Sunday, Aug 11, 2024 AM

Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Father, we do thank

You for Your grace, even when we do not understand the fullness of it, the depth of it, the length of it.

But we know that all of Your grace towards us is because of Your Son, Jesus Christ, our

Maker and our Savior, and that we know this grace and are changed by it through Your Holy Spirit.

You are truly the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.

Every good and perfect thing that we enjoy comes down from You. So we give

You thanks today. Thank You for all of it.

Help us to rejoice in the particulars of it. Bring to mind,

Father, we pray, bring to mind the particulars this morning as we read

Your Word. May each stick in our minds that we may meditate upon Your truths.

And I pray that You would cause them to take root in our hearts.

And not only provide continued meditation, but true change in us.

Produce godliness as we think more in Your way, feel more in Your way, live more in Your way.

As You glorify Your name, conforming us to Your Son. It is for the sake of His name that we pray for these mercies in our lives.

Amen. I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Acts 16.

And we'll be reading verses 6 -15. Acts 16.

We'll be reading verses 6 -15.

As we continue our look at this passage, in a sermon entitled,

Wait on the Lord. Wait on the

Lord. This is the second part. Last week, we considered the travels of Paul and Silas and Timothy.

Twelve different geographical place names ranging from east to west and north to south.

What direction to go. And how they had to depend upon the

Lord. To wait upon the Lord to receive their direction.

They were utterly dependent. They had to wait on the Lord's way.

Also, this passage teaches us other dependencies. Not only that we are to be dependent upon the

Lord's way. To wait on the Lord's way. But also to wait on the Lord's work.

As we're going to see in verses 13 -15. Which of course means that we must wait on the

Lord's will. The story of Paul and Silas teaches us of our dependencies.

We must wait upon the Lord. I invite you to stand with me as we read this passage together.

Acts 16, beginning in verse 6. It's the word of the Lord Jesus Christ by His Spirit through His servant

Luke. And when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the

Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. After they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the

Spirit did not permit them. So passing by Mysia, they came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night.

A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, come over to Macedonia and help us.

Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the

Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them. Therefore, sailing from Troas, we ran a straight course to Samothrace and the next day came to Neapolis.

And from there to Philippi, which is the foremost city of that part of Macedonia, a colony.

And we were staying in that city for some days. And on the Sabbath day, we went out of the city to the riverside where prayer was customarily made, and we sat down and spoke to the women who met there.

Now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira who worshiped

God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul. And when she and her household were baptized, she begged us saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the

Lord, come to my house and stay. So she persuaded us. This is the word of the

Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. How many times when we are confronted with a challenge, confronted with a problem, how often do we think first of what we can't do?

We think of what we can't do. We have in this passage one of many examples of the disciples of Jesus Christ, the apostles, the early church, being confronted with barriers, changes, difficulties.

This is common. But how many times when confronted with barriers and challenges do we think of first what we can't do?

I think we are encouraged in following Christ to wait, to pray, and to serve.

There are so many things that we can't do. But what we know to do, let us do.

And be content with that. And to know that it is good and to rejoice in that.

Let us prayerfully, humbly do what we can. We can't heal the sick.

We can't fix the problems. We can't foresee all of the needs.

And we can't save sinners. But what we know to do, let us do while we wait upon the

Lord. Waiting on the Lord means we look to the Lord for our salvation and for our success.

We need deliverance. We need help. We need solutions. We need to succeed in the tasks that He Himself has called us to do.

Let us wait on Him and rejoice in that waiting. Our good

Lord, He is good and He is our Lord. He determines, He arranges, He makes it so that we have to wait on Him.

That's the way that He plans. That's the way that He works, that we would wait on Him.

He brings glory to His name. It strengthens our faith. This is our good shepherd at work.

In our service to God, we are to wait humbly upon the Lord, whatever arena of service that is.

Our passage teaches us that the gospel's map and methods and might are all dependent upon the

Lord, so we are to wait upon the Lord's way, we are to wait upon the Lord's work, and we are to wait upon the

Lord's will. Psalm 37, verse 1 says, do not fret because of the evildoers.

Oh, we could stop right there. We could have a long conference just on that portion of a verse.

Do not fret because of evildoers. In so many of our conversations as followers of Jesus Christ, do you know what the conversation topic is?

Do you know what Christians tend to talk about a great deal? Fretting over evildoers.

Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity. Why? For they shall soon be cut down like the grass.

These evildoers that we focus on so much and think about so much and talk about so much, they're about to get mowed down in the timeline of redemptive history.

They are about to wither as the green herb. So given that, verse 3, trust in the

Lord. That means you wait on Him, depend on Him. You're on His timetable, you're in His arena.

Trust in the Lord and do good. You hear that? Trusting in the Lord, waiting on the Lord is not do nothing, it's do good.

Trust in the Lord and do good. Is your doing good going to erase the workers of iniquity?

Is your doing good going to solve the issue of there being evildoers in positions of power?

No! The Lord will take care of that. He's in charge of that. So trust in the Lord and in the meantime, do good.

Dwell in the land and feed on His faithfulness. What blessings has He given to you? Enjoy those.

Delight yourself also in the Lord. Notice where your desires are located, verse 4, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. What a great meditation for us and how applicable it is for Paul and Silas and Timothy and Luke as they make their way from Troas into Macedonia and begin to preach the gospel in Philippi.

Wait on the Lord's work. There are four different means of the

Lord's work. We can see in verses 13 through 15.

The Lord works in mysterious ways. The Lord works in many ways.

The Lord is at work in everything going on. There is nothing going on that He is not sovereign over and working through and around and in spite of, but He's in charge of it all.

The Lord works through our trouble. The Lord works through tradition.

The Lord works through our trades, our toiling. The Lord especially works through His truth.

That's what we see here. So let's wait on the Lord's work. I think sometimes we can despair of the

Lord's work simply because it's not happening on our timetable. If I can't see it, smell it, taste it, touch it, can't hear it, it's not right in front of me,

I guess the Lord's not working. Well, that's not true. We're children, and as children, we're impatient.

And as children, we can't see. We don't know what's going on, and sometimes we complain, but we can trust that the

Lord is working. We can trust that He is active and doing good.

We must trust that we have the smiling, welcoming countenance of God by Christ, even though when we look up, we might find the clouds of a frowning providence.

First of all, we see in the text and in the larger context that God works through our trouble.

Verse 13 begins this way. They show up in Philippi and look at verse 13.

And on the Sabbath day, we went out of the city to the riverside where prayer was customarily made.

Well, that's not the way it's supposed to happen. Paul and Barnabas, on their first missionary journey, they would go from town to town throughout

Asia Minor, and they would come to the synagogue on the

Sabbath day and find there a large, ready audience from whom many would be saved.

Many would complain and perhaps begin to organize resistance, but there were a lot of conversions amongst the

Jews in the synagogues throughout Asia Minor. And then there would be connection points there with God -fearing

Gentiles or Gentile converts to Judaism, and they would tell the rest of the Gentiles. And you just see the planting of churches and the conversions of so many people everywhere, but now they've come across the

Aegean Sea into what we call Europe, farther away from Jerusalem, closer to Rome, and they show up in a

Roman colony of Philippi, and there's no synagogue. Uh -oh, this is not according to plan.

We can't find the synagogue to go into and preach Jesus of Nazareth as the

Messiah who fulfills the prophecies. So there's a little bit of trouble here.

This is not a good start. We go out to the river just outside the city, the

Gangetes, and we find there just a few women praying on the

Sabbath day. This is not an auspicious start. They have encountered a little bit of trouble, and they're going to encounter more trouble here in Acts 16.

But what we're going to see is that God works through their trouble. We have a temptation to think that trouble indicates that God is not working.

We tend to interpret trouble as God's sign from heaven that we've gone astray, that there's something wrong, that we've done the wrong thing, gone the wrong direction.

But after God has said no to them going into Asia and said no to them from going into Bithynia and gave them a vision to go over to Macedonia and help them by preaching the gospel, they arrive in Philippi to find no

Jewish synagogue, just a handful of women out by the river praying on the Sabbath day, and they're going to encounter very soon a lot of trouble.

How is this? But this is all in accordance with God's will. This is His yes. This is Him saying, go, this is all in accordance with what

He desires. Now, why are there no synagogue in Philippi? Why are there no synagogue in Philippi?

Well, there's a couple of things that we can observe. Later on in Acts 16 and verse 20, still in Philippi, after Paul casts a demon out of a little girl, those who owned the little girl and used her for exploitation were very angry.

And they grabbed Paul and Silas and they brought them to the magistrates of the city of Philippi, this

Roman colony, and they accused them in this way. Look at verse 20 of Acts 16. They said, these men, being

Jews, exceedingly trouble our city.

Further, and they teach customs which are not lawful for us being

Romans to receive or observe. The people go nuts and then beat them.

Why was that such an effective argument? Well, another passage in Acts, just to help set the historical context of what is going on in the

Roman Empire. Acts 18, just a little bit forward in your

Bibles. There in Corinth, just go south out of Philippi, go to Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, and then

Corinth, down in Corinth, verse 2, Paul found a certain

Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife

Priscilla. Notice the reasoning, because Claudius, that's the Roman emperor of the time,

Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome and he came to them.

Now, Caligula and Nero, on either side of Claudius, were nothing but nonsense.

Claudius was a no -nonsense guy. He did not like disorder.

Even his name means restrainer. And he got very upset, according to the

Roman historians, about the Jews demonstrating and rioting and stirring up everybody about this

Christus. The Jews in Rome were angry at the preaching of the gospel in the city of Rome, and they were out there parading and demonstrating and causing all kinds of havoc, that Claudius said, get out of my town.

He kicked all of the Jews out, and to the untrained Roman eye,

Jews and Christians were the same. They didn't distinguish between either one.

They said some of the same stuff, and they used the same sacred writings.

They looked the same, they sounded the same, they're the same. Get them all out of Rome. Well, Aquila and Priscilla got swept out of Rome because of that persecution.

Here in Philippi, a Roman colony and a colony really wanted to do everything as Roman as Rome did because that's the basis of their legitimacy and their authority, and so they're going to be very, very

Roman, which means no Jews in this colony. So on the

Sabbath day, where there should have been Jewish families gathering together in a synagogue, there was none.

In fact, there was only a handful of women out by the River Genghis having prayer on the

Sabbath day. And when push came to shove, the best way to get somebody in trouble with the magistrates is to accuse them of being a

Jew and pushing Jewishness, which is why Paul and Silas got thrown into prison and beaten.

That's the background. Now, this is possibly why, we don't know,

Paul didn't even have it on his radar to go preach the gospel over across the

Aegean Sea over in the Roman colony areas of Macedonia. He wanted to go down to Asia, down to Ephesus, he wanted to go north into Bithynia, he wanted to hang out in this whole area.

But no, God sends him across with a vision, the Macedonian man saying, come over and help us. And so he's there, he's trying to find the

Macedonian man to preach the gospel to, and he can't find a man. All he finds is a group of women out by the river praying.

This is not an auspicious start. This is not according to plan. Things are going wrong.

Things are not going according to plan. But God works through our trouble. God works through our trouble.

We have a temptation to think that trouble means we've gone the wrong way.

American Christianity has been discipled to believe that an open door means no resistance, and a closed door is signified by resistance.

If you have problems, if you have persecution, if you have logistical issues, if your car breaks down, if you have a cold,

God is saying no. And by the way, if you weren't trying to do something, and you're having those things, it means that you're in big trouble.

Because you've gone the wrong direction. And that an open door is signified by no resistance, and everything going along swimmingly.

The problem with this is that we read the tea leaves of luxurious ease and invent a

God of yes and amen, always affirming us in our victimhood and accommodating us in our comfortableness.

He is the God of all comfort, but He is not about arranging our comfortableness.

He does champion the cause of those who are oppressed, but He does not affirm victimhood.

We ought to be careful that we do not invest in and partake in a theology of least resistance.

God says this is the way to go, and there's trouble, but God works through the trouble. This is a troubling time, not only for the

Roman Empire, it's growing more troubling as it goes. There's already unrest between some of the

Jews and the Romans because of Caligula. Claudius is trying to shut it down. The Roman emperors are beginning to get assassinated.

This is political unrest. Things aren't going well there. For the Jews themselves, they are under great oppression.

They are being often targeted by the Gentiles. These are not great days for the

Jews. Yes, they have a gold -covered temple and so on, but these are days of corruption amongst the priesthood, amongst the

Jewish leaders. These are not great days to be a Jew. But it was the fullness of the time.

When the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born of the law. It was

His timing. It was His timing, the gospel of Jesus Christ, that Jesus of Nazareth is the

Messiah, the Son of the living God, and that He, by His life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and promised return, would bring to pass all the blessings of salvation that God had promised to Israel in all their history.

That message was timed to be preached at this moment in the dim, corrupt dusk of the

Old Covenant, that the New Covenant would dawn at this moment. It was in the days of these kings, the kings, the

Roman kings, Daniel 2, verse 44 tells us, in the days of these kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and a kingdom which will not be left to other people.

It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, but it shall stand forever. It was already timed for when this kingdom, this gospel of the kingdom would be preached, and that Christ would be ruling and reigning, which is the message of Acts.

That was the timing. Jesus, in Mark chapter 1, verses 14 through 15, said, the time is fulfilled.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. This is the time, and it's the time of trouble.

There's difficulty, there's problems, there's political tensions, people hate each other, there's fighting, there's violence, there's unjust use of the civil magistrate to persecute people who don't deserve it.

It's chaos out there. And do you know that in this time of unrest, in a time of political corruption, in a time of religious corruption, in a time when it wasn't really safe to travel around, when things were going south, do you realize this wasn't the end of the world?

This was the beginning of the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. God works through our troubles.

Don't look around at the troubles of our day and say, I guess our goose is cooked. It's about over. We're done.

The gospel of Jesus Christ and the church of Jesus Christ went forth and was birthed out of a time of great trouble.

And in the hands of Jesus Christ, there is no small loss. There is no small loss without some great gain.

We fear the boogeyman too much. We don't meditate on our

Lord enough. Let us trust in the

Lord and do good. Let us feast in joyful defiance. Let us be like the

Narnians who feast in the face of the white witch, knowing that Aslan's on the move. God works through our trouble and God works through tradition.

God works through tradition. A lot of blame for Christian problems, for the failure to advance the gospel into new areas, a lot of blame for dissension amongst

Christians and so on gets placed at the feet of tradition. And that's, of course, true for bad and fleshly tradition, but we find that God uses it, changes it, and establishes it, and we see examples of that in our passage.

Now, what we find is that on the Sabbath day, a group of women have gathered out at the

River Genghis, which is less than a Sabbath day's journey from the

Roman colony of Philippi. Obviously, gathering outside of the city helps them to avoid persecution.

It also provides them a fresh source of water for any

Jewish ceremonial purification that they have to use. Since it's running water, it's considered clean water.

Also, we find one among them, Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, who worshipped

God, a particular term to diagnose her and identify her as a

God -fearer, somebody who was a Gentile but had converted to the Jewish faith and was worshipping

God as a God -fearer, though she was originally from Thyatira.

There was a Jewish synagogue there. That identifies the tradition as well. About 80 % of all the inscriptions from archaeology that talk about God -fearers or Gentiles who converted to Judaism were all about women.

So here's one of those converts. She's not originally from Macedonia. She's not originally from Philippi.

She's from Thyatira, and actually a region called Lydia. Some people think that her nickname is

Lydia, but she was the Lydian lady who had come over from Thyatira, working her trade.

So I don't know what Paul's thinking, but he had a vision of a man of Macedonia, saying, come over here and help us.

He shows up, he finds no man and no Macedonian. Here's a Lydian lady from the region of Asia where he was trying to go in the first place.

So I don't know what's going through Paul's mind, but you've got to trust the Lord. These are the things that he has arranged, and now

Paul is preaching to this group of women who are observing traditions.

It's a Sabbath day. They're out by the river. They're praying. Here's a Jewish convert, and Paul takes this opportunity to once again preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, as he did amongst those who were actually meeting in synagogues in other cities.

He uses the tradition to preach

Jesus Christ, who is the substance of the shadows that were evident there among them.

But that's not the only set of traditions that we find in the text. Look down at verse 15. This is after God has opened

Lydia's heart to believe the things preached by Paul after she has been baptized, her and her household.

But notice what happens. Verse 15, when she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the

Lord, come to my house and stay. So she persuaded us. Now, of course, hospitality was a very cultural tradition, but it's a very

Christian tradition. And in Matthew 10, as Jesus is giving instructions to his disciples about their preaching of the gospel throughout

Judea, he says, verse 11,

Matthew 10, now whatever city or town you enter, inquire who in it is worthy.

Another way to translate that is the same way that Lydia says, you know, am

I worthy? If you judged me to be faithful, well,

Jesus is saying to his disciples, find someone you judge to be worthy, someone you judge to be faithful, who is receiving of the message, and then what's the plan?

Stay there till you go out. So stay there with that person in their home until you leave that city.

When you go into a household, greet it. If the household is worthy, let your peace come upon it. Now notice the focus on the household.

In Acts, we read about Lydia's household. If the household is worthy, let your peace come upon it.

But if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet, which, of course, is what

Paul and Barnabas did on their first missionary journey. We read in the text that they were shaking the dust off their feet when they left.

They're following instructions that Jesus Christ gave to his original disciples about their preaching the gospel in this region to the

Jews, to preach the gospel to them. They take this passage, and they are keeping with that tradition and applying it wherever missionary journey they're on, even if they're not in Galilee and Judea.

Okay, if they're in Galatia, or if they're in Macedonia, they're going to do the exact same thing. They're going to keep with this tradition that Jesus Christ has established.

Now, noting that, when we read the teachings of Christ and the apostles, we come across many passages that are anti -tradition.

And these are the more well -known passages. We can often be inclined to them.

In Mark 7, 8 -9, Jesus says, For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men, the washing of pitchers and cups, and many other such things you do.

He said to them, All too well you reject the commandment of God that you may keep your tradition.

And that's true. The Jews were following their traditions, and they were rejecting the authority and word of God.

A similar thing was said by Paul in Colossians 2, and Peter in 1 Peter 1.

Warnings about traditions that cannot save, that actually divert us away from fidelity to God, and there are great cautions and rebukes against tradition, and then also there are commendations of tradition, and establishments of tradition in the

New Testament. These are not so often discussed. They're not so often talked about.

Because the temptation is that we see things going awry. We see things going wrong.

We see things not progressing fast enough. We find that there are problems in advancing and doing good and glorious things for God, and there's problems that we're not getting along, and some people want to move faster than other people, and then very quickly, very easily, there comes a critique, a rebuke, a complaint about tradition.

It's all that tradition. Why do we have to keep on doing this and this and this, and all this is just keeping us back?

And so all that tradition that Christ has established that is good is put on the chopping block along with fleshly, man -centered traditions that do need to be rebuked all at the same time because of an impatience of not realizing that the

Lord works through tradition. We think we have to get rid of tradition out of the way?

Do you think we have to take the sledgehammer of our piety and take down the brick walls of tradition so that finally

God can get something done? No, He works through tradition.

2 Thessalonians 3, in verse 6, Paul says, But we command you, brethren, in the name of our

Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us.

What was that tradition? That they not be lazy, busybodies, depending on other people to give them their daily sustenance, but that they work with their hands and they get busy and be diligent and be productive

Christians. And Paul says that's a tradition that he handed to them because when Paul went to Thessalonica, he didn't take a dime from the church that he planted there.

He worked and labored so that he would not be a burden to them, and the church in Philippi was helping to support him as well.

But he established a tradition in Thessalonica that was necessary for them, that they would be diligent and they would labor and work and value that as part of their following after Christ.

And another tradition is going on in our text, which is not simply that Matthew 10 is being observed, but the tradition that we already have in the book of Acts.

The regular and occasional gathering of the saints in Christian housing. Do you realize that's a tradition?

A biblical one? Acts 2, verse 2. Acts 2, verse 46.

Acts 5, verse 42. Acts 8, verse 3. So on and so forth. In our chapter, verses 15, 34, and 40.

Gathering together as the saints in Christian housing for communion, for worship, for prayer, for the teaching and preaching of God's Word.

All of these things, the singing, the meals, all of these things happening together in Christian housing.

This is our Christian housing we share in common. This is the property we hold in common. This is a

Christian house. And we meet here because we're doing something that is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years old.

It's traditional for Christians to gather together in Christian housing and to worship and rejoice and fellowship and be hospitable.

That's a good thing. Many people want to throw away traditions and say, that's a problem.

That's all you ever do is just show up at church over and over and over again. Like attending church is the problem.

Blaming the simplest acts of obedience to Christ as the root of all evil.

No, God works through tradition. Don't despise the small things because of anxiety about where things are.

Thirdly, God works through our trades. I would say toil, but it's so specific for Lydia.

Yes, He works through our toil, but notice the trades. With Lydia, we read in verse 14, a certain woman named

Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira who worshiped

God. The region of Lydia was renowned for purple dye.

They were there on the coast of the Aegean Sea, had lots of inlets and lots of ability to manufacture the purple dye from the mollusks that were along the seashore.

The creation of purple dye and the selling of purple dye was extremely expensive.

That's why it was generally reserved for nobility. And here we have this

Lydian lady from Thyatira. She apparently had joined the worship of God through the

Jewish synagogue there in Thyatira. She had been part of the guild of purple dyers that many archaeologists have found evidence of in the region.

There are records of creation of dye in that area, records of merchants selling purple over in Macedonia, in Philippi even.

And they made this dye from shellfish and plants. We don't know much about Lydia other than that she was a seller of purple and that she had a household.

We don't know if she's single, if she's married, if she's divorced. We just don't know. But we can see that she is diligent, she is generous, she is well -traveled.

And God uses her wealth, her engagement, her obvious leadership out there by the river, all for the sake of the gospel.

I find that important to note for two reasons, for a very specific reason.

Lydia, according to the new Christian woke ethic, is probably one of the worst people in the whole

Bible. She's a villain. First of all, she's wealthy, so evil right there.

She's obviously destroying these poor molluscs. She's terrible in creation care, just destroying thousands of molluscs just to get a little bit of purple.

I mean, that's so vain. What a terrible person. She doesn't care about the environment at all.

She is someone who is a

Gentile, so she's part of the majority culture. But then she's coming into the church as a

Jewish convert, so she's appropriating the culture of oppressed minorities. But once she's in the church, because she has the

Jewish background, she's part of the majority culture of the church, and now she's a villain all over again, because she's somehow already converted to the

Jewish side, so she's actually against the Gentiles, so she's also a villain in the church and outside. No husband is mentioned, no children are mentioned, but she has a household, and she's wealthy, and she's in the trades, so obviously 100 % she owns slaves, so she's going to hell.

Even after she gets saved, she's still going to go, because she owns slaves.

I love how the Bible cares nothing about any of that. But also, if you try to apply the new woke ethic, how it fails immediately.

Here's the more important reason we should note this. Because we are tempted to despise our daily work as unfit for Christ, given the godlessness and tyranny of our empire.

We may look upon our work and our labor, whatever it is, if we're working in the home, working outside of the home, working for a family, working for ourselves, however it transpires.

We might grow weary of our work and consider it to be unfit for Christ because of how evil this

American empire is. But here is Lydia, who's using her wealth for the kingdom, becomes this hostess for Paul and Silas and his team to advance the gospel from Philippi.

Let us not despise our vocation, our trades, our work, our toil.

God works through it. God does not reserve His working through His people only for monks and hermits.

God works through our trades. And we can trust Him to do that. It might be humble work.

We might despise the humility of our work. We might end up comparing and contrasting ourselves with others and think that others are more vital and more important than us.

But let us entrust our work and our wages and our interactions and our opportunities to the

Lord. And what will He do? He works through them. He works through our trades to advance the kingdom.

I think this is a theme that we find in the

Scriptures. Ephesians 4, 28 says, Let him who stole steal no longer. I will let him labor, working with his hands.

What is good that he might have something to give him who has need? 2

Thessalonians 3, 7 and 8, For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us. We were not disorderly among you, nor did we eat anyone's bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toiled night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you.

So Christ demands a willingness to leave it all behind and in fact to lay it all down so that we may take it all up again in His name.

To leave it all behind for Him. To sacrifice it all for Him. That's what He calls a willingness for.

But peasant wandering is not a requirement for salvation. What has

God entrusted to you? What stewardship has He given? Take it up for the glory of His name.

Remember that in the Proverbs, the man who is diligent in his work, the man who is diligent in his work will not stand before men of low esteem.

He will stand before kings. Dearly beloved, we will stand before the

King of kings. Let us make our diligence unto Him. We'll leave it there for God's blessing and let's pray.

Father, we thank You for the time that You've given to us in Your Word. We thank You for the encouragement here to wait upon You.

Observations here, Lord, that are encouraging to see that things don't go according to our plans and they don't meet our expectations and every time we think we might be able to find a pattern or a system that works,

Lord, we are reminded that You're the one who works. You are our sovereign.

You are the one who has the power. You are the one who gives the grace. Lord, help us to wait upon You and to trust in You and to rejoice in the timing that You choose and the means that You choose.