How to Serve Effectively for Christ Part 2

Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Serve Effectively for Christ Part 2. He will be reading out of Acts 18:1-11.

Opposition and rejection is not a sign from God that somehow you’re doing the wrong thing, but the opposition and the rejection that you experience is a reminder that you’re doing the right thing for God.

Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders with Hope Worth Having radio broadcast today. We are excited that you’re with us and you’re tuned in and today we’re gonna continue our study on Acts chapter 18 and we are continuing to learn about how to serve effectively for Christ.

We started this just before the holidays and now we’re gonna pick it back up so we want to learn and we want to grow and I hope you’re ready to take some notes as we learn together. This morning I want you to take your Bible and join me in the book of Acts chapter 18.

Acts chapter 18, if you’re a note-taker, is about serving, serving God, serving Christ. That’s why we’ve entitled the message how to serve effectively for Christ. We’re looking at the life of the Apostle.

I want you to remember that he is on his second missionary journey. We find him now in the city of Corinth and we have already covered the first four verses of this text talking about how to serve effectively.

We learned a few weeks ago that we first have to learn to connect with people and to help them grow in the Lord. God providentially would allow Paul and Aquila and Priscilla to connect together and Paul would use his influence to help them grow in their faith.

The second thing we learned a few weeks ago is that we need to commit to work extra when it is required. Now, the Apostle went into the city of Corinth with the ambition of planting a church. Led of the spirit and commissioned by God himself, he went into every community to make an impact for Christ.

And when he went into the city of Corinth, he was in need of some resources financially. And not wanting to be a burden to a newly planted church. He was willing to work, he was not ashamed to work, so that his needs would be taken care of, and that he would be able to sustain himself financially and not be a burden to the church.

We see that there laid out in verse 3. Then we come to verse 4, where we learned that the Apostle was ready to explain the gospel. Now, the Apostle’s strategy was very simple. When he would go into a new city…

he would go first to the Jews, and he would show up at a synagogue. And because of his credentials, often he was warmly welcomed into Jewish synagogues. And they would let him get up and share because of who he is.

And so the apostle would then get up and explain the redemptive plan of God. And how that from Abraham all the way to Jesus, that God was putting together a beautiful story of bringing people into a relationship with him.

And how that Jesus was that Messiah. He was that Christ. He was the one that they had been waiting for. That he was the one that the prophets had prophesied about. And that they needed to put their faith and their trust in the Lord for true salvation.

We pick up in verse four, the Bible says, that he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded both Jews and Greeks. He was ready to explain the gospel. If you’re gonna be an effective servant for God, you need to be ready.

You never know when your opportunity is coming. You need to not only understand the redemptive plan of God, but you need to understand how you can stair-step people to the cross. And how you can communicate that in a way that is understandable, that it’s relatable, and that people can respond and make a choice or a decision to receive Christ as their savior.

And that’s exactly what happened to the apostle Paul. I want you to pick up in verse five. The Bible says, when Silas and Timothy had come from Macedonia, Paul was compelled by the spirit. And he was testified to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ.

But when they opposed him and blasphemed him, he shook his garments and he said to them, let your blood be upon your own heads. I am clean. From now on, I will go to the Gentiles. and he departed and he entered the house of a certain man named Justice, one who worshiped God, whose house was next door to the synagogue.

Then Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his household, and many of the Corinthians hearing believed and were baptized. Now the Lord spoke to Paul in the night by a vision, Do not be afraid, but speak and do not keep silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to hurt you, for I have many people in this city, verse 11.

He continued there, that is in the city of Corinth, a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. The fourth way to effectively serve Christ is to march on despite rejection. What I want to talk to you today is about dealing with this problem of rejection.

That as we are out there making the case for Christ, we have to be realistic. We have to have an understanding that there are going to be people who do not like us. But you got to remember that you’re not going to make everybody happy and not everybody’s going to like you.

And certainly when you stand up for Christ and speak up for Christ, not everybody is going to get all excited and come to church with you. I want you to know that. And this is more of a reality than it ever has been in our society.

And so how is it that we are going to be able to march on for Christ? I’m going to share that with you. But I want to give you a little bit of background to help you before we get straight into the application.

When we come to verse 5, here we find that Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia. They rejoined Paul. His team is coming back together. Now, when we walk through the apostle with his team, as he is on this second missionary journey, they’re going from city to city, strategic cities, in order that the gospel may go out far and wide.

And when they have planted a church, here was again the apostle’s strategy. He would go in, get this church established, get it going, and then he departed. He would leave his team to organize the church family.

And we see this throughout the Old Testament. We see it in the New Testament. That the apostle would leave his team behind and they would get the church established and set up in such a way that it could effectively make a difference for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That is what is taking place. So when we come to verse 5, that team has completed their task and now they’re coming to Corinth and they’re rejoining the apostle. We see here, as we read in verse 5, that the apostle has as a burden, something that’s compelling him.

Again, we read in verse five, Silas and Timothy had come from Macedonia. Paul was compelled by the Spirit and testified to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ. Now, I’m reading from the New King James this morning.

Some of you are reading from other translations this morning and you’re saying to me, well, Pastor, I’m looking for that phrase compelled by the Spirit. We don’t see it. Some translations use this phrase as the idea of being constrained by the word or devoted to the word or compelled to the word.

Now, listen, we go back into the Greek. It’s the same Greek words, but the translation of how you might say it can be different. And so what they’re trying to say under the old English terminologies, again, the word.

pressed is in the King James. But the idea is simply there was this burden that the apostle had through the spirit and the word and he was devoted to the task of teaching the church at Corinth and this heavy burden was upon him and he was compelled and pressed and driven to get this church trained in the word of God.

Now we continue in verse six, having knowing what him and his team are doing in verse five. Verse six, we find that they were opposed. But when they opposed him, again, I understand and I’m not here to discredit any translation.

Okay, I’m not here to cause you confusion, but in the King James it says that they opposed themselves. Now that’s just an old English way of saying they opposed him. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s literally what it means today, that they opposed the apostle.

They were against the apostle. They were against him so much, not just that, hey, I don’t like what you’re saying, but this word opposed has the idea that they were organized to oppose him. They were vigorous and they planned how they were going to oppose the apostle.

They didn’t like what was going on in verse five. So in verse six, the Bible says, when they opposed him and blasphemed him, here’s what he said. Now these are the Jewish people in the synagogue. He shook his garments and said to them, your blood be upon your own heads.

I am claimed. From now on, I will go to the Gentiles. Now I know that we look at this and we say, wow. I mean, it looks like the apostle, he had had it, amen? I mean, he was done. These people, he had been trying to reach them with the gospel.

He’d been trying to help them to grow in their faith and to come to full knowledge of Christ and they keep opposing him. Remember, it’s not that they’re just organically opposing him, but they are. organized about it, and they have a strategy about how they’re opposing him, and he’s just like, okay, if you’re gonna be that involved in opposing me and teaching the gospel of Christ, and you’re gonna be that resistant to the message of Christ,

then he said, I’m done. Your blood be upon your own hands. You’re responsible. You’re accountable to God. I did everything I could to teach you the Bible. I am clean, the apostle says. From now on, I will go to the Gentiles.

We will come back to that, but I want you to remember this, that there’s always going to be opposition and rejection as you and I are trying to spread the message of the good news of Jesus. We should not be startled, nor should we retreat from what is before us when we are opposed.

The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 16, verse nine, that a great and effective door, the apostle said, has opened to me, and there are many. adversaries. Opposition and rejection is not a sign from God that somehow you’re doing the wrong thing, but the opposition and the rejection that you experience is a reminder that you’re doing the right thing for God.

Nobody’s going to be opposed to a message of prosperity, wealth, and health, but people are opposed to a message that you’re a sinner in need of a Savior, that you need to come to Christ and you need to confess your sin and you need to come clean with God and own your sin and make it right with God that Christ went to the cross and died for your sins.

That is a distinct gospel message that upsets people. Just go out there and tell people they’re sinners and they will start pushing back on you because all their life they were told how wonderful they are and then here comes the pastor, a Christian, somebody comes along and says you know you’re a sinner and you need to get saved.

They’re startled, they’re shocked, they would take it as a personal attack upon them and therefore they would define it as hate speech. But that doesn’t mean we give up, but just the opposite. We’re called to march on despite the rejection.

Remember that if you’re doing the work of Christ, Satan will sooner or later oppose you and he’ll use whatever means that he can to stop you from sharing the wonderful message that God loves us even though we are sinners and that God went to the cross and died for us, rose again the third day so that we could have a future with him.

So when the apostle in the midst of this conflict, he denounces the people by first shaking his raiment that is his clothes. He just shook them and it was kind of like a word picture for the people. It was an object lesson to them.

It was something that was used among the Jewish people to simply say, I’ve done everything that I can to lay the groundwork for your success, but I am done. It’s very similar to what Jesus taught us when he taught us in Matthew 10 verse 14, whoever will not receive you nor hear your words when you depart from the house or city, shake off the dust from your feet.

We see this in Acts chapter 13 in verse 51, that when Paul and Barnabas were in Antioch, again, the message of the gospel was rejected, and the Bible teaches us that they shook off the dust from their feet.

There are moments and times when we need to shake the dust off our feet. You say, pastor, do we give up on people? No, we don’t give up, but we do everything that we can, but we’re not going to beat them over the head with the gospel.

We’re not gonna pressure them to make a decision. We’re gonna do our responsibility, and that is that they understand that they’re a sinner in need of a savior. And if they keep pushing back and rejecting that gospel, then guess what?

We’re moving on. We’re shaking the dust off of our feet just as Jesus commanded us. He not only gave a demonstration of a word picture, but we see second of all that he pronounced damnation or judgment upon them.

Your blood be upon your own heads. It is a divine judgment that Paul is calling for here, that they have only themselves to blame, that they must own their choices, they must own their decisions, and that having God send an ambassador to them to help bring them salvation that they still would reject God, then he says, you know what?

Your blood’s not on my hands. Your blood is on your hand. The only way that blood could be on our hands if we didn’t faithfully share the message, if we didn’t have the courage to tell our friends and our neighbors and every stranger that crosses our path, if we didn’t have the courage to tell them how to be saved, then the blood would be on our hands.

But here we see that Paul is saying, I’ve done everything that I can to help you to respond to the gospel. The third statement that he makes is a declaration. I am claim. Paul was not evil. It’s not that the apostle was given an evil message.

He is letting those people know that are the enemies of the gospel that he is claim. In every age and every generation, and especially in our age, it is unfortunate that the world wants to take good and vilify it, that if you do good things, that somehow is considered evil, and they want to take good things.

They want to take evil and they want to celebrate it. And they want to make it something that you should do. And we live in these times and I don’t have time to reiterate, you know what I’m talking about.

The prophet Isaiah told us that there would be a time when people would say good is evil and evil is good. Can we say church that we are living in those times? Yes, we are. And so Paul is setting it right.

He is helping them to understand that evil is wrong and he is exonerating righteousness. He is celebrating righteousness and he’s saying, hey, I’m claim, I did my responsibility. Something I want you to remember that as a servant of God, that you are out there sharing Christ and you’re trying to help people know the message.

Here is your responsibility. And so many times Christians have gotten this all confused and distorted, therefore they become discouraged and not abounding in the work of Christ. But here it is, be obedient to the commission.

And what is it that Christ told us? That we were to take the gospel to Jerusalem, to Samaria, to the other most parts of the earth. My job is to be obedient. You are a success for God when you are obedient.

Success is not defined by how many people get saved. Success is not defined by how many people receive Christ. But success is defined in the eyes of God for you as a servant of God is whether you’re obedient to the call and the commission.

We love the book of Isaiah. We love that part in chapter six where he had this moment because of a tragedy in the nation where their king had died and Isaiah and the king were close friends, deeply connected to one another.

Isaiah was like a personal pastor to the king. He was a friend with the king. The Bible tells us in the year that Uzziah died, we find Isaiah prostrate before God in the temple at the altar. Weeping, grieving, devastated over the loss of his friend.

And the Bible tells us that Isaiah saw God high and lifted up. He saw him sitting on his throne in the moments of grief and the moments of despair in our hearts in the moments when we feel like everything that we have known to be true is pulled out from underneath our feet.

We need to see a sovereign God sitting on his throne. Isaiah sees this great vision of who God is and the Bible tells us that as he sees the righteousness of God and he sees the greatness of God that he himself is overwhelmed just how unrighteous and unholed.

he is. He pleads for God to touch him and forgive him. The Bible tells us that the angels touched him with a coal that was the ideal of purging his lips. Isaiah said, I am a man who’s undone. I am a man who has unclean lips.

Isaiah, it’s not that he was out there a rebel rouser, it’s just that as he saw how holy God is, he could not but help see just how unrighteous and unholy he was, and he’s like, man, I’m a man who has unclean lips.

And because of his emotional state, he said, I’m undone. I’m falling apart. I’m a mess. Every part of my body is falling apart. I am coming apart at the seams is the idea of the Hebrew word. And so God restores Isaiah.

You are familiar that Isaiah says, here am I. Send me. You and I are under the persuasion that Isaiah must have gone. to the deepest jungles and the farthest country, to share the wonderful message of God.

The truth is Isaiah went nowhere. He never left the temple. He never left the king’s court. He never left Jerusalem. It wasn’t that God wanted him to go to another place, but he just wanted to make sure that he was always available and obedient.

And God said to Isaiah, I’m gonna send you to a people who will not listen. I’m gonna send you to a people who will not understand your message. Isaiah was sent to his own people who were hard-headed, stubborn, and as the Old Testament likes to say, stiff necked, and they would not receive this message.

Was Isaiah a failure? No, he was not a failure. He was obedient to the calling that was upon him. Whether God sends you around the world or across the street, the importance is that you and I are obedient to God, that we are obedient to his calling and his mission upon us.

Now, when we come to verse six, the apostle says, I’m clean. And from now on, I will go to the Gentiles. Since the Jews did not wanna hear the gospel message, Paul was saying, I’m gonna go to the Gentiles.

We see this in Acts 13, verse 46. Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said it was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first, meaning the Jewish people. But since you reject it and you judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles.

What we see emerging in the book of Acts over and over again is the pattern of Acts 1.8, that you first go to Jerusalem, you first go to the Jews, and then you would go to Samaria, to the uttermost parts, and then you would go to the Gentiles.

This is… really interesting what we are seeing here in this text and what the apostle is saying. This has been the history of the Jewish race. Since the time of Christ they have not wanted the gospel.

They have not wanted to hear what the Bible says. They were more interested in their religion and their rabbis and their liturgical ways of doing religion than they were of having a relationship with God.

But when we come to Romans chapter 9, Romans chapter 10, Romans chapter 11, we see an amazing truth that is coming before us in that God would not only bring this message of the gospel to the Jewish people first, but that they would reject the gospel and that God would use the rejection of the Jews of the gospel to bring it to the Gentiles.

that Israel did not understand their great spiritual privileges, that they did not understand how they had been blessed to receive Jesus as the Messiah, and therefore they rejected Him, and this has now spilled over into the Gentiles.

That’s literally what’s happening in the whole book of Acts. But let’s talk about this. How do I march on when I try to win my children to Christ and they will not have anything of it? Now, number one, how do I march on?

Teamwork makes the dream work. Did you get that back in verse five? You see, the team is reunited. Silas and Timothy, Luke’s already there, they’re all coming back together. When the team rejoined Paul, it helped him.

You think about what would the Apostle been able to have accomplished by himself? I know that some of you are lone rangers, but I want you to know you were designed to be in community, and you’re designed to be on a team that gets the job done.

Whether it’s in the home, or it’s in the church, or it’s in the workplace, we all have to remember teamwork makes the dream work. We have to know our responsibilities, our roles, and we have to get that job done.

Now, there are five commitments of great teams. That is, number one, commit to give a hundred percent. You see, church, how is it that we’re going to be able to reach this community for Christ? How is it that we are going to be trained God’s people in the Word?

How are we going to establish people in their faith? How are we going to make disciples for the glory of God? It’s going to be teamwork. But when we’re all on the team, and we’re all working together, and we’re all giving a hundred percent, I’m telling you, God uses a team.

Number two, to help me have commitment for teamwork, I have to be committed to getting better. And what I’m saying to you, church, is it doesn’t matter what we did in the past. What about today? What are you doing to get better for God?

To be sharper for Christ? What is this church? It’s going to take all of us getting better. together. It’s about growing in our faith. It’s about being more mature. It’s about handling adversity. It’s about us being committed to excellence.

The third thing is we need to stay positive. Great teams are positive. Great teams are always filled with the hope of God. They are always seeing an opportunity here. That’s what I want you to know. I know it’s easy for you to curse the darkness and I know it’s easy for you to find fault with everybody out there, but I want to challenge you to see this moment of darkness is a great time to take the light of Christ to the darkness.

And the light always shines the brightest when it’s darkest. And so let’s take that light and let’s get the gospel message out. Number four, commit to the mission, the team’s mission. We have a mission church.

We don’t even have to get together and huddle together and talk about it for 24 hours because Jesus just cut to the chase and He told us our mission. He gave us the Great Commission. He told us that we’re to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, that we’re to be about making disciples for the glory of God, that we’re about reaching people, and we’re about teaching people, helping people to live obedient lives to God.

And whether there’s five of us or 500 of us, it doesn’t matter. This is our mission from our Savior. It just needs to be obeyed. Stay focused, church, on the mission. There are a lot of things out there that the devil is dangling before you to get you off mission.

And I’m telling you, these things aren’t bad or evil. They’re just not the best. And good can be the enemy of the best. So I wanna challenge you to stay on mission. Number five, teams, great teams, are committed to each other, the wellbeing of each other, the health of each other.

We gotta be committed to one another. You need to understand that a community of faith is not just about sitting and soaking. It’s not just about coming, listening, and learning, and leaving. It’s about I come in here, I hear God’s word, I learn God’s word, and I go out, and I apply God’s word.

I love others. I minister to others. I serve others. I help others. This makes a great team. This is what the apostle had. He had a great team of people who loved one another, served one another, ministered to one another.

We’re looking out for one another. This is how we march on church with one another. You go out there on your own, you won’t make it. You’ll be defeated. You will not abound in the work of God. You will be deflated, discouraged.

The Bible says two are better than one. And three is a strong cord that cannot be broken. So I wanna encourage you to do that. Now we’re learning how to march on. We said teamwork makes the dream work.

But here’s the second thing. You gotta have confidence in God’s plan. Go back to verse six. When the apostle faced this rejection, he said, I’m clean. From now on, I will go to the Gentiles. Why would he make such a statement like that?

because he knew and understood the redemptive plan of God. What was God doing? First taking the gospel to the Jewish people, and then it would spill over into the Gentiles. Paul did what God said, go to the Jewish people, and they said, no, we don’t want it.

He said, fine, I did what God said, and now I’m going to the Gentiles. I think one of the keys to serving God is just simply being faithful, and so I hope you’re making every effort to stay faithful to God and not be discouraged and not quit and not throw in the towel.

There’s many times we’ve all considered that, but let’s keep pushing through, and let’s keep honoring Jesus Christ. Let’s take the high road so we can go to the next level for God. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope, worth having.