I'll speak through your word, Lord, and help
us to see how the practical things and
world vision and learning together and living together
is linked with spiritual growth and the message
of apostolic Christianity and Christian faith.
Speak to us from your word, we pray,
in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Now, I'm just so full of things to
share from the life of Paul, and I
was just during my quiet time this morning
reviewing, especially in the book of Acts, and
I'm going to hold off some of the
thoughts I had for today concerning the balance
we have in the life of Paul.
And instead, I want us to study together,
Paul, in the book of Acts.
So if you'll turn right now to the
book of Acts, and we'll start in chapter
8, the first verse.
This is Paul, of course, his name is
Saul.
Now, we aren't giving these very high standards
of Christian conduct and spiritual reality as demonstrated
by the Apostle Paul to put everybody under
bondage.
And a lot of people have a great
fear of Bible teaching that involves teaching spiritual
principles, and clearly speaking of how things should
be.
I personally very, very much appreciate the ministry
of Martin Lloyd-Jones, I'd hardly be considered
perhaps as Calvinistic as he is, but his
books, especially Spiritual Depression, I see his commentaries
up there on Romans, they are very, very
filled with spiritual meat.
And he has a very balanced message.
I think maybe some of his disciples who
get the letter without the reality, don't have
what he has.
That's always true.
And he has great spiritual balance, and the
emphasis he puts on discipline, on spiritual growth,
in some of his writings is really great.
You see, unless we see where we're going,
it's hard to get there.
I know the only way you can get
these spiritual principles is through the in-working
of Jesus Christ in your life.
So the reality of the cross, and all
of us here, most of us here, have
heard many messages along that line.
If you live in the British Isles, and
if you're in contact at all with some
of the great Bible teachers and deeper life
speakers and others that minister.
But I feel that much of the ministry
in that area does not get people anywhere
because they don't have any high goals.
They don't really see what God can do
and wants to do, and what will happen
when we do know the crucified life.
When we are filled with the Spirit.
And so we get all kinds of people
who claim to be filled with the Spirit,
who claim to have had some experience, and
yet when you live with them, their life
isn't any different than someone who has never
claimed to have that experience.
And it's because so often times we have
low aim.
We haven't seen apostolic Christianity.
We haven't understood the biblical Christianity as found
in the word of God.
We haven't been willing for the whole counsel
of God, especially the radical, ethical, and moral
teachings of Jesus, as demonstrated by Paul.
And so we end up short of what
God would have us be, in the practical
realm especially.
And I believe that we have all this
teaching in the word of God, this sermon
on the mount, the book of Acts, so
that we can know where we're going.
We cannot expect at this conference to, through
some great special happening, all end up here
spiritually, but we should be able at this
conference to at least get our aim right.
So that we go out from here knowing
where we're going.
You may feel after these days together, I'm
not a disciple, I don't want to suffer,
I don't know how to pray, I'm so
far short.
Fine.
But do you know where you're going?
I am short in many of these areas.
I have inconsistencies in my life.
I have spots of laziness.
I have areas of pride that keep sticking
their ugly head up.
I have lust that keeps popping its ugly
nose in.
But I know where I'm going.
And I'm having hard enough trouble at times
as it is, if I didn't even know
where I was going.
I am out to see every inch of
lust destroyed in my mind.
I am out to live on this level
that we're talking about.
And because I've set my sights, I know
where I'm going, even though I'm not there
yet.
I'm moving in that direction.
So many Christians don't know where they're going.
And they set such a low aim.
They say, well, I'm not a disciple, I
don't really know how to pray like this
person, I don't really have the faith of
this person.
So they just go on and on and
on and on.
Or they escape into some false message of
grace.
Well, I can't really do anything.
It's only the Lord who does it through
me.
And here I sit the next 20 years
waiting for the Holy Spirit to do something.
What a subtle, ugly lie of the devil.
You're making God into some kind of a
schizophrenic.
One minute he's telling you to do all
these things, the next minute you're sitting down
and saying, I'm not doing anything unless he
sort of forces me to do it.
We're not robots.
If you have the most earth-shaking experience
with God, and there are such experiences.
You know, they all have them.
Some men of God have had really earth
-shaking experiences where they totally leave lightning bolts
coming down on them.
But even if you have that kind of
experience, the next day God will not force
you.
Because then you would be a robot.
Then the Christian life would just be a
matter of getting to a point where you
got the final spiritual pet pill, and after
that you would move from being a free
-will creature to a spiritual robot controlled because
you swallowed this pet pill.
No.
You always had free will.
And so you always, every day, must re
-consecrate your heart or life, use whatever terminology
you want, take up the cross, and follow
him.
If God hammers us with the word hard,
it is because he wants to pick us
up.
As long as you're running in your own
energy, it's the greatest hindrance there can ever
be to God's word.
And so God uses the word to humble
us.
He uses circumstances to humble us.
Have you ever had a really catastrophic failure
in your life?
Something that really, really, you never forget it.
You never forget it.
But wasn't that, at least in some of
your lives, one of the biggest steps towards
spiritual reality?
In so many lives I have known, it's
true, God uses circumstances.
I sat under the ministry of Alan Redpath,
Moody Church in Chicago when I was a
student, and I tell you, when that man
finished preaching, I figured, man, I'm dead.
And then I realized, praise God, I am
dead.
I am dead.
And Christ liveth within me.
And so if any of the word is
hard on you, if you're feeling that deal,
you're coming down, good, except a corn of
wheat falling to the ground and die.
But if it dies, it brings forth much
fruit.
And I don't believe this is a once
and for all thing in the Christian life.
I find that in my life, constantly, I
have to go through this process of death
and life.
I know it only happened once on Calvary,
but as we trod along after the Lord
Jesus many times, the experience of death and
life has to work again through us, through
many experiences.
And today's victory is no guarantee that one
month from now we will not have to
go through God's process again.
And I wanted to read a quotation just
to set off this lesson or this lecture
or whatever you want to call it this
morning, Bible reading, that will help us keep
the balance.
It's from Mr. Tozer and his book, Rooted
the Righteous.
Listen to this, this is me.
He says, God is easy to live with.
It's interesting for him to say that because
his writings are the most powerful and pulverizing
books that I've ever read.
God is easy to live with.
You see, that's the balance.
The fellowship of God is delightful beyond all
time.
He communes with his redeemed ones in an
easy way, uninhibited fellowship, what is restful and
healing to the soul.
He is not sensitive, nor selfish, nor temperamental,
even though we often are.
What he is today, we shall find him
tomorrow, and the next day, and the next
year.
He is not hard to please.
He is not hard to please, though he
may be hard to satisfy.
He is quick to mark every simple effort
to please him.
I tell that in ministries to me.
He is quick to mark every simple effort
to please him, and just as quick to
overlook imperfections when he knows we meant to
do his will.
Of course, they already are completely covered by
the blood, so it's no great problem for
God to overlook them.
Let me read that again.
And just as quick to overlook imperfections when
he knows we meant to do his will.
He loves us for ourselves and values our
love more than the galaxies of new created
worlds.
Some of us are religiously jumping,
self-conscious, because we know that God sees
our every thought and is acquainted with all
our ways.
Religiously jumping.
We need not be.
God is the sum of all patience and
the essence of kindly goodwill.
We please him most not by frantically trying
to make ourselves good, but by throwing ourselves
into his arms with all our imperfections and
believing that he understands everything and loves us
still.
It's truths like this from the word of
God, expressed through a human instrument of God,
that minister to such a wretched heart as
mine.
And I thank God for his grace.
Now, keeping that as our foundation, we're going
to look at a product of grace.
The Apostle Paul, we're going to trace him
through the book of Acts.
We're going to go a little quicker than
other mornings.
Some of this is in the way of
background, but let's move.
We have Stephen being stoned, and we know
the Apostle Paul was there at the time.
Of course, that's what it says in chapter
8, verse 1.
The Apostle Paul was consenting unto his death.
What a beautiful picture of Stephen.
By the way, he was a deacon.
That's quite interesting, because you get some people
in church who say, well, I'm a deacon.
I just do the practical things.
I don't pray.
I don't preach.
I'm a deacon.
Well, Stephen was a deacon.
And you know the qualifications for being a
deacon.
You get them there in the book of
Acts, being filled with the Spirit and the
other things.
And the first thing he did as a
deacon was to go into open air meeting.
And that was the last thing he ever
did as well, because he was martyred in
the open air meeting.
So those of you who think, well, you
know, I'm going to take the less spiritual
task in the church.
I'm going to be a practical man.
I'm going to be a behind-the-scenes
man.
You need to restudy Stephen.
Because you see, in the word of God,
it's not just a group of specially trained
theological men trained in homiletics and hermeneutics and
spiritual politics and gymnastics that are going to
guide the church.
But it's ordinary people.
Ordinary people whose hearts are thrilled, and they
just step out on their feet and, hey,
Jesus is alive.
What?
You what?
Take this stone.
And he's in heaven.
God wants to use ordinary people, right, Stephen?
You get this idea that there's going to
be a preacher, there's going to be a
missionary.
Boy, he needs to be filled with the
Spirit.
But Mary, you know, hey, I'm just a
housewife.
You don't need to be filled with the
Spirit, do you, to make your fish and
chips?
You don't need to be filled with the
Spirit to clean the dirty ring around the
bathtub my husband leaves every time his eggs
are bad.
We all need to be filled with the
Spirit.
We need to be filled with the Spirit
for the practical jobs as much as for
the ministry of the word.
We're all together.
Each member needs the other member.
We have all chapters in the word of
God trying to get that teaching into our
heads, how important it is.
So Paul, named Saul at that time, consented
unto his death.
And at that time there was a great,
we're in verse 1 of chapter 8, a
great persecution against the church.
God really used that, didn't he?
Which was at Jerusalem, and they were all
scattered abroad throughout the region of Judea and
Samaria, except the apostles.
And we know what happened as a result
of that.
Look at verse 4.
Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere
preaching the word.
And I feel in my heart that if
more people don't start moving from this country
that has such a great church, you may
think the church in Britain is so weak
and so small, but how many of you
really know much about the church overseas?
I've been to 50 countries.
I've spent time ministering in churches all over
the world, and I can tell you the
British church is probably as good and as
spiritual as most churches in the world today.
And we have had the advantage in this
country of a spiritual heritage and a spiritual
literature that almost no people have had in
the world today.
And that is a very important thing.
And we have and should be making as
a nation, a little hard to say as
an immigrant, but as a nation we should
be making a far greater contribution to worldwide
spiritual revolution.
Praise God for what has happened in the
past.
We think of the men that have gone
out from this country like Hudson Taylor, like
C.T. Studd, and many, many others, unnamed,
less famous people.
And we must cry out to God, O
Lord, do it again.
And I believe if we don't start sending
more forth, and we're going to see that
in Acts and the life of Paul, the
church sending people forth, we may find that
God allows major persecution, that we may be
scattered abroad.
Many, many years ago I was ministering in
Northern Ireland, years before all the trouble.
There is no place that made me quite
as ill as Northern Ireland.
Because of so many Christians, and many dear
Christians, but a vast majority of them just
content.
Just content.
And I spoke, I believe under the authority
of the Spirit, several years before the trouble,
and I said, I believe something catastrophic is
going to happen here, that more people one
way or the other will get out of
this.
There's probably more evangelicals per person in Northern
Ireland than any other place in the country.
And you know, we've seen what's happened over
the past years, and we've seen it drive
people out, and become witnesses in many different
parts of the world.
God's Spirit is a way of overruling man's
hideous and terrible acts, as we've seen in
Northern Ireland.
And let's not point any fingers up there,
because so often we're not any different.
Let us move on.
We don't see anything of Paul now, there
in the book of Acts, for a while,
but rather we get involved with Peter.
No, we have Paul's conversion in chapter 9,
and then we have a little lapse period
in which we get involved with Peter.
I don't want to go into the details
of this conversion.
I just wish that more people, when they
were in the process of being converted, would
pray and cry out, verse 6, what will
thou have me to do?
You see, not because salvation is of works,
but because salvation is a revolutionary experience, when
we are converted, almost in the same breath
we should be crying out, Lord, what would
you have me to do?
The night that I was converted to Jesus
Christ in Madison Square Garden, 20 years and
a few months ago, I knew that I
was to be his witness.
I was pretty sure it was going to
be out of my own country, and I
was from a non-Christian home.
And I just feel that even as we're
converted, we should cry out, Lord, what would
you have me to do?
Even in the middle of it, this is
sort of in the middle of Paul's conversion,
because he didn't know what he was even
asking for.
And God, in Paul's case, led him to
a rather strange situation.
He lost his sight, and he had to
go find this man down this road.
No one knows, pinpoint, when exactly did saving
grace flood the heart of the Apostle Paul.
I guess we have a great argument about
that.
You know the story of Paul's conversion, and
I don't want to dwell on that, because
I want us to go on and get
into the heart of his ministry.
We do find Paul getting baptized in verse
18 and 19.
We do find him being filled with the
Spirit in verse 17.
I think there's a danger in the book
of Acts of trying to get some little
orthodox formula of how God works.
One group has one formula, another group has
another formula.
There are about 25 new books on the
Holy Spirit that have come out in the
last two years.
There are all kinds of formulas.
The Holy Spirit will not be put into
a formula.
It says that in John 3, the wind
bloweth where it will, and ye hear not
the sound thereof.
Very few people in history have had the
formula that the Apostle Paul had in his
conversion.
One of you will go, well, the Apostle
Paul was one of the greatest conversions in
history.
All of us should have a similar experience.
Should all go blind?
Go through all this?
But we know that he was filled with
the Spirit, seemingly almost at the same time
of his conversion.
There are some hours here.
We know that he was baptized.
That's pretty basic.
And the amazing thing is, immediately he preached
Christ in the city dogs.
Wow!
Boy, that's taboo.
He's a babe.
He's just been born again.
Now he has to go to Bible school.
He has to go to seminary.
He's just ignorant.
And he was a murderer.
Can I really trust this murderer?
He helped murder Stephen.
Now we're letting him preach.
I know some people say, well, Paul discovered
later on that was an error.
He was all in the flesh, and then
he went into the wilderness.
He really got his theological education in the
wilderness.
But I've heard more guys trying to sell
theological school, use that wilderness thing.
Guys that have never been in the wilderness
once in their lives.
Spent their whole lives living in some crazy
city.
And I don't really think we can equate
Paul going into the wilderness with me going
to University of London theological school.
Not that I don't believe God can use
theological schools.
God is so great.
He uses all kinds of things.
But I think there's an overemphasis in the
church on professionalism.
We grind out professional ministers, and if you
and I have studied anything about history, we
know the first places to go into unbelief
and liberalism are the theological seminaries.
And I believe that there needs to be
a greater emphasis on the layman, the ordinary
man, being a witness for the Lord Jesus
Christ.
You know, when I read that this morning,
I almost came an inch off the bench
I was sitting on.
So exciting.
Here is this Christ-hating Jew, suddenly saved,
and within days he's out proving that he's
a Christian.
You see, there is intellectual content in our
gospel.
This is not just emotionalism.
This is not just a matter of getting
yourself some kind of religious package.
This is determining to follow truth wherever it
will lead you.
Paul confounded the Jews.
I think one of the great proofs of
the Christian faith, of course, first is the
resurrection, but another great proof is how so
many enemies of the cross became followers of
Jesus Christ.
I can't believe that was some great hallucination,
or some religious trip, or some bandwagon experience,
especially when they were being killed off like
flies.
These men had an intellectual experience.
They knew that Jesus Christ fulfilled prophecy.
And you know, if it wasn't for the
fact that there is intellectual meat in the
Christian faith, and something that my mind can
accept as a person who is basically skeptical
and basically inquisitive, I wouldn't be able to,
as we say, hack it.
I wouldn't be able to have a go.
But our minds can be satisfied.
There are honest answers to honest questions.
I have money.
I still have some.
But when I see things like this, I
praise his name, proving that this is the
very Christ.
And after many days were fulfilled, the Jews
took counsel of killing.
All of this has happened in such a
short period.
One minute he's killing Christians.
The next minute, his best friends are out
to kill him.
And you say Christianity is dull.
You say Christianity is dull.
You know, you find a lot of Christian
young people, they've sort of got to do
all kinds of crazy things to entertain themselves.
They stand on their head, run around in
circles.
Not that we can't have a little exercise.
But I want to tell you, when you
get caught up in red-hot Christianity, you
need much more.
You need much more.
You can't call this a boring way of
life.
In a short time, he was going over
a wall in a basket.
I'm talking about a rock-climbing experience.
I'm interested in rock-climbing myself, especially now
that my children have grown up.
I've begun to do a few things again
that I haven't been doing for 18 years.
But there it is in verse 25.
And then the disciples took him by night,
and this is a great repel in the
Bible, and let him down by the wall
in a basket.
What a life!
And I want to tell you, young person
and anyone else, when you get involved in
the spiritual warfare, you're going to find some
over-the-wall basket experiences.
You're going to find yourself in prison.
You're going to find yourself being stoned.
This is quite ordinary for many of our
young people.
We have many, many in prison.
What's a great prison ministry?
Turkey, Libya, Soviet Union.
And stoning, well, every week we had a
stoning in India.
You know, a few stones.
I died a few stones.
Only one hit me in the head.
We sang the doxology after that.
And I kept preaching.
These aren't sort of, you know, unusual things
that come upon a few spiritual freaks who
are tripping out.
But as we get involved in spiritual warfare,
as we begin moving for God across the
whole world, these, these are experiences, as they
happen in the book of Acts, that will
happen to us.
I was only in my early twenties when
I was arrested in the Soviet Union.
I was engaged in a little innocent activity
of distributing the word of God, and got
picked up by the secret police and accused
of being a spy, and spent three or
four days in interrogation, and then escorted out
of the country with a machine gun.
These things are nothing special.
You don't write a book about that.
I didn't even love to write two pages
about that.
Probably was in there by my own, even
stupidity.
But as we begin to move in world
evangelism, we discover this thing is not dull.
And I believe with all my heart, God
wants to take some of the young people
here, and all of us in one sense,
and thrust us into a new spiritual adventure.
I believe he wants to take us out
of this conference in the coming days and
just throw us into new things.
And for some it may mean overseas.
Well, Paul had this experience, and then we
don't find him very much for a while.
We find Peter coming into the picture, and
I wish I had time to speak to
you on the life of Peter, especially how
he got in prison.
But we can't get sidetracked on Peter.
We find Paul again there in verse 25.
But the word of God grew and multiplied,
and Barnabas and Saul, praise God for Barnabas.
He's not seen as much in scripture as
Paul, but he's the picture of the faithful
man.
No leader would amount to anything if you
didn't have a Barnabas.
If I didn't have a number of Barnabases
in this world, I probably would have been
knocked out of the battle so long ago.
Only God knows.
Faithful men.
Son of consolation, Barnabas.
Another man in scripture that you will want
to study.
Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they
had fulfilled their ministry and took with them
John, whose surname was Mark.
We did miss a little incident there in
Jerusalem with Paul and Barnabas.
Remember that it was Barnabas who was able
to persuade the rest of the fellows that
Paul could be trusted.
After all, most of these early apostles are
there.
How can we trust this fellow?
He's been murdering Christians?
Barnabas had the discernment, and he saw that
Paul was real.
He was scared, and was able to say
a word and bring Saul into the church,
into the fellowship.
He said, wait a minute.
How can that be a mistake?
I believe because when we do that, our
ministry becomes man-centered.
When you talk to someone, and if you
haven't learned their terminology, you've had it.
You might as well speak Greek, because you
don't understand this fellow's special brand of deeper
life terminology.
I keep changing my terminology over the years,
trying to, because I believe God has fresh
ways to communicate.
I like Biblical terminology, but the English language
changes.
The English language changes.
This is where we need balance, and we
need flexibility.
I very much feel that what DeVoe Frumpkin,
in this book, emphasizes very, very good, that
our ministry, our whole life is firstly the
Lord.
Unto the Lord.
And we see that here, and it's many,
many other places in scripture, as they minister
to the Lord.
If we're ministering to the Lord, when we
finish ministering, immediately, Lord, have I been faithful
to your word.
If we're ministering to man, and there's a
subtle way that when we minister to man,
we're ministering to ourselves.
Preachers all know how to do that.
When at the end of the ministry we're
waiting to see, what does man think?
Somebody comes up and says, Brother, that really
spoke to my heart.
I got ministered to.
Because if I minister, and God uses me,
and someone tells me that, not that we
should never say anything like that, I think
we should be honest in expressing ourselves, but
that should be water above the glass.
My joy is God himself.
Anything above that, that the saints may give,
praise the Lord, water above the glass.
He is my sufficiency.
And as I minister, I must minister unto
the Lord very hard for my type of
person.
I'm very much man-oriented.
Very pragmatic.
In business when I was 11 years of
age, three businesses by 16, I know precisely
at times in the business world what to
say to get the client to do what
you want them to do.
Now God has thrown me into a ministry
where oftentimes I'm saying things that very much
upset people.
They never want to hear it from me
again.
And certain places where I've been invited to
speak and then someone heard about it, was
upset with my ministry, blacklisted me, he must
not speak here.
He'll upset everyone.
Especially holiday camps.
How you ever invited me to anything that
even borders on a holiday, I am known
to be anti-holiday.
You know, I love tennis, swimming, rock climbing,
let me climb some of these trees actually,
and I'm quite open to relaxation.
I'm known as being anti-holiday.
I'm known as being bolting, I preach discipleship,
and I make Christians nervous.
They get nervous about their possessions, they get
nervous about their laziness, they get nervous about
lots of things.
So don't invite him to the holiday camp.
He'll ruin the whole holiday.
We'll all be weeping and some will be
repenting and who knows what may happen.
What kind of a holiday is that?
Well, it may be a holiday from hell
eventually for somebody.
And really, every Christian is on a holiday
from the day he's born again.
I often have people come up to me
and say, let me take a holiday.
Really, you need a holiday?
Look man, I've been on a holiday for
20 years.
I was enshackled by Satan.
I was the son of the devil.
I was an enemy of God.
I've been released.
I've had 20 years holiday.
And every year it gets more exciting.
Makes butlins look like a prison cell.
We are free in Jesus Christ.
We are saved from sin, from death, and
from chains.
Certainly Paul knew this in his life.
Ministry unto the Lord.
Not easy.
Not easy for me.
This next part especially is unpleasant and fasted.
Fasted.
What kind of a subject does that have
to bring up?
Alan Redpath speaking at Moody Church some years
ago, really, he really upset those people.
And we're used to a very, very much,
the kind of message there before he came
in which, you know, grace and lovely Bible
teachings fill up in their book with Bible
lessons.
And you know everything in the Old Testament
has meaning and types and study Leviticus until
you can expand what every bush and tree
and twig means.
And I'm not saying there's no significance in
all that kind of study.
But if Christianity is a matter of intellectual
knowledge, just filling our heads with Bible truths,
then it certainly is a very, very insipid
religion.
God puts these things in His Word for
a purpose.
That our lives may become more like Jesus
Christ.
And he came in there and Moody Church
and that big church started to preach the
Lordship of Christ.
And I tell you, some of the old
deacons and elders from who knows what generation
began to get itchy and he's preaching the
law!
And they gave that dear brother such a
rough time there in Chicago, he wouldn't stop
preaching.
And he said once, we don't fast anymore
because we don't have hunger for God.
What a congregation!
I thought stones were going to come hailing
off the balcony.
And he organized nights of prayer.
Imagine nights of prayer.
It's alright for Jesus Christ to pray all
night.
He did it, Luke.
We have that recorded.
And these disciples, when Peter was in prison,
that was no little 20 minute prayer meeting.
But if you preach fasting or you preach
having a night of prayer, oh no, that's
not grace.
It's law.
Anything we don't want to do, all we
have to do is say, that's not grace,
it's law.
I've seen people even do that in driving.
I actually told a man once, Luke, there's
a speed limit here.
He said, 70 miles an hour.
He said, brother, I'm not under the law,
I'm under grace.
Wooo, down the road he goes.
And I tell you, there's a law he's
going to discover.
There's a law of gravity.
And we have been set free.
We have been set free that we may
be obedient sons and daughters of the living
God.
While Paul ministered to the Lord, fasted, the
Holy Spirit said, Wooo, that's spooky, isn't it?
The Holy Spirit speaking.
And I believe the Holy Spirit wants to
speak here in these days.
We have the word as our guide.
The Holy Spirit spoke and said, Separate me
Barnabas and Saul for the work unto which
I have called them.
I don't believe this is necessarily a calling
in the way some people describe a missionary
calling today.
But I believe it was guidance.
I believe more than some special calling, we
just need basic guidance.
We need to know where God wants us
to go and what God wants us to
do.
All Christians need that.
Don't expect people to go to Operation Mobilization
without guidance.
And yet many people are confused about guidance.
And I think one of the reasons, and
again I must avoid getting in sidetracked, but
one of the reasons is we get too
much of a stereotyped way or view of
how God works.
And we read somebody else's book, that's how
he was guided, and we wait weeks and
months and years to get that particular kind
of guidance.
God doesn't give it.
God works in different ways and different people.
And you know, even when we go forth,
we ought to go forth in humility.
And to me, you know what that means?
It means as I go forth, I want
to admit that I may be wrong.
I may be wrong, I'm a human being.
This is the earth.
And I may sense I have guidance, but
as I go down the road, I say,
well, actually, I was wrong.
Why is it so hard for Christians to
admit they're wrong?
Especially if they put something spiritual into it.
You know, the man in the world, he
makes a mistake sometimes, well, there's another one.
But the Christian, somehow he feels, well, am
I saying that the guidance I said I
had, in fact, I didn't have it?
And so he gets much more involved, emotional.
And I've had people come to me sharing
that guidance about a particular girl.
She was the one.
Boy, I tell you, this is an area
where people really become irrational.
This is the one.
Had a revelation.
He was a fellow in London.
Not too long ago.
Had a revelation.
And a prophecy.
That he had the wrong wife.
So he got rid of her.
No problem.
You think divorce courts make it easy?
You get off on some kind of religious
quirk and get away from the word of
God, man, you can really move.
Met recently another church in Thailand, a pastor,
huge church.
I don't know how many people, he got
a revelation, he had a vision, he had
the wrong wife.
No, she was all right, but he needed
to know, he needed a concubine.
So he took only a wife, two wives,
put the church down the middle.
Those who were for two wives, those who
were against two wives.
You don't think these things aren't happening in
the 20th century.
So this fellow in London got another girl
who was more in line with his new
way of seeing things.
The devil is very subtle.
That's why he's given us the word of
God.
And that's why he's given us one another
that we may exhort and encourage one another.
I was telling you how people have come
to me sharing that this girl was the
one.
The funny thing is, the next day a
brother came, another brother, and he had a
word, people get quote, a word.
About the same girl.
And I want to tell you, if there's
any area where you can't trust yourself, it's
in this area.
This is where you need to counsel others.
We have a brother in the room, he
says, look, get your Joshua.
When you discover a girl, you think she's
the one, get Joshua and Caleb.
They're going to the promised land.
Spy out the land, bring back the information.
What's she like?
Is she already married?
Does she snore?
You know, whatever.
Maybe then you can make more intelligent moves,
either forward or backward.
Well, you may not agree with that strategy,
but I hope you'll agree a little bit
with using your head.
Some of you may think, well, it's too
late for me.
Why didn't I hear this fellow 20 years
ago?
But you better hang on to the sovereignty
of God and press on.
All right, we better move on.
Notice there was this tremendous opposition from Satan
as they moved out to minister the word
of God.
And we have a long sermon here, relatively
long, as far as sermons that are found
in scripture, starting at verse 14.
And then we move on to verse 43,
where again we see this simple word.
Paul and Barnabas, who's speaking to them, they
minister together.
Paul, almost his entire life, worked on a
team.
And I believe we need more teamwork in
the Church of Jesus Christ.
If Paul, as strong as he was in
Christ, generally worked on a team, how much
more should we?
Our whole work is built on teamwork, and
this is one of the reasons we have
had very few casualties.
Because when you're on a team and you're
beginning to go down, the team pulls you
up.
When you're a lonely missionary out in the
middle of nowhere, all by yourself, and you
start to go down, who's going to pick
you up?
Who's going to exhort you?
Who's going to challenge you?
And we found it very, very important to
work as teams.
Sometimes a team is small, other times a
team is big.
Almost all of Buck Sinsworth, a very unique
evangelist in India, has planted two or three
hundred churches.
A human being, a man God has used,
some of his teams have been up to
a hundred strong.
He moves into a city with a team
of a hundred.
And when they're done, three months later they
planted a church.
A very unique spiritual movement.
So Paul and Barnabas, who were speaking to
them, verse 43, persuaded them to continue in
the grace of God.
Now, they did not only want to persuade
people to be converted, but they wanted to
persuade people to continue in the grace of
God.
I have as much burden that people continue
in the grace of God than that they
be converted in the first place.
Because the fact is, if they don't continue
in the grace of God, how do I
know if they've even been converted?
And many times we have found people being
converted in the process of following them up.
They made a decision, we'll follow them up,
and they got converted there.
Because a decision is not always a conversion.
You all know that.
Very easy to get decisions, relatively speaking.
But in the book of Acts, we have
the number of disciples multiplied in Jerusalem, not
the number of decisions.
This is a great concern on our own
hearts.
Well, let's move on and get a few
other pictures of Paul.
We had Paul stoned a couple of times
in chapter 14.
And then we move on, and I want
you to notice verse 22.
Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting
them to continue in the faith, and that
we must, through much tribulation, enter into the
kingdom of God.
I'd like to just insert here the fact
that one of the most important things in
my spiritual life when I was first converted,
was memorizing the word of God.
It is my deep prayer that during these
days, there will be definite decisions made that
will go into practice not only here, but
next Monday and weeks to come.
And I would challenge you to make this
decision.
If you want to grow in your spiritual
life and experience more reality, start memorizing and
intensively meditating on the word of God.
I can't tell you how important that was
in my life as a young Christian.
Now you are clean through the words spoken
unto you.
I just had a letter yesterday or the
day before from George Duncan up in Scotland,
asking me to come up and preach in
his church.
And I remember a message I heard from
him years ago on memorizing the word of
God.
He says, this is the way we cleanse
the subconscious.
So many of our problems are in the
subconscious.
And we don't even seem to have control
of some of our habits and some of
our actions.
Haven't you ever had that experience of doing
something that was actually contrary to everything you
wanted to do?
Because we're emotional beings and these impulses come
from within.
And it's the word of God that can
get into the subconscious.
I've seen even mentally disturbed people healed by
the power of the word of God.
Bill Gothel in the United States has been
used to help tens of thousands into spiritual
life.
His one main thing, main message among all
the other things, a fantastic minister of the
word, is meditation and memorizing the word of
God.
But you know some of us are too
lazy and we pay for it.
We don't want to get down into really
memorizing and meditating on the word of God.
And some of these verses I'm giving you
today I would love to see you committing
to memory.
I'd like to move on now to Acts
chapter 17.
We have Paul entering Europe.
We have Paul casting a demon out.
And I might just say a word here,
a word of warning.
I believe that this is a very, very
dangerous and difficult area.
I've studied it now 19 years.
I have been involved in praying for demon
-possessed people out in Asia.
First of all, because the church so totally
lacks discernment in our day.
And if we lack discernment in one area,
we will generally lack it in other areas.
There are very few who seem to be
able to understand when a man or a
woman is truly demon-possessed, and then to
discern what to do.
And I feel there are a lot of
other things in terms of spiritual life that
must be built into our lives first, before
we're going to be able to get into
some of these heavy tasks that in the
word of God we mainly see were done
by the apostles.
Men with gift, men of tremendous spiritual power.
And of course, God was working in a
very special way as well in this transition
period.
And oh, how we need such men today.
And at the same time, there are many
faults, many, many faults.
Prophets, the devil comes as an angel of
light.
I think of how many in my own
country, the United States, have been led astray
by angels of light.
I think of a man years ago named
Brennan, who is considered one of the most
holy men in our country.
He had all the so-called gifts of
the Spirit.
He had everything, and he had tens of
thousands of followers.
And once in a meeting, a halo appeared
over his head, and you may laugh.
They had photos of that halo, and tens
of thousands believed.
They believed this was the most spiritual man
in America.
And they followed.
And he led them astray, into denying the
Trinity, into denying basic doctrine.
And he's dead, and now we've got a
Madras, India.
We've got a Switzerland, Brennanites.
I don't know how to pronounce it, but
followers of him.
Tozer said something that I wrote in my
notebook.
I tell you, it has helped me so
much, if I can find it.
It has helped me in this whole area
of having a little bit of healthy disbelief.
Let me read this.
In our constant struggle to believe, we are
likely to overlook the simple fact that a
bit of healthy disbelief That's what I like
a little more about the British than the
Americans.
They seem to be a little stronger on
this point.
A bit of healthy disbelief is sometimes as
needful as faith to the welfare of the
soul.
I go further and say that we would
do well to cultivate a reverent skepticism.
It will keep us out of a thousand
bogs and quagmires where others who lack it
sometimes find themselves.
It is no sin to doubt something, but
it may be fatal to believe everything.
Everything you read, everything you hear.
I think that's very, very important.
So when we come to this area of
demons, and we know that there is this
tremendous force in the world, and demons are
moving, they always have been.
It's an area where we need a lot
of prayer, a lot of reality.
And the messages we're giving in these days,
we hope will be foundational for many other
things that God wants to do in his
timing.
Of course, the result of all this was
verse 23.
And when they have laid many stripes upon
them, they cast them into prison, charging the
jailer to keep them safe.
Quite different, isn't it?
Today, when you do some of these things,
you're made into a Christian hero.
Your name goes in the Gospel Gazette, and
pretty soon your head is bigger than a
balloon.
And then the devil moves in.
Merrick Hutchings was just sharing with me yesterday
what happened to someone in England like this,
who started being used and had a great
testimony, and it went to this person's head,
and one thing led to another.
But with Paul, it wasn't becoming a great
feature figure in the Gospel Gazette.
After he did this miracle, it was getting
beaten.
And Paul, basically, most of his life was
despised, even by many people in the Church,
born-again people.
You know what they said about him.
And this is why he wrote some of
his defenses.
The Thessalonian Church, as soon as he finished
there, we're going to see that in a
minute.
As soon as he finished there, people came
in, and he was just after their money.
That's why he wrote, one of the reasons
he wrote the Thessalonian Epistle back.
We go into chapter 17, after we see
this incredible jail experience.
Paul in the middle of the night, praising
God.
Notice verse 25, and at midnight, Paul and
Silas prayed and sang praises unto God, and
the prisoners heard them.
Talk about a prayer life.
Talk about praising the Lord in all situations.
It's quite funny, you get some people also
that get very upset about this work in
Soviet countries, where you have to work in
closed countries.
I can't even tell you some of the
closed countries we're working in.
And they say you must obey all the
laws of man.
But you know when the laws of man
go absolutely contrary, straight forward to the laws
of God, and you have to make a
choice.
Where do you choose?
Peter said we have to obey God rather
than man.
And if you say we can never, never,
never break the laws of man, then I
want to know what you're going to do
with the angel who broke into the prison
when Peter was there.
She had no warrant, caused a lot of
damages.
This angel could have gone to court for
that.
Who sent the angel?
God.
And here we have an earthquake and the
whole prison is broken down and every other
crazy thing happens.
And I think that's just one beautiful example
of how at times the laws of man
have to be circumvented.
If those laws are absolutely contrary to God's
command to go into all the world, there
is no border that I cannot go over,
or under, or parachute over, or what.
The whole world is my field.
And that command has been given to me
by Jesus Christ.
Well, I won't get into that.
We find Paul in chapter 17 in Thessalonica,
and notice verse 6, coming at the end
of our time.
When they found them not, they drew Jason
and certain brethren unto the rulers of the
city, crying, These that have turned the world
upside down are come yours.
In another version of the Bible it says,
These spiritual revolutionaries.
I like that term.
Not in the political sense, but in the
spiritual sense.
Revolution means change.
And God wants to change our lives.
God is not firstly concerned with changing your
vocabulary.
He's not even firstly concerned with changing your
theology, though sound theology is important.
He is concerned with changing your life and
my life, and making us different, and revolutionary,
and loving, and dynamic.
Even if it's in a quiet way, because
we're not all the same.
And don't think for a minute how I
think that most of you should become like
me, or like Hudson Taylor, or like any
favorite person you have.
God is not trying to annihilate you.
He's not going to destroy your personality.
He's going to work through you.
And if you're basically a quiet person of
a particular temperament, he won't annihilate that and
make you into something that you're not, but
he'll work through that.
And he'll break, and he'll bend, and he'll
work through you.
Well, they were spiritual revolutionaries, and that town
of Thessalonica was really turned upside down, and
in a matter of weeks a church was
born.
In a matter of weeks.
And Paul left.
Talk about a man who's on the move.
I have been studying his life for 20
years.
I haven't caught up with him yet.
I haven't figured out all the places he's
gone to yet.
You study.
And we're not all called to that kind
of ministry.
There were many who were in the local
church that Paul came and ministered to, but
he said, be ye followers of me.
So he didn't mean in journeys, but he
meant in attitude, lifestyle, mentality, spiritual quality, ethical
quality.
Some would travel.
Some may not.
Well, you know what happened then in Berea.
He liked the Bereans.
He said they were more noble than those
in Thessalonica, and that they received the word
with all readiness in mind and searched the
scriptures daily, whether they be so.
And I hope that we here at this
conference will be like the Bereans.
Well, after the meetings, take some time in
these beautiful woods and environment to search the
scriptures.
Anybody can study the Bible when you're in
a meeting, and you're all supposed to be
here.
But to take that little extra time to
get into the word, morning, evening, or both,
and search the scriptures like the Bereans to
see if these things may be so.
While I wanted to get into Acts 20,
which is an incredible bombshell of spiritual truth,
so maybe we could just close by looking
for a few minutes at Acts 20.
Notice verse 2.
When he had gone over those parts and
had given them much exhortation, he came unto
Greece.
In other words, when Paul went around ministering
and reministering to the churches, he went with
much exhortation.
Some of what I'm giving you in these
days is Bible teaching, and some of it
is exhortation.
But I believe we need exhortation.
I need exhortation.
That's why I read so many of these
hot books.
So many of these books I'm challenging you
to get.
And they've just been such a challenge to
me.
Because I naturally go downhill.
I'm a natural downhiller.
And I need constantly to be challenged and
exerted.
That's why I believe in setting goals.
That's why though I hate to get up
in the morning, I get someone to wake
me up at 6 or 6.30, and
I go out and run.
Because I don't like that.
That I know as I run, my lungs
start going, my heart starts going when I'm
finished, and then I can go into the
world and I'm awake and ready to go.
And I believe many of our spiritual problems
are because we're out of shape physically.
And our hearts and our lungs are not
able to do what God wants us to
do.
We're great neglecters of the physical body.
We may do a little exercise during our
holiday, but exercise means very little unless it's
all year.
All year.
That's why some of the great football players
become the most ill men you could ever
talk to.
Because one period of life, exercise, exercise, fanatics,
and then negligence.
And I've seen many people hindered in their
spiritual life because of poor lungs and poor
heart.
Of course, some of those things happen later
on no matter what.
And I recommend that kind of discipline.
Well, Paul moved in a mighty way and
in much excitation.
Now, if you could just read chapter 20,
perhaps it would lay a foundation for tomorrow's
thinking.
Because it's a chapter that reveals much of
the spiritual reality demonstrated by the Apostle Paul.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for so many
spiritual truths and so many practical truths from
the life of this year's servant, Paul.
Help us, Lord, not to forget that which
we have heard this morning.
But to apply it.
And to act upon it.
For we pray in the name of Jesus
Christ, our Lord and our Savior.
Amen.