What The Gospel Does
We're gonna dive right into the book of acts that sound okay. We're in acts chapter 16. Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Foria and Galatia. Having been kept by the spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia.
When they came to the border of my, they tried to enter Bethia, but the spirit of Jesus would not allow them to do so they passed by Mysia and went down Toro Trez during the night, Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him come over to Macedonia and. After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, including that God had called us to preach the gospel to them from Troaz
we put out to sea and sailed straight for Samathrace and from there, we went on to Neopolis from there, we traveled to Philippi Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia. And we stayed there several days on the Sabbath. We went outside the city gate to the river where we expected to find a place of.
We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. One of those listening was a woman from the city of Tyra named Lydia a dealer in purple cloth. And she was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message. And when she in the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home.
If you consider me a believer in the Lord, she said, come and stay at my house. And she persuaded us once. When we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had the spirit by which she predicted the. And she earned a great deal of money for her owners and her for by fortune telling she followed Paul and the rest of us shouting.
These men are servants of the most high God who are telling the way to be saved. She kept us up for many days. Finally, Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit in the name of Jesus Christ. I command you to come out of her at that moment. The spirit left her. When her owners realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities they brought before them.
They brought them before the magistrates and said, these men are Jews who are throwing our city into uproar by advocating customs on lawful for Romans to practice or accept the crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rod.
After they'd been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stalk about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing HIMS to God. And the other prisoners were listening to them.
Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken all at once the prison doors flew open and everyone's chains came loose. The jailer woke up. And when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped.
But Paul shouted don't harm yourself. We're all here. The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas, he then brought them out and asked SIRS, what must I do to be saved? They replied believe in the Lord, Jesus, and you will be saved you and your whole house. Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house.
At that hour of the night, the jailers took them and washed their wounds. Then immediately he and all his household were baptized. The jailer, brought them into his house and said a meal before them. He was filled with joy because he'd come to believe in God. He and his whole household, when it was daylight, the magistrate sent the officers to the jailer with orders released those men.
The jailer told Paul the magistrates have ordered you and Silas be released. Now you can go leave in. But Paul said to the officers, they beat us publicly without a trial, even though we're Roman citizens and threw us into prison. And now you want to get rid of us quietly. No, let them come themselves and escort us out.
The officer reported this to the magistrates and when they heard that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens, they were alarmed. They came to appease them and escorted them from the prison, requesting them to leave the. After Paul and Silas came outta the prison, they went to Lydia's house where they met with the brothers and sisters encouraged them.
Then they left. All right. What a story? We've been in this acts series and the purpose of the series that we've started from the very beginning was to learn what it means to be a local church. What does it mean to be a group of people filled by the spirit of God placed in a context for the sake of the gospel work that Jesus is doing in that context.
And so we've had lots of conversations on a very communal level on a very, we sort of level. And that's intentional because often in our conversations around Jesus and church, we make it a very me focused thing, a very personal it's about me and Jesus. And that's just not something you get in the new Testament.
Very. most often when you're reading the new Testament and you come across the word, you, if you were to read it in Greek, you would see that word is actually you all that the new Testament has a much broader focus. The Bible as a whole has a much broader focus than simply our individual lives with Jesus.
And so we've tried throughout this series to draw the focus away from the center of ourselves, into what Jesus is doing in and through his church. And so with that in mind, I set out to write this message earlier. I'd been thinking about it and praying about it for a couple of weeks. And when I sat down to write, I wrote at the top of the page, how Jesus builds his church, because the truth of the matter is this is the story of the beginning of a church that meets in Lydia house.
We would come to know that church by a name that's famous to us. Now it's the Philippian church. This is the book that Paul wrote was a letter to this church. So this church in Philippi, this is the beginning. This is the origin story of this church. And so I want, and it's one of my favorite letters.
If you haven't read Philippians recently, I encourage you. It takes about 30 minutes. Just sit down and read the whole thing in one sweep or read it line by line for the rest of the year. That would be a year well spent memorize it. If you want to, it's possible. I've done it. I've forgotten some of it now, but it's possible to.
The book, this is an amazing book to an amazing church, and this is the story they're beginning. So I sat down and I thought, I wanna show how Jesus builds this beautiful church and we'll see that today. But I just felt like the holy spirit said to me, as I was prepping this, don't forget about the people though.
In other words, we've been trying to draw ourselves away from the center of self, into a bigger conversation about community and what God is doing. But I think today God wants to focus specifically on some people that are here, a need to hear specifically what happens when the gospel encounters a person where they're at.
So with that in mind, we have a few stories here, three to be specific, Paul and his crew. They start out on this missionary journey and they're heading into Asia. What we it's, we're not talking like east Asia. What we talk about today, when we say Asia, we're talking about Asia minor, which is Turkey. So they're working their way around Turkey and they're preaching the gospel and some crazy stuff is happening and some amazing stuff is happening and they figure they'll just keep heading east and see where they end up and who knows where they would've ended up.
But the Bible in very cryptic terms says they were prevented from going into the province of Asia by the spirit of. Okay. So they hit a roadblock as they're heading east. So they turn around and they decide to head west. They go west and they think they've got a plan. And then what happens? They get to another spot.
And there's a man standing at a river that says, don't go this way. They have this vision this kind of picture of an angel that says that. Actually what it says is the holy spirit, the spirit of Jesus prevented them from preaching the province in that preaching the gospel in that province. So they've headed this other direction and now they're prevented again.
When finally after two closed doors, they catch a vision of a man in Macedonia. In other words Greece at the time. It's not that far from Israel, from Palestine, what we see today, but the gospel had not yet made its way into the Greek world. And so we see a vision of a man in Macedonia, in Greece saying, come over and help us.
And so they decide to do that. So they hop on a boat and they set sail. They make their way to Macedonia. And when they get there, they arrive at the city of Philippi, which is a significant city. It's a Roman province where it's one of their Roman emperors placed a whole bunch of ex-military people.
So it's a very patriotic town in the Roman empire. It's a colon. So everyone in Philippi is Roman citizens and they're proud of being Roman citizens, even though they're on Greek soil, they've all been given citizenship. They have we love Caesar days, like big parades in the streets because it's all ex-military, who's really focused on what's happening in the empire.
That in mind, someday you should read the book of Philippians as well. When Paul talks about who the actual Lord here is, but. They arrive in Philippi and they find immediately that there's no synagogue in the city. This is important because Paul used to go first to synagogues to preach the gospel. So even though he's considered the missionary to Gentiles his strategy in every city was to go find a Jewish community as his base of operations, preach the gospel and tell they either accepted or beat him.
And from there, he would go out into the city and see what happens. So he preached the gospel in the synagogue. The problem is there's no synagogue in Philippi, none whatsoever. Instead, he hears about a place of prayer, a place of prayer where Jewish people or Gentile followers of yawe gather to pray.
And he goes to the place and it says he was expecting to find a place. Actually it says we were expecting, did you guys notice that in chapter 16 when I was reading along that the pronoun has changed, the personal pronoun has changed from they to, we cool. Luke is now part of the story. Isn't that interest.
The leading theory is that they met Luke and Troyaz, and now he's joined their crew. And so from here on out, he talks about we instead of they, which is really interesting. But so Luke, the rest of the crew, Paul, they go out to this river where it says they expected to find a place of prayer, but what do they find instead is a group of women waiting there for prayer to happen.
Now, why do I say it in those terms? Because in Jewish context, in order for a prayer gathering to happen, it's called a minion, not a minion like this, like the movie, a minion in order for a minion to happen, there has to be 10 men present men being defined by a boy who is over 13 years old. If you don't have that, you don't have an authorized or official prayer gathering.
So what you have instead here is a group of women praying. But they were expecting to find a prayer meeting. Instead, all they found was a bunch of women praying to yawe one of whom being this woman, Lydia, who's a fascinating character. Really interesting. She is described as a merchant who sells purple stuff.
That's what it says in Greek purple stuff. Now, why is this important in N it says purple cloth, because that's probably what it was. Why is it important? Because purple stuff in the ancient world was incredibly rare and hard to come by. You couldn't just get purple paint down at the store. You had to get it from really rare sources.
And so if she was selling purple stuff, it meant that she was wealthy, a high end think like rodeo drive fashion kind of character. I don't know what you call them. boutique. This is who she is. She's a high end merchant in fashion. So significant influential successful business woman will see by the end of the story that she owns her own home, which is big enough for her and her household, which means her kids and her servants.
And if she has kids, a husband is probably part of the picture though. He's not mentioned significant and she still has room to bring them all in his guests and for the church to meet in her home. I say all that to say very wealthy and successful person who is a Gentile from a place called Diat Ty. In Asia, but convert to Judaism.
So a God fear, somebody who has come to appreciate that Yahweh is the true God and has begun to worship to seek him. Now, why do I say all that context? Cuz it's really fascinating to see what happens when the gospel encounters hurt. She has this very gentle and simple conversion story. Paul Silas, Luke others show.
They start to share the story and she simply receives it with joy. Why , because here is a genuine seeker who has been looking for Yahweh
and he just shows up where she's at. And she discovers that all along while she's been looking for him, he was on the hunt for her, that she thought. That maybe she had been overlooked that she had been passed by because she can't even really pray to him unless we get enough men. For whatever reason, we can't get enough men to show up to a prayer gathering.
Can I get an amen? Let's change that. But they can't get enough men to show up to the prayer gathering and she's feeling overlooked. She's feeling bypassed. She's feeling like I, I don't know what she's feeling in this moment, but a genuine seeker of God. And then God just shows up. He just, as a matter of fact, they probably told the story, we were headed this.
We were headed this way east into Asia and God said, turn around. And then he said, turn around again. And then we got on a boat and we came over here and we saw a vision of someone saying, come and help us. And maybe just, maybe they were talking about you, this God that you've been seeking, that you've been looking for, he was looking for you.
He's come to you. And so what does the gospel do in the life of Lydia? The gospel. Recognizes sees dignifies the overlooked. I think this is really important. Here's a woman who becomes a fundamental leader in the church. The church meets in her home. If there is a pastor of the church in Philippi, it is Lydia.
Let's be clear on this. She's the only name given it's in her home,
but she'd been overlooked because she's a woman. Despite her obvious leadership giftings, despite her success and her power, she had been missed because she's a woman and yet Jesus chooses her to make to build the church on. It's really powerful. The conversation we had a couple weeks ago around circumcision.
We talk about circumcision a lot in this church. Forgive me for that. It's in the text. There's nothing we can do about it. But the conversation we had a couple weeks ago was all about grace and how it's a theological conversation about how we don't have to do anything to earn God's favor that the sign of the covenant is no longer circumcision.
It's faith. That faith is how we enter into the covenant, simply receiving what Jesus has already done. It's not about our works. It's about his that's the conversation we had. But I was struck this week by the fact that there's a side effect to that whole conversation about circumcision. And the holy spirit sort of removing the covenants of circumcision, because if you think about it, if circumcision is the sign of how you enter into the covenant with yawe, then who defines the terms of the covenant.
The man does it's through the male leadership that the whole family has to enter into the covenant. The male has to lead the way and the women follow, which is why we have this very patriarchal story for the entire old. It's because the covenant is dictated by the obedience of the man. Now what's the problem with this new covenant that Jesus brought.
How is that covenant defined? Who leads the way into that covenant? Jesus does Jesus does. And on the basis of his faithfulness and his work, we all follow him and whoever follows him well gets to lead the way. Does that make sense? Male female slave free Jew Gentile. It doesn't matter who it is. If you are close to him, then by definition, you are leading the way because he's out in front.
And Lydia leads the way into this new covenant community in Philipp high, because she had been seeking and God showed up and he saw her when she had been overlooked, despite her gifts, despite her talent, despite her potential, nobody saw her except Jesus and said, You, I choose you to start this community.
So what does the gospel do? The gospel dignifies, the overlooked. Then we come along and we see this second story of this slave girl. Who's walking around the city and she follows Paul and Silas and crew around as they head to the place of prayer and back day after day. And she's shouting out by this prophetic spirit, this evil, prophetic spirit, which I don't even wanna talk about today.
Cause I don't know what to do with that, but that tells for the future and tells her true things. She's making a lot of money for people by being a fortune teller. What it literally says in Greek is she had the spirit of the Python, which is weird until you understand that the Python was like a significant religious symbol of the day in Greece.
So she's telling the future by this demonic spirit. And she sees Paul in Silas and she starts crying out. These people are servants of the most high God come to show us the way of salvation. And now you think what's wrong with that? She got it. That sounds fantastic. She's like the, like this walking billboard come to them and find salvation.
The problem of course, is we always see this throughout throughout the story in the Bible, the demons always know what's going on. Don't they? James points this out. As a matter of fact, he says, even the demons know that there's one God and shutter. So don't be blown away by the fact that, the truth it's are you willing to apply the truth?
That's what matters. So the demons know the truth. They tell the true story. The problem is nobody in Athens would know what they mean when they say the most high God. Do you think anyone in Athens, in unreached Greek Athens is gonna go back to Yahweh of Israel? No, they're gonna go to Zeus. So when they hear these are servants of the most high God, what they're hearing is these are servants of Zeus.
And when it says, come to show us the way of S. They're not gonna think heaven or hell, they're not gonna think afterlife or resurrection. They're going to think health, wealth, and prosperity. These are servants of zoos. Come to show us how to get wealthy, how to get everything we need out of the gods. And so they're being less than helpful.
She's being less than helpful. And finally, in the process of all of this, Paul gets so irritated. I don't know if this happens often but this is maybe one of the only stories in the Bible where a Demonn is exercised out of irritation. He gets so irritated that he turns around and says out and the name of Jesus out and the Demonn goes, cuz that's what happens.
Leaves in the name of Jesus. Now this girl set free in two ways. This is a big deal.
One, she had been oppressed by an evil spirit, spiritually crushing her, destroying her from the inside out. But then two, she had people who took advantage for oppression. And enslaved her and used her to make money. This is how injustice works. There is a dark spiritual force at work in the world at work in people's lives that causes oppression and damage and slavery.
And then we, human beings participate in that system and use that system for our own gains and the gospel deals with both of those things. It cuts through all of that nonsense. Paul comes along and he says, you are free in the name of Jesus, which means you are free from the spiritual power that enslaved you and consequently free of the indebtedness to your masters guys.
This is how the gospel has to work. It has to do both things. It's the second thing we learned from this amazing girl here, we learn that the gospel liberates, the oppressed. You ask me, how do I mean that I say yes, liberates, those who are in spiritual bondage, who are enslaved, who are addicted, who are broken and beaten down by the powers of this world.
And it liberates those who have been therefore crushed by systems of human creation, whether they're systems of racism or sex. Or war or human caused tragedy disease, famine, poverty. The gospel speaks to all these things. When Jesus comes along in Luke chapter four and gives us his mission statement before he launches public ministry, he says this, the spirit of the Lord is on me because he's anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners in recovery of sight, to the. To set the oppressed free and to announce the year of the Lord's favor. Now, for so long, Christians have looked at this and said, oh, he's talking about spiritually poor, spiritually oppressed, spiritually impoverished. And I say, yeah, he was, and actually poor actually oppressed actually impoverished.
The gospel is good news, both to our spiritual lives and to our lives. Cuz the fact of the matter is Jesus wouldn't have made that distinction. I just made, he wouldn't have said there's a spiritual side of me and there's a physical side of me and the gospel helps over here. And then this is just we get by until it rots in the ground.
And then this part that's not the Bible. That's Greek philosophy. Read Greek philosophy. That's Plato. That's why he was talking about this idealized self, this sort of spiritual form. That's not what Jesus talks about. He talks about good news for a whole person, the word soul in, in the Hebrew and in Aramaic, the language Jesus would've spoken the word soul Neish it means a whole person.
It doesn't mean the disembodied part of myself. it doesn't mean just this kind of thing that goes off into heaven someday. And that's where the good news goes. It's my whole self, my emotions, my spirituality, my physical life, my everything is wrapped up into a Neish. Self and the gospel is good news for all of them.
The gospel must be good news for all of them. Justice for the oppressed is central to the message of the gospel. I've heard too many Christians in this day and age say social justice is something that comes from the left. It comes from somewhere out of the Bible. And I say actually read the whole story and you'll see where it comes from.
This was written well before there was a left and a. The word justice is here from the very beginning. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. The word human rights comes from the king James translation of the Bible. This is our word. If somebody else out there has picked it up, it's because we've laid it down and it's time we pick it up again.
Gospel is good news for a whole person. And this dear slave girl becomes a whole person delivered by the power of Jesus set free from her spiritual oppression set free because she can no longer do what she was supposed to do from her physical oppression. And now we don't hear her named by the end of the story, but it says that they gathered in the house of Lydia, all of the brothers and sisters.
And I have to think she. Now part of the church, gospel liberates, the oppressed, and then there's this Roman jailer fascinating guy, probably ex-military cuz those kind of jobs, those cush government jobs go to Roman jailers. The only downside to this job is if your prisoners got away, you died. So other than that though, probably good pay, probably pretty simple for the most part.
Paul and Silas. They get thrown in prison. Incidently do you notice why they get thrown in prison? Because they cost people money. Did you guys see that there are two reasons that the church gets persecuted in the book of acts? Two. One is because they cost people control. And the second is because they cost people money.
Let's be very clear on this. The gospel will do both. when it takes root in your life, it will cost you control. And if it does not cost you money, you're not paying a.
That's all I'm gonna say about that for now. Roman jailer, Paul and Silas get beaten, thrown in prison, despite the fact that Roman citizens. Why Paul didn't think to say that earlier. I'm not sure I have some theories, but we'll talk about that another time, but they get beaten thrown in jail where we find them in the middle of the night at midnight singing.
And this is one of the most stunning pictures like VI just. If you're a visual person, close your eyes. And just try to envision that just beaten and bleeding and broken and singing in stalk, legs and chains, hands, head in stalk, just singing at midnight. The jailer has got to be thinking they're either nuts or they know something.
I don't.
And then the room started to shake and the doors swung open and the jailer was confronted with the conclusion that they knew something he didn't know,
the power of God came into the room as they worshiped and the room shook and the doors swung open and they stayed, put. Here, the guy thinks he's probably asleep in the corner, cuz again, it's a Kush job. Everybody's locked in there in stocks. They're not going anywhere. The doors swing open. He probably takes him a little bit to come to his senses.
And then he realizes his life is over. His prisoners have escaped on his watch. So he grabs his sword and prepares to kill himself rather than facing the shame and pain of a Roman execution. And Paul says, we're still here. Don't sweat it. How did this man come to the conclusion because he rushes in immediately.
He's gone from jailer, from the one in power to the one who's seeking help from those who have the actual power. How did this happen? How did he come to the conclusion that they know something? I don't know, two things, the power of God and the compassion of the church, Paul and Silas could have taken off.
They could have let a revolt, but they didn't. They stayed put because they knew that if they left this man would. So the doors opened and God set them free and they laid down their freedom for someone else. Just like Mike talked about in that beautiful sermon last week, when the power of the gospel comes into your life and sets you free, you don't have to exercise that freedom.
You don't have to fight for it anymore. Jesus has already fought for and won it. Now you are free to lay it down for others. God sets them free. And they said, yeah, we could. But at what cost. And so they lay down their freedom for the sake of this man. Don't kill yourself. We're all still here. Somehow. They kept all the other prisoners in too.
We're all still here. And he comes running in and he says, what must I do to be saved now he's not asking, what do I have to, what do I have to say to get to heaven? He's saying, how do you, how do I get out of this mess? I don't understand what's going on. Help me out here. And they redirect him from the situation.
To the power of Jesus. I was just struck by the profound hospitality of Paul and Silas. In this moment, here they are. Roman citizens brought into a town and treated like garbage, beaten in a town where they belonged, where they had a right to do what they were doing. Treated like garbage, no hospitality thrown in prison.
Tortured. The stalk was a form of torture, tortured with no regard for their humanity. And yet, sorry, I set a timer. I'm running right through it. Here we go. Stop. And yet they decide instead of falling victim to their circumstances, they decide to set the tone for the circumstances. I call this the difference between being a thermometer and a thermostat.
What does the thermometer do? It tells you the temperature in a room. Super helpful. Isn't it? Everybody's stressed and bomb. Great. Thanks for letting us know. I couldn't tell what does a thermostat do? A thermostat changes the temperature in a room, and that's what Paul and Silas do. They come into this circumstance, that's dark and dismal.
That's inhospitable in every way. And they change the temperature. They introduce through their prayer and through their worship and through their compassion, they introduce a spirit of hospitality into a prison. And now. What happens when the gospel encounters a Roman jailer, the outsider is welcomed in
the gospel, dignifies, the overlooked, the gospel liberates, the oppressed, and the gospel embraces the outsider. And this is the foundation of the church in Philippi. And it's beautiful and it's powerful. And if you are any of those things, if you are overlooked, if you are oppressed in any way, if you are an outsider, you feel like an outsider.
This is your home. You are welcome here. You are free here. You're seen here. I don't know who that's for. I have a feeling. It might just be for a couple people, but if it's you, this message is for you.
So my question is, what about everybody else who doesn't necessarily identify as overlooked or as oppressed or as outside, but you've been around church for a while. You received the gospel a long time ago, all this stuff already. Okay. Then who are you in the story? What are Paul and Silas?
Because here's the thing, Jesus, he loves to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. And if you've gotten too comfortable, With the message of the gospel. If you, if it's become so commonplace in our lives, that it no longer as Mike shared with us last week, causes us to weep. If we have become too accustomed to being insiders in the church and no longer have any sort of lens for what it means to be an outsider or oppressed or anything else, just remember that you are here for the same reasons that they are, that the only way you got in is the same door that everybody else has to walk.
You are here by grace and grace alone. And if you believe that to be true, then you don't just say that with your mouth. You don't just sing it with your lips. You don't just do it once or twice a week or twice a month. You live that thing. If that's true, then that's all that matters. And that's what Paul and Silas and Luke, they give their lives to this, not just a day, not just a song, their lives to it.
The gospel was the core of their identity. And if we are those who have been comforted by Jesus and brought in, now we give our lives to it. And what does that mean for Paul and Silas? It means first of all, that they have to welcome in who Jesus welcomes in with open arms. There's a famous prayer that goes back that Paul would've prayed.
He would've known it's a dark. It's famous in the T it says that Jewish men would stand up in the morning and pray it. And it says, God, thank you that you didn't make me what a woman, a slave, or a Gentile. Who do we see here in this story as the foundation of the church in Philippi
woman slave. And a Gentile. And I have to think that when Paul stood in that church, it just about crushed him. know he'd been crushed by the gospel before, but just the sheer beauty of this king who welcomes in the overlooked, the oppressed in the outsider and all his prejudices had to die.
Church. All of our prejudices have to die. Jesus is bringing people in. We might think have no business being here, but they do every bit, as much as we do. And we have to have the eyes to see them that Paul and Silas and Luke did the gospel, kills our prejudices and embraces those who Jesus embraces.
And we have to be willing to do whatever he tells us to do. Did you notice that, you know how frustrating this story must have been? They have a plan they're heading into Asia and the spirit just says. He doesn't tell him no, go here and say, he just says, no. Okay. I guess we'll come up with another plan.
So they turn around and go the other way. And they come to another place and he just says, no. How many of you have ever had Jesus close a door in your face? How many of sometimes he speaks through no more often than through. Yes. And what do you do? What do Paul and Silas do in those circumstances?
They keep going until they get clarity. Because they're not so hamstrung by needing to know the exact specific will of God in every moment, because they already know what he's up to big picture. He has told us to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And I'm gonna go to the end.
Nope. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go. Nope. I'm gonna go to the ends of the earth. Just keep going. And when he turns you turn, but don't. Just keep doing what you know, he already told you to do love him, love others, bear, witness to his resurrection power, bring through the power of the spirit, the kingdom of God, do whatever he tells you to do.
That's what they did. They've just sold out to king Jesus, whatever he tells me to do, I'm gonna do it. How did this story happen? This amazing, beautiful story written on my card stock.
It happened by two things, the power of the holy spirit and the availability of the church, the obedience of Paul and Silas and crew. So with that, what you pray with me,
Lord, we love you. And we think you, you love us and your kingdom is for us. And I, I say that confidently, knowing some people in the room and not knowing others, it doesn't matter. there's no circumstance in this room today. No person who could say this kingdom's not for me. It is for every person here, regardless of backstory, regardless of where you've been, what you've done, what's been done to.
This kingdom is for you. This king has come for you. He sees you. He's come to set you free. He's come to embrace you and empower you into community and into mission into purpose. Jesus. This gospel of the kingdom is for everyone,
with my friends here today who need to hear that, like not just with their ears, but with their soul, with their whole being. Would they hear it by the power of your.
And God, for those of us who have gotten comfortable with the idea of you and the gospel and church, would you disturb us? Oh Lord.
The way you disturbed Paul Silas, would you put a burden on our hearts for the nations, for those who are outside? It causes us to just keep going to do whatever it takes to reach
Lord Jesus. Would you empower us by your mercy and your joy to once again, lay down our lives, our time, our resources, our talents, whatever we have at our disposal for the sake of your kingdom, there is no higher. Disturb us. So Lord,
we love you.
Just spend a few minutes there. Gonna keep this simple, spend a few minutes, praying into whatever the holy Spirit's putting on your heart. Sophie's gonna lead the way as you're ready, feel free to stand and worship with her. If you need to simply sit in the presence of Jesus and talk. That's great too.
If you wanna talk with somebody else, pray with somebody else, have somebody else carry you to Jesus. Cuz you feel like you can't get there. Even though he's already done all the work, I get it. Sometimes we feel like we just need a little bit of help and just come to the front and somebody will take that as a sign that you want somebody to pray with you and they'll come up and they'll meet you here.
Yeah. I guess what I'm saying is whatever he is telling you to do right now, just do that.