Sunday Sermon
sunday morning service 13th Sept 2009
Acts 16v11-40.
God knows what he is doing, all he asks is that we trust and obey!
1) Philippi : v12
This is a monumental event in terms of world history for it recounts the first time the Gospel gets into Europe.
Philippi had a long history, being influenced by many world famous characters.
Established by Philipp II in 356 BC, a fortified city to keep gold in!
His son was no less a person than Alexander the Great, who used the Gold to pay his armies who created one of ancient times largest empires!
The Romans then began to colonise it in 42BC, then in 30BC under Octavian (who was later given title Augustus by the Roman Senate) more settlers were put there.
It was an important place as it was on one of the main trade roots.
It is to this strategic city that the Lord leads Paul! V12.
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What can we learn from this? Simply to trust God.
He knows what he is doing, our position is simply to be confident enough in Him to obey.
2) Three People :
Lydia : v13-15
Next we have Paul actually in Philippi, this important city full of important people!
But who is the first person who Paul meets and brings to salvation? Lydia!
A woman! Not what you might expect!
But just as the city was strategic so was this conversion!
For it seems that she was a wealthy woman who could help the cause by use of her wealth.
V15&40 she has a house at least big enough to accommodate Paul and the brothers!
Her conversion story is quite simple. She was someone who we would call a “seeker”.
She went out of her way to worship, she listened to Paul and God opened her heart to believe. That was it! Nothing spectacular, no moment of crisis. She simply believed.
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How can I be saved? Simply believe. The message is God loves you. God wants you to believe in Him. He has shown the world how much he loves it by sending Jesus to die!
All he asks is that you believe!
Slave girl. V16-24
Next up we have the curious incident of the fortune telling, money making, poor, abused, slave girl! She had been manipulated all her life.
She was a nothing. Just the property of some men! A tragic picture.
She follows Paul around for days, obviously disturbed and shouting.
Paul gets, annoyed / disturbed / upset, by all this and cast out the evil spirit.
Then the game is up! P&S are in trouble. V 19-23
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Under God we seek to live for His glory.
But there are times when things happen that we simply cannot account for.
The mystery of Gods dealings. We do not know why he does what he does most of the time!
Here are P&S getting out evangelising and all of a sudden they are in jail!
But God is in control! He knows what He is doing.
Jail and Jailer v25-34
Next we see P&S not in least bit worried! They are in jail singing and praising God.
Then there is the earthquake, the near suicide of the jailer and then his salvation!
What a night!
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God cannot be pinned down! He deals differently with each one.
This Roman jailer was converted in such dramatic style! The earthquake, the attempted suicide! He was brought to a point of crisis and saved just at the brink.
What a story of amazing grace this is.
· But that is true of every story of salvation.
None of us earn the right to be saved!
None of us can lay down to God the circumstances of our salvation.
Lydia was different from the jailer!
But both came in the end by the only way any of us can be saved!
The both believed! V14-15 and 30-31.
What about you? To be saved you must believe. That is it, there is no other way.
3) Credentials v35-40
Finally after that night, the magistrates decide to let them go, and then the great twist in the story is Paul pulls out his credentials! He is a Roman citizen!
That meant he had certain rights! Rights to a fair trial, being the most pertinent one here!
But he did not demand his rights until it was all over.
Which begs the obvious question: why?
Paul was letting himself be treated as a right-less slave surely as part of his calling to be a herald and apostle of the Gospel.
He was called to bring the good news to the gentiles, a large number of whom were slaves!
Only by becoming a slave could he show the slaves that the gospel was for them!
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Jesus became one of us! He took on human form, gave up his rights: why?
To show us that the good news was for us! That if we believed in him we would be saved!
God so longs to bring salvation that He went to those lengths!
All he asks of you, is that you believe in this Lord, this God who so loves the world!
sunday evening service 13th Sept 2009
Colossians 4v7-18.
Three keys to applying the letter: Read, Work and Pray.
Here we are at last! The final verses of Colossians.
In the first instance these verse do not look too promising.
A list of names and instructions, greetings and farewells.
But the great thing about the ending is its life.
The letter is not the close of business.
The letter is the stimulus to getting on with living life to the Max!
The people were not left to read the letter and then put it down to gather dust.
Action had to follow!
So the great question for us is how do we follow the letter with action?
The answer is surprisingly simple and straight forward: Communicate, Work and Pray.
1) reading / communicating: v7-9, 16.
Paul wants the Colossians to read the letters. He wants them to be in the know.
The whole point of the letter and the sending of Tychicus and Onesimus was to pass on information about the situation Paul was in.
Not just a brief account but Paul says “all the news about me” v7.
The “express purpose” in sending Tychicus was for communicating, giving information of their case and situation v8!
Onesimus was also to go along to help communicate information.
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Communication amongst believers is vital for true fellowship.
Discussion about how we are getting on in life as followers of Jesus.
How we are working out in practise the things we profess.
Lack of communication shows there are some serious problems.
If we are not talking to one another then is simply shows that we are not a family.
The end of communication is of course understanding that which has been communicated.
When we are learning, talking, sharing, the end point has to be putting it into practice!
That may mean we pray, or we visit, or we seek to know more.
But communication is vital for the fellowship.
2) work: v17
Archippus is given a special word to keep at the work.
But all the others who have been mentioned are hard workers, look at the descriptions!
Servants, faithful minister, fellow-workers, working hard..........
At the end of the day the task of following Jesus, worshipping Jesus, takes a great deal of faithful hard work!
Archippus had a commission, some kind of calling, and he was responsible to work it out.
Archippus in Philemon 1v2 is called “our fellow-soldier”, so this word to him is simply an encouragement, not a rebuke because he was letting things slide!
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We all have a service, a diakonia, from the Lord.
The word literally means to “wait on tables”.
No matter how inconsequential we may think it is, no matter how unnoticed it goes in the eyes of the world, it is special because it is given from the Lord. Thus it is holy!
Our task, our end of the deal, is do what we have been given to do.
We are called to work! What a blessing that is.
The encouragement from the Word is: get to it! Press on, keep going, don’t give up!
This letter is full of great holy revelation about Jesus, full of instruction in the way we should live: now the crunch comes, work at it. Put it into daily practice.
3) pray: v12-13, 18.
a) Finally the word is keep praying. Our faith at the end of the day is a relationship with God.
So we receive God’s communication, we receive one another’s communication, we work things out in practice, but we do it all prayerfully!
V12 Epaphras, the slave of Christ, always wrestled in prayer for the Colossians!
He was the one who had brought the gospel to the Colossians.
He had communicated to them, and worked hard amongst them!
But he has not stopped there, he keeps praying hard for them.
What is his prayer for them?
That they would be able to maturely hold onto the faith doing all the will of God.
A prayer for maturity and faithfulness!
Note to his prayer work ethic: he fights for them in prayer, labours, wrestles!
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Prayer is a mystery. We wonder how prayer fits into Gods Sovereignty.
But scriptures testimony time and again is of the necessity and usefulness of prayer.
We can never do without it, we need it personally and others need our prayers too!
Part of our calling is to be as faithful to prayer as we can be.
Not all of Paul companions are spoken of as prayer warriors so we need not get down hearted about it; but we all must pray as we can. Be faithful to prayer. To seeking God.
It is only through prayer that Gods work is accomplished.
V13 prayer is real work, needs therefore the dedication and commitment that work requires. 30 second prayers may be ok sometimes but really we need to step it up a gear!
b) V18 also Paul throws in another prayer request: “remember my chains”
Paul needed their prayers! Paul was one of them, a worker and a sufferer for the gospel.
He did not live in some ivory tower throwing out commands expecting others to do the work. He was at the coal face, he suffered, he struggled, he prayed, he worked.
The request would both inspire them to pray and to work themselves.
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As we leave Colossians behind remember all the work and effort and suffering that has gone on down through the ages to bring the gospel to us!
May that inspire us to work and pray now!
