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.
We all have a tendency at times to ask God question, but why are
you allowing this Lord or what's the purpose in this or how can
anything good come out of this? We, we struggle at times with,
with God's sovereign hand and, and his work in our lives.
We have to understand there's always a bigger picture behind
everything that happens in our lives.
The Bible tells us and we all memorize the verse that all
things work together for good, right?
All things that means the bad things.
There's a famous Carrie Underwood song called Jesus Take
the Wheel, which is told from the perspective of a woman who
miraculously survives a car crash.
But in today's message, Pastor Clark teaches you that trusting
Jesus doesn't require you to give him the wheel temporarily.
Instead, you're supposed to fully surrender your life to
him, even though you don't know where the road will lead.
But fear not, God's Word teaches that He works everything out for
the good of those who serve Him. Now here's Pastor Clark in the
book of Acts Chapter 4 with today's edition of Living Waters
of Grace. So we are in the book of the
Acts going through this book verse by verse study.
Can we are in chapter 4 and this is verse 23 where the apostles
had this gotten released from the incarceration from the
authorities and the empire there that were trying to control them
and not allow them to share their faith in the streets.
They got delivered from this abuse and persecution.
And now they're going back to report to the rest of the group
that they are in communion with the body of Christ to pray for
boldness. So we'll pick it up here in
verse 23. And being let go, they went to
their own companions and reported all that the chief
priests and elders had said to them.
And so when they heard that, they raised their voice to God
with 1 accord and said, Lord, you are God who made heaven and
earth and the sea and all that is in them.
So right away they're worshipping God for His
sovereign power and His ability to understand that God's always
in control no matter what is happening.
They were going through some difficult times, being
challenged by sharing their faith in the streets, and they
were being told they couldn't do this anymore.
And so instead of complaining about the authorities or asking
God's vengeance upon the government, they went right to
the Lord to praise Him. First of all, that in spite of
everything that's happening in their lives right now, they know
they're in the center of God's will and they know that He's in
charge. Nothing's happening outside of
God's awareness and His wisdom, and we have to keep that in mind
when we go through difficult times in life and challenges
that we don't understand. We have to realize that God is
not abandoned us. He's always there with us and
for us. He cares for us, He loves us,
and he promises He'll never leave us or forsake us.
And in those times of the dark nights of the soul that we all
have, we have to get before the Lord and say, Lord, I believe,
help my unbelief. Help me to stay faithful, not to
to go backwards, but to trust in You even though I don't
understand what is occurring right now.
Jeremiah, the prophet in the Old Testament was told to go preach
the word and he went to people that didn't want to hear what he
was saying. And because of that, they
eventually put him in prison. And he was upset with God
saying, I don't want to do this anymore.
I'm done, I'm resigning. I didn't sign up for this kind
of stuff. And the Lord let him Stew in his
own frustration. And eventually Jeremiah said, I
cannot but help to preach the word because it's like fire in
my bones. And so no matter what he wanted
to do, no matter what he wanted to stop the one or run or
whatever, he just had this constant urge in his heart to
share the truth of who God is with people.
And that's I'm sure the case with all of us.
We have that same Holy Spirit in us.
So they're worshipping God. And it's a good prayer dialogue
here to sort of think about when we go to the Lord to pray, how
do we start? Do we right away ask him about
things or tell him our troubles, or do we worship him for who he
is and how great he is? Because whenever you start a
prayer like this of God being the creator of everything that
exists, you begin to see how big God is as opposed to how small
you might think he is. When you got the big problem in
front of your eyes, you can't overcome and you're letting it
bring you down and and give you a depression and discouragement.
Well, here they're worshipping God together communally with one
heart and one, one mind. And they referred to David's
prayer and, and Psalm 2 as they're beginning to talk about
the the greatness of God. And David recognized the
greatness of God in his life and in his ministry.
And he said in Psalm 2, why did the nation's rage and the people
plot vain things? The kings of the earth took
their stand and the rulers were gathered together against the
Lord and against His Christ. And so since the beginning of
time, the day when the Lord will completely eliminate the
influence of Satan on this planet, on this earth, in this
universe. And what a day that will be.
But this is the testimony of what it's like to be a people of
God living in a world without God.
Look at the nations. Look how they raised.
Look at all the ungodliness that's being legislated and the
mandates that are being put upon different countries that have
nothing to do with the greatness of who God is.
Man wants to take control and he wants to run this world.
And the more we try to run the world without the grace of God
and the Holy Spirit, the more we destroy this world and destroy
one another. The writer continues here for
Truly in verse 27 against your holy servant Jesus, whom you
anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the
people of Israel were gathered together to do whatever your
hand and your purpose determined before to be done.
So he's listing here Luke these different characters that were
responsible for putting Christ on the cross along with our sin,
obviously putting him on the cross.
And the big picture is here that God used all these players that
are mentioned here to be part of the fulfillment of his plan to
accomplish the prophetical plan that Christ would be crucified
and that the world would come against him.
And so they were just in communion, basically not even
unaware of it, that they were supporting and fulfilling the
plan of God even with their evilness.
And He said that they did whatever his hand, your hand,
your purpose determined before to be done.
We, we think lots of times in life about certain things that
occur and why they happen the way they do.
And we all have a tendency at times to ask God question, But
why are you allowing this Lord? Or what's the purpose in this or
how can anything good come out of this?
We, we struggle at times with, with God's sovereign hand in, in
his work in our lives. We have to understand there's
always a bigger picture behind everything that happens in our
lives. The Bible tells us and we all
memorize the verse that all things work together for good
right all things That means the bad things, the heartbreaking
things, the challenging things, everything all things work
together for good to those who love God and are called
according to his purpose. Then the next verse says for
those he did for know he did predestined to become conformed
to the image and likeness of his son.
So the challenges of life and the heartache of life at times
is making us a little more like Jesus.
Jesus is the representative to us of how we are to live this
life. We, we need to understand and
experience a little bit of what he had gone through and what he
went through for us so that we can begin to be humbled and
begin to be interested in others more so than we maybe think
about ourselves. And so he says now verse 29, to
begin to petition Lord, look on their threats and grant to your
servants that with all boldness they may speak your word.
So this was what they were praying for.
Lord, look at how they're trying to stop us from preaching your
word. Look how the culture today is
trying to undermine the authority of God and the world
and the church and the Word, how in some parts of the world
people are being persecuted and proclaiming this book, the
Bible, as being the word of God and the truth of God.
Lord, give us this grace. And Lord's aware of all these
threats. He's aware of what we need.
And we need to have boldness, all of us.
And they needed boldness in this time to speak your word.
So all of us at times we get nervous when we have a chance to
share the Lord with people. Holy Spirit's got our chest sort
of going and we know, Hey, I this is the Lord wants me to, to
say something here. And sometimes we don't listen
and we regret that. But there's always obviously
other opportunities. But whenever he begins to work
with us, we can't do this in our own strength to proclaim the the
goodness in the word of God. We need the power of the Holy
Spirit, all of us, to be able to follow through and give the
message in the power of God. And so they're praying for
boldness that they may speak the word.
They were just threatened and told you will not speak this
man's name, Jesus again to anybody.
And they understood the consequences when they were
being told that by those in authority.
But then Peter said, well, we can't but help but the proclaim
what it is that he's done and who he is.
And, and they were obviously not going to listen to the edict of
the governing authorities at the time.
Later on, they say there's times in life where we have to obey
God rather than man right. And we're probably living in
days like that ourselves as a a country.
We have to understand our rights as citizens and our rights as
Christians. But our allegiance is really to
one who created everything. It's not to any governing
authority. We, we obey those who have
authority over us. We pray for them, that kind of
stuff. But whenever that authority
circumvents the will of God, that's when all of us in our own
conscience have to decide what are we going to do?
Are we going to listen to God or are we going to fear man?
And that's something that we are all, I'm sure, thinking about
more in the days that we're living.
And so then they also prayed that your word will have the
power, obviously to change the lives, but by stretching out
your hand to heal, it wasn't them praying.
God give us the power to heal or create miracles, all this stuff.
They always understood the apostles, that any miraculous
power that was manifest was not manifest by anybody's human
ability or the will of man. They were asking God to stretch
out his hand. Jesus is the great healer.
He's Jehovah Rapha, He's the great physician.
He has the power to heal, still heals and he's able to stretch
out his hand to heal. And that signs and wonders may
be done through the name of your holy servant, Jesus.
So in the early church, the amount of miracles that were
occurring on any given day were just unbelievable.
This is a common occurrence, signs and wonders miracles.
And then so as a result of that, it got activity, it got people
interested. Now a lot, not everybody that
came to to experience miracles or to see miracles became
followers of the Lord. Many of them just wanted the
hype and the excitement, but they had no interest in
repenting and living after the ways of God.
But nonetheless, the Lord used this Apostolic authority in the
beginning stages of the church to shape the church.
And so then they continue there here in verse 32.
And, and I'm thinking about like your life and mine, like this
past week. Did you have an opportunity to
share your faith with anybody? Did you have a chance to pray
with someone, to do a random act of kindness for someone in the
name of Jesus? Were you praying specifically
for a situation to come to pass in someone else's life that you
were burdened for that? Did you make a phone call to let
someone know you were thinking of them or caring about them?
These are all acts of power and boldness to come from the heart
of God who dwells in US through us as the people of God that we
might be instruments in his hands to be the hands and feet
of Jesus in this world of, of, of struggle and and challenge.
Cindy called me this week all excited.
She says you wouldn't guess you believe what the Lord did for
me. I, I visited this lady in the
development of an older woman where my mom lives and she's
having to like move out of her house and get rid of all her
belongings and she has to move into one of the skilled nursing
facilities. And she's, you know, you know,
overwhelmed that she has to do this in her life.
And she's looking at all the stuff and the memories and when
her husband was alive and all the beautiful experiences they
had. And her heart was sad that, you
know, she didn't, she knew she couldn't take everything with
her. And so Cindy said, why don't you
look at the things that are most important to give you the most
happy memories and just take those things.
And so they were talking and then the Lord just put on
Cindy's heart to ask the lady if she could pray for her.
And the woman said yes. And Cindy was so blessed that
she was able to be in that place providentially by God and a
situation that she wasn't even planning on doing.
The Lord just put on her heart to stop at this home and, and
then the Lord opened the door for her to minister Jesus to
this woman. And, and, and so the woman was
blessed and she was touched and, and tears and that kind of
stuff. But but Cindy was really blessed
and, and, and I, I was blessed and I have a, a wife, obviously,
who cares about people and, and wants to be used by the Lord,
right? That's, that's awesome, right?
And we all want to be that way. And it's all the work of the
Holy Spirit. He's the one that sets these
opportunities up. So they're they're talking about
this work of God and then it says in verse 31, and when they
had prayed, they were praying together with one heart and one
mind where they were assembled together.
It was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and
they spoke the word of God with boldness.
So I don't know how many people were here at this time, but it
was the apostles and the church beginning stages of the people
in the church. I'm sure a good number of people
assembled there. It wasn't evidence that this,
the apostles were filled, but the whole church was filled with
the Holy Spirit. It wasn't another Pentecost.
There's only one Pentecost. There's only one Calvary.
But it was a replication, if you may, of the influence and the
power of God being able to continually give the church and
the believers the power to do the work of the ministry.
And so, you know, we pray here, God, fill us with your spirit.
Fill us today as we're studying your word, Phyllis, as we
worship Phyllis, so that we go out of this place today
different than when we came and that we all have our antennas up
to want to be used by the Lord in a specific way, right?
To be used by God, to be able to have the Lord put aside our
obsessions and our compulsive natures at times of why I got to
do all this stuff first, you know, and then maybe I'll have
time to do some stuff that the Lord might be interested in.
So that's the opposite, right? The Bible says seek first the
Kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Seek first His will, His plan, His purposes, and everything
else you have need of will be added unto you.
And so they were filled, and we'll read throughout the book
of the Acts this tremendous work of God, the Holy Spirit filling
them with His power. I get up sometimes in the
morning and sometimes I don't feel like getting up.
I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to do anything.
That is going to be bummed out some days, right?
And then I say, Lord, come on, I need power, I need strength, I
need your, your love, your ability.
You know, you got to get me in gear here because if you don't,
I'm not going anywhere, right? And the Lord does that.
He's faithful to fill us. He's he's faithful to refresh us
and to renew us. And, and we got to be reminded
of the fact that we need the power of the Holy Spirit.
He's been given to us to give us the strength to live the
Christian life and to do our jobs and to do our marriages and
do our family life and all the things that we, we deal with in
life. Everything has to be done in and
through the power of the Holy Spirit.
And I'm amazed at how often and we have a tendency to try to do
stuff on our own strength. These guys were faced with a
challenge. They knew they needed to pray.
They got the people praying together with them and then they
petitioned God to do what they needed him to do in order for
them to be able to speak the word of God with boldness.
So then we continue in verse 32. This is when they began to share
all things. Now when we study Acts, a lot of
churches nowadays, they talk about wanting to get back to the
early church. Well, there's certain principles
of the early church that are eternal, if you may, the
teaching of the word, meeting in the apostles, doctrine,
fellowship, prayers and the breaking of bread, which is the
Lord's Supper and the Lord adds daily to the church such as
those who are being saved. But this instance of what they
did here in the beginning stages here was not something that we
see carried on in the pastoral epistles.
This is a one time experience. Some ideas that some folks had
that they thought they could share everything and and
breakdown their assets so that everybody would have enough to
be able to to take care of everything that was happening.
The problem was at this time that that there were so many
people in Jerusalem because of Pentecost, that there was a lot
of people who had left their homes and their families
temporarily and their jobs. And so they were there in this
phenomena of this early church, this excitement.
So there was a lot of people that needed shelter, they needed
food, they needed provision. So they figure, let's pour our
assets together so we can take care of all the needs of the
people. Well, eventually this thing
stopped because first of all, they ran out of money.
Everybody needs to work in order to continually fuel the bills,
pay the bills that take care of the needs of the of the church,
that kind of stuff. So this wasn't written down as a
gospel mandate that this is what the church was to do.
If you want to know about giving and and participating in
community. Second Corinthians chapter 8
talks about why we give. We don't give out of compulsion.
We give willingly, cheerfully, as God has caused us to purpose
in our hearts or God loves a cheerful giver.
It wasn't like, you know, bring everything that you own to the
Calvary Chapel altar. And we, we, we figure out what
we do with it. You know, we take a portion of
what it is that God blesses us with.
We sow it into his Kingdom. He says, if we sow liberally,
we'll reap liberally. If we so sparingly, we'll reap
sparingly. So we have this desire in our
hearts as the Holy Spirit works in the church to give into the
work of the ministry. But anyway, these guys, what
they decided to do at this time says the multitude of those who
believe we're one heart and one soul.
And that's. Critical in a local ministry.
You want to have the same heart and the same mind.
Neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was
his own, but they had all things in common.
So when you think about your assets and what God's entrusted
you with, they're really His. And He entrusts those things to
you to use accordingly, right? Use them for His Kingdom.
You use them for your goals, your pleasure.
He gives us the opportunity to use what it is He's entrusted us
with. But we have to all be good
stewards. We're going to give an account
God and how we use what it is He trusted us with.
But they had this plan to share things in common.
And with great power, the apostles gave witness to the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus. So the preaching was happening,
the Word of God was going out, the people were coming to know
Christ, or at least thinking about coming to Him, and great
grace was upon them all. So in the beginning stages of
the New Testament church, the grace of God was so abundant.
The church was so pure. There was so much love and
humility and simplicity. They didn't have a lot of
complicated things going on back in those days, or there was no
such thing as a praise ban. There was no such thing as
technology and computers and Wi-Fi and Internet.
I mean, we didn't have all that stuff back then.
And yet, believe it or not, God still is able to accomplish his
will, right? But they didn't even have a
building. They were in the streets in
those days. They met in the Solomon's
portico, borrowed the porch together as an assembly.
But basically, ministry was always happening out in the the
streets as the word of God was being proclaimed.
But great grace is upon them all.
And I think one of the important things to remember in the
Christian life and in the local church is that you try to keep
things as simple as you can, right?
That's really important because soon as they become complicated,
then we begin to get in the way of the Spirit of God.
We begin to quench the Spirit of God, We begin to grieve the
Spirit of God. Paul's heart, when he preached,
he said the one thing he was most concerned about as a church
began to develop was that the minds of the people would be
corrupted from the simplicity that's in Christ Jesus.
If our minds get complicated about church and ministry and
knowing the simplicity of the Bible, Jesus loves me.
This I know for or the Bible tells me.
So it doesn't get any better than that, right?
And then walking in that reality of God's love and experiencing
that on a daily basis, that's where it's at, right?
Whenever something begins to become a strain or pressure or
you know, passionless, then you know, Chuck Smith used to say
when something's on life support, in other words, man's
trying to keep it going, pull the plug.
It's already dead right? Don't try to make something
happen that God isn't in. And we all have a tendency at
times to do certain things. And lots of times we we begin to
do ministries in our lives. And it doesn't mean just because
we don't see anything happening right away that God isn't in it.
Sometimes God's testing, our perseverance, our dependence on
him, our patience are waiting upon the Lord.
The Bible says those who wait upon the Lord, right?
Waiting on the Lord is a hard thing to do.
They shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings
like eagles. They shall run and not be weary.
They shall walk and not faint. And you may be waiting on the
Lord for something in your life to come to pass.
Don't get discouraged and don't get downtrodden.
Whenever God gives you a vision and a purpose and a plan, keep
on keeping on, and in time you'll see the fruit come forth
as He blesses what it is. And He's called you to put your
hand too. Don't ever give up.
Thank you for listening to this edition of Living Waters of
Grace. Pastor Clark is teaching us
about the book of Acts in this series.
Acts is a powerful and unique part of Scripture, not just
because it records the spread of the gospel geographically from
Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, but also culturally.
Acts shows us how the message of Jesus moved beyond its Jewish
roots and began to reach the Gentile world.
What started with Peter leading a small group in the Upper Room
became a global movement with Paul taking the gospel to
cities, synagogues, and marketplaces across the Roman
Empire. Acts captures this vital
transition and reminds us that the good news of Jesus is for
all people in every place. May we be inspired to carry that
same gospel boldly into our world today.
Living Waters of Grace comes to you from Calvary Chapel,
Westmoreland. If you're in the Greensburg, PA
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