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.
When you're challenged with the will of God, you have the
opportunity to, as I started the message day to step back for a
minute and say I'm not real sure what I should do here as opposed
to this blowing through the the red light.
It's good to stop and test your plan and say, Lord, is this your
plan? Is this what you want me to do?
Or is this what I want to do? And if you give the Lord the
chance to answer your prayer, He will clearly show you His will.
It can be difficult to discern what God's will is for your
life. Sometimes you become anxious
that what you think is God's voice is actually just your own
subconscious telling you what you want to hear.
But Pastor Clark encourages you today to take the time to slow
down. When you have those moments of
anxiety, God will speak to you through His Word, and the wisdom
you gain from being a faithful student will help you learn how
to distinguish His will from your own human desires.
Now here's Pastor Clark in Acts chapter 18 with today's edition
of Living Waters of Grace. There was an assurance that keep
doing what you're doing this, maybe down the road you're going
to have some issues, and he did. But this wasn't the time that
his life is going to be taken. He had opportunity now to be
bold and to proclaim Christ in the midst of the culture that
wasn't really open to what he had to say.
No one's going to hurt him. And so he needed to hear that,
I'm sure, in Corinth, because it was a barbaric, godless city.
And he was pretty much by himself outside of Priscilla and
Aquila at the time in regard to doing this ministry.
And I love what it says here. He's encouraging Paul for I have
many people in the city. In other words, Paul, there's a
lot of people that live here in Corinth that need me, that will
come to know who I am because of what it is you're going to tell
them. I remember years ago, my brother
was a church planner and he had an opportunity to take over a
fledgling Baptist Church in Ambridge.
It was previously pastored by a transgender, believe it or not,
a person dressed up in dresses privately.
He was a preacher. I have no idea how that
happened. So my brother had to go in and
try to get this church back on its feet again.
And so we were at a pastors conference and we had an
opportunity to talk to Chuck. He had finished one of his
messages and we went up and I went in to introduce Pastor
Chuck and my brother Doug. And Chuck says where where are
you serving? And Doug says Ambridge,
Pennsylvania. And and then Doug began to tell
him what a terrible city it was. It was, you know, really run
down because of steel mills had closed down a lot of drug
addiction, alcoholism and poverty.
And and I'll never forget what Chuck says.
He looked at me, he says couldn't be any worse than
Corinth. And he said the dog, he says,
you know why you're there. And Doug just looked at him
shell shocked. And Chuck said because many
people need me there. So wherever there's a church, no
matter how big or how small, it's there.
And those cities, because people need Jesus, God placed us here
in this city because people need the Lord, they need the word,
they need to be taught, they need to be fed.
So God has all these plans. And so Paul's encouraged by this
vision that the Lord gave him, and it says he continued there a
year and six months teaching the word of God among them.
This particular town was the place that Paul spent his most
time. He's never been in a place this
long in regard to ministry, 18 months.
So he's discipling, he's teaching, he's educating, he's
equipping, he's establishing this church.
And of course, we studied First and 2nd Corinthians.
You remember a lot of the craziness in that church that
carried over from the culture, people getting drunk at the
agape feast, sexual immorality in the church.
I mean, this whole kind of messes egos, some saying, well,
I prefer Paul's preaching. I prefer Apollo's preaching.
I I prefer Cephas Peters preaching.
And Paul had to teach him, hey, it's not what these guys are
doing, It's what the spirits doing.
All they're doing is watering, watering the word into your
heart so only God can give the increase.
So he said, you know, you don't have favorites, you don't play
this kind of political game. There's a lot of things in the
in the city of Corinth, even after the church established
that needed to be dealt with. And then it says in verse 12 on
Galileo, Galileo was his name was proconsul of Archaea.
The Jews with 1 accord rose up against Paul and brought him to
the judgment seeing saying this fellow persuades men to worship
God contrary to the law. Once again, these rebel rousers,
these Jewish people is continually causing problems in
the in the city are causing problems again trying to set
Paul up and lying about the what it is he's doing.
And so when Paul was about to open his mouth, and this is
interesting too, I got to give a defense if I'm slandered, if I'm
accused of something I didn't do.
And the first thing you want to do is clarify to people who are
judging or accusing you, especially if it's a legal
issue. This is what my testimony is.
This is what the truth is. Well, he didn't even have to say
anything. He was getting ready to speak
this pro consul leader. And this would be in the center
of the city, a high platform where people would bring
grievances to this judge and he would have to make a ruling.
And so Gallio said to the Jews, if it were a matter of
wrongdoing or wicked crimes of Jews, there would be reason why
I should bear with you. So in other words, he's not
going to even take this seriously because this is a
conflict between these Jewish people and Paul.
But if it's a question of words and names and your own law, look
to it yourselves, for I do not want to be a judge of such
matters. And he drove them from the
judgement seat. So he didn't didn't even listen
to them. Now, what's interesting, if he
would have made this a criminal case and Paul wouldn't have been
able to preach there anymore, the whole gospel in the ministry
would have been shut down. But obviously the Lord prevented
that from happening. And then verse 17, all the
Greeks took Sophanes. This is a guy that took over the
synagogue after Christmas, got saved the roller of the
synagogue and they beat him before the judgment seat.
But Galileo took no notice of these things.
So these people are so vindictive and so hateful and
they're they're not Jewish people, obviously they're
they're Greeks. They take this new leader of the
synagogue and they literally beat him.
What's interesting is that this sophones eventually came a
believer too. And it's talked about in the
book of Corinthians how he also was baptized.
We see now Paul, he's done in Corinth.
This is after the 18 month duration in verse 18.
So Paul remained a good while, and then he took leave of the
brethren and sailed for Syria, and Priscilla and Aquila were
with him. Priscilla and Aquila.
And it's like in our church, there's couples and families
here that Lewis and I couldn't do what we do apart from your
support, your prayers, your love, your concern, your care.
There's no way we could do this without encouragement from the
body of Christ. And Paul had this blessed
encouragement, not only from the churches he planted, but from
this special couple, Priscilla and her husband Aquila.
And it says here he had his hair cut off at Sancrea, for he had
taken a vow. The vow was a Nazarite vow.
Paul was Jewish and he still had a affinity and a love for his
Jewish history and Jewish tradition.
He would never ask a Gentile to follow any kind of Jewish
tradition, and these traditions weren't going to mess up the
gospel of grace or salvation. This had to do with a personal
consecration that Paul sense perhaps being in corn for 18
months. He probably was somewhat
defiled. He felt he had been exposed to
some godless things and some situations.
He wasn't intentionally sinning or anything, but I'm sure he had
to be tempted at times and he just wanted to get deeper with
the Lord. So this vow was a promise before
God of deeper sanctification, and it would be done by cutting
his hair and taking a vow of not partaking of the Grapevine for
30 days. And John the Baptist and Samson,
of course, took these Nazarite vows for the rest of their life.
But Paul felt compelled that he wanted to do this.
And This is why he took the vow and why he had his hair cut off,
it says. And he came to Ephesus and left
them there. So he, he goes down to Ephesus,
stops there briefly. Of course, we know there's a
church in Ephesus. There's a book called Ephesians.
We've studied that. We'll get there again.
But he himself again enters in the synagogue and reason with
the Jews. So wherever Paul went, the first
stop was not Chick-fil-A, right? That's where we go Chick-fil-A,
right? So Paul is, you know, finish
this Nazarite vow. He goes into the synagogue and
he's preaching the gospel again. When they asked him to stay a
longer time with them, he did not consent but took leave of
them, saying, I must by all means keep this coming feast in
Jerusalem, but I'll return again to you, God willing.
And he sailed from Ephesus. What's interesting was Paul
wanted to go to Ephesus a couple years before this time and he
was forbid he wasn't able to go. It wasn't God's will.
And now he has the ability to pass through and he's going to
go back and have a powerful ministry and in the city of
Ephesus and Priscilla and Aquila will be working there as well.
When you think about God's will, you have a plan.
I have a plan. I want to do this.
I want to go there, I want to buy this.
I want to work here. I want to whatever and whenever
God's got control of your life, you can't, and I'm thankful for
this. God knows where you're at
spiritually. And when you're tested to
challenge the will of God and you go opposite of will of God,
then there's conflict. Things don't work out like you
were hoping they would or wanted them to work out.
When you're challenged with the will of God, you have the
opportunity to, as I started the message day, to step back for a
minute and say, I'm not real sure what I should do here as
opposed to this blowing through the the red light.
It's good to stop and test your plan and say, Lord, is this your
plan? Is this what you want me to do?
Or is this what I want to do? And if you give the Lord the
chance to answer your prayer, He will clearly show you His will.
But we don't many times have the patience to wait upon the Lord
for His will. Now some things are maybe Gray.
Well, should I do AB or C? Well, God doesn't see problems
with any of those. Is there a perfect will?
Yeah, there's always a perfect will, but there's a prevenient
will, I guess, or a will that he preferred B.
But you take A, he's still going to work in your life and bless
you and, and help you. But it's good to to want to know
the perfect will of God. So Paul, instead of just saying
whenever he couldn't go to Ephesus before I'm going anyway,
I'm going to do this. And he didn't.
And now we see in God's sovereignty that he eventually
got to this place he wanted to be.
Then stay day long this time, but he's going to get a chance
to go back. And when he had landed at
Caesarea, he gone up and greeted the church.
He's in Jerusalem, he's meeting everybody, giving him updates of
his three-year missionary journey, where he's been, what's
happened. And then he goes down to his
home church, Antioch, where he was sent out from this
tremendous time, I'm sure to be able to give everybody an
update. And after he had spent some time
there, he departed and went over to the region of Galatia and
Phrygia in order to strengthening of all the
disciples. So a 1500 mile journey now from
Antioch to these other regions that he's going to be doing
ministry in places like Iconium and Tarsus and Derby and Lystra
and Antioch. And he's wanting to see, are
these people going deeper in Christ?
Where are they at spiritually in regard to their passion for the
ministry and the gospel? I sense, you know, that the Holy
Spirit visits us every time we gather.
He lives in us. He's omnipresent and He's
searching the audience here today, like, where are you with
Christ today? Where's the pastor?
Where's the worship people? Where all the people serving
here? Where are we with the Lord?
Are we here going through the motions?
Are we here to have God exercise our hearts and to take us deeper
and challenge our thoughts and give us more clarity on His will
and His purposes for our lives? Maybe He's calling us to
ministry, some kind of ministry here in the church, and we've
been holding back. We don't know why, we just do
sometimes all these kind of things are happening in in the
room whenever we hear the word and, and God's at work in the
word and through the word. And I don't have the radar
ability to know exactly what it is he wants to say to you today.
But the Holy Spirit does and he knows how to take something that
maybe I didn't even really cover.
And he's going to talk to you specifically about something he
wants you to deal with personally.
And he challenges your heart. He causes you to think about
some things maybe you haven't thought about for a while or
maybe never thought about. And that's how awesome our God
is. And I'm so thankful that, you
know, when I come here to preach, I have a limited ability
in regard to what it is I do. But God has unlimited ability.
And so if we allow him to speak between the lines, if you may,
or in the silence when nothing's being said, then we begin to
hear something from God. God spoke to me today at
Calvary. He showed me this.
I need to pray about that. I think this is what he's
calling me to. This is what I sense His will
might be giving God the opportunity to work in the midst
of the time of worship and the and the teaching of the Word.
And then we, we moved on into this last section here as he's
out there checking out the churches, seeing how people are
doing, you know, just thinking too, what if Paul showed up here
today, if you could and came up here and, and I sat down, what
would he ask us? What would he say to us?
What would he think about the ministry here?
That's something to think about. I know he would be interested in
your growth. Are you maturing?
Are you becoming more holy? Are you loving God more?
Are you learning to love people more?
Are you having an influence on people in your life for the
gospel and for the sake of Christ?
And if we weren't, he wouldn't condemn us or anything.
He just encouraged us and exhort us that we need to get right
with God get get closer to the Lord surrender more so in verse
24. Now a certain Jew named Apollos
and of course Apollos is mentioned in the book of
Corinthians. I'm a poem of Apollos.
I'm a Cephas born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in
the Scriptures came to Ephesus. Now there's no indication of
where this guy came from or he wasn't coming from another
church or whatever. He he obviously was a lover of
God and, and called by God and compelled by God that he's just
going to go out and, and preach. This man had been instructed in
the way of the Lord and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and
taught accurately the things of the Lord, though he knew only
the baptism of John. So he was a disciple of John the
Baptist. He knew who Jesus was, what he
did, what he accomplished, He's Messiah.
But he didn't understand a whole lot about the church, the plan
of God for the church, let alone the work of the Holy Spirit.
He had some holes in his ability to teach, but he was very, very
gifted and he had a real zeal and a very inspirational kind of
speaker of the people would respond to.
And he was taught in the ways of the Lord throughout the
teachings of the Old Testament at the time, fervent in spirit,
meaning he was on fire for God. And he didn't teach anything
inaccurate. It says he taught accurately the
things of the Lord, taught accurately the things that he
knew. But the one pitfall was he only
knew of the baptism of John. So he began to speak boldly in
the synagogue and when Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they
took him aside and explained to him the way of God more
accurately. So it'd be like me or Lewis
here. We're done preaching and a
couple mature couple, godly couple deep couple wants to have
coffee with this Afrin said. Boy, that was a really blessed
message that you you brought. We wanted to share with you some
other things. I don't know if you ever knew
about this or thought about this or heard about this.
And, and he was a humble guy because he didn't act like, who
are you to talk to me, right? And it was a woman and a man
that's not a man, a godly woman and a godly man ministering to
this fellow Apollos. And so they, they took him aside
and they explained to him more accurately or more detailed the
things that he needed to know about so he could be a better
servant in the ministry. I'm so thankful I, I, I have
many influential people in this church that have helped me get
better at what I do. And Louis feels the same way
that we're growing in our ministries.
We're learning more about how to serve God with you guys.
We're, we're in process as well. And there's blind spots.
We have sometimes the things we didn't see or know.
And so you know, someone has a conversation or whatever, and it
helps us to to be more of a blessing and no pride, no ego in
in, in what it is we do. And we need God's help more than
ever. And what it is we're called to
do, especially in these very, very challenging days of of
ministry in the world that we live in today.
But equivalent Priscilla, again, I can't emphasize enough couples
in the church, younger couples, older couples, allow God to use
your ministry together as couples.
A husband and a wife team in ministry is powerful.
I believe that Priscilla was a little bit more, not the head of
the home, but she was more influential, I think in some
degrees in the church. Maybe she had more time or
whatever just gifting upon her. But it's evident in the
Scriptures that God uses deep women of God, doesn't he?
He does not to teach as a pastor, not to teach men per SE
in a public setting, but to share the truth of the Word of
God. My wife, Cindy, she's the most
influential woman in my life spiritually.
I need her counsel even when I don't feel like hearing it, need
her encouragement, need her criticism.
Whatever it is that God wants to pour through her, I need to be
open to. And I've learned after 51 years
to realize that God speaks through her life in a mighty
way. We move on here.
And when he had desired to cross to IKEA, the brother wrote,
exhorting the disciples to receive him.
So in other words, there's a letter of accommodation here
that's going to go with Apollo's.
Hey, this guy's a good teacher. He's sound, he's faithful.
He's not a heretic. You can trust him.
Invite him with open arms into your church.
It says he greatly helped those who had believed through grace.
And that's how we believe the gospel.
It's all through grace, right? By grace, we've been saved
through faith, and that is not of ourselves.
It's a gift of God, not of works.
And no one can boast the gospel of grace, right?
We're praying this morning. Lord, help us to be gracious
people. Help us to give grace.
Help us to receive grace. Help us to teach grace and to
preach grace so that the people that here and are part of this
ministry can grow and abound in the grace of God.
For it says in verse 28 he vigorously refuted the Jews
publicly showing from the scriptures that Jesus is the
Christ. And I, I believe we need to be
vigorous in our proclamation of the gospel, not milk toast or
watering things down because we're afraid of offending
people. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
the living God. There's no other name under
heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
Jesus Christ is the only way. He is the way, He is the truth.
He is the life. No man comes to the Father but
through him. You mean to tell me you can't go
to heaven unless you have Jesus? That's exactly what we're
saying, right? Well, isn't that bigoted?
There Isn't that, you know, single minded or arrogant or you
know, whatever, Hey, we're just telling you what the Bible says.
We're telling you what the truth is.
We're telling you what the gospel is.
It's all about Jesus Christ and him crucified, his death, his
burial, his resurrection. So this is what this man
Apollo's did. He vigorously refuted the
rejection and the negativity of the Jewish people when they
tried to deny that Jesus was a Messiah.
He didn't let up and he showed them not from his own wisdom or
his own ability. He showed them from the
scriptures that Jesus is the Christ.
Amen. And that's what we do.
We show people right one another through the scriptures that
Jesus is the Christ. Father God, we thank you Lord,
we pray now that you would take this word that we studied and
seal it into our hearts. Is there any bitterness or
unforgiveness or self centeredness or lust or idols or
whatever, Lord, that shouldn't be there as a child of God?
Lord, forgive us and wash those things out if they're there.
And Father, if there's anyone here today that's never come to
faith in Jesus Christ, that the day you would knock on their
hearts, Father, and show them that you died for them and that
you rose again from the dead, that they might have everlasting
life. And the day would be the day
that they would believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
the living God. 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 moved 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 or 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. Pray about helping support the
new station that will reach thousands more listeners.
Send gifts to Grace FMPO Box 716, Greensburg, PA 15601.
If you can join us in person, you can subscribe to the Calvary
Chapel Westmoreland YouTube 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.