How to Serve Effectively for Christ Part 3

Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Serve Effectively for Christ Part 3. He will be reading out of Acts 18:1-11.

What I want you to see here that in these verses, in verses 12 through 17, we were witnessing the faithfulness of God in the apostle Paul. You say what do you mean? Well back up to verse 10. What does God say to the apostle in that vision?

I am with you and no one will attack you to hurt you, for I have many people in this city. A promise is given to the apostle. The promise is don’t give up. The promise is, I’m gonna protect you. I’m gonna take care of you.

The promise is, there’s more people to win. There’s more people to come and to know the Lord as their savior. And so what we’re witnessing here is the apostle is seeing God’s handiwork unfold. That even though the attempts of people to try to get the apostle in trouble with the law, and even though they try to get him in trouble even with the Jewish laws, that they failed miserably.

And this is a demonstration of the faithfulness of God. Now, let me show you something else that shows how God takes the schemes of man and he flips them on their head and that God takes what is wrong and he makes it right.

You remember Sophonis? This man who was the scapegoat, this man who had to take on the beatings of the religious leaders of that day? Well, we know that this man would later become a convert to Christianity.

That he would later believe in Jesus Christ. He also would be a secretary for the apostle in helping him with some of the details of his mission’s team. He would become a brother in Christ, even though he had been beaten by the religious leaders.

1 Corinthians 1, 1. When the apostle writes to the Corinthians, the Bible says that Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God and Sophonis our brother. What he is introducing himself to, the believers at the city of Corinth in fellowship as a church and he’s writing the letter and he’s saying, it’s me, the apostle and it’s our brother Sophonis who is working with me.

And now God has taken this and he has turned it around and he has shown again his faithfulness. The Lord is fulfilling his promises to the apostle. And that’s what I want you to understand. You look at your circumstances and you see some of your problems that you’re dealing with and maybe they’re out of your hands.

and maybe they have to deal with the law or they have to deal with people that you have no control over and you have no ability to influence them. But God takes that and He is able to flip it around and He is able to turn it to what is right.

So what does it mean when we say that God is faithful? Well the root meaning of faithfulness means certainty. It means dependability. It is a word that is describing something that we can be assured of.

When we say that God is faithful and that He faithfully keeps His promises, we say that we can be certain that what God has said He will do. Now let me give you another wonderful verse, Numbers 23, 19.

God is not a man that He should lie. Neither the Son of man that He should repent. Have He said and shall He not do it or have He spoken and shall He not make it good. There are over 30,000 promises in the Bible.

Every day of your life you need to begin with a promise from God. You need to make sure that you are starting your day out with His promises. His promises will be sustaining in your life and you need to remember that God will always fulfill His promises.

The Bible teaches us in Isaiah 40 verse 8 that the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever. Church, you be encouraged that our God is a faithful God and I want you to understand that He is faithful even when we are unfaithful.

We’ve all found ourselves in those moments and times where we’ve not stepped up to the plate and we didn’t show courage and perhaps our boldness was drained right out of us. We stepped back and we were not faithful to God.

We succumbed to the temptation or we gave in to the tricks and the traps of the devil. But I want you to know something today if it’s been a bad week, if it’s been a bad month that you have a faithful God who will be faithful to you even when you are unfaithful.

Now that’s why the Bible says that if we confess our sins, He is what? Faithful. See, I sin, I’m unfaithful to God. He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all own righteousness.

What does God expect of us? That we would own it, that we would be real with Him and humble enough to admit it. That you and I would be honest enough with God to say, Lord, I’ve sinned against you and our faithful God, He will cleanse us from all of our sins.

The Hebrew writer said in Hebrews 10 23, let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering for He is faithful. That promise the Hebrews were thinking about going back on their faith in Christ, they were considering look maybe living for Christ is not worth it because they had endured so much suffering they had been abandoned by family they had lost their means of making a living and the Hebrew writer says to them hold fast why should you hold fast to your faith because God is faithful that promise how is it that I can keep moving forward how is it that I can keep living for God even when I struggle in my walk with God even when I am facing suffering in my life I dwell and rest in the faithfulness of God he is a faithful God he will not forsake us he is faithful to fulfill all his promises in my life That’s why we sing standing on the promises of God.

Hey, my friends, not only do you need to stand on the promises of God, but you need to identify the promises of God, and you need to claim the promise of God, and you need to pray the promise of God, and you need to rest in the promises of God, and you need to believe the promises of God so that it will continue to help you to live for the Lord Jesus Christ.

A servant of God will never be effective unless they are resting in God’s faithfulness. The next point, deny self. Look at verse 18. We’re watching the apostle. We’re learning from him. He told us to follow his example.

Bible says in verse 18, so Paul still remained a good while. Then he took leave of the brethren, and he sailed for Syria and Priscilla and Aquila were with him. He had his hair cut off at Centria, where he had taken a vow.

Verse 19, he came to Ephesus and left them there, but he himself entered the synagogue, and he reasoned with the Jews. And when they had asked him to stay a longer time with them, he did not consent, but took leave of them saying, I must by all means keep this coming feast in Jerusalem, but I will return again to you, God willing.

And he sailed from Ephesus. And when he had landed to Caesarea, and he’d gone up and he greeted the church, he went down to Antioch. Again, we’re looking at the travel itinerary of the apostle. And we’re seeing how he is working from place to place, and how God is using him to not only win souls, but he is using him to establish the churches.

This journey that we read about in verse 18 through 22 was 1500 miles that the apostle traveled. Now he didn’t have the convenience of traveling 1500 miles like you and I do, but yet the apostle travels 1500 miles.

Why? because he had a passion that not only people would be saved, but that the church would become mature and would be spiritual, that they would grow in their faith. That’s why he spends time teaching them the Bible, walking with them.

He is willing to deny himself. He is willing to deny all the conveniences and the comforts. He could have just stayed in Corinth. He could have just stayed there and the people loved him and they thought so well of him, but it wasn’t the will of God.

But see, the apostle was not called to be a pastor. He was called to be a missionary. He was called to go from one area to the next and to start churches. That was his calling in life. You can see that the people wanted him to stay.

They asked him to stay. And we can almost sense the emotion of what that means. You know what it’s like if you ever had to travel for work and leave your family behind. certainly would have been a lot easier for the Apostle to just stay there.

But he was willing to deny self despite the comforts. You remember that he taught the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 31. He said, I die daily. What does he mean? I’m dying daily to my desires, myself.

I’m dying daily to the things that I want. I’m dying daily to my plans, and I am submitting to the will of God. We see that the Apostle wants to reconnect with these wonderful people. But he says, if it is the will of God, he would return if it’s what God wants him to do.

And we know that Jesus Christ taught us that we’re to live a life of denying self. Remember that Jesus said in Luke chapter 9, verse 23 and 24, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself. Take up his cross daily and follow me for whoever will save his life will lose it.

But whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. God is calling each one of us as believers that if we’re going to be an effective servant of God, you’re going to have to be willing to deny self.

You cannot be an impactful servant upon your family and upon your church and upon your community unless you’re denying self. If you live for self, if you make it all about you and you say, look, every day I’m going to get up and I’m going to love on me, then I tell you that you’ll never be able to make a difference for Christ.

The disciple of Jesus must be willing to deny self. The very fact that you’re here this morning is certainly a demonstration of your willingness to deny self. So many people. I can’t go to church on Sunday.

That’s the time I sleep in. It’s the only… day I got off a guy told me the other day was the only day he had off and he could never go to church on Sunday. You see as believers our mindset is different.

Our mindset is that we are willing to sacrifice whatever comforts whatever conveniences so that we might honor God and that we might glorify God and that we might be able to help the lost to come to the Lord Jesus Christ.

That needs to be our passion. We understand that the impact of this statement that Jesus made to us when he says that we must deny ourselves and he didn’t say it just do it on Sunday but he said daily Jesus said you got to be willing to take up the cross and you got to do it daily.

Now we look at the cross and we love the cross we glory in the cross rightly so but in the day of the Roman Empire in the day of the Apostle in the day of our Lord and Savior walking on this earth the cross was a symbol.

of death. The cross was a symbol of execution, but it’d be like me saying to you, take up your electric chair every day. Talking about the electric chair that we send people to to die. When Jesus said, take up your cross, it was stunning to the disciples.

But what he was saying to them is that you gotta be willing to die every day. You gotta be willing to die to your will, to your desires, to your ambitions if you’re gonna be my disciple. There are many people who reject God’s call upon their life.

They reject God’s will upon their life. Why? Because they would rather do the will of family. They reject God’s purpose for their life because they would rather be accepted by the world. They would rather achieve success in the world.

There are many that reject the call and the plan of God, because they want the prestige of the world. They want the possessions of the world. They want the materialism of the world. They want the security and the safety of the world.

You want your children to go out and you want them to make big money. You want them to go to big universities so they can be indoctrinated to hate God and hate America. When what you ought to really do is send them to a God honoring college and university.

Place where they lift up Christ and a place where they reaffirm family’s faith. That’s where you ought to send your kids. You say, well, they go to those universities, they won’t make big money. Big whippy dippy do.

All you care about is your kids making money. I know you’re worried about your retirement, but that shouldn’t be your priority. We wanted our children to see other young adults living for God. We need to make spirituality a priority.

We need to make faith a priority in our families and we need to make good decisions that are blessed where we are certainly emphasizing and prioritizing our children’s walls. walk with the Lord as more important than any job they can get in this world.

Nothing comes more natural for people than to be self promoters and especially today. But we live in a culture that is very self centered. It’s all about us, social media, the majority of it is just about us.

What God wants us to do is deny self, take up the cross and follow Him. So here’s an important question that every one of us have to answer this morning. An important question, who am I going to live for?

Am I gonna live for self or am I gonna live for Jesus? Have you ever considered that question? Who am I gonna live for? Am I gonna live for Christ or self? You see that question right there determines your decisions.

It determines your choices in life. It’s a question that we need to continue to evaluate our hearts with. Jesus was a great example of self-denial. Jesus said in the gospel of John, I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me.

What is God’s will? Once you understand God’s will in your life, then I want you to know that should be the focus of your life. You say, Pastor, how do I know God’s will in my life? Well, every one of us needs to understand that there’s two levels of understanding God’s will.

There is his universal will that is his will for everybody. Like the first will is that God wants you to be saved, amen? God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

God’s will is that you would know Christ, that you would be a believer. But I’ll tell you, God’s second will, it’s universal to every believer. It’s not like a secret. It’s not in hiding. It’s flat out right there in the Bible.

And that is that you would grow more and more every day like Jesus, that you’d get on a path of growth, have a focus, and how can I grow in my faith? But I’ll tell you, God’s third universal will is that you would serve him.

God didn’t call you to just to sit and soak. He didn’t just call you to come in here and sing songs and then leave, but he called you to be engaged in serving God. And every one of you needs to find your place.

You need to be serving God in your church. You need to be serving God in your home. You need to be serving God in your community. You need to serve. What is God’s will? It is that I would share Christ, that I would tell others.

I promise you that just as Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, he is calling you and I to seek and save the lost, to bring them to the cross, to be a witness for him, and to tell others about Christ.

And I know that many of you are saying, well, I don’t have anybody to talk to. Hello, open your eyes. And if you need help with that, we’re glad to help you with any of that. But I wanna tell you, God’s unique will, now that’s unique to you.

His universal will is for every believer. And you and I, that’s where we gotta start. You say, I wanna… God’s unique will for my life, you’ll never know God’s unique will until you start obeying and following his universal will.

I mean if you can’t get those basics, I just lift it up to you like the big rocks in the Bible, and if you can’t get that down and under your belt and secure that and say I’m gonna start doing those things, then forget about the unique will of God.

Because here’s what God told Abraham. He said Abraham pack your bags and leave and I’ll be where you’re gonna go later. You see we look at the will of God and we think that God ought to just lay it all out but that’s not how God works because he calls us to a life of faith and the just shall live by what?

Faith, not sight. And so God says as you obey me in the big rocks, I’ll show you my unique will for you. God has a unique will for every person. He has a special calling on every person. Now the only way that you’ll fulfill that like the Apostle is that you must be willing to deny Now, the final point that I want you to see in verse 23 through 28 is that we need to be teachable.

Now, when we come to verse 23, we’re introduced to a new person in this narrative of the journeys of the apostle. I want you to pick up with me in verse 23, after he had spent some time there, referring to the apostle, he departed and he went over to the region of Galatia and Phrygia in order strengthening all the disciples.

Now a certain Jew named DePaulus, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and he taught accurately the things of the Lord, though he knew only the baptism of John.

So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and they explained to him the way of God more accurately. And when he desired to cross Achaia, the brethren wrote exhorting the disciples to receive him.

And when he arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace, for he vigorously refuted the Jews publicly, showing from the scriptures that Jesus is the Christ or he is the Messiah. In verse 23 is the beginning of the apostle’s third missionary journey.

Remember that the apostle was not isolated, he did not travel by himself, but rather he always had a team because teamwork makes the dream work. He is headed over into Galatia and Phrygia, which is the area, if you’re aware of, geography that’s in the area of Turkey.

And Paul visited all the churches that had already been previously founded on his first missionary journey. He wanted to strengthen them in the faith, he wanted to make sure they’re getting organized, he wanted to make sure they’re prospering in the gospel.

But then Luke begins to introduce to us a man named Apollos. He was considered a great servant in the early church. He was a dynamic example of a strong disciple. The Bible says that he was mighty in the scriptures.

I wonder what and how people would describe you and I. I wonder how people would describe us relating to the Bible. Would they call us to be a people who are mighty in the scriptures? He was a strong disciple.

We note in the text that the Bible says in verse 24 that a certain Jew named Apollos, born of Alexandria, an eloquent man, meaning he could speak very eloquently, he was mighty in the scriptures, he came to Ephesus.

And this man had been instructed in the way of the Lord being. He was fervent in spirit. He had a passion for God. He spoke, that is the word of God, and he taught the word of God, how does the Bible say?

Accurately. He taught the things of the Lord. This word accurately means he was careful. It’s the idea of being painstaking research. He just didn’t randomly get up there and just start sharing his opinions, but he taught the ways of God.

He was a scholar. He was a preacher from Alexandria, which is in the northern part of Egypt. He was a man who was making an impact. Now Apollos was very much like John the Baptist, that there were many times, and we see even later as he goes to Ephesus, that he was a forerunner for the apostle.

He was kind of the guy that came in early and kind of broke up the fallow ground. His preaching was dynamic. It was passionate. It was accurate. It was the things of the Lord. It had awakened many hearts, and then the apostle would come in later, and then he would continue the teaching, and he would get the churches organized, and he would get them started.

But the Bible tells us that Apollos had a weakness. He had a weakness. He did not grasp that Jesus was the fulfillment of the teaching, preaching, and baptizing of John the Baptist. The Bible tells us that as he was speaking in verse 26, in the synagogue, perhaps after his message that there was this couple, remember this couple that we met in chapter 17 at the early part of chapter 18, Aquila and Priscilla,

they were tent makers. They would join the apostle Paul’s team on this missionary journey. They heard him, and what did they do? The Bible says they took him aside. and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

He was deficient in his full understanding of the fulfillment of Christ in the preaching and ministry of John the Baptist. Here’s what I want you to see is that the Apollos, no matter how mighty he was in the scriptures, no matter how dynamic and eloquent he was in his teaching and preaching of the word of God, he was humble enough and he was teachable enough for someone to come along and show him where he had erred,

where he had not fully understood. The Bible tells us in Proverbs 10, 17, he who keeps instructions is in the way of life, but he who refuses correction goes astray. Apollos sets an example for you and I to be teachable servants and believers.

There isn’t any of us that has it all figured out. The problem that you see with many Christians after many years of living for Christ, that they kind of become a little arrogant and no one can explain something, no one can teach them, no one can say anything to them.

But God is calling us to be not only teachable in our faith, but to be humble and to be lifelong learners, to never come to that point in your life that you feel like you have arrived, that you’ve figured out everything and there’s no way this next generation could tell you what to do.

No, my friends, let’s be open that God may be showing us things that will continue to help us in our walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. When we choose to be teachable, we are choosing that what is right is more important than always being right.

The most important thing you could learn today is to walk out of here and say, Lord, help me to be teachable. If there’s something that I maybe need more clarity on in the scriptures, or something I need to change in my life, or something that God wants me to do differently, that I would be teachable.

When was the last time you felt defensive and offended? Perhaps it was when your spouse made a suggestion to you about certain behaviors, or perhaps it was when a coworker or a supervisor offered some advice to you to help you be better.

How did you take it? Maybe someone in the family of the people of God made a recommendation to you to improve your spiritual life. Maybe an elder, a deacon, perhaps a Sunday school teacher, a pastor, pulled you aside and gave you encouragement on some good changes that would help you speak.

I’m telling you that through my life there have been great people who have made different comments to me and helped me to be a better person, a better Christian, a better father, a better husband, and yes I know it’s hard to believe but a better pastor and it’s because that I’ve always believed that God puts people in your life to help sharpen you for Him.

My advice to you church, be like Apollos, be a servant, and be teachable. Well serving God effectively is quite the challenge because you know we live in some unique times but we’re grateful. that God is faithful to us, and because He is faithful to us, then we can be faithful to Him.

So keep that in mind as you’re serving the Lord this year, as you strive to have a great year to honor the Lord Jesus Christ. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.