Acts 18:1-17 - Vitamin J: The Comfort of Jesus

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Don Filcek, Solid Foundations; Acts 18:1-17 - Vitamin J: The Comfort of Jesus

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You are listening to Recast Church of Madawan's Podcast. Listen in as our lead pastor,
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Don Sopec, is in a sermon series entitled, Solid Foundation, A Journey Through the
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Book of Acts. I think it's important here at Recast to kind of review our goals and to kind of set out the agenda, the vision a little bit about what
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Recast stands for a little bit at a time. And so what I'm going to share right now, I generally at this time introduce my sermon, but what
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I'm going to say next doesn't necessarily tie in or dovetail perfectly with a sermon, but it's something that God has laid on my heart to communicate to you as a church and kind of as we're thinking through, particularly regarding the question, what does spiritual maturity look like at Recast?
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Now some of you might have noticed that Recast doesn't have a lot of programs. Has anybody who's been here for a while noticed that?
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Right off the bat, it kind of stands out, especially if you were raised in a church that's a little bit more traditional, a little bit more formed, you would kind of say, well, a lot of programs, a lot of things going on, a lot of activities during the week.
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We primarily have a Sunday morning service to worship and to grow in faith, and then we have our small groups that meet during the week, a couple of other little things here or there.
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And so you're kind of, it could be confusing for those who were raised in a church that has a lot of established programs kind of saying, where do we grow?
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How do we grow and what is the vision for that? So I wanted to kind of spell that out and define what does spiritual maturity mean here at Recast?
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And it's quite simple actually. It means that we are growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.
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So I kind of want you to think about those words, and I want you to think about what that means, to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service.
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The fact of the matter is, notice the word growing in that. Maturity is not a static thing.
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Like I've now arrived, and now I've arrived at this place that's called maturity. And you know what I mean when
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I say arrived. I mean arrived. Have you ever been at a place in your own life where you felt like you arrived?
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That's generally a bad sign when we think that we've arrived. It's about growing. It's about process.
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And maturity is being in process. Does that make sense? It's that we are on the journey, and we are drawing closer to God, and we're growing in faith, we're growing in community, we're growing in service.
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Does that make sense? A couple of you look confused. But do you understand the difference between that maturity is defined by being in the process and being engaged in the process, versus just simply a place that I've arrived,
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I've crossed a certain line, and now I'm mature. Okay. I've got one guy who is on board.
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Thank you for that. Okay. The point being also in this process is that you can grow and be mature with what
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God has given you. In other words, we start at different levels. We have different backgrounds, different places that we're at in our relationship with God.
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Some of you are here, and you're just figuring out who God is for the first time, and you're trying to figure that out. Can you grow in faith?
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Can you grow in community? Can you grow in service? Yes. Some of you have been kicking around the church.
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Some of you were born in the backseat on the way to a Sunday morning service. Right? And you were in church right there from the moment you were born until now.
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Can you grow in faith? Can you grow in community? Can you grow in service? Do you see what the plan is?
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That's what we're talking about when we're talking about spiritual maturity here, is that process of growing.
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The fact of the matter is we need all those things. We need faith, and we come together on Sunday morning to grow, and by faith
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I mean taking in God's Word, believing it, and living it. That's the process of faith.
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That's how we grow in faith. We cannot grow in faith aside from this. We need this in our lives to grow in faith, and so we take it in, we digest it, we come to a place where we understand it.
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But is that enough? Is understanding this enough? No, and that's something that really
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I can't do for you. I can help you. I can try to bring you to a place where you understand it, but then when we walk out these doors, we need to live this out, right?
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That's what it means to grow in faith is actually take these things on and ask for God's assistance and help in our lives to grow in that.
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And then growing in community is through our small groups, yes, that's an avenue that we've set forward, but, man,
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I just love to hear the discussions and the conversations that go on during the connection time here, before the service, after the service, people staying until one o 'clock after, just chewing the fat and talking, and hopefully those end up becoming relationships and connections where when things are going tough in your life, you have places to go.
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So we need community, and God gave us the church, ultimately, to help us grow. And then the last thing is service, obviously, and that is just this intention of, out of the abundance of what
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God has given to us, and out of the ability, skills, recognizing that those are things that he's given to us, then looking for opportunities and avenues to serve others and serve the church through the way that he's designed us.
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This morning we're going to get a chance to see another step in the expansion of the early church, so kind of going into the sermon a little bit here.
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We're going to see the foundations of one of the largest churches in the Roman Empire, the church in Corinth. And it's interesting to note that this church in Corinth that we're going to see founded, we're going to see the very beginning of this church.
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It was characterized later. Paul's going to write letters back to this church after it's founded. We're going to get a chance to see it start here in our text.
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He's going to write letters, and the letters are going to demonstrate what kind of character that church had. And it wasn't a good picture.
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This church is going to turn into a place of cattiness, economic segregation, a place of sexual immorality, divisions, and strife.
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We're going to get a chance to see the church founded. We're going to see the way that it started. And then, unfortunately, through 1 and 2
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Corinthians, there's a lot of correction that needs to happen later. But God has given us
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His church. And after we read this text and sing praises to God this morning, I want to do so recognizing that we're not alone.
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God has given us a church. He's brought us together so that we can grow in community. And we need one another to grow.
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We need to be building each other up, encouraging each other, and doing life together in community.
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Do we need each other? We do. So I want you to open your
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Bibles, please, to Acts 18. We're going to read the first 17 verses of Acts 18. That's page 794 in the
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Bible. I'm going to sit back in front of you. Again, I say this, if you don't own a Bible, please take that one with you. We want everybody to own a
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Bible, and that's a gift from us to you. Acts 18, 1 -17.
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Follow along as I read. After this, Paul left
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Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife
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Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them.
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And because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade. And he reasoned in the synagogue every
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Sabbath and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks. When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the
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Word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them,
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Your blood be on your own heads. I am innocent. From now on I go to the Gentiles. And he left there and he went to the house of a man named
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Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. His house was next door to the synagogue. Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the
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Lord together with his entire household and many of the Corinthians, hearing Paul, believed and were baptized.
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And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, Do not be afraid, but go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are
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My people. And he stayed a year and six months teaching the Word of God among them.
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But when Galileo was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal, saying,
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This man is persuading people to worship God contrary to the law. But when Paul was about to open his mouth,
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Galileo said to the Jews, If it were a matter of wrongdoing or vicious crime, O Jews, I would have reason to accept your complaint.
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But since it is a matter of questions about words and names and your own law, see to it yourself.
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I refuse to be a judge of these things. And he drove them from the tribunal. And they all seized
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Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the tribunal. But Galileo paid no attention to any of this.
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Let's pray. Make sure that you're open in your
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Bibles to Acts chapter 18. That's page 794. Sometimes I forget to say that to you a second time around, but it's good for you to be open to that text to kind of be able to follow along.
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We talked a couple of weeks ago about the Bereans that Paul encountered. And they checked the
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Scriptures to make sure that what Paul was saying was accurate. And so I want you to have your Bibles open. Check the
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Scriptures to make sure that what I say is in there. Maybe I'll throw something in there once in a while.
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Not on purpose anyways. Paul was in Athens last week. And so we're going to see right from the beginning in our text right off the bat after this
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Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. Now we don't understand it. It doesn't give us a reason. Do you see that in the text? There's no rationale, no reason why he left
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Athens. We don't know. He just did. So he left Athens, went about 40 miles west to the city of Corinth.
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Now leaving Athens for Corinth may be confusing. Like you think in Athens, like that's the capital city, right?
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That's the big one. But it could be confusing until we understand that at this point in history where we're at in the text,
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Corinth rivaled Athens regarding its culture, its political clout, its art, all of those kinds of things.
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It was a very important city. And so Paul is going to head down to Corinth. It's on an isthmus.
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Does anybody from geography remember what an isthmus is? Like a land bridge between a peninsula and the mainland.
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So to get to the peninsula, you had to cross through Corinth. And then not only that, but it had two ports.
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How many cities have two ports? It had one port on the west side of the city and one port on the east side of the city because this was on a narrow land bridge.
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So within just a couple of miles has a port on the west that can open up into the Mediterranean and all the way out into the
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Atlantic. And then on the other side, it's got a port on the Aegean Sea and can head towards the eastern side.
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So it's a pretty significant town. But one thing that's interesting is it's very, very clear. Historical references to Corinth are all throughout the
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Roman Empire. Very significant town for one particular thing. It was the Las Vegas of the Roman Empire.
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Whatever you get in your mind, when I say the Las Vegas of, any of you ever been to Vegas? Ah, ah, ah.
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You didn't want to raise your hand, did you? Whatever was in your mind when you think of, when I say it's the
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Las Vegas of? Yeah, okay, that. Okay, it's a really rough place. To be direct, the word
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Corinth was used as a verb. It was used as a verb, slang verb in the
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Roman Empire that was slang for prostitution. Okay, that's the way that it was used.
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So Corinthianize meant to prostitute. Okay, so you get the picture?
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It would be like taking Bourbon Street and Vegas and moving them to Amsterdam. Okay, did you get it?
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Few of you have traveled, you know what I'm talking about. So Paul goes there.
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Paul goes to this town. That's the town that we're going to see. That's the place where the entire context of this is going to occur.
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And then when you read, when you get a chance to read the letters that he writes back to them, that's the place you need to have in your mind.
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The Las Vegas of the Roman Empire. That's when he's writing 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians in these letters. The issues and the things that they go through there, that's this town.
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And the question is, who else is going to go there? Like who wants to go and reach that part of society?
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Who wants to go and be a minister in that context? And Paul goes.
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Now the fact of the matter is God doesn't call everyone to that type of ministry, right? But that's where he's going. So he heads into Sin City.
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He encounters a couple right off the bat, we see, of Jewish Christians who are originally from Asia Minor.
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But then they were from Asia Minor. They had moved west to Rome. And now they've been kicked out of Rome. And so presumably they had moved to Rome for business.
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They'd been kicked out. And historical documents support the idea that Jews were kicked out of Rome at this time.
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So you have historical, non -biblical documents that are supporting the evidence of Scripture.
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Now how many of you know that when you really get into studying history and you really get into the New Testament and you figure things out and you dig down deep, the deeper you go, the more historical evidence corroborates the
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New Testament with amazing accuracy. So that you have 49 A .D.
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There's documents and letters that say that Claudius kicked the Jews out because there was a debate between them and another sect who were followers of Crestus, a corruption of the word
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Christ. So the Greek, the Hellenization, the Greeking of that word
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Messiah. There were debates in Rome going back and forth and almost riots were starting because of the
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Jews and the Christians in Rome at this time. Now how were there Christians in Rome? Were there
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Christians in Rome during 49 A .D.? How would that have happened? If you were to go back in Acts 2 during Pentecost, who was in Jerusalem at the time of Pentecost when the church first started?
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People from all around, Jews from all around the world were present there and it says 3 ,000 of them believed and then what did they do when they got done?
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They went back home because they were there for the Passover. There is Jews celebrating on a pilgrimage to the holy place and then they heard the truth about who
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Jesus Christ was and then they go back. So the church is not, what we have in the book of Acts is not the sum total of what
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God is doing in the world during that time. Did you know that? It's not the sum total. We're not seeing the full picture.
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We're seeing kind of what God wants us to know about how the apostles and where they were going and things like that but the truth is still spreading at a grassroots level in other places so that we actually have
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Christians in Rome even before Paul is going to get to Rome and we're going to see that.
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So they're kicked out. They end up moving over here to Corinth and Paul's connection with Aquila and Priscilla that we see this couple in the text was because of their trade.
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That's the primary thing that is their first connection. So what is their trade? It says in the text they were tent makers.
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Now historical documents again show that the trade of tent maker would have kind of morphed because most of the tents were made out of leather at this time so that really
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Paul would have been a leather worker. Making tents would have been a portion of that trade but repairing anything leather would have been what he did.
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So that's where we actually find that Paul was not merely trained in religious studies but he actually had a trade as well.
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All kinds of working with leather and also the production of tents. Think about this.
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So people have been kicked out of Rome. His business is probably booming because people are looking for something to live in.
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They've been displaced. How many of you know when people are displaced they need some place to live? So he's making tents and he's probably making tents at a fever pitch here because there's a high demand right now in the
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Roman Empire. So Paul works making an income during the week but on the weekends he's going to the synagogue and he's proclaiming the truth to the
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Jews. Of course he goes to the synagogue. That's what he does. It says in the text he was reasoning with the
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Jews and the God -fearing Greeks who are coming to the synagogue. So you have some Greeks and some
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Jews that are there coming to the synagogue every Saturday to try to figure out who God is and to study and to learn.
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And he's kind of like their guest speaker. Again, we find the word persuade here. And it's important to just think about the way that Christians interact with their society.
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And I mentioned this a couple weeks running now but Paul was not satisfied to simply stand and shout out the message. He works to help people understand and to help them to embrace the good news that forgiveness is available through Jesus Christ.
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And he's working with them. And he's trying to persuade and to dialogue back and forth with them.
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Now if you remember a couple weeks ago Paul had sent for Silas and Timothy. They stayed up in Macedonia in the area of Berea, Philippi, Thessalonica up in the north.
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And he had sent for them and said get down here as soon as possible. While he was in Athens he sent for them.
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But they don't catch up with him until he gets to Corinth. So he's actually said come meet me in Athens but then he takes off and goes down to Corinth and then they have to catch up with him.
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And according to 2 Corinthians 11 .9 if you're taking notes you can just jot these down and look them up later.
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But if you take 2 Corinthians 11 .9 and Philippians 4 .6 you get the notion there that Silas and Timothy actually bring a financial gift with them from the church in Philippi.
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So a church that they had started months before and Silas and Timothy stay there then they come down and meet
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Paul and they bring a financial gift with them. Now Paul is working as a tent maker. Why is he working as a tent maker?
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He's got to eat. And he's in a city where there's not believers. There's not a church there.
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There's nobody there that's supporting him and he's working to put food on the table and to have something to eat. He's got to have a place to stay.
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Whether he's staying at an inn or he's paying somebody room and board or whatever he's got to have a place to stay.
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So he's working that way. But now they're going to bring a financial gift to him. And that makes sense of what we see in verse 5.
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It says, When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the Word. Now, is that kind of confusing?
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What does it mean? Was he always occupied with the Word? What does that word occupied even mean? Some versions translate this.
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And it's interesting. It's very rare, but occasionally I like the King James Version better than I like the
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English Standard Version. This is the only case where I've found it so far. But the New King James actually translates this differently and this is what it says in King James.
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When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to the ministry of the
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Word. So he devoted himself exclusively to the ministry of the Word. Now what was he doing on weekdays before that?
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Making tents. And then just basically preaching in the synagogue. But now it makes sense that they brought him a gift.
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Do you see how that works? They brought him a gift and it's enough that he's able to quit the tent making and go basically full time and he's now occupied with the
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Word basically full time trying to reach the Jews for Christ at this point. In other words,
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Paul hasn't been able to fully devote the time that he wanted to ministry because of his tent making.
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But now the support of a recent church plant is able to free him up to deeper ministry in Corinth.
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We still have missionaries who move out into other cultures, right? Even in our era, in our time.
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We had the McGuinnesses in to speak about what they're doing in Costa Rica and raising support and all of that. And this is just an image, a picture of how that works.
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A church like us being able to financially help a couple who is moving their family to another culture so that they can put food on their table so that they in turn can devote their time and energy to the ministry of the
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Word. Does that make sense? But we still even today sometimes have tent makers. And we'll use that word in the church.
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Have any of you ever heard that word used in church before? Tent maker. A tent maker is an image of a person.
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It comes right from this text right here. It's the image of a person who goes over to a foreign country and then gets full -time employment in order to work.
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Sometimes that's an excuse to be in the country because some countries don't issue visas to missionaries. That wouldn't be so great.
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So they'll go and they'll work as an English teacher or something like that and have full -time employment and then try to get opportunity to present the gospel in there as they can.
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So we'll use the word tent maker from time to time in that way in the church. So what is the focus of Paul's ministry?
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What is it that he's trying to accomplish? It says he was testifying that Jesus was the Messiah. He's trying to explain to the
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Jews. He's speaking with Jews. They are looking for the chosen one of God. How many of you know Jews are still looking for the chosen one of God?
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He already came 2 ,000 years ago but they've kind of missed some of that. But he's trying to convince them that Jesus Christ is the chosen one.
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Let me show you from the Old Testament. Let me show you Isaiah 51 through 53 and get the picture of who
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Christ is and does that match up or not. And so that's what he's trying to do. He's opening up the
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Old Testament every week. How many of you would like to have been able to be there to hear Paul explain Jesus Christ from the
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Old Testament? That would have been amazing. I would have loved that opportunity. Better yet would have been to be one of the guys on the road to Emmaus when
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Jesus opens up the Old Testament and explains who he was all the way to these two guys walking on the road.
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Do you know the story I'm talking about? That would have been phenomenal to hear Jesus give evidence for himself as being the
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Messiah. But here, this would have been awesome too. But in verse 6 we see an organized opposition is going to form against Paul speaking in the synagogue.
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The Jews. And it says that there's an opposition and they reviled him. The word opposition implies an organization to their opposition.
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It's not just a couple of guys standing up and yelling at him or screaming at him or calling him names. Another thing that's interesting,
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I hate to disagree too much with the English Standard Version, but I'm going to twice this morning.
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The word that's reviled him, the word him does not appear in Greek. So occasionally the translators throw in a word like that to try to make the flow seem better or something like that.
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But the word him doesn't appear there. So again, the King James says exactly translates that word exactly from Greek into English.
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And the word is blasphemed. And they blasphemed. They opposed him. They brought a formal organized opposition against him.
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And they blasphemed him. And you know what blasphemy is. They are speaking derogatory, harsh, critical, obnoxious words about Jesus Christ.
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And it's important that we get that because of the way that Paul is going to respond here. It would be kind of petty if they revile him and then he responds the way that he responds because he's going to say your blood is on your own heads.
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Basically, you're all condemned. That's what he's going to say to them. How many of you think that would be a little bit harsh if somebody called me a name and I'm like, you're condemned.
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You're done. How dare you say that to me. You see what I'm saying? But that's not what the picture is here because the text
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Luke is telling us that it's not Paul that was reviled but it's Christ that was reviled.
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And he was blasphemed. Basically make a mockery of Jesus Christ. And so Paul responds aggressively.
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He ultimately judges them condemned and says, I'm innocent regarding you. Your blood is on your own heads.
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It's not on my hands. I've done what I've been called to do. I've proclaimed the truth to you and you've rejected it and you've made fun of it and you've mocked it and you've mocked
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Him. And so your blood is on your own heads because you have taken that on yourself. You have judged yourself because of your response to the good news.
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What he does next is kind of a little bit confusing. He shakes the dust off of himself.
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What's that got to do with anything? Do you see that in the text? He brushes the dust off of his clothes.
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He shakes it out. Jesus mentions that symbol of shaking the dust off when people reject the message and He does so in Matthew 10, 14.
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So if you wanted to look at that sometime later, you can write that reference down but Matthew 10, 14. So when you're talking with your co -worker and they basically swear about Christ or they make fun of Him or they curse
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Him or something like that, you just do one of these. Any of you ever do that? No, that's not what
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I'm suggesting. I think though a modern day equivalent to something like that is something that I had to do recently on Facebook.
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Literally two weeks ago I had this encounter. It's been an ongoing relationship for years that I've had.
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I had to do something about the man who performed my wedding. So actually did the ceremony for Lynn and I.
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A man that I respected greatly. A mentor, a pastor for many, many years.
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A godly man. Through a series of life circumstances.
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Devastating life circumstances. Like his oldest son was hit by an IED in Iraq, in Baghdad.
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Thrown into a sewer ditch and his arm was infected and he's had multiple surgeries over the last few years.
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It's just devastating. This is his oldest son. While he's engaged that happens to him.
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He's down in Texas having surgery after surgery after surgery. This is a friend of mine from the other side of the state. The guy who performed our wedding.
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Some tough things. About the same time that his son is hit by an IED his other two sons are in a car on the way to a
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Christian gathering and are both killed. Accidentally run through a stop sign and both die.
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Can you just get the picture of what kind of devastation this guy is facing? He now ultimately declares himself an atheist.
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He says, God, there is no God. And now all of his Facebook posts and everything are Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins are all of these atheists and he's just vehemently angry at God.
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How many of you know that I don't believe for a second that he doesn't believe God exists? I believe he's just angry at Him.
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Do you know there's a difference? There's a difference between not believing that God is there and being angry at Him.
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How many of you think that God could handle his anger? Like if he were just being intellectually honest, God could handle that.
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And he would have somebody to turn to and be angry at. But technically I've been like, dude, you don't have any right to be angry if there is no
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God. It's just chance and circumstances and stuff, right? But anyway, so all of this.
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He's become very inflammatory. I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut. So he writes these things or posts something on Facebook or whatever and I just get in this dialogue.
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And I've worked to be very cordial and very kind to him. But this last interaction a couple of weeks ago pushed me over the edge.
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He eventually has moved into a place of intellectual dishonesty in order to defame the name of Christ.
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He quoted a verse, fight the good fight of faith and said all you Christians are just violent and haters and violent and trying to blow everybody up and kill everybody.
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I wrote him and I said, Cliff, you know that that's dishonest. You know you're abusing the text of Scripture. Texts that I've heard you preach on, you know better.
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You know that's a metaphor. You know that's not about picking up swords and that Jesus didn't encourage us to carry machine guns and shoot on believers and stuff.
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How intellectually dishonest. And at that point, I wrote him and I said, I want you to know
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I am your real friend but I am unfriending you from Facebook because I can't spend this time that is just eating up my time and chewing up my energy and my emotion for you.
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I will continue to pray for you. Here's my phone number. Here's my email address. If you'd like to really get in touch with me, if you ever get in a place in life where you need a real friend, give me a call.
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And I unfriended him. I shook the dust off of my clothes, in essence.
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Do you see how there comes a point in a relationship where you might need to do something like that? Have any of you ever had to unfriend somebody on Facebook?
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That's really awkward when they ask, when they find out and they ask you to be their friend again later and you're like, oh no, now they know.
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But I actually... Go ahead. I'm going to keep after you. I'm going to keep trying to be your friend.
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But no, I told him. I told him I'm unfriending you. And here's the reason why. The dishonesty and the intellectual dishonesty.
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I could handle a genuine, honest discussion up to a point, but once it became dishonest and I knew he was being deceptive,
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I just couldn't stand for that anymore. And he was being dishonest for the sake of defaming Christ. So Paul turns to the
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Gentiles in Corinth, which is ironic because turning to the Gentiles in this context means that he's just going to move next door.
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Like, he's got a lot of chutzpah. Right? His synagogue's right here and then he goes over to this guy,
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Titius Justus, and he meets in his house right next door to the synagogue. What do you think? There might have been some awkward moments out on the sidewalk before the meeting started.
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Like, the synagogue is Kitty U and they're meeting in the synagogue right now and we decided to just kind of start a church right next door and we're trying to draw from their crowd.
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Hoping that maybe they empty out and start coming here. You think that would be a little awkward? Maybe a little bit tense?
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I tend to think that that would be a little bit rough. Verses 7 and 8 highlight two of the new believers in the church of Corinth and I think they're there for the purpose of highlighting them and much can be determined by the names of people in the
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Roman world. So the name Titius Justus is the name of a Roman citizen. It's very clear by the name itself that he would have been a
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Roman citizen. The fact that his home was able to house the church, does that say something about him?
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Again, this time if the church is able to meet in his house, he's doing fairly well. And we actually find out later that there was a significant contingency of wealth in the church in Corinth because we're going to see later on Paul writing and saying, you wealthy people need to get past your wealth and start ministering to those who are poor in your midst.
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And there's divisions that are formed over economic issues in their church. So we know that there were wealthy people there,
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Titius Justus probably being one of them. But also another believer,
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Crispus. Are you ready for this? Crispus, who is or was the leader of the synagogue.
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So this guy who is leading the services down at Kittiyou decides to come down here.
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Are things going to get more tense? How many of you think things are probably tense in Corinth at this time?
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It's kind of getting amazing here. And not only that, but his entire family followed him in faith.
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And many of the Corinthians, it says, believed and were baptized. And actually, if you were to jot this reference down, 1
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Corinthians 1 .14 says that Paul himself baptized Crispus. Paul went down into the water and baptized
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Crispus with his own hands. So we actually see that recorded. He's the one who did it. That might have been a little intense in and of itself to baptize a religious leader from another religion.
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So let's pause for a second and consider the circumstances. Let's think through what we've actually encountered because we can easily forget this real life, real people, a real situation, historical account we're reading, not just some story that's made up to prove a point or something.
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So Paul comes to Corinth, starts making tense. On the weekends, he's visiting the synagogue, right?
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Things go bad at the synagogue. They blaspheme, organized opposition. So he leaves and goes next door.
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Followers of Jesus begin to meet and meet next door. There's organized hostility against them.
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Many people in the town are believing and being baptized, including the ruler of the synagogue.
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So you get in the picture of what the atmosphere would have been like. How many of you think Paul is experiencing some confusing emotions inside himself?
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He's a real person. Put yourself in his shoes and think, how are you feeling? Really answer that question. How would you be feeling if you were him?
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Anybody? What's that? Apprehensive? Okay.
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A little apprehensive? Stressed? Okay. Anxiety?
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Would any of you be a little confused? I mean, God is doing some good things. Anybody else like me have their bags packed, ready?
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Because I'm going to get run out of town any minute now. He's experienced that, hasn't he? Just about every place he goes, he gets run out of town, beaten, rocks thrown at him, names called, all that stuff.
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And he's been chased out of almost every town he's ever been in. He's probably packing light and ready to leave that night, right?
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I would imagine that he experiences joy. And wouldn't you know, there'd be joy in baptizing many people.
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But also fear, right? Like a bunch of mixed emotions going on in him. So he's ready to go.
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I'm convinced that he's packed, he's stressed, he's confused, he's anxious. And then verses 9 -10 enter the scene.
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The Lord appears to him in the night in a vision and appears and gives words of comfort and courage.
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And Jesus is going to tell Paul three things. Listen to these three things. He says,
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I am with you. I am with you. Keep speaking. I'm with you. Words of divine comfort.
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And I'm curious, how many of you have felt some kind of solace, some kind of comfort from that knowledge that Christ is with you?
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Have you experienced that before? That is key. I know I have.
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And the most comforting thing to me about Christ saying that He is with me is that He's not aloof and high and His presence doesn't come to us in lofty ways.
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But He comes as one who has been here in the dust and ashes with us.
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Do you see how that has the power to bring a special, unique kind of comfort? That it's not like He's some
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God that's removed from us that hasn't experienced what we've experienced, but He's been here. He lived here in flesh.
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He has felt raw nerve endings before. He's mourned the loss of a loved one.
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He has spent dark nights in prayer stressed and anxious. He doesn't come to me detached from my suffering.
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When He says, I am with you, He knows right where I am.
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And when He says, He is with you, He knows right where you are.
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He's experienced it. He's been through it. The second thing He says is no one's going to bring harm to Paul.
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It's important that we understand the way that the Greek is constructed there because we're about to see him get attacked. And it looks in the text like it says you won't be attacked.
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Well, you won't be attacked unto harm. So, you might be attacked, but no harm is going to come of it.
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That's the promise that He gives. Because we are going to see Paul attacked here in a minute, right? So you could be confused about that.
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How many of you know those are the words that Paul needed to hear? Again, you put yourself in his shoes. That's what he needed to hear and that's what
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Jesus brings to him. Exactly what he needed to know to have the strength to press forward in his life.
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You see, we can inaccurately think sometimes that Paul was some kind of a superman who just was like courting disaster everywhere that he went.
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He was like, bring it on. I think he was fearful. As a matter of fact, I know he was fearful because later he's going to say in 1
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Corinthians 2 -3, think about this in context. To the Corinthians, he's going to say this to them later down the road writing them a letter.
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He says, and I was with you. When was he with them? In this text right here where we're at in the historical account.
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He says, and I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. That's the way that Paul was in Corinth.
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With weakness and fear and trembling. So was he a superman? Was he just rising above the occasion and nothing touched him and he was just courageous at every turn?
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No. He was struggling. He was having a hard time here. And Jesus appears and assures him of safety in Corinth.
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And the last thing that Jesus says is He gives hope and purpose to Paul. He says, I have many people in this city who are mine.
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It's interesting and important to note that Paul doesn't take that to mean I'm done with my work here because Jesus is going to get all of His people and I don't need to do anything about it.
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Jesus has selected His people in the city who will believe. And so, okay,
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I'll just leave and they'll come to faith in Christ somehow. Jesus is saying in essence,
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Paul, you are going to have success because many of these people are mine. So you are going to have success.
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Keep it up. Keep doing it. I have a question for you. Does Jesus know which people in Corinth are going to believe?
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Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't a trick question. Does He tell Paul which ones to go to?
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Wouldn't it be nice to just be able to sit down with Jesus for a cup of coffee and say who should I go to because I know you've already got some that are your chosen ones so can
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I just go to them? Is that the conversation that Jesus has with Paul here? So what does that say about our role and our responsibility in sharing
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Christ with others? We are to be indiscriminate. As a matter of fact, the picture of proclaiming the gospel is one of sowing seeds.
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Now how many of you know that when you distribute seeds with your hand and just throw them out on the soil, are all of those seeds going to grow?
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You don't know which ones are going to grow but you just keep sowing. Just keep sowing and leave the results up to Christ.
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And that's the picture that we have here. Paul doesn't give up because Jesus says, I know who's going to believe.
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He keeps at it. He's going to keep working. What a boost though to Paul knowing that he is going to have success, right?
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Did you know that there are many people who belong to Jesus in Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties that do not yet know
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Him? Did you know that? There are people around us who are
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Jesus' people who don't even know Him yet. And that's where we come in just indiscriminately sharing the good news to rich, to poor, to men, to women, to children, to everybody that we encounter.
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Just sharing and telling them the truth. So Paul stayed there in that hostile situation.
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Remember, we're talking about the vaguest of the Roman world. He stays there for a year and a half teaching the
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Word and strengthening the church. And the interesting thing is here in that setting, in that place, this is the longest time that Paul spends with any church plant in the entire book of Acts.
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This is going to be the longest duration that he's going to be intentionally. Now he's going to get imprisoned later, but that doesn't count because that wasn't his choice.
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I mean, he's going to stay with them intentionally for the longest time here. But even that comes to an end as eventually the
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Jews make an extra effort to nab Paul. They take him before Galileo, the proconsul. By the way, this section,
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Acts 18, 1 -17, is the most accurate pinpointer of the dates of the life of Paul and the events because it is the most historically evidenced in the entire book of Acts.
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We know the time. Between 49 A .D. and 51 A .D.
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Paul was in Corinth because we know Galileo. We actually see verses.
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The date 51 A .D. appears on inscriptions of Galileo's proconsulate, meaning that Paul was certainly in Corinth in A .D.
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51. We know that. It's historically verified. Any historian is going to say there was a dude named
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Paul that was in Corinth during this time because the evidence is just there.
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The historicity of the New Testament is astonishing how accurate it is and how supported it is by archaeological evidence.
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So this guy was proconsul of Achaia, Galileo. The Jews accused Paul of encouraging people to worship against Roman law.
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He says, I'm seeing through your smokescreen here. So before Paul can even give a defense,
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Galileo makes his judgment. You'd be nervous if you're Paul. I haven't had a chance to say a word, and he's ready to issue his judgment right then and there.
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Galileo says, quit bothering me with your petty religious squabbles, Jews. Leave him alone.
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I have a province to run here. Now the fact of the matter is, Galileo did not prove to be friendly to the Jews or friendly to the
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Christians, but he's a busy man with a hard job and he wisely avoids this religious issue altogether.
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You deal with that. That's a religious matter. You're talking about religious things. I'm not going to judge in that.
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So they are physically removed from the tribunal. So you've got to get a picture in your mind of we're going to struggle a little bit with who the word they is in verse 17.
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And they all see Sosthenes. These are the Jews? The Jews are going to get their own synagogue ruler and beat him?
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The picture there is that you have a crowd gathered around the judgment place where all the tribunal is happening.
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And the crowd, hearing Galileo's noncommittal attitude towards the Jews, take this as an opportunity to beat the daylight out of the
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Jewish leader knowing that Galileo has already ruled. I'm not going to touch this. I'm not going to get into it. It's a free game.
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We're on. They grab Sosthenes and beat him right in front of Galileo. And Galileo says, whatever. I know this isn't going to amount to any significant civil unrest.
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You just do what you need to do. Get your own trial underway. So you see what happens here?
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Sosthenes gets beaten in front of basically as a freebie. And the crowds are just...
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I mean that's the kind of environment, the kind of atmosphere that you have going on there in Corinth at the time. A lot of racism going back and forth between Jews and Gentiles and they look at it as an opportunity.
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It's amazing to hear the rest of the story as Paul Harvey would put it because we get that with Sosthenes.
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So you could do one of those... I can't do Paul Harvey. But you could do one of those on this passage and you could get...
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And the clincher. You know how the rest of the story at the very end has the twist, right? And you're like, oh,
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I should have known who that was all along. I knew who he was talking about, but I didn't get... 1 Corinthians 1 .1
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would be the rest of the story for Sosthenes because apparently while in Corinth, Paul saw many believe in Jesus Christ including two synagogue rulers because Sosthenes is mentioned in 1
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Corinthians 1 .1 as a brother in Christ. Sosthenes, this guy who followed...
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Crispus was the ruler in the synagogue and then he steps down and becomes a follower of Jesus Christ. Sosthenes replaces him, gets beaten at this tribunal, and ends up as a follower of Jesus Christ.
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Isn't that amazing? Anybody else amazed by that? It's cool what
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God is doing in Corinth. So what is the point? We've traveled with Paul to Corinth.
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We've watched him do his thing. A new church has been started. What does that have to do with 2011? What does that have to do with where we live, where you guys are going to go out.
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You're going to step out of here. You're going to go into a week, right? Things are going to happen. Bosses are going to be making demands.
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Kids are going to be making demands. Husbands, wives, all the real life things are going to happen here, right?
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How many of you have some real life things that are going to happen this week? You guys are looking at me blank and I'm kind of like, well, maybe you guys just disappear when
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I don't see you. Object permanence or something. I don't know. That was weird.
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I want to zero in on one point. There's one thing that I want us to walk away from this text with.
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One main thing. And that is the comfort provided by Jesus Christ in this context.
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I see him as the center of this text. As a matter of fact, I see him as the center of history. I see him as the center of everything.
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And here he appears to us in this text. And he appears to Paul. Although I've never had
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Jesus appear to me in a dream or otherwise to give me direct verbal comfort, I have received regular and consistent significant comfort from him.
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Any of you guys testify to the same thing? Some of you maybe had him appear to you in a vision.
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I don't know. But whether it's in the pages of Scripture where I encounter his teachings and his miracles and I encounter his lifestyle and the things that he did, or whether it's in the quiet remembrance of his sacrifice, thinking on the cross and letting that wash over me, or the joyful laughter of other believers who are reflecting his light in community,
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I encounter the encouragement of Jesus Christ. And it is in faith, community, and service that I have found the encouragement of Jesus Christ.
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Paul needed that encouragement to press on in ministry. Like I said, I really firmly believe that he was wondering when am
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I going to get run out of town? And Jesus says don't worry about it. He gives him the comfort that he needs.
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Now some of you, that might not be your issue. That might not be why you need to be reminded of the presence of Christ with you.
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It might not be that you feel like you're up against a wall in ministry and you're like I don't know where this is going.
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But there's other things in your life, aren't there? There's other things that crowd in and press in. And the presence of Christ can make a difference in those situations where we meditate and we think about and consider that he is with us that provides the strength to press on to another day.
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That provides the strength to take on new ground. To live intentionally.
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The fact of the matter is, Jesus knows right where you are at. He can provide what you need to press on.
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Paul's response to the encouragement that he received from Jesus Christ was to press ahead. And he stayed on in Corinth with great success.
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You see, so much of the book of Acts has been pressing us to share our faith more or to just do stuff. And sometimes I fear that we can get into the text and you can walk away here with just stuff to do.
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And that's not what the Christian life is. The Christian life is not just do more. The Christian life is who we are.
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Who we are called to be and who our trust is in. That's what the Christian life is all about. And so I'm asking you to do something different in response to this text.
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It kind of is like doing something, but it's kind of like asking you to rest in something.
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So, I mean, it's kind of go do it, but you get it. I'm asking you to take some time this week, maybe even this afternoon, maybe even during the song for communion, take some time this week and reflect on the presence of Jesus Christ in your life.
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Take some time to contemplate and consider that He is with you. He is for you.
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He is a present comfort. And He will give strength and power.
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He will give guidance and direction to you. When's the last time we did that? Where we sat down and we said,
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Christ is with me. What does that imply for me?
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And I fear, don't do this. It's not about ooh. Sometimes where you're at in life, it's like, ooh,
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Christ is with me. Whoa, did He see that? Does He know that? Does He know what I was thinking there?
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He loves you. There is grace to cover sins. Even just that can be an encouragement. Every day can be a new day.
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Do we sin? Yes, we give those over to God, come into His presence, say, thank you for being here with me. Thank you for being gracious and present.
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With a listening ear, He knows our circumstances. He knows our situations. Without the presence of Christ, we will be timid and fearful.
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You experience that at times when you're not focused on the presence of Christ in your life. Timid, fearful, unsure, and we will live lives with minimal risk.
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The fact of the matter is, Christ is with those who are His. And just as he told Paul, there were many in Corinth that were
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His. There are many here who are His. But there may be some here who have not yet invited
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Christ to be your Lord and Savior. If you want to know more about Jesus and the peace and forgiveness that He offers,
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I believe that desire comes from God. I don't believe anybody wants to know more about Jesus Christ and more about forgiveness without God planting that seed in your heart.
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I'd encourage you to follow through on that. To come and speak with me after the service. Come and speak with Rob who's leading worship or Zach who's about to come up here and lead communion.
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Come and talk with one of us about knowing Jesus Christ more. I'm going to pray and then