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.
Idolatry is fashioned in many ways today.
We don't have shrines and temples of of some ridiculous
Pagan deity around our necks. At least I hope we don't.
But idolatry is in the form of a lot of other things.
It can be our material wealth. It can be something we own that
we love and that every time we see it, we just smile and say
that's mine, you know? And I'm going to give hours a
day to whatever I think is important.
That's mine. It could be making sure you see
every football game possible on Sundays, or maybe it's never
missing a single CrossFit session.
You have ATV show that you claim as yours.
Or maybe you own a car that you can't stand to have any
scratches on. Pastor Clark makes it clear
today that idolatry in today's time is different than Bible
times. And yet it's kind of the same.
It's giving your heart and your devotion over to something other
than God. So take some time and think
about this. What or who are you worshipping
now? Here's Pastor Clark in the book
of Acts Chapter 19 with today's edition of Living Waters of
Grace. Acts chapter 19.
We're going to look at the verse 18 before we go into today's
text. And many who had believed came
confessing and telling their deeds.
Also, many of those who had practiced magic brought their
books together and burned them in the sight of all.
And they counted up the value of them, and it totaled 50,000
pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord grew
mightily and prevailed. Verse 21.
And when these things were accomplished, then Paul's going
to begin to talk about what's next in his life.
This is a big deal. And what happened here and what
we read about Whenever the Holy Spirit works in our lives, there
is a transition from one way of living to a new way of living.
And I loved it when Pastor Lewis was teaching us in First
Thessalonians because there's a verse there that really ties
into what happened to these people in Ephesus.
Same thing with the Thessalonian believers in First Thessalonians
19. It said what manner of entry we
had to you. In other words, the apostles are
saying how the Word impacted him and how you turn to God from
idols to serve the living and true God.
So conversion or repentance or belief in faith in Jesus Christ
is just not like this mental thing we we do.
So we go to heaven. I mean, that's a good thing that
we go to heaven if we trust in Christ.
But it's much deeper than this believing so that we might have
a better life. Now, the purpose of coming to
Christ is a term from the old way of life, the way we used to
live and the way we used to be wired in other, in other words,
and how we thought about life and what we did in our lives,
the things we regret now that we're Christian.
So true repentance is always a change of mind.
You change the way you're living.
And even to this day when I study the Scriptures and when I
pray and I have my time with the Lord, I'm always open.
I want him to show me things in my life that He wants to still
change. It's not like once we become
Christians, we don't need to change, right?
There's this continual transformation by the Holy
Spirit to conform us more to the image and likeness of Jesus.
So when I whenever I'm talking to the Lord and and thinking
about things I say to him, is there anything in my life right
now that isn't the way it should be that you want to change, that
you want me to to look at differently and respond to you
differently. And there's never really a time
where he doesn't share something with me that's helpful to help
me want to be more like him and to let go of some things that
sometimes get in the way of my relationship with him.
And that's that intimacy, that relationship we have with Jesus.
And as we were worshipping, I, I was thinking back there that
it's so incredible that each of us can have a personal
relationship with the Lord that I've never physically, outside
of a spiritual touch, touch the Lord.
I, I haven't seen him as, as a human being other than the lives
and the writings of the Scripture.
I don't see him like I, I see you physically at this point in
time, but one day I will see him.
The Bible says we'll see him face to face and we will see him
and we shall become like him because we shall see him as he
is. He truly is.
So one day we will have that privilege of physically
encountering Jesus as a man and as a as a risen savior when we
go to heaven. But what's incredible for you
and I, when we think about this privilege we have to have this
communion with the Lord, is that we can talk with him moment by
moment, That we can lay our head down in the pillow at night when
we're troubled and, and talk to him and he listens and he
responds to us when we're overwhelmed by life and this
having difficulty with whatever we might be going through, we
can ask for his help and he'll help us.
He's he's always near. I love what it tells us in
Hebrews that we don't have a high priest who cannot be
touched with the feeling of our weaknesses, our infirmities, but
was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.
And then the writer says that we can have boldness to enter into
the holy place by the blood of Jesus, this relationship of
Christ shed blood that enables sinners to go into the presence
of God and not be rejected. And we can go into that throne
room of grace and find mercy and help in our time of need.
Isn't that wonderful? You don't have to come to church
in your time of need. You can go right to Jesus
wherever you are, in your car, in your house, in your
apartment, in your bedroom, and you know, your leisure time.
You, you can go to the Lord 24/7.
And how privileged we are to have that relationship.
And I hope and I trust that you're taking advantage of that
relationship. The Lord has provided for you
through his death, burial, and resurrection, that you can have
a real conversation with God and he'll have a real conversation
back with you. That's priceless.
And this is something that the world doesn't know about.
We see the headlines this past week of this tremendous,
horrific assault on this young man who didn't do anything other
than run, and he was assaulted and brutalized and murdered for
no good reason. And this is just a tippity
iceberg. We get the the news all the
time. I mean, I'm reading about
husbands shooting wives, wives killing husbands, riots, mobs,
you know, fighting, you know, out in the streets and trying to
force us as Christians to accept godless ideologies and, and, and
basically wanting to shut us up and to tell us that our opinions
don't matter and, and in regard to marriage or sexuality or
whatever. And so we're living in times
when you study this with me today, understand that this is
going on today too, Not to the degree that it was an Ephesus in
America. Pray that it never will been in
Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Emirate Republic,
Pakistan, India, you know, China, all these places in the
world, people are being brutally tortured for their faith in
Jesus Christ. And so as we study this, we have
to understand the courage that Paul had.
Paul was not afraid of a fight. God gave him the strength to
persevere. He always had this desire to
take the gospel to wherever he could take it.
And he always had a great attitude.
He was always positive, he was always joyful.
He had his time of struggles. He talked about despairing of
life itself at times and being brutalized himself and people
throwing rocks at him and that kind of stuff.
But it never stopped him from what it was that God called him
to do. And I think about your call as a
Christian mind. As a Christian, God has certain
purposes for your life and relationships He wants you to
have with people. And lots of times those
relationships will end up in conflict because of your
position regarding who Jesus Christ is and how you live.
Some people will reject you, some people won't like you, some
people want to argue with you, some people want to slander you
or whatever. At this point in time, you know,
they might even want to fight you or beat you or whatever.
I, I, I pray that's not the case in our time.
But we have to be ready for whatever may come down the road.
And we have to be willing to stand as the apostle Paul stood
and those who served with him in this particular time.
So Paul is purposing in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit speaking
to Paul about the next goal that the Lord had for him.
That is, he's beginning to complete his ministry after a
couple years in Ephesus. He's been teaching for two years
in that Bible school. The school tyrannis 8 hours, 6
hours, 8 hours a day for six days a week for two to three
years. If you were in that place with
him, you would be out on the streets sharing what it is you
have learned because it was just so living and so fresh and so
alive and so anointed of God. People's lives are being
transformed to the degree and it was impacting the commerce of
this Pagan city in a very negative way.
And it says when he had passed through Macedonia and Arcade to
go to Jerusalem, saying after I've been there, I must also see
Rome. So already Paul has got his eyes
on other opportunities to minister, and so it says in
verse 22, so he sent into Macedonia two of those who
ministered to him, Timothy and Rastus, but he himself stayed in
Asia for a time. Now, there's a lot of things
that go on when we study the Bible.
You sort of have to be willing to look at some other passages
in order to have some things make sense because he's talking
about a lot of geography here. But if you looked at these maps,
you would see how, how close these different places were and
how you were able to get to these different places in a
period of days or weeks or whatever, using boats or donkeys
or walking, whatever. And so there was no part in that
known world at the time that Paul wasn't anxious to get to to
do the ministry. And so this this issue here of
these different places he's mentioning, Paul wrote to the
Corinthian church from the city of Ephesus.
And the Corinthians is another book in the Bible we'll get to
eventually. He also wrote from Rome to
Ephesus. So why was he interested in
going to Rome? And I want to look at Romans
chapter 15 for a minute. And this all ties together with
Paul's great heart of missions. It says in the heading there
plan to visit Rome. For this reason I also have been
much hindered from coming to you.
But now I'm no longer having a place in these parts and having
a great desire of these many years to come to you whenever I
journey to Spain. So not any was he planning on
going to Rome, but he eventually wanted to get to Spain.
I don't know if he ever got there or not.
We don't have any indication he did or didn't.
But that was a plan. He says I shall come come to you
for I hope to see you on my journey and to be helped on my
way there by you. If first I may enjoy your
company for a while. So Paul not, and he liked
teaching, but he liked being around people like us so he
could have fellowship with them because we would encourage him.
But now I'm going to Jerusalem to minister to the Saints.
Now, Jerusalem was in a time of famine and poverty.
And so whenever we know about people who are in crisis,
through missions, our own missionaries that we support, or
through Calvary Chapel, that lets us know about different
things that are going on in the world.
We have the ability to budget part of what it is.
It comes in through the offerings to go help people in
crisis, even though we're not going to physically be there.
And so Paul's going to Jerusalem to minister to the Saints for
it, please those from Macedonia and IKEA to make a certain
contribution for the poor among the Saints who are in Jerusalem.
So Paul sending Timothy and Erasus to these places to
receive the offerings that these cities had stored up for the
help of those who are suffering in Jerusalem.
And it says it pleased them indeed, and they are their
debtors. For if the Gentiles have been
partakers of the spiritual things, so in other words, they
became believers because of Paul and the ministry and the Word
and the gospel. Their duty now is also to
minister to the people that helped them in material things.
Therefore, when I performed this sealed to them this fruit, I
shall go by way of you to Spain. But I know that when I come, I
shall come in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of
Christ. So here we are reading about
things an ethicist, but Paul spiritually multitasking like
you and I do, you're thinking about maybe later what you're
going to do and you know, is a Bengals going to win or the
Chiefs and all these things are thinking about today, right?
Really important stuff I must say, right?
Depending on who you want to win, right, But you know, you're
thinking about next week and family and people that you wish
would come to church with you that haven't yet or people that
you love that don't know the Lord yet.
You have all these thoughts and you're thinking, well, I take
this trip to this place one day and I see these friends or
relatives or these coworkers. I'm going to tell them more
about my faith and what Christ did for me.
That's that's a good thing that the Holy Spirit is always
putting things in our heart that we can think about doing in the
days ahead, the further the gospel.
But Paul, even though he's an Asian Ephesus, at this time,
he's already thinking about all these other things that need to
be accomplished. And 1st Corinthians is also
tying into this. If you turn there, First
Corinthians 16, I read verses one through 4 and Pauls talking
about this collection that they're going to take to
Jerusalem. Now concerning the collection
for the Saints, as I've given orders to the churches of
Galatia, so you must do also on the first day of the week, let
each one of you lay something up aside, storing up as he may
prosper, that there be no collections.
When I came, when I come, and when I come, whomever you
approve by your letters, I will send to bear your gift to
Jerusalem. But if it is fitting that I go
also, they will go with me. So, So these churches work
together and obviously they gave offerings like we do, you know,
monthly or weekly or however we do it online or anything
offering boxes outside. So that like if there's a big
issue here, and I've never had to do this, nor has Lewis not,
nor do we ever want to do it. We're not interested in begging
for money or asking for money. You guys give liberally as God
is purpose in your heart for God loves a cheerful giver.
He doesn't want to manipulate any of us.
He doesn't want to force us. That's a privilege that we give
what it is that the Lord prospers us with.
But whenever we have a need or a missionary rights us or we have
something in our heart of benevolence or crisis in the
church, we don't have to say, well, this family has this
problem. We're going to take a special
offering today so we can help this family or help these
missionaries. Everything that comes into the
church is put in a a general fund for George, who's the
financial guy here to help us determine what it is we can
budget and how we can help. And so the Lord has never not
had funds in the storehouse for us to be able to use things for
people and missionaries and struggles and people in in
crisis and that kind of stuff. And this is all taught
throughout the New Testament. So as Paul is working in
Ephesus, he already has a heart in his mind.
He's serving the believers in Ephesus, but he's concerned
about the church in Jerusalem and he's also wanting to go
visit these other places to see how they're doing since the
churches have been established. That's a beautiful, beautiful
thing to, to see how these things are all weaved together
in the Scriptures. And, and about that time in
verse 23, as as he's thinking and planning and and talking
about the things ahead, there arose a great commotion about
the way. The way was considered the name
of the new group of followers of Jesus Christ.
Yeah, The way represented John 14-6, where Jesus said I am the
way, I am the truth. I'm the life.
No man comes to the Father but through me.
The way is the only way. There is only one way, right?
His way. And he said, it's so clear.
Aren't you glad he didn't say, well, I'm one of the ways, or
this is something you should consider?
There are other ways. No, he was real clear so we
wouldn't be confused. Jesus is the only way, and we're
not bigoted. We believe what he said and we
know it's true because we found the truth in regard to our
salvation is only wrought in the person, in the work of Jesus
Christ. He's the only one that has
conquered the grave. He's only the one that's
overcome death. He's the only one that's
sinless. He's the only one that's
perfect, and He's the only one that could die on the cross to
redeem us and save us and atone for our sins.
And so these people are uptight about this issue of the way a
lot of people are getting aggravated and why Verse 24 for
a certain man named Demetrius, the silversmith who made silver
shrines of Diana brought no small profit to the Craftsman.
So this guy made his livelihood from making idols out of silver
and crafting these little mini miniature gods, replicating the
temple of the person of Diana the high priestess, if you may.
And it was really a weird image and multi breasted woman.
And the temple prostitutes at this temple of Diana would go in
their short skirts and and have one breast exposed to represent
the the deity of this Diana temple prostitutes.
All kind of Pagan rituals and occultic things going on.
I mean, the whole thing was crazy.
What's happening is Paul and his preaching in the school at
Tyrannis. People like us are there and all
of a sudden maybe we had these little idols in our house or
warm around our neck. Some people did that.
All of a sudden we're hearing the word of God and the truth
regarding Jesus Christ, and all of a sudden we want to get rid
of these things, right? And that was the purpose of the
fire and burning those things and throwing them away.
This being free from it. Well, as a result of this
happening in the community in the city of Ephesus, there was
less people buying these things. So if you made good living by
making these things, maybe you're selling, you know, 1000 a
week or something. And all of a sudden you look at
your numbers and now they're 600 a week and then they're 400 a
week and then they're three. You know, you're, you're
starting to get bothered, right? Because you know that what's
happening in the city now is impacting your livelihood.
So this is the purpose of why Demetrius is beginning to get
this crowd together, because he made these silver shrines of
Diana and it brought a lot of money to the Craftsman who were.
Involved in it, it says in verse 24 he called them together with
the workers of similar occupation.
So he's getting all the people in the union together to tell
them about what's going on and why the numbers are down and why
the revenue is a lot less than what it once was.
Because they probably didn't really quite grasp the impact
that Christianity was having in the city of Ephesus.
So he calls them together and he says, man, you know that we have
our prosperity by this trade. This is how we make our
livelihood. Moreover, you see in here that
not only at Ephesus, but throughout almost all Asia, this
Paul has persuaded and turned away many people saying that
they are not gods which are made with hands.
Now, Paul never once picketed in front of the temple of Diana.
There's no indication that he was there with signs and, and,
and telling everybody, don't go in there and don't do this.
Don't do that. He was just teaching the word.
And whenever you teach the word, it has an impact on lives.
It it changes your thought process, it changes your
worldview. It changes what your priorities
are and what you invest and spend your money on you.
If you're doing things that aren't right, the Holy Spirit
convicts you and speaks to your heart inwardly and says, you
know this isn't cool. You know, you know, you really
need to let this go. You need to move away from this,
this idol or whatever it might be.
An idolatry is fashioned in many ways today.
We don't have shrines and temples of, of some ridiculous
Pagan deity around our necks. At least I hope we don't.
But idolatries in the form of a lot of other things.
It can be our material wealth. It can be something we own that
we love and that every time we see it, we just smile and say,
that's mine, you know? And I'm going to give hours a
day to whatever I think is important.
That's mine. And so we begin to become
consumed and controlled by metal and, and, and leather and tires.
And those cars are the biggest idols for all of us.
When you first get it, you know, you're excited and there's
nothing wrong with having a nice car, but it can really overcome
you, can't it? Especially when someone wrecks
into it. You just bought it.
Like it happened to me. I'm in Philadelphia and someone
knocks my mirror on my Sienna and I'm like, you got to be
kidding me. You know, it's just like, I just
got this thing the Lord said, Clark, it's just a piece of
metal and it's a means to an end.
It's how you make your livelihood.
It's how you stay safe and drive around.
But I, I had to, I had to sort of like repent a little bit.
John's an auto body guy. He likes it when we wreck.
That's good for you, your prosperity.
But you know, I had to think like, well, you know, it's just
a car, right? But things can control our
hearts at times, can't they? How about our houses?
Nothing wrong with having nice houses, but when they begin to
have problems, how can it begin to make us depressed or upset or
uptight? Or, you know, it's, it's
interesting. I love sports.
Many of you do too. But if my whole life was like,
well, you know, I'm not going to go to church today because I'll
miss the kickoff. And, and I actually did that
when I was younger. The Steelers were kicking off at
like 12, man, I was, I was the first one out the door at 11:30.
Cindy, come on, we got to go. Where are we going?
The game is starting at that. Pastor's going to go on and on
and on. Let's get out of here.
One pastor, he like tortured us. He'd have an Alder call,
especially in a big stealer day. And I knew man, we were going to
miss like at least 1/2 an hour to have the game.
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 outwards, 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. Please pray about supporting
this outreach. Gifts can be sent to Grace FMPO
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Join our e-mail list, submit prayer requests, and give online
all at calvarychapelonline.com. Thank you for tuning in and
spending this time in God's Word.
Be sure to join us again for Living Waters of Grace.