading out into the other regions of the world.
And because of what they've done, that gospel has gone
throughout the earth. And we're recipients of the
seeds that were initially planted in these early stages of
the New Testament church. And so it talks about in my
Bible, the heading, and I'm going to finish up verse 13.
Just read it. Blessing and conflict at
Antioch. So persecution comes in a form
of people who hate Jesus, hate the gospel, hate the word of
God, hate holiness, hate righteousness, hate repentance.
They just want to live as pagans, right?
And many of us, all of us, probably at one time, we were
all lost in our sins before Christ saved us.
We lived that way too. We didn't want to hear anything
about this kind of stuff we're talking about today.
Then the Lord saves us. He softens our hearts, and he
gives us a desire to want to go this way, right?
To follow the path of Christ. So we pick up persecution and
adversity because we live for Christ.
We try to represent him and sometimes we pick up persecution
and adversity from employers or even in families.
Sometimes we go through it even in a church.
Lord, we're sometimes God allows things the enemy works and tries
to divide the church and to scatter the sheep and just get
people to stop falling the Lords, you know, because of
relationship issues or whatever, you know.
So when we study the word, we have to understand that we are
all sinners still. Things have happened to us in
all of our lives that we don't think has been fair or we don't
like. And so we get bitter at times.
We get hard. We get in a place of being
unwilling to forgive. We get bitter.
And that's not what the Lord's like.
When he died on that cross, He had his arms out and we all knew
what we were doing. But he says, Father, forgive
them so they know not what they do.
So as we study this today and you think about your own trials,
your own persecution, the things that have happened to you that
you don't think's fair, if anybody has hurt you, if
anybody's offended you, if anybody's injured you in some
way, allow the Lord to give you grace to forgive.
Because we can't be followers of Jesus if we don't forgive.
It tells us in the Lord's Prayer forgive us our trespasses as He
forgives us our trespasses. Then later on in John it says if
we don't forgive men their trespasses, neither will our
heavenly Father forgive us of ours.
That's shocking, isn't it? You can.
So I prayed the prayer. I asked Jesus to come into my
heart. That's all well and good, but if
we're not forgiving people, there's a disconnect, right?
So we want to be a Church of mercy and forgiveness in our own
lives toward one another and toward those in the world.
So it says in verse 42. So when the Jews went out of the
synagogue, the Gentiles begged that these words might be
preached to them the next Sabbath.
So certain people heard the gospel, they were excited, they
believed, and obviously there were people there that wouldn't
believe, just like there may be here today.
So when the congregation had broken up, many of the Jews and
devout proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking to
them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.
And so we're here today by the grace of God, we are faithful to
be in the Word. We show up for no other reason
but that we're all testifying together when we're together,
that we're continuing in the grace of God, no matter what we
might be dealing with. On the next Sabbath, almost the
whole city came together to hear the word of God.
Wouldn't that be awesome, you know, for next Sunday that there
wouldn't be enough room for people to come in here because
the whole city is beginning to hear about the grace of God at
Calvary Chapel. That would be a prayer that we
should all have. All these people were excited
about salvation and what the Lord can do.
But it says that when the Jews saw the multitudes and these
were the people that were still not believing, they were filled
with envy. They had never seen so many
people in the synagogue before. And they weren't coming for the
law. They were coming for the grace
of God that was setting them free from all their sin and
their bondage and contradicting and blaspheming.
They oppose the thing spoken by Paul, so there's always
adversity and push back to the message of God's grace and
forgiveness. They're jealous of the impact
that the Word is making on these people because of the grace of
God. And they're also slandering the
preachers, the teachers, the apostles, anybody that has
anything to do with communicating these things they
are adamantly opposed to. And that's what's happening in
our culture today. The world we live in, in the
arena that we are all experiencing, we know there's a
real push back toward Christianity in our country and
in the rest of the world. And so it says they blaspheme.
They opposed the things spoken by Paul.
Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said it was necessary that
the word of God should be spoken to you first, but since you
reject it and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life.
I love how Paul really puts it in her face, well, if you guys
don't want this and you don't want to have everlasting life,
OK, what am I going to do for you, right.
And he said, behold, we turn to the Gentiles.
For so the Lord has commanded us.
I have set you as a light to the Gentiles that you should be for
salvation to the ends of the earth.
So that the gospel initially came to the Jewish people.
Jesus said his own did not receive him.
He came to his own. They didn't receive.
And so the whole goal of God from the beginning of time was
to take the gospel to every people group in the world, every
tribe, tongue and nation. There's no discrimination with
the Lord in regard to the good news of the gospel.
It's for all people and all places, everywhere.
And so they are rejecting this. But the Gentiles and some of
these Jewish people are believing.
So the Lord has commanded us. I've set you as a light to the
Gentiles that you should be for salvation to the ends of the
earth. Now when the Gentiles heard
this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord,
and as many as had been appointed to eternal life
believe. This is a fascinating verse
because God, in his all knowingness, his omniscience,
understands that there's going to be a people that are called
out by Him that will believe even before we're created.
That's a mystery of God's sovereignty, His election.
Why is it we're chosen here today?
Why is it that we've believed? Why is it that we've come to
faith in Christ where we heard the Word and it resonated with
us and we came out of death unto life because of the Holy Spirit
making us capable of believing the gospel?
There's so many people that still don't believe.
Why? In the mind of God, he wants the
gospel to go to everyone. We don't know who's going to
believe who isn't, and sometimes people don't believe until their
deathbed. So you never stop praying, you
never stop preaching, you never stop giving the gospel.
You're always wanting to share the Lord with people.
And so and then it says in the word of the Lord was being
spread throughout all the region.
But the Jews stirred up the devout and prominent women and
the chief men of the city, and they raised up persecution
against Paul and Barnabas and expelled them from the region.
But they shook off the dust from their feet against them and came
to Iconium, and the disciples were filled with joy and with
the Holy Spirit. So Paul is dealing with
adversity as as we do. Something happens in your life
as a believer, and you might be tempted to quit.
Pastors are tempted to quit all the time because of some of the
pressures they deal with or whatever, but we're called to
persevere. And if we're really the Lord's,
there's this doctrine called the perseverance of the Saints.
If we're really saved, we don't give up, do we?
We just keep on keeping on because God is in US, the Spirit
of God's in US, and he gives us a capacity to not give up even
when we're thinking about it, you know?
And so this beauty of this wisdom of God is that in spite
of John Mark leaving them in the ministry prior to this, that was
a set back. Now they're going in and they're
excited that people are believing and getting saved, but
now they're going to get stoned. People are going to try to kill
them. They just keep keeping on.
And the wisdom of this, you know, the Lord said to the
disciples when they were out on the road that if you get hassled
or people don't listen to you and they don't receive you, he
said shake the dust off your feet, meaning don't let it
bother you. Don't let it bring you down.
Don't let it discourage you. Just keep your eyes on the Lord
and what He's told you to do, and He'll leave you to some
other people that will eventually want to hear.
And so as they did that, they remembered the words of the
Lord. They did exactly that.
They just forgot about it and moved on.
And it says they were filled with joy and with the Holy
Spirit. So when your heart and mind
submits to the issues in our life, whether we like them or
not, and we say, Lord, I'm not real happy with this right now,
but I trust you and what you're doing in my life.
And my heart wants to be soft towards you.
And I want to be open and willing to accept what it is
you're doing in my life. And I want to praise you in it.
Count it all joy when you fall into diverse trials and
temptations. The Bible says that the trying
of your faith works. Patience.
I want to be and I'm sure you do too.
The kind of person that I'm not complaining or I'm not groaning
and moaning, that I accept God's sovereign hand in my life and
say, God, you have a plan in this and I want to praise you
because in the power of praise there is deliverance.
And you're passing the test when you praise God for what it is
you're going through. If you're moaning and groaning,
the Lord says, OK, we got to go through this for a while now
you're still not getting it, are you?
You're still not praising me in spite of the storm.
And so these guys are in the midst of it, but they are filled
because their hearts are open to God and they're filled with joy
by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now in verse 14, the journey
starts in these other regions. Now it happened in Iconium and
this is the area of Galatia at the time, it's the Roman Empire.
A lot of pagans in these countries are going to no church
yet until the gospel gets there and Paul and Barnabas are used
by the Lord to see people become believers and churches are
established. They went together to the
synagogue. So the beauty of this thing is
they had a place to go to get people to hear when they
couldn't find a synagogue. They preached in the streets.
But because of Paul and Barnabas being Jewish people, they were
accepted in the system of Judaism because they had
knowledge of the Old Testament. So they were given the
opportunity to speak. I'm sure after they spoke, the
Jews were upset. Like we should never let these
guys say anything. It's ruining our ministry,
right? People are leaving and following
them. But that's what happens, right?
So they, they spoke to a great multitude, both of the Jews and
the Greeks believed, but the unbelieving Jews stirred up the
gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brother.
This is the work of the devil. Whenever you're anywhere where
the truth of God is going forth, people can say things about
whoever the teacher is. They can say, well, they're
hypocrites, or they're this or they're that.
If we're honest, we all have areas of hypocrisy in our life,
right? Is anybody perfect here today?
If you tell me guys, you're perfect, I'll just ask your wife
or I'll ask your husband, right? But you know, this is the
patience of God, right? And he chooses to use weak and
foolish things that confound the what God never looks at the
vessel and says, well, boy, I'm going to pick you because like
you're like no one I've ever created.
And boy, people are going to be blown away with your homiletic
skills and your preaching ability.
God's like, forget that. Let me fill you and let me speak
through you because I don't want you getting in the way of what
it is I want to say. But all the time someone will
come to someone and say, you know, with this person, you
know, I saw them, you know, say this or they acted this way or
whatever. And so people seem to have a
tendency to want to judge you instead of judging themselves.
And the enemy wants to pull the church down and destroy it and
destroy the people that minister in the church through slander
and hatred and unbelief and criticism.
That's why it says in Ephesians, let all bitterness and wrath and
clamor and evil speaking be put away from you, and be kind,
tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for
Christ's sake hath forgiven you. So this continual, habitual need
to forgive, right? And when we forgive, we're to
move on and keep going on looking toward the Lord.
That's something we can't do without the grace of God in our
lives. You have bitterness in your
heart. You want to slander people.
You, you want to get even with them.
You want to be vindictive toward them.
You got to like, say, Lord, this is not you.
Help me to forgive. Well, how many times do we
forgive? Jesus says 70 * 7.
That's 490 times for the same offense.
That's the picture of you keep forgiven, right?
So what happens is they're trying to poison the mind of
these people. Therefore, they stayed there a
long time, speaking boldly in the Lord.
Those guys knew what people were saying.
They felt that they experienced it, but they didn't say, you
know, get thin skin and then say, well, this isn't fair.
We're just trying to do what God wants us to do.
We're not going to do this anymore.
It's hurting our feelings or whatever.
No, they just kept being faithful.
It says they spoke boldly in the Lord who was bearing witness to
the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by
their hands. So this Apostolic authority
ability, sometimes God showed up in signs and wonders and they
did miracles. Lots of times there was no
miracles. It wasn't anything.
And Paul in and of himself, it was a special anointing that
came at times and in seasons for God to be glorified in the midst
of a situation where people would get their attention taken
by some miraculous situation. So the multitude of the city in
verse 4 was divided, part sided with the Jews and part with the
apostles. So like in our world today, you
have a group of people who are followers of Christ, and then
you have a group of people who are against Christ, right?
It's always that way, even sometimes, unfortunately, in
churches. And when this issue happened,
this violent attempt was made by both the Gentiles and the Jews
with their rulers to abuse and stone them.
They became aware of it, and they fled the Lystra and Derby
cities of Iconia into the surrounding region, and they
were reaching the gospel there, so they understood the attempt
to take them out, to kill them, basically to assassinate them.
They were smart enough to know that they needed to get out of
that town and move to next place.
But the stoning never stopped. Paul remembers when Stephen was
stoned, he was part of that group that had Stephen Stone,
the first martyr in the book of the Acts in New Testament
church. So now Paul's going to
experience some of the same things that those who have gone
before him. So now they go to Lystra verse
8. And in Lystra, a certain man
without strength in his feet was sitting a cripple from his
mother's womb. So this guy didn't have a
temporary paralysis. This didn't happen after he was
born. He was born with the inability
to walk. He had never walked.
This man heard Paul speaking. He heard the gospel.
You heard the message, Paul observing him intently.
And so you have an audience. You're speaking.
I see your eyes, you see mine. Sometimes I get fixated on
someone in the room because I sense there's a heavy burden in
their lives. There's something going on.
I don't know what it is, but the Lord does.
And I just say, Lord, you know, speak to them, whatever it is
you need to say to them. And sometimes I see people who
are eager to want to follow Jesus deeper and I pray and I
say, Lord, help cultivate that in their lives.
Help them to sense that and want to follow you.
And if I can be of any help, show me how myself or the elders
can be of help and the others in the church that are wanting to
serve people. So he's looking intently and he
sees that he had faith to be healed.
He's looking at this man and he says he has faith to be healed.
Now this is interesting because God does all things according to
counsel of his own will. And some of these faith
churches, they'll teach, well, the reason you're not healed is
you don't have enough faith, right?
You hear that? But there's this element too,
that when we come to God, we have to pray believing, and
that's where we struggle. I believe, Lord, help my
unbelief. But God honors belief, simple
belief. And so this man is hungry for
the Lord, but he also has something happening in his
spirit that Paul recognized that this guy can believe God for
anything right now in his life. And that's rare.
That doesn't happen all the time, but he senses that
something can happen here. The Holy Spirit obviously was
speaking to Paul about this. So Paul, think about this.
I mean, sometimes like people came for healing.
They didn't get healed. Other times they got healed.
And I'm sure at times Paul's like, God, I don't know how this
works. Why can't it work all the time,
you know? But it doesn't.
And probably the reason it doesn't is, is that we would
think we had something to do with it, right?
Do you ever pray and really believe and you see God do
something and touch someone and you're like, wow, you know, I'm
going to do this all the time. And then the next time you pray
and it doesn't happen and you're like, why did it happen the one
time and why didn't it happen the other time?
That's the mystery of God and his plan, his sovereign plan.
So he says to this guy, and this would take some real faith on
Paul's part. Stand up straight on your feet.
And he leaped and he walked. Now, what if Paul would have
said, stand up straight on your feet and then nothing happened?
That would be somewhat like embarrassing, I guess.
And they say, well, why did you say that?
I don't know why I said that. I just was hoping or maybe, but
somehow, you know, again, God's sovereignty, there was such an
complete evidence that something miraculous was going to happen
here, that God did something miraculous.
Thanks for joining us on this journey through Acts.
On today's edition of Living Waters of Grace, Pastor Clark
shares that one of the most remarkable things about the book
of Acts is how it shows the disciples transformation.
The followers of Jesus we meet here are very different from the
often confused and fearful disciples in the Gospels.
After Jesus's death and resurrection, and especially
through the power of the Holy Spirit, the apostles experienced
a profound change in their hearts and boldness.
Their faith became unwavering, and they move forward with
courage to spread the gospel despite opposition and hardship.
Acts reminds us that the same Spirit who empowered them is at
work in US today, shaping our hearts and giving us strength to
live boldly for Christ. Living Waters of Grace is a
ministry of Calvary Chapel Westmoreland.
If you're in the Greensburg, PA area, we invite you to join us
this Sunday at 10:30 AM at 400 E Pittsburgh St.
Unit 6B. Visit calvarychapelonline.com
For more information where you can also join our e-mail list,
submit prayer requests, give online and download our mobile
app. If you are in the Greensburg
area, you can listen to Grace FM on the new 91.7 frequency.
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channel so you'll be alerted when new material becomes
available. We're so grateful that you
joined us today in Acts. TuneIn again soon for another
edition of Living Waters of Grace.