The Bible & The Lost

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Please be seated, take out your Bibles, and turn with me to the 17th chapter of the book of Acts.
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Acts chapter 17, and this morning, when we come to our time for reading, we're going to be reading verses 1 through 15, so we're going to be reading quite a bit of Scripture today, but it all fits within a singular narrative that I wanted us to at least be able to look at in its fullness, whether or not it's going to...
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we'll finish this week, we'll see if we need to push it into next week, I'm sure that will work.
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Recently, a megachurch pastor, and we say the word megachurch, this man has one of the largest churches in the United States, and he made waves through the evangelical community because he stated with really great boldness that faith in Jesus Christ is not dependent upon the validity of the Bible.
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He was trying to appeal to people that he said had left the church for the wrong reasons.
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Having had their faith in the Bible rocked by what he called unanswerable questions, he said, and I quote, if the Bible is the foundation of our faith, here is the problem, it is all or nothing, Christianity becomes a fragile house of cards that comes tumbling down when we discover that perhaps the walls of Jericho didn't.
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End quote.
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That's a direct quote from this particular pastor.
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In the message, he made the bold proclamation that the truth of Christianity is not dependent upon the truth of Scripture, and his argument was that Christianity predates the Scripture, so it can't be based on Scripture.
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He even went on to say that the early Christian missionaries didn't appeal to the Bible, but rather their own eyewitness testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the foundation of their faith, and as a result, his conclusion was that when we proclaim Jesus, we can do so without the concern of the truth of the Bible.
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Because ultimately, the truth of Christianity is bound up in the truth of the resurrection, which is based on the testimony of the eyewitnesses of the apostles and others, and not on, to use his words, the fragile house of cards, which is the Bible.
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Now, I share this for two reasons.
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One, I know that some of you actually listened to this message, because I got some messages and emails and questions.
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Some of you have seen or heard about it, and maybe you even heard me mention it on a Wednesday night.
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He is a very popular minister in some circles, and so I wanted to address those claims publicly, because people have asked me the question.
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But also, the second reason, I believe that his understanding of the foundation of Christianity is absolutely askew and needs to be addressed.
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So, as I begin, I want to say a few things.
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Number one, his claim that the early church was not dependent on the Bible is absolutely false, because the early church had a Bible.
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It was what we call the Old Testament.
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They had a Bible.
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To say that Christianity predates the Bible is to misunderstand what the Bible is.
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The Bible is not...
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When you look at what you have today, you have 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament, and people think this is what the people of God have always had.
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This is not what the people of God have always had.
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In fact, not even in the numbers, the way that we have our number system, we talk about the 39 books of the Old Testament.
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If you look at a Jewish Old Testament, it's only 24 books, because they didn't number them the same way that we do.
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They didn't have 1st and 2nd Kings.
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They didn't have 1st and 2nd Chronicles.
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They didn't have all the individual prophets outlined.
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They were all one book of the prophets.
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And so, there is a difference in how the word of God has been understood in its outline, if you will, but it's always been the same word.
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Don't let me confuse you to say that the word of God has changed, but my point is to say this.
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To say that the early church didn't have a Bible is to totally discount the Old Testament scriptures and their authority to speak the word of God.
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Jesus Christ held men accountable to the scriptures.
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And what scriptures did he hold men accountable to? The Tanakh, the Torah, the Netavim, and the Ketavim, the law and the prophets.
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In fact, I would even go on to say that when the Apostle Paul proclaimed, Pascha grathe theonistas, all scripture is God-breathed, that he was talking about the Old Testament, because at that particular time, when he wrote that to Timothy, there was no New Testament.
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It was in the midst of its revelation.
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It was in the midst of being written down.
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So when Paul proclaims that all scripture is given by God, it's inspiration from his mouth or from his breath, as the scripture says, God-breathed, he's talking about the Old Testament.
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The church has never been without a testimony of God inscripturated.
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So my goal is, and how this all came about in writing this into this message, is we're going to look today at how the Apostle Paul shared his faith.
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Acts 17 is one of the great evangelistic chapters in all the New Testament.
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It shows how the Apostle Paul went from city to city, taking the gospel, and it shows how he engaged not only religious unbelievers in Christ, but the irreligious unbelievers or the polytheistic unbelievers, and how he addressed each one of them.
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And what did he point them back to? He pointed them back to the truth of the scriptures.
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And so for someone to come along and to say that to believe in Jesus Christ doesn't necessarily mean that we have to believe in the authority of the scriptures, where else do you get your information about Jesus than from the scriptures? Well, there's a little bit in Josephus.
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Okay.
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Is there enough in Josephus to tell you that it is by grace through faith alone and Christ alone that you must be saved? No.
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Is there enough in the oral traditions that have been passed down that have been so misconstrued and misunderstood, especially in like Roman Catholicism, which has added the Marian doctrines to the oral tradition that that's what we need to hold on to? No, we hold to the Word of God.
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And so this morning I want to show, again, as I've mentioned, that from the foundation of the church, the apostles, the missionaries, appealed not to their own experiences.
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Though they use their experiences, Paul will talk about his own experiences at times.
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His having been blinded and brought to Christ through a miraculous revelation of God.
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But his appeal to why people should believe is an appeal to the scripture.
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And so too should we.
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So let's stand and read.
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We're going to read Acts 17.
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We're going to read 15 verses.
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So like I said, quite a swath of text.
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This is Paul and Silas along with Timothy.
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The they in the first verse.
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It says, Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica where there was a synagogue of the Jews.
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And Paul went in as was his custom and on the three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead and saying, This Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the Christ.
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And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas as did many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.
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But the Jews were jealous and taking some of the wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason seeking to bring them out to the crowd.
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And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authority shouting, These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also.
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And Jason has received them.
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And they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar saying that there is another king, Jesus.
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And the people in the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things and when they had taken money as a security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.
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The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea.
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And when they had arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue and these Jews were more noble than those of Thessalonica.
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They received the word with all eagerness examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so.
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Many of them therefore believed with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.
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But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul and Berea also, they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds.
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Then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea, but Silas and Timothy remained there.
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Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens and after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed.
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Father God, come to you in Jesus' name.
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I ask first and foremost for forgiveness for my inadequacies, my sins, my errors.
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Lord, that you might make me a vessel worthy to preach your word right now.
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And I pray God that you would keep me from error as I know that I am a fallible man and capable of preaching error.
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I pray Lord for your people.
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God, that they might hear the word and be changed.
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That the application of the word would be strong in their hearts.
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That they would see that this is more than just a narrative, Lord, but that this narrative gives to us a reminder of how we ought to conduct ourselves as the people of God.
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Lord, if there are unbelievers here today as I am certain there are, with a group this large, there are several who have not bowed the knee to Jesus Christ.
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Maybe they have with their mouth, but not with their heart.
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I pray that they would hear today the call of the gospel to repent of their sins and trust in Jesus Christ.
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For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved than he who is our all in all.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.
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Quite a while ago, we started a study through the book of Acts.
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I couldn't find when the first message was, but I know it was well over a year ago.
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Possibly more than that.
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But this series is entitled Beyond Our Borders because the theme of Acts is taking the gospel into all the world.
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We did take a break over the summer to study the biblically functioning church, but now we'll, Lord willing, continue this series following the early missionary journeys of the apostles.
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And you'll remember that the book began with, the book of Acts begins with a focus on the apostles in Jerusalem, particularly Peter, but later after his conversion, the apostle Paul sort of takes center stage as the primary missionary figure in the book and he has already completed one missionary journey with Barnabas and now is in the midst of his second having taken Silas as his partner and picked up Timothy along the way along with a Gentile physician named Luke who sort of comes in and out as the story unfolds.
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In our last study, we saw them in Philippi.
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He had preached the gospel to a group of Jewish women and one of them named Lydia was saved and a church was started in her home.
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Paul was jailed in Philippi which led to one of the greatest conversion stories in the Bible of the jailer who was there.
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There was an earthquake.
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He was going to commit suicide.
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Paul called to him, do not commit suicide.
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The man fell down.
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How should I be saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved, you and your whole house.
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And thus it was so.
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Well, it's after that event in chapter 16, it's after Paul has seen the conversion of the jailer.
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There has been a release of Paul because of his Roman citizenry and now he's out again to go proclaim the gospel and this is where we find ourselves beginning in verse 1 of chapter 17 and we see first the events which occur in Thessalonica.
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It says in verse 1, it says, Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica where there was a synagogue of the Jews.
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Now that entire journey, it doesn't say it in the text, but if you look at a map, the entire journey would have been about a hundred miles.
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They were traveling along the Via Ignatia which was a road which extended all the way across Macedonia and often we envision the missionaries walking but most scholars think that this being such a long journey and them having the opportunity probably would have ridden on the back of an animal, maybe even a horse.
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They're going across the Via Ignatia making their way and it says that they went through Amphipolis and Apollonia to get to Thessalonica and some people again looking at what scholars have conjectured about why they went through.
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It doesn't say they stopped and ministered there and you can assume that they were sharing the gospel as they went but it doesn't say that they stopped and it's likely that in Amphipolis and Apollonia there was no synagogue.
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There was no place to go in and directly engage with those who had the scripture.
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So they went on to Thessalonica.
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Thessalonica which we know will become very important because later the Apostle Paul will actually write two letters that we have in scripture to the Thessalonians.
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So that's the same group of people.
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Thessalonica was founded in 315 BC on the site of the early settlement of Thermae by Cassandra who named it after his wife a half-sister of Alexander the Great.
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So Thessalonica was the half-sister of Alexander the Great and the city is named after her.
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Verse 2 it says, And Paul went in as was his custom and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the scriptures explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead and saying this, Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the Christ.
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I want to look first at that word reasoned.
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The Bible says that he went in for three Sabbath days which means three Saturdays in a row he would go into the synagogue and reason.
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Now we can assume it's not in the text but we can assume that there was more than just a Saturday Bible study going on but that he was probably engaging with people during the week.
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But the text specifically says he went into the synagogue because that would have been where the gathering of the people was to be able to engage them and reason with them.
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The word reason here it means to address an audience but it also has the meaning of interacting with people.
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It means that Paul was not just standing up and giving a monologue.
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He wasn't just preaching a sermon but he was answering the questions that the people had to engage in regarding what he was saying.
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And it says in verse 3 the very first word of verse 3 in the ESV says he was explaining to them.
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Explaining means to open up something.
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That he was opening the sense of the scripture to them.
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And the word proving there a very important word means that he was actually laying out his case.
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So he goes in and he has a dialogue a conversation where he's telling them things he's allowing them to ask questions he's explaining to them what he's saying and he's proving the truth of his word.
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He's proving what he's saying.
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In my heart as I was reading this this week and I was preparing my message in my heart I was wondering what he was saying and how he was addressing this crowd.
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Because honestly you know if let's say I picked you up and I dropped you off in the middle of a Jewish synagogue today and said okay share Jesus.
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You know right away that you're walking into a situation where most of the people have heard about Jesus for better or for worse.
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You can't go to a Jewish synagogue today and not hear at least someone they've heard about Jesus.
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You can't drive a hundred feet in the south and not see a cross on a building.
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But you got to think these people have not heard this at all.
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These are Jewish believers.
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They believe in the scriptures and here comes this guy who's proclaiming something radically new.
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So was he dealing with questions? Yes, but not the same questions you all would have to deal with today.
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If you went into a Jewish congregation they would sort of be fit to argue with you because they've already had to deal with this.
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These people this is all new.
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And here he comes.
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And I just wonder did he take them back to Genesis 3 and show them where God had promised to crush the head of the serpent through the seed of the woman? Did he go back to the covenant with Abraham and show how the world was going to be blessed through the Christ and this Jesus is the Christ? Did he take them to the law and show them how Christ was the fulfillment of the ceremonial offerings? Or did he take them to Isaiah's prophecy and show how Jesus meticulously fulfills the prophecy of the suffering servant to the point that even today many Jewish people won't even debate that particular passage because it so particularly describes who Jesus is and what he was going to do.
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400 years before 500 years before he came.
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You see I don't know what Paul said but I want to know.
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Maybe one day in glory I'll get to say hey what did you say? We have a lot of time to talk about it.
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But that's the beauty of this is this is what Paul's doing.
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He's going into people who already have the Bible.
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He's going into people who already have the scriptures.
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They know their scriptures well too.
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This is what they were taught.
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And he's saying look your scriptures proclaim to you Jesus.
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And let me tell you who Jesus is.
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What a pure beautiful evangelism that he has.
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It's not tainted by the confusion of today.
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He's not tainted by Google and all the confusion that's out there today.
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He gets to bring in he says you know the Bible.
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Let me tell you what your Bible says about Jesus and let me share Jesus with you.
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It amazes me the wonder of what Paul got to experience as he went in and opened the word of God with these people and said this Jesus who I proclaim to you is the Christ.
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That's an important sentence because they knew there was a Christ and they knew there was a Christ coming.
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The Old Testament was clear enough that they knew there was a promised one to come.
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There was no doubt that there was a promised one to come.
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And so he says that's why he doesn't say this is Jesus the Christ.
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He says this Jesus whom I'm telling you about is the one that you knew was coming.
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He is the anointed one.
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Christ.
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Christ is the Greek of the Hebrew Messiah.
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You have waited for Messiah.
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You have known that he is coming and this Jesus who I am proclaiming to you is He.
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Let me show you how.
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Let me show you why He is the one who is to come.
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And that's why in verse 4 it says and some were persuaded.
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Can you imagine that? Some of them actually believed what Paul had to say.
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Absolutely.
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It says some were persuaded.
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It means they were convinced to become followers.
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And they joined Paul and Silas.
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It says as did many of the devout Greeks and not a few leading women.
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The phrase leading women there proton in the Greek it simply means women of prominence.
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And there's some debate as to whether or not that means that they were women who themselves were prominent leaders in the church or business people in the community.
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And in particular the F.F.
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Bruce says this.
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He says Macedonian women did have a well-earned reputation for their independence and their enterprising spirit.
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And you remember Lydia.
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Same thing.
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She was an enterprising woman.
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So it could be that these are women in the church who had a prominent standing maybe business-wise or otherwise.
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But others have said well, maybe these are the wives of leading men.
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Well, it doesn't say that but there have been some who've conjectured well, maybe that's what it's being said.
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But the point is what comes next.
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It says, but the Jews were jealous.
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Verse 5.
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Why are they jealous? You're taking people away from us.
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Rather than being excited and happy that the Gospel is being proclaimed, rather than being excited and happy that the Messiah has come and we know who He is and we know what He's done, you've taken away our people and now we're jealous.
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Now we're angry.
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And it says, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob and set the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason seeking to bring them out of the crowd.
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Now, the wicked men of the rabble, the rabble, I like the way the King James says this.
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It says in the King James, certain lewd fellows of a baser sort.
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That's a very old school way of saying a bunch of jerks.
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Certain lewd fellows of a baser sort.
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In the Greek language, this particular term, it refers to troublemakers.
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There were people that were just willing to start trouble at any moment and be a part of the trouble at any time.
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The Jews knew who they were and knew how to get them going.
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It says they formed a mob.
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We've seen recently in our country how easy it is to inspire a mob, how easy it is to inspire mob behavior in certain groups.
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And so some individuals are just given to that type of mentality and that's who these men were.
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They were the people who were given over to that type of mentality.
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And I like Brian Boardman, one of my favorite preachers.
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He actually talked about this in his message and he said it could have been that they just went out giving out money.
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He said, it doesn't say in the text, but if you think about how do you inspire a crowd, just go say here's a few bucks, just make some trouble.
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And I thought that was an interesting sort of personal commentary that he said that these are the type of people that do anything for a buck.
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You want us to start some trouble? Sure, no problem.
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And so they inspire a mob.
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And then we are introduced to a person that up until this point we have not been introduced to.
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His name is Jason.
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It says they attack the house of Jason.
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Now later we see that this is the place that Paul and his companions are staying.
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This is the first time Jason's name comes up.
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So it's likely that he's a new believer.
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He's a person in Thessalonica who's heard the word, he's believed the word.
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And like Lydia had opened her home to the apostles, Jason has opened his home to the apostles.
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So what do they do? They take the mob.
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They take the crowd and they go and attack this guy's house.
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Now can you imagine being a believer for oh say maybe three weeks and having a crowd come to your house, pitchforks in hand.
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It doesn't say that, but you're adding a little bit of sanctified imagination.
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Bringing pitchforks to your home.
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I mean some of you have been believers for 20 years and you couldn't imagine it happening today.
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Imagine if you were a believer for just this side of three weeks and now your house is being attacked for your faith, your very livelihood, your community is coming after you.
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It says they drag him out and some of the brothers, which assumes that they were meeting in Jason's home, and they brought him before the city authorities, verse 6, and said, and this is an important phrase, these men who have turned the world upside down have come here also.
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Who's he talking about? He's talking about Paul.
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Because everywhere Paul went, there was a seismic event.
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There was an explosion for the gospel.
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Sometimes Paul was attacked.
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Sometimes he was arrested.
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Sometimes churches expanded and blew up.
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But there was always something.
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Paul, everywhere he went and he brought the gospel, something happened, something amazing.
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He was a world turner.
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And because they couldn't get Paul, they got the next best guy.
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They got the guy who was holding him at his house.
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We'll pull him out.
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So they say, these men whom have turned the world upside down have come here and Jason has received them.
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That's an interesting way of addressing something that can happen with us.
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As preachers of righteousness, as people who proclaim the gospel, we are in fellowship with one another and we're associated with one another.
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And we can, in a sense, get one another into hot water because you're a part of a church that proclaims the truth.
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And people hate the truth.
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And, you know, I'm not trying to scare anybody or put anybody off, but there may come a day in our nation and it may not be as far off as you might want to imagine it is.
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There may come a day where it's illegal to say many of the things that we say here.
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Are you going to be willing to stand in that day? Because it won't just be me who has to stand.
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I might go to jail first, but I won't be alone.
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I'll get a cot ready.
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If you're willing to stand, you're going to stand together.
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And just like Jason, because the apostles weren't there anymore, they went to the next best guy.
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Okay, these guys turned the world upside down.
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We'd like to hang them out to dry.
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They're not here.
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We'll get the next best thing.
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The guy who put them up.
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And so they take him and they make this charge against him.
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They say they are acting against the decrees of Caesar saying that there is another King Jesus.
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This was a huge deal in the first century.
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Do you know why Jesus' Lord is such a controversial phrase in the New Testament? Because Jesus' Lord is not just a statement of truth.
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Jesus' Lord is a proclamation of adversity against the authority because the authority demanded that people say Kaiser Korias.
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You know what Kaiser Korias is? Caesar is Lord.
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You know what the Christians said? No.
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Yeshua Korias.
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Jesus is Lord.
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Yeshua Korias.
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Jesus is Lord.
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It was not just a statement of fact.
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It was a rebuttal to the demand of Rome that you claim Caesar is Lord.
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No, we do not claim Caesar is Lord.
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We claim Jesus Christ is Lord.
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And so, they weren't wrong in their accusation.
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They weren't wrong.
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You see, here's the thing that was different about Christianity than all the other pagan religions.
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Nobody would have had a problem with Christianity at all if the people serving Christ would have served everyone else's gods too.
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Nobody had a problem with adding a new god.
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The problem with Christianity in the first century was that the apostles and the prophets were saying this.
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No, Jesus isn't an add-on.
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Jesus is the only God.
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Jesus isn't an addition to your gods.
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He is the only God worth worshiping because He's the only God who exists.
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That was repugnant to them.
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So it says in verse 8, the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things.
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And when they had taken money as a security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.
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Basically, they put them out on bail.
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They took money from them as a sense of allowing them to not have to stay in chains.
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But at this point, Paul is gone.
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He's made his way.
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Verse 10 shows us he has made his way by night to Berea.
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And when they arrived, again, verse 10, and when they arrived in Berea, what did they do? Did they go into hiding for a few weeks? No.
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When they arrived in Berea, they went into the Jewish synagogue.
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Now, verse 11, and let me tell you something.
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Verse 11 is huge.
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I could do an entire message.
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And I may come back next week and readdress this some.
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But verse 11 is very important.
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Have you ever seen a church called Berean Church? Berean Bible Church? Berean First Baptist? Berea? Whatever.
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That is from this passage.
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The Bereans.
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It says, Now the Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica.
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They received the Word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.
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The term Berean has become synonymous with any person who is willing to look to the Scriptures for truth.
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This designation is a popular and positive designation.
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If you ever heard somebody say, be a Berean, what that means is listen to what I'm saying, but don't take my word for it.
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Listen to what I'm saying, but go to the Word of God and check.
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And every believer should be a Berean in that sense.
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Every believer.
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You should never say, well, Keith said it, so it's right.
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Keith has been mistaken many times.
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In fact, Brother Lee and I were talking this morning after Sunday school.
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I have said some heretical things in the past.
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I've said things that are wrong.
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And this is the point.
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My friend said this the other day.
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I thought it was great.
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He said, If your theology has never changed, that means you were 100% right when you started.
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And that's a pretty prideful way to say I've never had to change.
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I've never had to rethink anything.
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That's pretty prideful.
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But having said all that, that's what the Bereans were.
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They were willing to say, okay, these guys have brought us something.
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We need to go to the Scripture and see if it's true.
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We need to go to the Scripture and see if it's right.
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And so they did.
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They were noble-minded.
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What that word noble means in the Greek, it simply means willingness to learn.
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Willingness to be open-minded.
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Now, the phrase open-minded in our modern context can be somewhat of a miscommunication because people are so open-minded anymore their brains are falling out.
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But what it means, open-mindedness means that you're willing to admit that you are not absolutely perfect and that you're willing to be corrected by Scripture.
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I know people who aren't willing to be corrected by Scripture.
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I know that some of you at times have not been willing to be corrected by Scripture because we've talked and you've said things to me like, well, I know the Bible says this, but I'm going to keep doing this.
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That means you're not willing to be corrected by Scripture.
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Can't say amen.
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Say ouch.
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Either way, it doesn't matter.
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If you say those words, I don't care what the Bible says.
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I know what the Bible says, but I'm not going to do it.
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What are you saying? I'm not willing to be corrected.
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Right? Well, these people were.
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They were willing to be corrected.
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And then the last few verses show, the last few verses of today show just how tenacious Paul's enemies were because it says in verse 13, But when the Jews of Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea, they came there also.
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You see, they're over in Thessalonica getting on to Jason, trying to make an attack against him.
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Paul has slipped out the back door, as it were, by night, and he's made his way over to Berea.
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Now they hear about it.
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Well, we can't let that stand, so we've got to go over there too.
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And it says they were agitating and stirring up the crowds.
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And that word agitating in the Greek means agitating in English just in case you're wondering.
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They were bothering.
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They went around making a problem.
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And then the brothers immediately sent Paul off by the sea, but Silas and Timothy remained there.
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And those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens.
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And after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come, as soon as possible, they departed.
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It's amazing how much Paul's ministry was affected, or rather had affected, those who disagreed with him to the point that they were willing to try to thwart him by following him wherever he went.
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It's not enough to get him out of our town.
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We've got to make sure he doesn't say anything in anybody else's town either.
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Yet God ensured that his ministry would continue.
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And it did, even in the midst of the agitators.
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Well, now that we've looked at the text and we've made a very, very quick overview of the text, I want to make four observations.
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These should be in your bulletin on the back.
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I just want to explain four observations that I want to make from this text.
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In regard to Paul's evangelism, because again, looking back at how we started today's message, there are those out there who are saying today, the Bible, you can put it aside, just tell people about Jesus.
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Don't worry about the truth of the Scripture, just tell people about the resurrection.
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And where you get the information about Jesus and the resurrection without the Bible is head scratching for me, but that's another point.
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The issue here is, I want to show you four things that we see in this text about Paul's evangelism, because this whole chapter is Paul going about sharing the gospel and we see four things specifically.
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Number one, and I didn't give you blanks so you don't have to write this, but Paul's evangelism was Christ-centered.
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When Paul went into the synagogue, he was not preaching a generic message about God.
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His message was about Jesus Christ.
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One of the things that bothers me most today when I hear people talking about evangelism is that they're just trying to get people to take a general acceptance of the idea of a God, but they're not proclaiming Jesus Christ.
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That's the whole failure of the creation movement, by the way, the whole creation science movement and the ID movement, which is intelligent design, is all they do is get people to convince that a God exists, but it's not the God of the Bible.
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Oftentimes it doesn't go that far.
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A fool says in his heart, there's no God.
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We're not proclaiming a generic God.
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People were proclaiming Jesus Christ.
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This Jesus is the Christ, and that's what we proclaim.
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It is not only necessary that men know that God exists, it is necessary that men know that Jesus Christ is the only way to Him.
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If it was not necessary that these men knew Christ, there would be no reason for Paul to jump on that boat, get on that horse, and make his way to Thessalonica, because these people already knew that God existed.
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These people already had a Bible that told them about God and where the world came from.
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They knew about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, and yet they needed evangelizing.
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I've heard people say, well, I'm not going to share.
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They believe in God.
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I don't need to share the gospel with them.
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Do you think that was Paul's attitude? No.
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Well, they believe in God.
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They're fine.
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No, they're not.
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Without Jesus Christ, they're not fine.
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I only say that because how it works out practically, how it works out practically is why this is so important.
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In just a few weeks, we're going to be at the fishing hole.
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Many of you, I hope, will come.
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And even if you can only spend a couple hours being there with those who are handing out tracks and learning how to share your faith, you will hear people come up and they'll say, I'm fine.
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I believe in God.
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Yes, but what do you believe about Him? And does your belief in God matter if it's outside of Jesus Christ? Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father.
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Not just that God exists, but that He sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that He might save us from our sins.
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That's what we have to proclaim.
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So that's the first thing.
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As I was reading through this, Paul's evangelism is Christ-centered and ours should be as well.
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Second thing, Paul's evangelism was scripturally based.
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Paul's evangelism was scripturally based.
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Paul used the Bible, which in his sense would have been the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew Scriptures, to make his case.
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Those who would argue that the Scripture was not necessary for the founding of Christianity need only to look here.
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Paul didn't go into synagogue and say, hey everyone, Jesus blinded me.
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Now I'm sure he told that story.
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I'm not saying that his experience didn't have any value at all.
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But Jesus and His experience with the Apostle Paul was not the foundation for the Apostle Paul's proclamation.
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It was the Word of God.
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That's why the Bereans didn't simply engage with Paul about his blindness or about his situation, but they went to the Scriptures to see if what Paul was saying was so.
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Because if what Paul was saying didn't agree with the Scriptures, it doesn't matter how good of an experience he had.
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It would have been a lie.
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Now some people will say, well yeah, Paul used the Scriptures, but he only used the Scriptures of people who believed the Scriptures.
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But we're going to see in a few weeks that that's not actually the case.
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When Paul addressed the men at Mars Hill, he still addressed them from the God of the Bible and from Jesus Christ, whom every knee shall bow to.
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He didn't just generically discuss God with them.
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He did start from a generic position because they had their unknown God.
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He said, this unknown God I proclaim to you.
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But ultimately, he pulled them back to this.
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He says, God will judge the world in righteousness and He has commanded all men everywhere to repent.
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Where did God command all men everywhere to repent? In the Scriptures and through His Son Jesus Christ.
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It was never a generic message.
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It was always a very specific gospel message which comes from the Scriptures.
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So Paul's evangelism was Christ-centered.
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It was scripturally based.
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Number three, Paul's evangelism was differently received.
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One of the things that keeps people from evangelizing is a fear of rejection.
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Have you ever not shared your faith because you were afraid the person was going to reject you? Yes.
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Everybody do this.
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Yes.
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You've all not shared your faith either because you feared that you were going to be rejected or you feared it was going to start an argument or you valued the friendship and you didn't want to interrupt it or you valued the family relationship and you didn't want to cause a problem.
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And so you understand that part of what keeps you from sharing your faith is the fear of rejection.
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And here's what I want you to point, what I'm trying to point out from this text is that the Apostle Paul was the greatest missionary in the history of the church.
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I would say one of the greatest Christians who's ever walked the earth and not everybody heard his message and accepted it.
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You see, if the fear of rejection, Paul was rejected.
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Paul was rejected and chased.
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He was rejected and stoned.
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He had to leave by night so as to not be arrested.
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Your message will always be received differently by different people.
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Jesus said the seed is sowed and on some it falls along the way and the birds come and steal it and by some it is sown in stony ground and the thorns choke it out and some it is sowed in shallow soil and it springs up for a time but then it withers away.
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But some of the seed falls in the good soil and there it produces the fruit.
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Some thirty, some fifty, some a hundred fold, right? When you're sowing the seed, it's not all going to be received the same way.
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But God has His people out there to receive it.
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You are not responsible for their reception but you are responsible for their introduction to Christ.
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Not for their reception of Him but their introduction to Him is on you.
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Fourth and finally, Paul's evangelism was brotherly supported.
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Now this was actually a last minute part of the message I put on.
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This was originally a three point sermon.
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I normally don't do more than three.
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But as I was reading through the text and I came to this, I added this on at the very end.
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If you read the last few verses, you'll see Paul goes away by himself and what does he immediately do? He sends back and he says, To send Silas and Timothy to come where I am.
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Oftentimes we get the picture that Paul was sort of a superhero.
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And I did say earlier he was one of the greatest Christians that ever lived, greatest missionary.
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Maybe even I was building him up sort of like an evangelistic powerhouse.
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Yes, he was an evangelistic powerhouse but he didn't do it by himself.
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There is never a call in Scripture to be a lone wolf disciple.
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Christianity is meant to be lived out in community and even evangelism is meant to be done in community.
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We need one another in the ministry.
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This is why I like going out with other men.
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Not only does it hold me accountable to the going, because if other men aren't going, I might be more willing to stay home.
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So it kind of holds me more accountable.
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Hey, I know I got to meet the guys so I'm going to go do it.
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But also when I go, I know that I'm not alone.
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But I have other men of God, sometimes women of God out there with us.
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We have people there encouraging us.
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Paul needed that.
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Paul wasn't a stone-faced superhero.
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He was a man of God who needed to be encouraged by the people of God and might I say the same for you and me.
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Evangelism is our calling but it's not a calling to have to do alone.
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Now there are times when you'll evangelize alone at work and things like that but I'm saying our ministry life is meant to be done in community, not as a lone wolf.
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So as a recap for the message, just to very quickly remind you of these things, when we're trying to win people to Christ, we're not trying to win people to a generic God.
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Our foundation for who Christ is is based on what the Scripture says and that's a firm foundation, not a house of cards.
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Even the greatest evangelist in history was not able to convert every person he spoke to so we need to understand that rejection will be a possibility and a reality when we're evangelizing and we need the encouragement of one another when we go about evangelizing.
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That's the four things that I draw from this passage and I hope that those things have been an encouragement to you this morning.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the truth of the word and the encouragement of the word to go and share our faith.
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The reminder that the Apostle Paul, the greatest of all missionaries that we see in Scripture, and yet he too felt the sting of rejection.
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He felt the hatred of those who came after him for preaching the gospel.
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Lord, may we be firm in the foundation which is Jesus Christ and may we be willing to stand for Him and may we be willing to proclaim His name to those with whom we come in contact.
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I thank you, Lord, for the call to evangelism for in it is the beautiful wonder of sharing with people a truth which has eternal value.
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May you inspire us and encourage us all, Lord, to be more willing to share our faith.
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And it's in Christ's name we pray.
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Amen.
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Let's stand together and sing as we prepare our hearts to receive communion.