Who Does God Put On His Team - Ben Stuart

Well, if you've been with us, we've been moving through the Book of Acts, the story of the birth of the Christian Church. And right at the beginning of Acts, what we covered in season one was the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. And then his apostle Peter, who had traveled with him, began to preach powerfully in the city of Jerusalem, and thousands came to faith. And then after Peter, others like Stephen and Philip began to preach throughout places in the Middle East. And you saw the gospel. The good news of Jesus even go down into Africa. Then God got ahold of a man named Saul, who was persecuting the church, trying to imprison and kill Christians. God said, You're not going to kill him. I'm going to make you one. And God changed his life. And Saul, now the Apostle Paul, began to take the gospel forward. And he and a buddy named Barnabas helped lead the first church plant that North of Jerusalem, Antioch, the first multi ethnic church, was established. And then there out of Antioch, Paul and Barnabas went on the first mission trip of taking the good news of Jesus further into what's called modern day Turkey and the island of Cyprus. And they saw people coming to faith that didn't have any background in the scriptures at all, which we saw last week sort of incited a question in Jerusalem and Antioch. Can you put your faith in the Jewish Messiah without first committing yourself to obey the law that God gave his people in the Old Testament? Is that legal?

Can we do that? They had a whole council about it. And they said, You know, the law is good that God gave them the law in the Old Testament to give moral and civil order to a nation so people could see what a healthy society looked like and gave them ceremonial laws that were pictures of how God would redeem us and rescue us and how we're meant to be consecrated to him. And so the church got together and realized, You know what? All those pictures and symbols were to lead us to the rescuer, the hero, Jesus. And now that we have him, we don't have to go back to the symbols and the pictures. And so the Gentiles, the ethnos, the nations could come to faith in Jesus and have the very spirit of God and dwell them without them having to do a lot of external laws. And so armed with that good news, where we are today is we're going to see Paul say, You know what? Now that we know that a relationship with God is by a free gift through grace that we're all preaching the same message, let's take it out with power as far as we can. And we're going to watch today the gospel spread to Europe. What is commonly referred to as the second missionary journey. We're going to see Paul and his team land in a little city called Philippi, which might sound familiar to you because it's where we get Philippians from. He's going to write a letter to this church later and call them the fellowship of the gospel partakers of God's grace with me that you know what it is to have his grace to forgive you. And then you want to spread this message along with me.

We're going to see one of the churches Paul loves the most because they are joined with him and spreading the gospel wide. But what we're going to see in Acts chapter 16 is the birth of the great church of Philippi. We're going to watch God assemble a team. My son Owen played his first football game ever yesterday. Yes. Flag football. We went out there to Wolf Trap. He played scored a touchdown on his first drive. Got to say it's a proud dad. Yeah. The other team never saw him coming. They didn't have any game film on him. It was a surprise. And now if the team can only learn defense, we're going to be unstoppable. But I was trying to coach him up before the game of just like, hey, you know, just be a team player. You're learning some of the rules. And so listen to the coach and help your other teammates and just hustle, do whatever you can. And so I was trying to kind of encourage him to have certain characters. He approaches the field. And so I said, Hey, imagine if you were a coach, what kind of player would you want on the field? And he goes, Well, I'd pick you, Dad. And I was like, Oh, buddy, the cap's 11. Dad's eligibility is long since passed.

But thanks. I didn't mean what people you would pick. I mean, what kind of people you would pick. And I mentioned that because we're going to look as God builds a beautiful, healthy church, we're going to see what team God would pick. It's interesting. If you look through a lot of movies that have kind of an ensemble cast, this always happens, right? The Avengers. You kind of meet different ones as they assemble them. The Fellowship of the Ring. You got a dwarf and an elf and all kinds of different people. Robin Hood's merry men. We tend to assemble a crew that will accomplish a mission together. We're going to watch God assemble a crew, and you're going to get to figure out what kind of people is God moving towards. And you might just look like one of them. And so at the beginning, it starts kind of humble. We'll summarize. This happens at the end of Acts 15. Paul, after this Jerusalem council where they say, okay, we all have clarity. We're preaching the same message. He looks at Barnabas and says, let's go to all the churches we helped plant before. And Barnabas says, great, I'll bring my cousin, little John Mark. And Paul says, absolutely not. Because little Mark bailed on us

in the first mission trip, I don't trust him. And it says they had a severe disagreement about it, and so they decide to part ways. Barnabas takes his little cousin Mark, and they go to Cyprus. And Paul will go pick a new partner, Silas. And incidentally, they're all friends. Paul will shout out Barnabas when he writes to Philemon, and he'll say later of Mark that he is useful for service. Mark has a great redemption story, and then he wrote the gospel of Mark. But they split up the team, and Barnabas and Mark go to one of the places they had planted churches. Paul grabs Silas to go to another, which was a smart move because Silas was from Jerusalem, Paul was from Antioch. And so they got to say, hey, both of these major churches, we're in lockstep together, and here we come to tell you about the good news of the grace of God. It's one church with one story about one Savior, Jesus. And so they head out together, and as they go back to where they were before, they pick up another guy, young Timothy. And where Silas was an educated man from Jerusalem, Timothy was from a backwater town that Paul ended up in kind of on accident. And all we really know about Timothy was

he was from mixed parentage, and his dad wasn't really in the picture. And yet God had touched Timothy's heart, and through his mother's teaching and his grandmother's, he had put his faith in Jesus, and he had a good reputation in multiple cities because he was a young man who's been touched by the grace of God and was gracious to others. And so they pick him up. And so Paul, Silas, and Timothy head out. And at first, it seems like they're just gonna do a similar little loop to some of the places they've been before, but then God is gonna start to move this little team further than they ever anticipated. And you see in Acts 16, verse six, they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. So passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. Let me give some context in case you don't know any of those words. This is an interesting moment at the beginning. They launch out into what we would call modern-day Turkey, and it says the Spirit prevented them from preaching in this area.

And so they tried to go north, and the Spirit didn't let them do that either, which leads to a natural question. Well, how did they know that? How did the Spirit forbid them? And we're not told how, and we're not told why. Did Silas get a prophetic word? Did somebody have a dream? Did an angel show up? Was it just an impression or a feeling, or was it just logistical failures? They couldn't get there. We don't know. It doesn't say. But they try to move into the places, and it seems like God keeps shutting the doors. Now, to clarify, this does not mean that God doesn't love Asians. You know, you're like, why wouldn't God let them preach in Asia? Peter's gonna minister in this area, okay? And Paul will come back and minister here later. It's where he'll establish a church in Ephesus, and we get a letter to them, the Ephesians, all right? Nicaea will come to this place too. And so this isn't a no, this is a not yet, right? But somewhere, I want you to notice, as the apostle Paul is following the Lord, the Lord leads him early on here by shutting doors. And some of you have been there.

Little side note. Some of you say, I'm trying to follow God, and he just keeps shutting doors. Are there any left open? And so Paul and his team kind of just drift west, trying to figure out God, what God is doing. Sometimes God leads you by eliminating options. God, just tell me where I'm supposed to go, and he won't tell you. But suddenly doors start shutting, and you go, where are you, God? Well, he doesn't want you there, that's what you know. And so Paul doesn't apologize, and God doesn't rebuke him, but God is driving this little team further west. And we're not told how these no's happen, but then they finally get a yes, and we are told about that. Paul sees a vision in verse nine. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night, a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, come over to Macedonia and help us. And when Paul had seen this vision, immediately we sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. So he sees in a vision a man from Macedonia. How did he know it was a Macedonian? Sometimes in dreams, you just kind of know, right? Also, historically, Macedonians wore funny hats, and so it could have been that.

Either way, this was the former empire of Alexander the Great. This is Greece. We're about to watch the gospel jump the banks into Europe for the first time, right? And so Paul enters into this space and discerns, as best as I can tell, this cry for help is a cry to go bring the good news of forgiveness and life through Jesus, right? Interestingly, I don't know if you noticed, the pronouns switched to we, Luke, who wrote this book, and the gospel of Luke just joined the team. He sort of humbly never says his name, but you just kind of see it change to a plural. Luke has entered the chat, and so now we got four of these guys, verse 11, setting sail from Troas. We made a direct voyage to Sam and Thrace in the following year. flowing data in Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city in the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. And we remained in the city some days. Philippi was named after Alexander the Great's dad, Philip. But now at this point in history, it was a Roman colony. And a lot of retired Roman soldiers lived there because when the armies of Octavian and Antony defeated Brutus and Cassius, remember Brutus? Et tu, Brute? That really happened.

And when Octavian and Antony's forces overcame Brutus's, they were so grateful for their military service, they gave them this city, Philippi, and said, we are gonna name it as a Roman province so you get all the privileges of those who live in the capital city of Rome, like never having to pay taxes. And so the Philippians were very proud to be Philippian because they were Roman and proud of being Roman, right? And so now the gospel's gonna move into this proud city, and what Luke's gonna do in our passage that follows is he's gonna show us three different people who God gathers to be his church. God's gonna assemble a team. And a lot of people came to faith there, a whole church is planted, but Luke just focuses on three because he wants us to see what they're like, how God constitutes his people. And the first one we meet in the lineup is a woman named Lydia. Verse 13, it says that on the Sabbath day, we went outside the gate to the riverside where we supposed there was a place of prayer. And we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. One who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.

And after she was baptized in her household as well, she urged us saying, if you had judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay. And she prevailed upon us. Now Paul's typical MO when he arrived in a city was to go to the synagogue first. That's where the Jewish people in that city would study the Old Testament scriptures together. And so the fact that on a Sabbath day, he doesn't go to a synagogue suggests to us that there wasn't one. That you needed back then at least 10 men to form a synagogue. And here Paul arrives in Philippi and this is a very pagan place. There are no synagogues. So he just goes down to the river to pray and sees a group of women there. And here's where he meets this woman, Lydia. Could have been her name, could have been a nickname. She's from the region of Lydia. So Lydian lady, right? It's like calling a Texan Tex. It's not an insult. But here we find out a few things about her. The first thing we find out is she's sophisticated. The gospel's not just for the rural or backwoods or Southern or whatever you wanna say. Lydia was from Thyatira and she was a seller of purple. Thyatira was a city that was famous

for high quality textiles and purple was hard to make. You had to make it from a specific shellfish or from the roots of a particular plant. Hard to make purple, expensive to make it. That's why it was the color of royalty. So it was hard to make and it was expensive. And so it showed you got some money, you got some power if you're rolling around in purple. And this lady was moving purple in Philippi. And was so good at it that she has a house that you saw later can house all these guys, all right? Business is good for Lydia. So we got a sophisticated, successful woman with a spiritual inclination. She's a worshiper of the Lord. She has a sense that God's up there and she's interested in God. So she goes down to the river to pray. That's what Lydia is in this moment. And did you see what Paul does? He spoke to her and she listened. There's no miracles. Paul doesn't part the water. He doesn't heal a brokenness in her, some sort of disease. He just comes down and he speaks with her and reasons with her and it's in the imperfect tense, meaning it went on for a while. But he was explaining to her that God's son, Jesus Christ, came for us, lived for us, died for us, rose again, that he's the hope of the world.

Paul explained this to her and upon hearing it, the Lord opened her heart. So salvation is still a miracle, it's all of grace. God changed her heart, but look at how God did it. Not with a bunch of fanfare, just with a simple, reasoned explanation. In a gracious, non-dramatic way, God opened Lydia's heart and she believed. Which incidentally, is what many of you need. Some of you are like Lydia. I remember when I was a youth pastor, I used to teach Bible studies and what I would do is I would just print off a couple paragraphs at a time on a piece of paper so these kids didn't have to do any work ahead of time. And we'd sit in a circle and I would just hand them out a passage of scripture and they would read it and we would discuss it and learn the Bible together. And I remember one time we did it and this kid showed up and right as he walked in the door, he came up to me and he said, hey man, I don't wanna be here, my mom made me be here, I don't believe any of this and so here I am. I'm like, great, you want some snacks or I don't know, let's make the best of it. So we would do this Bible study and what I would do was I would try to ask observational questions anyone could answer. even if they believed or not, who wrote this letter as we were studying Galatians?

Paul, how do you know that? Because it says, Paul. Yeah, that's right. Okay, good job. All right, who did he write it to? The Galatians. How do you know that? Because it says, to the Galatians. Way to go, you guys are crushing it. And on and on we would go and just kind of help them understand the text. And so he started coming back week after week, answering questions, interacting with the text, as we learned that salvation, intimacy with God is not through works, but by the kindness of God that changes us from the inside out. And somewhere about six weeks into this 12-week study, I noticed when he would answer a question, he would say, well, we believe that Jesus really came and he really died. And we believe that Jesus rose again. And that's how we have hope that there's a future for us beyond the grave. And we believe, and I remember I stopped him one point and I go, wait a minute. When did we become we? When did you become a part of this? And he was like, I don't really know. There was no big altar call, not a bunch of tears. He's just at some moment as we reasoned about this text,

it made sense to me. He was almost like C.S. Lewis in a way. C.S. Lewis had this great illustration of a sheet of music. He said, imagine sitting at a piano and playing some sheet music on the piano and then seeing a random lone sheet of paper on the floor. How would you know that that sheet of music fits the music up here on the piano? He says, well, you just put it in there and see if it plays. Does it fit the song? And he said, the gospel's like that. He said, as I considered humanity and lived my life, started asking questions, who am I? What's wrong with me? How's it dealt with? Where did I come from? Where am I going? As I pondered the great mysteries of life, why we're all here, why we have dignity and yet are deeply broken. As he pondered reality and then studied the scriptures, he said, when I pick up Christianity and assess how it explains the human condition, it just plays. It makes sense more than any other philosophical system. And he had tried them all. And so C.S. Lewis came to faith because he just saw the reasons intellectually why Christianity is satisfying. It makes sense of the world that I live in.

And same with Lydia, same with C.S. Lewis, same with some of you. You don't need fireworks, you may not cry. You need to hear the gospel and put your faith in Jesus. Still a miracle, the Lord opened her heart to believe. But some of you, God will save you through intellectual understanding. That's why we teach the Bible every week is because we want you to understand it, see what it says, because God will sweetly save many of you as the Lord reasons with you. And her open heart leads to an open home. We got our first team member and the boys are standing at her house. Then we meet team member number two in verse 16. And as we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune telling. She followed Paul and us crying out, these men are servants of the most high God who proclaim to you the way of salvation. And this she kept doing for many days. And Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And it came out that very hour. So Paul is going through the city and another girl appears who is in every way Lydia's opposite.

Lydia is a grown woman, sophisticated, spiritually inclined to worship the most high God. This is a young girl enslaved and possessed by a demon. And it says she had a spirit of divination. Literally in Greek, it says a spirit, a Python spirit is what it says. What does that mean? Well, we won't go into all the history of it, but it was associated with the God Apollo that the priestesses at Delphi would be overpowered by what was known as a Python spirit. And as they were overwhelmed by it, they would make pronouncements, fortune telling. And it was often attractive young women or really old ladies. I don't know why, that's how they would do it. And so this idea that a Python guarded the temple of Apollo and would possess young women to tell the future was popular in the imaginations of the people. And so this little girl is a slave and their owners exploit her. The spiritual darkness is in her life that takes her captive and they exploit it to make money. Which incidentally, spiritually dark exploitation of young women is alive and well today, often through sex trafficking. This woman is trapped and here they're doing it through fortune telling. And she begins to follow Paul and Silas around yelling things that are technically true.

Did you see that? I don't know that I have much of a problem with her message. Why does this greatly disturb Paul? I don't know, she could be saying it in a weird way, like sarcastically. It could be the fact that she's with them yelling it makes people think they're together and they think she's kind of crazy. So they're kind of like, she's not really on our team. We don't really know her. She's not dating. Timothy, stop, just like she's doing some things that are embarrassing in Jesus' name. I don't know if you've ever been in ministry and someone's naming Jesus and does something embarrassing and you're like, yes, we love Jesus too, not what they're doing, they're kind of doing a different thing. And maybe it just got awkward, like she's not on our team, but she's pretending to be on our team. Or let's not skip the obvious, a demon possessed girl is screaming at you for days. That's just a disturbing thing, all right? I don't know if you've ever tried to preach a message and a demon possessed woman is yelling the whole time. It's very distracting for both the preacher and the listener. I had a friend that this happened to,

incidentally, you can see it on YouTube. He's trying to preach a sermon and this woman is making these growling sounds and saying some really crazy things. And so he has to stop the sermon and a group of people pray over her for deliverance. It's pretty powerful. And so here in this moment, this girl day after day is bothering them. But that word annoyed Paul, it's not like he's like, it's distressing him. Something about this that's disturbing. This doesn't sit well with me. And so did you notice he doesn't rebuke her like he did with Bar Jesus before. He rebukes the spirit that's hold her captive. He looks at this girl and he says, some darkness has a hold of her and I don't want it to have a hold of her anymore. And Paul has no power to change her, but he calls for the Lord Jesus Christ to set her free. And she's set free that very hour. And some of you, that's you. You've gotten into some dark things and it's enslaved you. And you don't need a cogent argument. You need rescue. Some of you, you went to some places for comfort to obliterate the bad feelings.

You went to a chemical, a drug, a drink, a relationship, a way of acting out online. You've gone to some things because you thought they would give you freedom and yet they've made you captive. And some of you are here and you really don't need a cogent argument and apologetics. There is a reasonableness to our faith. That's why so many intellectuals now are being drawn to it. But you don't need those yet. You need rescue because you feel a real sense that there's some darkness that's bigger than me and it has me and I'm enslaved to it. And this young girl is a slave with hope ebbing away. And Jesus Christ, the warrior, makes war to set her free. And that's what some of you need. I've had many of you come up to me at this church and tell me that, that you've gotten into some dark things you thought would bring you freedom and it has made you a captive. And you're wondering if you have any hope left. I remember ministering to a young man who came to the city because he felt that the moral structures of a small town were too limiting and keeping him from the experiences he wanted to have that as an anonymous young man in the city, he could dive headlong into. And so he said, I participated in every fantasy I had hoped to be a part of while I was in the city. And he said, and I remember being on the train

on the ride home one day and burst into tears because I got everything I wanted and it didn't give me anything. But I felt like it had stripped things from me. He said, and I wanted to kill myself. He said, but then I heard this message about a Jesus who could forgive even me. And I showed up with maybe there's hope. There's a darkness bigger than me, but it's not bigger than him. And Jesus cast the darkness out. The second recruit, God is going for the intellectual, the sophisticated, the educated, the spiritually inclined. You grew up in church and God is looking for some of you that are broken, enslaved, addicted, and without hope. He wants you too. You're invited on the team. And the same Jesus that's intellectually satisfying is spiritually powerful. Well, our owners don't like it because they were exploiting the Python spirit in her for money. And so in verse 19, things get weird. And when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Cyrus and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers. And when they had brought them to the magistrates, they said, these men are Jews and they're disturbing our city. They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans

to accept or practice. The crowd joined in attacking them. And the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods. And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely. Having received this order, he put them in the inner room and fastened their feet and stocks. So they get mad at Paul. And so what they do is they drag him into the Agora, the marketplace, the center of town. And there, there was these seats set up called the Bema. It's where the magistrates would adjudicate. And they would just kind of have trials out there in the open. We watch courtroom TV. They didn't have TVs back then. You just go down to the Agora and say, who's in trouble now? Get them. They'd sort of do. And so they bring Paul and Silas down there. And did you notice, they can't say, hey, we're mad at these guys because they said our demon possessed slave girl for you and now we're out of money. That's not really gonna sell. So what they do is they appeal to some racism.

Hey, these men are Jews, which is something foreign in Philippi. And they appeal to their sense of pride in being Romans. They're trying to make us not Roman. They're trying to keep us from being truly Roman. They're anti-Roman. We have all these privileges from Rome. These guys are threatening that. We could be in trouble because they're here. And so he sort of appeals to politics and race rather than the fact that they're just out of some money. And the magistrates don't let Paul talk. They don't really give him any chance to explain himself. He was like, I don't know. All right, just strip these guys and beat them with some rods. So they do. And they publicly humiliate them by stripping them. And they beat them. They cane these men. And then they throw them not just into prison. They throw them into inner prison. And then they put their legs and stocks in the inner prison of the prison. And so they just go full pain, full humiliation. In verse 25, about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God. And the prisoners were listening to them. What do you do when God doesn't save you from external pain? God lets them get beat.

God lets them get thrown in prison. And there in that moment, they sing in the midst of their suffering. What kind of human being would do that? Well, that's what these prisoners are trying to figure out. So notice the rest of them are listening to them and just kind of taking in that these guys are praising a God who let them suffer. And verse 26, and suddenly there was a great earthquake. So that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's bonds were unfastened. And when the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried out in a loud voice, do not harm yourself, we're all here. And the jailer called for lights and rushed in and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? They said, believe in the Lord Jesus and you'll be saved, you and your household. And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of night and washed their wounds. And he was baptized at once, he and all his family.

Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God. Sometimes you're in painful circumstances and it's your fault, don't blame God. You cheated on your taxes, end up in prison, you go, why God? Well, it's pretty easy to track the numbers. That's on you. Sometimes you're in a difficult spot and it's not because of you. God puts you there. God deploys his apostles to prison. Because these prisoners are watching. Will they sink into despair? Their message, their good news about Jesus, will all that fail when they start taking some hits? How can you sing in a cell? What's going on with you? Sometimes God will let us go to prison because when people watch us go through pain with supernatural peace, it will make them believe. That's how it works. Some of you, God has put you in the cell, excuse me, cubicle that you're in now and you say, why God am I chained in the stocks of this cubicle? And it's so when people's lives get hard and they see that you can sing in the midst of your cell,

they'll wanna come and figure out why you have what you have. These men are singing and everybody's listening. What is your deal? Then the ground shakes, the prison crumbles, their chains break and they go, I don't think that was a coincidence. And the jailer, who before this, we don't know that he has any interest spiritually, he's just working a blue collar job for the government, right? Guarding the prison, one job, keep prisoners in prison. And he realizes, oops, prison's gone, chains are broken, I had one job. If I fail in this honor, shame culture, they kill me or I can kill me. You want them to do it, you wanna do it yourself. And he's like, well, might as well get it over with, pulls the sword out and Paul says, stop, because we're all here. Why are they all here? I think the other prisoners were watching these guys sing in a cell and then saw the ground shake and hit everything and they're like, I'm not doing anything, I'm gonna sit right here until those guys tell me what to do. And the jailer feels it too. Those guys have a piece that surpasses circumstance, I don't understand you. And when the ground shakes in your midst, you guys are still at peace, I don't get you.

And the jailer comes and says, you know what? I don't know that we cared about spiritual things, but when his external circumstances began to crumble, he comes to the feet of the apostles for truth. And some of you, that's you. Maybe you don't have a spiritual inclination like Lydia. Study the Bible, maybe you just don't really care. Maybe you're not possessed by a demon screaming crazy stuff. You just say, you know what? I'm just living my life and I don't really care. But when you start taking some external hits, your job starts to crumble, your world starts to crumble. C.S. Lewis said, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a hurting world to show us our need for him. I've seen many people in my family, not really interested in God until they start to suffer and then they start to ask questions. And when then they look and see the people who are singing in the midst of suffering and saying, how are you like that? John Wesley was very religious, very moral. And he became a chaplain because he was sort of proclaiming morality. And then he came to bring a morality to America and he was terrible at it. Fell in love with a girl, she didn't love him back. So he denied her communion, which was a bad move. And so they ran him out of town. Not a good start to ministry.

So he was on the boat back to Europe as a complete failure. But on the way over, he was chaplain of the boat. And he was telling people to be moral, do moral things and because he's moral and look how much it's worked for me. And then a storm hit the boat and he thought he was gonna die. And the chaplain was hugging the rails, scared to death of death. And yet the Moravians were all singing hymns on the dock. The men, the women, the children, they're on the front of the boat singing. And so he came to them embarrassed. I got my life put together, I'm a moral person, but I don't sing in the midst of suffering. And he came to the Moravians and said, how did you do that? How were you like that? And they said, do you believe Jesus has offered you eternal life? And he said, I hope so. They're like, that's not what we asked you. We asked you, do you know that he has? And so when the storm rocked his boat, he realized I'm a good person, but good person doesn't mean much when the foundations begin to shake. They've got something that sings in the midst of suffering and I don't. And so he went back to Europe and showed up at their little Moravian Bible study and they just opened the gospel of the book of Romans

and began to talk about how we are made right before God, not by our morality, but by faith and the kindness of God. John Wesley's heart was strangely warmed and he was changed because the grace of God changed him from the inside out. Some of you need a reasoned, logical argument. That's why we have some of our core classes that do that. Some of you need deliverance. You need someone to pray for you, to set you free from what you're bound to. Some of you don't care about spiritual things, but when the foundations begin to shake of your life, you realize there's a bigger story than just me earning a paycheck. And God graciously saves the third member of his team, the jailer, right? How does he save him? Through admission of need. What do I need to do to be saved? What do they tell him? Believe, believe that Jesus is who he says he is and can do what he said he would do. So to close, let's back it up. You got Paul, a former murderer, a half-breed Timothy, Silas and Lydia, the intellectuals, a demon-possessed slave girl, and a Gentile blue-collar guy. That's the team that's gonna take over the world. Solid choice that God picks a crew and says, that's my team, that's who I want. There was an old Jewish prayer at the time

that Jewish men would pray in the temple. They would say, God, thank you that you didn't make me a woman, a slave, or a Gentile. And so when Luke tells the story of the church at Philippi that will change the world, what stories does he tell? A woman, a slave, and a Gentile. What's the point? The point is, Jesus wants all of you. His grace is sufficient for all of you. And his grace can be applied in the specific ways you need it. Some of you are struggling intellectually with the veracity of Christianity. Christianity's not scared of your questions. You come and ask them, believing that in reason your heart can be opened. Some of you need rescue from some darkness, and Jesus is able to heal and restore. He's a warrior who fights for you. And the darkness that's bigger than you is not bigger than him. And some of you, your ground is shaking and giving way beneath your feet. And God has done that to drive you to your knees, not before the apostles, but before his word. So that when you see the foundation shake, you will look up to the author of life and believe in a Jesus Christ who can save you and your household. I don't know what your story is,

but I know who your answer is. It is the God-man Jesus Christ who wants Lydia's slave girls, jailers, Timothy's, and you. This is how he builds his church. you