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.
I don't know if we were told that prior to becoming
believers. If someone said, by the way, if
you commit your life to Christ and you really want to follow
him and be serious about him, you're going to have some
struggles in life, persecution. And how many people would be
willing to sign up for that? No one told me that.
So I just believe real simply, and I'm thankful I did.
But if someone would have told me, if you become a believer,
you're going to have a lot of struggles, I might have had to
think about it a little bit. You may have heard it taught
that if you give your life to Jesus, all your troubles will
disappear. Well, in his message today,
Pastor Clark wants to set a few things straight.
You see, it is true. The biggest problem you'll ever
face in life is sin. So when you give your life to
Christ, you'll be forgiven of your sin and receive eternal
life. But The thing is that when you
follow Christ, you're choosing to do so in hostile territory.
Following Jesus is a difficult journey, but the destination is
eternal life. Now here's Pastor Clark in Acts
Chapter 8 with today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.
This is Acts chapter 8 where Paul was baptized by Ananias and
it talked about the things that we're going to occur in his life
and it says there how many things he must suffer for my
name's sake. So Paul was going to suffer a
great deal because he was a follower of now Jesus Christ.
And we don't think about that. We become believers.
We sometimes think that everything is going to be
perfect and awesome and no more problems, no more worries, no
more difficulties. But if you've been a Christian
for any length of time, you know that's just part of the story,
right? There is a lot of wonderful
things we experience, a lot of joy, a lot of overcoming power
in our life. We're not stuck in sin anymore,
but the difficulties we struggle with many times have to do with
people that don't want to identify with us anymore because
we've become believers. Sometimes that happens in a
household where maybe a husband becomes a believer in the wife
isn't yet or vice versa, or kids that aren't interested or family
members. And sometimes you're rejected by
your own family because of your faith in the Lord and that's
very, very painful to deal with. Also sometimes work, sometimes
employers if they find out that you're and zealous through your
faith and following Jesus Christ, they sometimes aren't
interested in promoting you or maybe they're interested in
eliminating your position. This has happened to many people
even in our own country. And so I wanted to look at a
couple verses regarding the difficulty that we have at times
because we're Christians and just be upfront about what we do
go through. And Second Timothy, Pastor Lewis
had taught us on this a few weeks ago.
But second Timothy chapter 3, this is a good reminder
regarding what will happen when we become followers of Jesus
Christ. It tells us in verse 11 he
speaks about this issue of persevering and persecutions
afflictions which happened to me at Antioch at Iconium at Lystra
what persecutions I endured out of them all the Lord delivered
me. Yes and all who desire to live
godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.
I don't know if we were told that prior to becoming
believers. If someone said by the way, if
you commit your life to Christ and you really want to follow
him and be serious about him. You're going to have some
struggles in life persecution and how many people would be
willing to sign up for that. No one told me that, so I just
believe real simply, and I'm thankful I did.
But if someone would have told me, if you become a believer,
you're going to have a lot of struggles.
I might have had to think about it a little bit, but now it's
too late. I'm already a believer, I have
gone through a lot and then we'll continually go through a
lot as you guys do too, following Jesus Christ.
But I wouldn't turn back or regret anything thus far in my
life. Regardless of the challenges and
difficulties that we experience as believers in Psalm chapter
34, this is a tremendous encouragement.
Psalm chapter 34. We'll flip through the Bible a
little bit here before we get started in Acts 21 today, but I
just wanted to sort of lay a foundation for why we go through
what we go through, and how the Lord is there to help us
continually. Psalm 34 verses 19 it says many
are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers
him out of them all. He guards all his bones, not one
of them is broken. Evil shall slay the wicked, and
those who hate the righteous shall be condemned.
The Lord redeems the soul of His servants, and none of those who
trust in him shall be condemned. I like what it says in verse 17
of that Psalm. The righteous cry out and the
Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.
So we all go through challenges, difficulties, but we can be
assured that when we call upon the Lord, he hears us and he
will eventually bring us through the difficult times.
And I love this. The Lord is near to those who
have a broken heart and say such as have a contrite spirit.
So when we're struggling, when our heart is broken, when we're
overwhelmed, we call upon the Lord, we cry out to him, we ask
for his help. He's always there to listen and
come alongside of us and get us through those challenging times.
Jesus himself and the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5 tells us
how to deal with the challenges that we go through.
It says in Matthew 10, blessed are those who are persecuted for
righteousness sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.
Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and say
all kinds of evil against you falsely for my name's sake.
Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in
heaven. For so they persecuted the
prophets who were before you. And Jesus has written this to
all of us, and we are persecuted.
We can thank the Lord that we are counted worthy as followers
of Jesus Christ to be suffering and challenged at times and have
difficulty from people who don't believe in the Lord and aren't
interested in following Him at this point in time.
And people watch how you and I walk through adversity and
persecutions. We have to show one another that
no matter how hard life can get at times and the challenges that
we face, we're trusting the Lord, right?
We're depending on him. We're not giving up, we're not
complaining, we're not whining. We're just OK, I'm going to
believe God in this challenge. And many times, you know, the
persecution comes this not from people who are unbelievers, but
it comes also from the enemy, the devil.
He comes to steal, rob, kill and destroy.
The devil is our enemies is not our friend and many times
affliction, adversity, financial challenges, health issues,
conflict. This is all part of what we deal
with as followers of Jesus Christ in this world.
Jesus said we will have tribulation, but he said be of
good cheer have overcome the world.
And then the apostle Paul himself that wrote the book of
Romans, you know, he also verifies the fact and we know
what he's been through and study more and acts what he went
through. It says in verse 3.
And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing
that tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance,
character and character hope. Now hope does not disappoint
because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the
Holy Spirit who was given to us. So when we have these challenges
and these difficulties in our lives, they cause us to grow
deeper in the Lord, don't they? They humble us.
They make us realize that there's more to life than this.
Focusing on what I can get from this present life in this world.
Whenever I go through struggles and difficulties, it reflects
upon my potential to be superficial as a Christian at
times, not to be all in maybe or be sidetracked by something
else. It's attracting my attention.
And whenever a persecution comes, or an adversity or a
trial or even a chastening of the Lord is discipline, whatever
it causes me to, you know, get on my face before the Lord and
begin to live for what really matters again, right?
Not living for temporal stuff, not living for this, my own
sense of my own opinion or my own feelings or my own hope to
have everything go well all the time.
It doesn't work that way. So the Lord allows the trials
and we, none of us like him, none of us like the persecution,
none of us like the afflictions, none of us like the tribulation,
whatever term you want to call it.
But we all have to go through these things because this is how
God makes us more like himself, his Son, Jesus Christ.
This is how we become conformed more to the image and likeness
of Jesus. And the Bible is full of
teaching on adversity. I don't know how some of these
teachers on TV talk about, you know, the best life.
Now, the best life is when you're with the Lord in heaven
for all, all eternity, right? That's the that's what we're
looking for. But in this world, we do have
many joys and we and experience many joys and blessings.
But we also have to understand that this is part of the
identity of being Christians. It tells us in the book of
Hebrews, it refers to some of the people that went through
difficult times. It says some of these people
that were used by the Lord in past times.
They stopped the mouths of lions in Hebrews Chapter 11.
They quenched the violence of fire.
They escaped the edge of the sword out of weakness, were made
strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight.
The armies of the aliens women received their dead, raised to
life again. Others were tortured, not
accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better
resurrection. Still others had trials of
mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment.
They were stoned, they were son, and two were tempted, were slain
with the sword. They wandered about, and
sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented,
of whom the world was not worthy, they wandered in deserts
and mountains and dens and caves of the earth.
And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith,
did not receive the promise. God having provided something
better for us, that they should not be made perfect.
Apart from us, all these people went through all these difficult
trials and heartache and torture and adversity and pain, and they
didn't see what we have experience in regard to the
death, burial and resurrection of Christ.
They were looking forward to that.
Now we look back and we remember what Christ did and how he
suffered for us. And so when we go through
suffering, Jesus makes us partners together with him
because if we're going to take part in the resurrection, it
says we're also going to have to endure the sufferings that
Christ went through personally. We identify with these things
ourselves. And it's a wonderful thing when
you can see it from a biblical perspective that whatever you
may be going through, you're not alone.
People in countless years of history before you and I have
gone through things that have been even more difficult and
more challenging to deal with. And Paul also says in verse 10
of 2nd Corinthians 12, therefore, I take pleasure in
infirmities and reproaches and needs and persecutions and
distress for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am
strong. Amen.
So whenever we get beaten down and we feel like we can't go on
and we're overwhelmed and just, you know, like over everything
that's happening in life, we just don't want to have to deal
with it or whatever the Holy Spirit comes upon us, encourages
us. And all of a sudden we realize
that we're strongest when we're weakest, when we're weak in
ourselves, we're strong in the Lord.
And that's the upside of the challenges that we go through
now since we're hitting on difficulties regarding these
kind of situations in life. I wanted to read something here
in regards to persecution. This is important to know
because right now in our country, we still have the
ability to do what we're doing today.
No one's going to break in here and tell us we can't worship.
No one's going to handcuff me and say, well, you, we're taking
you to jail and you're never going to be able to talk about
this stuff again. That's happening in places in
the world right now. It's hard for us to understand
that, but it's true. One in eight Christians
worldwide live in countries where they may face persecution.
So one in eight people are facing unbelievable situations.
Open Doors and international NGO advocating on behalf of
persecuted Christians released their annual World Watch List.
The World Watch List assesses 50 countries where Christians face
the most severe types of persecution.
The newly published data reveals that during the reporting
period, and this is from October and 2019 through September a
couple years later, more than 340 million Christians were
living in countries and where they might suffer high levels of
persecution and discrimination because of their faith.
Among this #309,000,000 Christians were living in
countries where they would experience unbelievable
situations that one in eight worldwide, one in six in Africa,
two out of five in Asia, and one in 12 in Latin America.
It researched this time that Christians. 4761 Christians were
killed for their faith. 4488 churches or Christian buildings
were attacked. 4277 Christians were unjustly arrested, detained
or in prison. 17110 Christians were abducted for faith related
reasons. On average every day 13
Christians are killed for their faith. 12 churches or Christian
buildings were attacked. 12 Christians are unjustly
arrested, detained, or in prison and five Christians are abducted
for faith related reason. It's hard to comprehend that
this is occurring right now throughout the world.
Extreme levels of persecution. Some of these places are so
radically insane that you would never consider wanting to be a
missionary in North Korea ranks #1 as a world's worst persecutor
of Christians. For the 20th consecutive year,
being a Christian in North Korea is a death sentence.
If not killed, Christians are taken to labor camps as
political criminals. Kim Jong Un is reported to have
expanded the system of prison camps in which an estimated 50
to 70,000 Christians are currently in prison.
Nigeria also entered the top 10 for the first time, reaching a
maximum violence score. Nigerian Christians face violent
attacks from Islamic extremist groups including Boko Haram,
Falami Muslim militia, Dairish affiliate, especially in
northern Nigeria. In the Middle Belt and Nigeria,
men and boys are particularly vulnerable to being killed.
The women and children they leave behind are often displaced
to informal camps, face sexual violence, or even at risk of
abduction and forced marriage. China has entered the top 20 for
the first time in a decade due to ongoing and increasing
surveillance and censorship of Christians and other religious
minorities in China. The policy of Since sizing the
church has been implemented nationwide as a Communist Party
limits whatever it perceives as a threat to its role in
ideology. Thousands of churches have been
damaged or closed. In some parts of China, children
under the age of 18 aren't allowed to attend church, part
of the country's effort to stunt future growth.
While China is ranked 17th as a place where Christians are
subjected to high level persecution, the situation of
all religious groups China is dire and has been deteriorating
over recent years. Considering the current trends
of persecution in China, it's expected that China will be
topping the list soon with North Korea as a worse place to live
as a Christian. I mean, there's an agenda that
the world has to basically eliminate Christianity from the
face of the earth. And so that's why it's even more
important for now for churches like ours to be simply teaching
the Bible simply verse by verse, day by day, week by week, month
by month, year by year. Having young people over there
getting discipled in the truth of the gospel so that their
worldview is a biblical worldview.
And they can stand against all this agenda of all this
godlessness that's occurring at the top levels of our government
today. We have to pray like we've never
prayed before, intercede, get before the Lord.
The Lord knows what's happening, but He's only going to move in
the degree that we're all committed together as a group of
people in our nation to pray for our country and that we can be 1
nation under God again. For right now, we are one nation
under secular humanism and moral relativism.
You and I are one nation under God.
We're the remnant, we're the church, we're the believers.
But the ongoing issues of our ideology, of our governmental
system right now and denouncing our Constitution, among many
other things, freedom of religion, freedom of rights,
culture wars, everything is occurring right now to divide
people and to cause more and more chaos in our world.
We need to just simply keep teaching the truth.
And Jesus told us that these things would occur in the last
days. And so the last days could be
another 1000 years. I don't know.
They felt like Paul and those guys, they all felt that they
were in the last days in the book of the Acts.
But obviously it's been 2000 years.
So the Lord's on the scene, He's on the way.
He's with us. He'll never leave us or forsake
us. But that's why it's important to
study the Bible so that when you were going through trials and
you're going through difficulties and things, you'd
understand. You go back to the Scriptures
and you're reminded God's got it all under control, doesn't He?
Amen. He's on the throne.
No matter what we read, no matter what we see, no matter
what we hear, His will is going to be completely, 100%
ultimately accomplished. And that's what gives us the
encouragement to keep on keeping on.
So turning your Bibles to Acts 21, this is the subtitle.
My Bible says warnings on the journey to Jerusalem.
So Paul has been persecuted at times.
He's been put in jail for a day or two.
But it's going to get a lot worse for him in these remaining
chapters of Acts. Now it came to pass that when he
had departed from them he set sail, running a straight course
we came to cost. The following day it arose, and
from there to Partara, and finding a ship sailing over to
Phoenicia, we went aboard and set sail.
And when we had sighted Cyprus, we passed it on the left, sailed
to Syria and landed a tire, for there the ship was to unload her
cargo. And finding disciples, we stayed
there seven days. So the wonderful thing is that
they found believers and they want to have some fellowship
now. So let's pray.
Father God, we are here today as a body of Christ believers to
encourage one another to build each other up.
That's the very presence of every life here today represents
people who are following you and trusting in you and living for
you, Lord, and your Kingdom. And from your vantage point, we
are the majority because heaven and earth will pass away, that
all those who do the will of God and the truth of the Word of God
will abide forever. You promise us these things,
Lord. So as we study today, we humble
our hearts before you that we might be able to be taught by
your Holy Spirit. Because you resist the proud,
You give grace to the humble. In Your name, Lord Jesus, I
humble myself along with my brothers and sisters that we
would be open to believe and no need to believe, but live out
the things we learned today and we pray all these things in
Jesus name, Amen. So he's there fellowshipping
with people. Some of these people he never
met before. I'm sure most of them he didn't.
He knew maybe something about them.
They were a result of the persecution that occurred in the
early part of the church and Acts, where churches spread out
and those regions and so many, many people became followers of
Christ. Paul wasn't responsible for
every church plan or every move that had occurred at that part
of the world at that time. And so they began to speak to
Paul. They told Paul through the
Spirit not to go up to Jerusalem.
The Holy Spirit's laying it upon their hearts to tell Paul that
it isn't a good idea to go to Jerusalem.
OK, He's hearing it right from them.
And when he had come to the end of those days, we departed, and
we went on our way, and they all accompanied us with wives and
children till we were out of the city, and we knelt down on the
shore and prayed. And when he had taken our leave
of one another, we boarded the ship and they returned home.
And what a beautiful setting. I'm an ocean guy.
And boy, I'll tell you, nothing better than praying on the
beach, right? And he's there with his brothers
and sisters and saying goodbye. And the kids are there and the
families are there and they're just worshiping the Lord and
they're praying for Godspeed and blessing upon the apostle Paul.
So you can mark in your notes, that's one warning right there
that he shouldn't go to Jerusalem.
Verse 7. And when he had finished our
voyage from Tyre, we came to put Talamas and greeted the brethren
and stayed with them one day. On the next day we who were
Paul's companions departed and came to Caesarea and entered the
House of Philip the Evangelist who was one of the seven and
stayed with him. You remember Philip had
witnessed to the Ethiopian eunuch.
He was one of the seven that was picked to help serve tables in
the church. The church was growing so much
they needed physical help to take care of the widows and some
of the other issues in the church.
But these are spirit filled men, gifted men with callings and
teaching abilities and preaching and evangelistic opportunities.
Philip was one of these seven and he went down and he went and
preached to the Ethiopian eunuch.
That guy ended up getting saved after he heard Philip explain
what Isaiah 53 meant. And eventually he baptized this
man in the water, complete immersion, baptized him in the
river there, and he came up. And then Philip was translated
and This is why he was able to go from 1:00 point in time and
space, and he was taken to another place approximately 3035
miles away. We're so glad you joined us
today on this edition of Living Waters of Grace.
Pastor Clark is teaching through the book of Acts, which is the
only book that chronicles the history of the early church
immediately after Jesus's ascension.
It gives us a front row seat to how the Gospel began to move
outward, starting in Jerusalem and reaching into the heart of
the Roman Empire. In just three decades, a small
group of frightened ordinary believers became a bold, spirit
empowered movement that transformed the known world.
Acts is not just a history lesson.
It's a reminder of what God can do when His people are
surrendered, obedient, and filled with the Holy Spirit.
Their perseverance still inspires us today.
May we follow their example and live faithfully for Christ in
our own time. We hope today's message
encouraged you. Living Waters of Grace is a
ministry of Calvary Chapel, Westmoreland.
If you're in the Greensburg, PA area, we'd love to have you join
us in person. Our Sunday service begins at
10:30 AM at 400 E Pittsburgh St. Unit 6B.
Be sure to visit calvarychapelonline.com to
confirm times and learn more. If you are in the Greensburg
area, you can listen to Grace FM on the new 91.7 frequency.
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Gifts can be sent to Grace FMPO Box 716, Greensburg, PA 15601.
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Thank you for tuning in and spending this time in God's
Word. Be sure to join us again for
Living Waters of Grace.