Sunday, September 8, 2024 AM

Sunnyside Baptist Church iconSunnyside Baptist Church

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Sunnyside Baptist Church Michael Dirrim, Pastor

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Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the day.
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We thank you for the reminders in our singing, our reading and praying today, of why we may have joy in you, joy in Christ, joy by your
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Spirit. I pray that you would help us today to reflect well upon the truth of the gospel, that we would rejoice in this truth.
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That you would bless us with a refreshment of joy in our lives.
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That you would bring our attention back to our
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Shepherd, back to our Savior, back to our Sovereign, our
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Lord Jesus Christ. That we would find in Him every reason we ever need to live in joy.
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We pray these things for His sake. Amen. I invite you to open your
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Bibles and turn with me to Acts chapter 16. Acts chapter 16.
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We'll be reading verses 25 through 34.
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Acts 16 verses 25 through 34.
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We've been looking at this extended story in the second half of chapter 16.
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We've thought about why demons are so annoying and why magistrates are so corrupt.
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And now we come to the heart of the story, the most familiar portion. Paul and Silas in prison.
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And we're to think about why Christians are so joyful. In a sense, we're thinking about the
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Gospel impact on spiritual forces, the
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Gospel impact on the social fabric, and now the
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Gospel impact on us as we suffer for the faith. Acts chapter 16 beginning in verse 25.
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If you're able, I invite you to stand with me as we read God's holy word.
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But at midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.
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Suddenly, there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken.
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And immediately, all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were loosed. And the keeper of the prison, awaking from sleep and seeing the prison doors open, supposing the prisoners had fled, drew his sword and was about to kill himself.
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But Paul called with a loud voice saying, do yourself no harm for we are all here. And he called for a light, ran in and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas, and he brought them out and said, sirs, what must
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I do to be saved? So they said, believe on the
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Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household.
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And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who are in his house. And he took them that same hour of the night and washed their stripes.
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And immediately, he and all his family were baptized. Now when he had brought them into his house, he set food before them, and he rejoiced having believed in God with all his household.
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This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Strange and beautiful are the notes that sound in the grace of God.
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Strange and beautiful are the notes that sound in the grace of God. Love for one's enemies.
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Forgiving repeat offenders. Walking by faith and not by sight.
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Giving cheerfully. Serving humbly.
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And then there's joy. Joy untethered to the now.
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Unchained from the past. Unburdened by the future.
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What a strange and beautiful note in the grace of God is joy.
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And Christians may know joy and should know joy. Even in the dawn of pain and the dusk of grief, through the high noon of tribulation and in the midnight of trial, we may have joy.
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Joy speaks to that delight and that peace that we have in knowing
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God. In knowing God. This is truly much of that great gain that comes in contentment and godliness.
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Joy is forever the partner of that shalom that has no shelf life.
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Joy is the fruit of the Spirit. Joy is the victory of faith.
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Joy is in the angel songs of Christ's nativity. Joy is in the trumpet blast of Christ's finality.
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Joy is the marching drum of Christ's ascendancy. The glory and grace of God shines in the saints as their joy.
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When our focus remains on God, when our worshipful and reverent focus remains upon God, we will know continuing and increasing joy.
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If someone were to ask, why can Christians be joyful? Why are Christians so joyful?
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The number one answer I think must be because we have such a great God. That's the number one reason.
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We have such a great God. And secondly, because we have such great grace from this great
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God. And I think those are the two themes of this passage. If we are distracted, if we are aloof, if we are forgetful, then joy is not very present amongst
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Christians. But we must remember that our Lord will never leave us nor forsake us, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and so we may have joy and know joy and increase in joy.
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Why are Christians so joyful? Because we have such a great God. I think we see proof of that in verses 25 through 28.
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The prisoners of the Philippian jailer beaten by the
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Philippian magistrates, falsely accused by the Philippian citizenry.
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Paul and Silas are prisoners that night in the
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Philippian jail. But Paul and Silas, first and foremost, were already the prisoners of Christ.
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They were already the prisoners of Christ. It's why they were on this journey in the first place.
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It's why they wandered through Asia Minor and tried to figure out what direction to go.
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Why they took a ship across the northern Aegean to make it to Macedonia and to go all the way to Philippi and to preach the
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Gospel. They were the prisoners of Jesus Christ first and foremost long before they were ever spending a night in the jail in Philippi.
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Prisoners of Christ that were bound by four fetters of faith.
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And thus they were joy filled. They believed in God's governance. They believed in God's goodness.
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They believed in God's glory. And they believed in God's Gospel. They were bound by faith to Christ in these four ways.
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And that is why they had joy even in the midst of this terrible situation, painful situation, wearisome situation.
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We can be joyful because we have such a great God. As we read verses 25 -28, we see that God provides situations in which we have to exercise patience.
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God arranges for our joyful patience. God provides for our joyful patience.
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And so, remembering that about God, we can be joyful. We may often strain against a limiting providence.
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We might chafe at the lack of opportunities. We might look for any opening where we can get out from under a tough situation and never think about what is
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God arranging in my life for my good? Think about Paul and Silas.
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That morning, they were going to prayer. Meet up with Lydia and some of her friends.
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Go out to the river. Have a nice morning of prayer. And on the way, there's this demon -possessed girl once again, screaming and hollering and annoying the stuffing out of Paul.
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And he cast the demon out of her. And that started a chain of events that did not stop until they found themselves in the middle of the night, beaten and in chains and stocks in the inner prison.
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So here's Paul and Silas in a most trying time of suffering.
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A time of reflection. A time of questions. If you have ever been in a time of suffering in the middle of the night, come between 12 and 4, you have a sense of what
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Paul and Silas were going through. Those are not steady paths.
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Those are not clear trails. They are difficult.
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Remember that God provides those moments that we would be patient and wait upon Him.
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All that toil, all that time, all that travel of Paul and Silas to make it to Philippi, all the decisions that they made, all the seeking for the will of God, and this is what they get.
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Here they are in chains, in the stocks, in the jail, having been beaten, having been defamed.
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All the considerations may be very distracting, but all that joy requires is that Paul and Silas would keep their focus upon God.
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Not in answering all of the questions that pile up in the moment. It can't be all about what did we do wrong?
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Or what can we do to fix this? By focusing upon God, and we see how they do it in this passage, by focusing upon the
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Lord, even when the earthquake comes and the jail doors spring open and the chains fall out of the cracks in the wall and they're free to run.
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They don't run. Their focus is still on God. Not the rapidly changing situation in which they live.
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How did Jesus weigh His suffering against His Father's will?
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How did He see it in the light of His Father's will? Luke 22, 42, in the
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Garden, Jesus prayed, Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me.
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Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done. We pray what we know to pray.
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What our heart is begging the Lord for help, release, deliverance, salvation, healing, all the while ready to aim in what the will of God is.
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Jesus Christ is our Good Shepherd. He has blazed the trail through suffering to glory.
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He is our Captain. The Captain of our salvation. He has gone ahead of us, and He brings many sons to glory.
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He's been through the valley. He's our Good Shepherd, and He knows what it is like. So when we are there, we should look unto
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Jesus. We should look unto Jesus, Who is the Author and the Finisher of our faith.
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Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross. He despised the shame, and He has sat down at the right hand of the
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Father, at the right hand of the throne of God. Put your attention there. Consider Christ, Who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself.
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Listen, Hebrews 12 .3 Lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.
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Where's the joy? Put your attention upon your Shepherd. He's been through the valley. He leads you through.
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You do not have to be weary and discouraged in your souls, because you have a Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ.
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Consider Him. Put your attention there. I'm putting it into the larger perspective.
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Remembering that God is the One who's arranging all of this, because He's providing for our joyful patience.
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Remember this. God is shepherding all of history into the
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Christ -shaped fold of His glory. We may joyfully defer joyfully defer to our
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Lord's governance. How did Paul and Silas end up in a prison in Philippi?
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This was not the plan. This is not what I wanted, but we may joyfully defer to our
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Lord's governance, remembering He's still in charge and nothing is getting past Him or by Him.
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Bound by this fetter of faith as the prisoner of Christ, we may lay aside the oh -me's and take up the amen's.
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We may forsake the if -only's and the what -if's and take up Yes, Lord and by the grace of God.
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We may look on our lives and our situations and our circumstances not with the hermeneutic of suspicion, but that of submission.
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Our joyful patience under God's governance should be attended by joyful prayers that appeal to God's goodness.
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We have a great God. This is why we can be joyful. We have a great God. He provides for our joyful patience.
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He arranges these things for us for our good. And He provides for our joyful prayers.
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He has not abandoned us. He's not left us in the dark. He's not left us to guess. He has arranged for us to be able to pray to Him and to pray confidently to Him and to pray joyfully to Him.
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Paul and Silas are praying in the middle of the night. We're addressing
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God and fearing God and revering God. Confessing our sins and saying what
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God already knows, but being in agreement with Him about how very difficult this is.
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How much worry and complaint is in my heart that is being exposed so clearly in the moment of my weakness, requesting help, asking
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God to intervene, and remembering the promises and rejoicing in the promises.
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Prayer is a way we approach God in joy, even in difficult times.
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And what are we striving to know better? What is it that keeps us up at night?
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What is it that is on our hearts? What is the burden? What is it that we think is a barrier to our joy?
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What are we striving to know better? Are we striving to know our problems really, really well?
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Are we meditating on our problems in every subset of each category of how problematic our problems are?
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Or are we striving to know our Provider? What are we striving to know and understand?
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Our problems or our Provider? Have we become authorities upon ourselves?
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And authorities about our needs? Or are we taking ourselves and our needs under the authority of God?
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Prayer is how we turn all of this over to Him and turn ourselves unto Him so that we're about Him instead of ourselves.
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There's no other way to joy. God sovereignly arranges the need as a test for our good so that we will pray.
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How little we would pray if we never knew a frowning providence. How little we would pray if we never knew a frowning providence.
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How few times our little children would come to us in a day if they never needed anything.
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And we are little children coming to a heavenly Father. In Deuteronomy 8, verses 2 -3,
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Moses said to the second generation, you shall remember that the Lord your
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God led you all the way these 40 years in the wilderness to humble you and to test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep
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His commandments or not. He put you through hard times. Verse 3, so He humbled you, listen, allowed you to hunger.
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I thought He was a good God. He is a good God. And He allowed you to hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
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Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren, James says, every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow of His own will.
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He brought us forth by the word of truth that we might be a kind of first fruits of His creatures. So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath, for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
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Do you know where the wrath of man flares up most clearly, most often? It's when that person is in dire straits and dire need.
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Wait, didn't the hardship come by the hand of the
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Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow? Didn't it come by His hand, with His kiss of blessing on it, for your good, so that we might be slow to speak, slow to wrath, quick to hear, that we may grow up as the first fruits
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God provides for our joyful patience. He provides for our joyful prayer.
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I recall our brother David Holmes from CHA who would pray for hardships and troubles on CHA mission trips.
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God, give us trouble. God, send a problem our way.
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What a blessing to be put on our knees in dependence upon the
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Lord. God not only provides for our patience, but He also provides the prayer.
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Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is our Good Shepherd, who is our King, taught us to pray like toddlers to a
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Heavenly Father. Read Matthew 6. Consider what
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He says about prayer. How are we supposed to think about prayer and approaching prayer?
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Remembering that little children go to a father, and that father's not perfect. That father's not sinless.
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In fact, he's depraved. He's got sin all through him. And yet, when the child comes to the father and says,
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Father, I'm hungry. I need bread. He doesn't give the son a stone. Father, I'm hungry. Do you have fish?
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The father does not give him a snake. If that's the case, how much more is it true that God as our
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Heavenly Father gives to us all that we need in Christ by His Spirit?
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Hebrews 4, verses 14 -16. Remember, keeping your focus upon Christ. Seeing then that we have a great
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High Priest who has passed through the heavens. You ever feel like your prayers aren't making it through?
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You have a High Priest who's passed through the heavens. Jesus the Son of God. Therefore, let us hold fast our confession.
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For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are yet without sin.
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Therefore, let us, therefore, come. What does it say? It says boldly.
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Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
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I don't think my prayers are making it all the way up to the throne room of God. It doesn't have to.
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Jesus Christ, your Mediator, has gone on before. He's at the right hand of the Father. And He has given you
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His Holy Spirit by whom it intercedes for you as well and brings your prayers all the way to the right hand of God.
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And Christ intercedes for you, personally vouching for you in the Father's ear who is pleased to receive your prayers.
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Come boldly, simply, by faith in God.
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Faith in the Spirit. The Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. Even if we don't know how to pray, He intercedes for us.
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So God provides for our joyful prayers. Paul inspires me. I don't know how to pray. How do you pray in this situation?
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What a mess. What an absolute mess that they are in. How do you even pray in a situation like that?
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How do you keep your thoughts clear? How could you even reach for language in this terrible condition that would be worthy of praying, and yet they are praying and God provides for the praying?
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We may joyfully depend not on our ability to be sincere and focused, but we may joyfully depend on our
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Lord's goodness, because He's a good God and He's a good Heavenly Father. Bound by this fetter of faith.
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Faith in God's goodness. As prisoners of Christ, we have no righteous obligation to worry.
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None! Problems are complex by nature.
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Evil spreads and intrudes upon all things.
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That's what evil and wickedness do. But we have no righteous obligation to be anxious and to worry and to dwell and meditate on all of the problems.
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Quite the opposite. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
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1 Thessalonians 5, 16 and 18 says, Rejoice always! You know what goes with that?
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Pray without ceasing. How can I rejoice always? Because you pray without ceasing. And listen to this spiritual discipline.
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In everything, give thanks. Well, that's hard to do, but simple, it's short, easy to remember.
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Looking for memory verses. These are very, very short memory verses. Rejoice always. That's one verse.
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Pray without ceasing. That's another verse. In everything, give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
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I don't know what the will of God is for my life. Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In everything, give thanks.
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This is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. We have such a great God. That's why we can be joyful.
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God provides for our joyful patience. God provides for our joyful prayers. And God provides for our joyful praise.
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These two things, the praying and the praising, the supplications and the singing, happen all at the same time at once in the passage.
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In verse 25, it says, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God. A really good way of translating that would be, and Paul and Silas praying were singing.
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The praying and the singing go together. You'll notice this in the Psalms. You'll notice this when we sing certain hymns and spiritual songs, that it's praying and singing all at the same time.
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The focus was on God, but the praising and the singing and the praying and all of it goes together and it blesses not only
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Paul and Silas who are encouraging one another, but we also find out that the prisoners were listening in and paying attention.
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Woe is me is not the way of Christ. Yes, the blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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Blessed are those who mourn. But why? For they shall be comforted.
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Comforted. But we come in godly sorrow. We come broken in our sins. But we come to a
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Savior who fully forgives. And not only forgives, but cleanses.
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A God of all comfort whose mercies are new every morning. The way of Christ is not, woe is me, woe is me, woe is me.
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We have no call to walk around and beat ourselves with self -flagellation and say, here's how terrible
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I am every day. This is not what's pleasing to the Lord, but that we would trust in Christ and rejoice in His righteousness.
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And Paul and Silas might have some cause to say, woe is me. But they are singing, praying.
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They are singing. And the Greek word is where we get our word hymn. But it's in the verbs. They're hymning.
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They're hymning each other and they're hymning the prisoners. They're hymning all the way through the middle of the night.
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And the art of prayerfully hymning our way through the valley is exemplified in the
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Psalms. One example is Psalm 13. In Psalm 13, a full composition, six verses long, and we hear the condition of the psalmist.
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He's honest about his sorrow, honest about his concerns, honest with his requests, and holding fast to God.
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This is a good example among many, but Psalm 13, verse 1. How long,
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O Lord? Have you ever prayed that? How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?
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Not questioning God's omniscience, but he's wondering when God will take action.
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Remembering and forgetting for God is activity. When he remembers, he acts. How long will
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You forget me? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?
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How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?
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Notice that there is an additional but related concern. How long will my enemy be exalted over me?
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How long will the wicked prosper is a prayer in Psalms.
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Consider and hear me, O Lord my God. Enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.
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Lest my enemies say, I have prevailed against Him. Let those who trouble me rejoice when
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I am moved. But I have trusted in Your mercy. My heart shall rejoice in Your salvation.
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I will sing to the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me. So this is the kind of hymning we're talking about.
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Paul and Silas are doing this kind of hymning in the prison. It's not a rose -colored glasses, everything's fine and dandy, so glad I got beat up.
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Right? It's not a weird, unnatural kind of stoicism and stubborn chipperness.
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It's praying to God while singing to God and acknowledging the depths of sorrow and the difficulty, but all at the same time asking for Him to intervene and Him to act and confessing
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Your mercy is worth trusting. Your goodness is worth believing in. And notice the note to Providence.
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You have dealt bountifully with me. I have so many evidences in my life that I have well reflected on.
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There is God blessing me, and there is God blessing me, and there is God blessing me. And reflecting on the providences of God, so that gives me a foundation of faith in the now, in the suffering.
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God provides for our joyful praise by giving to us hymns and psalms and spiritual songs.
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What did Jesus do right before He was praying and sweating great drops of blood?
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What did He do right before? He had the Last Supper, yes, but after that? Matthew 26 .30
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And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. It was traditional to sing the
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Great Hallel. Psalm 113 -118
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To sing a hymn before you would depart after having the
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Passover. They sang a hymn and they went out to the Mount of Olives. Singing before the face of suffering.
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And do you know He continues to sing? Hebrews 2, verses 10 -12 where it was fitting for Him, our
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Savior Jesus Christ, it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, and bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain, that's the trailblazer, that's the head, the archegos in the
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Greek, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
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So He became our fitting Savior through His sufferings for both
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He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified, all of one, for which reason, listen,
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Jesus Christ, He is not ashamed to call us His brethren.
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Saying what? Quote from the Psalms. I will declare Your name to my brethren.
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This is from Psalm 22. This is the voice of David but fulfilled in Jesus Christ. I will declare Your name to my brethren.
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How do we know God? How do we know the Father? Through the Son. He declares God's glory to us that we may know who
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He is. So I will declare Your name to my brethren in the midst of the assembly. I will sing praise to You.
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We should praise God and worship God and sing hymns to God. Yes, and how do we know how great and glorious God is?
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Because Jesus Christ declared Him to us. Well, Jesus is also the song leader.
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He's also the worship leader. He's the one who's singing and He's leading us to sing and worship
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God who He has revealed to us. This is our great
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High Priest made perfect through suffering. So God has provided for our joyful praise in Christ.
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We may joyfully delight in our Lord's glory. Joyfully delight in our
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Lord's glory. Bound by the fetter of this faith, faith in God's glory, that His glory is of such weight and such brilliance that we can praise
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Him no matter what the circumstances are in our lives. Because of this, let us sing hymns and psalms and spiritual songs to one another.
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Let's sing to each other. Let's sing to one another and for the good of everyone around us.
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Colossians 3 .16 says, Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the
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Lord. This is in a chapter talking about what it's like to be renewed and brought up in Christ into maturity and being conformed to the image of God.
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Singing. Singing to one another. Singing for the praise of God. Ephesians 5 .17
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-20 Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is and do not be drunk with wine, which is anticipation, but be filled with the
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Spirit. Be filled with the Holy Spirit. Be being filled with the Holy Spirit.
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That's the instruction. Well, could I have some help there? That's kind of hard to grab hold of.
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That seems to be a bit of a mysterious and esoteric instruction. How do I be being filled with the
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Holy Spirit? Here's something you can grab hold of. Verse 19. Be being filled with the Spirit. How? Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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Singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. You want to be filled with the Spirit? There's a good way to do that.
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Put your attention upon Christ. Give praise and worship and adoration to God. Give all attention you can of your life to the
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One who gave you life. This is putting up the sails and waiting for the wind to blow and the
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Spirit will give you grace. Giving thanks always for all things to God the
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Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our joy is in God through Christ by the
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Spirit. Our patience is in His governance. Our prayers are for His goodness. Our praise is to His glory.
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And all of this, supernaturally, but in that sense naturally, goes with the joyful proclamation of who
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God is and who Jesus Christ is. The joy of Christians is an essential platform for the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ.
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Somebody comes to you full of complaints and sorrow and woe and their face looks like they haven't seen a bright light in 20 years, and they say,
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I've got good news for you. Do you have good news for you?
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Because it looks like you need some. Paul and Silas are in jail because they preach
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Christ. Paul and Silas are in jail because Paul cast a demon out of a girl who was possessed in the name of Jesus Christ.
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Paul and Silas are prisoners because of the proclamation of the Gospel, vocalizing
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Christ's worthiness and authority is what got them in trouble in the first place, and yet here they are in the middle of the prison doing it some more.
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Hymning one another, hymning the prisoners, hymning away in the night. And we read that the prisoners listened to what they sang.
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This word listened is not the normal old, oh, that's the sound. I recognize that there's sound coming from the jail cell next to me.
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This word means that they were enthralled. They were enraptured with the singing coming out of this cell.
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The prisoners, why didn't they just immediately run when the earthquake happened?
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They were focused, fixed, on the singing of Paul and Silas.
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They weren't about to go anywhere. What a strange and beautiful sound, this grace of God.
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Paul and Silas full of good words in a bad place. Full of good words in a bad place.
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Proverbs 12, 25 says, Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression, but a good word makes it glad.
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They had a good word, and we have a good word. The fear of the
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Lord is a fountain of life. Thinking of Him first and Him most, we have a good word to share.
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In peril and in problem and in persecution and crisis and concern and controversy,
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Jesus kept on preaching the good news. He had a good word to say to people who were hungry and maybe not getting enough food every day.
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He had a good word to share to those who were heavily oppressed by taxation. He had a good word to share to those who were the victims of corruption and false teaching.
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He had a good word to share. Luke 4, 43,
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Jesus said to those who came to seek Him and say, hey, we need you to come back. You need to cast out more demons. You need to heal more lepers.
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You need to do this and you need to do that. We have an agenda for you, Jesus. And He said to them, no. Not going back to those villages.
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I must preach the Kingdom of God to the other cities also, because for this purpose I have been sent.
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I've got a good word for prisoners that will set them free. We may joyfully declare our
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Lord's Gospel, bound by this fetter of faith. We believe that the Gospel, the preaching of the good news, is the most essential thing that Christians will ever do.
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This is what we need to focus on. This is what we need to accomplish. Our Lord set the example. Let's follow His example and joyfully declare the
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Lord's Gospel. Because we are the prisoners of Christ.
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We are bound to this. We are the sheep of His pasture. And He has put us out amidst wolves,
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He says. And so, harmless as doves, wise as serpents, we are
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His martyrs on His mission, crucified with Christ. We have been crucified with Christ.
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Is there anything worse than suffering under the wrath of God for the full weight of your sins?
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Not a thing worse. And Christians, the worst thing that could ever possibly have happened to you has already happened to you in Christ on the cross.
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It's already been done, taken care of, and sent away. And so, putting our attention upon our
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Savior Jesus Christ, He says a disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.
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It is enough for a disciple that he be like his teacher and a servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house
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Beelzebub, how much more would they call those of his household? So get ready for what they're going to call
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Christians. And He says, therefore, do not fear them.
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Think of the great arsenal of degrading speech that they have to launch at you as Christians.
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Therefore, don't fear them. Why? For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known.
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Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light. And what you hear in the air, preach in the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear
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Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. This is Matthew 10, verse 29. Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin?
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Not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father's will. The very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear, therefore.
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You are of more value than many sparrows. Therefore, whoever confesses to me before men, him
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I also will confess before my Father who is in heaven. Whoever denies me before men, him I will also deny before my
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Father who is in heaven. You know what steals the joy? You don't think God notices. Oh, He counts every hair on your head.
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You know what steals the joy? You're afraid of what people think. What they're going to say. That will steal your joy. But who cares if you confess
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Jesus Christ? He confesses you before the Father. And if the Father looks at you and the
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Son looks at you filled with the Holy Spirit, and they say, my own child whom
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I love, what do we have to fear? And there is the basis for our joy.
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We are the prisoners of Christ bound by faith in the goodness of God's governance, in the glory of His Gospel, joyfully forever anchored to Christ.
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Of all the strange and beautiful notes that sound in the grace of God, among the clearest and the brightest is that of joy.
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We may have joy at dawn and at dusk. We may have joy at high noon and midnight.
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We may have joy in Christ who was the same yesterday, today, and forever.
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Let's pray. Father, we thank You for the Word You've given us. Thank You for the example that we find in this passage where You arranged matters for Paul and Silas to be right there.
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Right there for the prisoners. Right there for the jailer. Right there for the earthquake. Right there for the
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Gospel. And we thank You for the reminder that we may have joy in such circumstances, and indeed all circumstances.
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I pray that You would turn our attention to our Savior that we may know this joy even today. Amen.