SPEAKER_00: Uh, but we're actually about to start a series this fall in the book of Philippians.
SPEAKER_00: And you might say, well, Garrett, that bumper video just said Acts.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't sound like Philippians.
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a reason for that.
SPEAKER_00: And that's because as I was studying for this series, and I've spent a lot of time in the book of Philippians.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, all right, we're about to get started this week.
SPEAKER_00: It's week one.
SPEAKER_00: Great.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I was actually listening to a sermon that's just part of my rhythm, what I do to uh engage with God's word, and I heard a sermon that was being preached in a series on Acts in Acts 16.
SPEAKER_00: And as I'm listening to the sermon, I realized Acts 16 is talking about how the church in Philippi began.
SPEAKER_00: And the church in Philippi that Paul is writing a letter to in Philippians.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we were starting, I was I was thinking about like what a better way than to go back to the very beginning where it all began.
SPEAKER_00: Before we ever talk about what's going on in Philippians, let's talk about how God started the work that He was doing there.
SPEAKER_00: And as we do that, we're gonna see a little bit about the type of God or the type of people that God chooses to use.
SPEAKER_00: And it's gonna tell something about how God chooses to use us as well.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna be in Acts chapter 16.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have your Bible, go ahead and flip there.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll go ahead and as you're flipping there, give you a little bit of uh foreshadowing for next week.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we have actually bought some booklets that are uh ESV Philippians journaling Bibles.
SPEAKER_00: It's just the book of Philippians.
SPEAKER_00: And as you open it, on the left side is the text and on the right side are lines for notes.
SPEAKER_00: We bought a bunch of them for you guys to have for free, but that comes with a commitment that as we walk through the entire book of Philippians together, you would hold on to that and you would take notes so that you're able to walk away from this series saying, hey, I've been through the whole book and I have all the notes, and maybe two, three, four, five years down the road you can look back at, hey, this is what God taught me then, and this is how far I've come.
SPEAKER_00: And as we start doing this more and more, that you would start to collect these uh booklets of times that you've spent in God's word.
SPEAKER_00: So that being said, that'll be next week.
SPEAKER_00: The context of Acts 16 is Acts starts with Jesus' ascension, and then you see the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes to believers and the church explodes and the gospel starts to spread all throughout that region.
SPEAKER_00: And something happened as the gospel started to spread.
SPEAKER_00: Early on, it was just people of Jewish ethnicity.
SPEAKER_00: They were placing their faith in Jesus and being saved.
SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, you have non-Jewish people starting to place their faith in Jesus and follow him.
SPEAKER_00: And that kind of threw everybody for a loop because for a long time God's people were seen as the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: And so people, as they were welcoming these Gentiles in, were asking, well, do they need to become a Jew first?
SPEAKER_00: Like, do they need to be circumcised?
SPEAKER_00: Do they need to keep a law?
SPEAKER_00: Like, how does that work?
SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of argument.
SPEAKER_00: And so they have this big council, and at this council, they decide, no, God gave his Holy Spirit to the Gentiles, just like he gave the Holy Spirit to the Jews before they had done anything or kept the law or any of that.
SPEAKER_00: And so, no, you do not need to keep the law or become circumcised or any of that to become a follower and a child of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's simply by grace through faith.
SPEAKER_00: And as they get that answer, the next step is all right, well then let's go tell the gospel to every Gentile that will listen.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul sets out on a missionary journey with a guy named Silas to where we understand as modern day Europe.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna see the gospel spread into Europe.
SPEAKER_00: So, chapter 16, starting in verse 1, we're gonna read a big chunk and then we're gonna start to walk through it.
SPEAKER_00: So stick with me.
SPEAKER_00: Acts 16, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Paul came to Derby and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish, and a believer whose father was a Greek.
SPEAKER_00: The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him, and Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.
SPEAKER_00: And as they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey.
SPEAKER_00: And so the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they grew daily in numbers.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Pyrgia and Galatia, and having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia.
SPEAKER_00: When they came to the border of Mijah, they entered Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.
SPEAKER_00: So they passed by Mijah and went to Troaz.
SPEAKER_00: And during the night, Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, Come to Macedonia and help us.
SPEAKER_00: And after Paul had seen the vision, he got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.
SPEAKER_00: So, I know that was a lot of text, but let's explain a little bit of what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: First, on their way, Paul picks up a guy named Timothy.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know much about Timothy, other than he was part Greek, part Jew.
SPEAKER_00: So he didn't really fit perfectly into either world.
SPEAKER_00: His father's not really in the picture because we learn that most of his faith has come from his mother and his grandma.
SPEAKER_00: He's young, he's inexperienced, but Paul picks him up and he brings him along on this journey.
SPEAKER_00: And to fast forward a little bit, eventually Timothy's going to become one of Paul's best friends in ministry, one of his like loved mentees, somebody he pours into.
SPEAKER_00: But something interesting happens as they're traveling along, they now have Timothy in tow.
SPEAKER_00: It says that the Holy Spirit forbid them from preaching in Asia and entering into a region called Bithynia, which was up to the north.
SPEAKER_00: And then you you hear that and you're like, well, how?
SPEAKER_00: Like, did they come in a dream or a vision?
SPEAKER_00: Like, how did God not let them enter somewhere?
SPEAKER_00: Was it like a logistical thing?
SPEAKER_00: Like maybe just the plans wouldn't work out.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't know, but there is something just as a little sidebar that I want us to focus on tonight before we move on.
SPEAKER_00: What I want you to see here is that God is guiding them by shutting doors.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we get mad when God closes doors, when we really want something or we want an opportunity or we want things to go a certain way, and God says no.
SPEAKER_00: And we say, Hey, God, where are you?
SPEAKER_00: But oftentimes when God is closing doors, that's actually his kindness to guide us where he truly wants us.
SPEAKER_00: I've actually probably in my life, most of God's guidance has come from closed doors and opportunities that I didn't get to take a hold of.
SPEAKER_00: Uh early on, when I was in high school, junior senior year, I kind of felt a little bit of a call to ministry, but I also enjoyed playing football and thought there might have been an opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: Granted, I was like 5'10, so I probably wasn't going far, but really wanted to.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then second game of senior year, I fractured my leg and I was out.
SPEAKER_00: I was done.
SPEAKER_00: And that door was closed permanently for me.
SPEAKER_00: And in the moment, I was mad at God.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, God, why would you do this?
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord used that to open up a door to Dallas Baptist, where I would then experience some of the most incredible spiritual growth that I had in my life up to that point.
SPEAKER_00: And then when I was at DBU, I thought I really wanted to do recteam, which is where you get to travel around to different summer camps and you get to put on the games and they were like the superstars.
SPEAKER_00: Like I wanted to so bad.
SPEAKER_00: I interviewed, I got told big fat, no, thank you, we're going in another direction.
SPEAKER_00: I was really upset.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, God, why did you close this door?
SPEAKER_00: Like I thought that you would put it on my heart.
SPEAKER_00: Like, like, why would you let this happen?
SPEAKER_00: Where are you?
SPEAKER_00: But come to find out, later that semester, a guy named Micah would offer me a job at a church called Community Baptist Church in Ferris, where I started to serve as a youth pastor for the first time ever.
SPEAKER_00: And it was that opportunity that opened doors later on.
SPEAKER_00: Because when I was about to graduate from college, uh, it was the middle of a pandemic, COVID hit, uh, and I knew I was called to full-time ministry, and so I was applying to jobs and I didn't know what to do.
SPEAKER_00: And I was looking in Dallas.
SPEAKER_00: I was trying to maybe become a resident at Prestonwood, which is a big church up there, or I looked at some other churches in East Texas, and I just got no after no after no after no, just a bunch of closed doors.
SPEAKER_00: And then one day I got a call back from a little church in Bourne, Texas.
SPEAKER_00: And all of those closed doors that at the moment I thought would be just God not letting me do something I wanted to do was actually his kindness to guide me here.
SPEAKER_00: And I've told you guys a million times I couldn't, my I couldn't imagine my life without coming to Bernie and what it is now and getting to be your guys' youth pastor and getting to experience all of these things.
SPEAKER_00: And so my point in that illustration is maybe tonight you're frustrated by a closed door.
SPEAKER_00: You thought that you were gonna be on varsity, or you thought that you were gonna get to make the team, or you thought you were gonna go to a certain school or have a certain relationship or get into a certain college, whatever it might be.
SPEAKER_00: I know that can be frustrating, and I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00: But take a step back and maybe give yourself permission to ask the question could this be God's kindness in my life?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, this door might have been closed, but which one is he going to open?
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes God guides us by removing opportunities.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where the story actually continues because Paul and the gang eventually get a yes, and it's to go to Macedonia, and that's where the story picks up next.
SPEAKER_00: And as we continue on, we're gonna see three people that God chooses to be on his team.
SPEAKER_00: That Luke specifically highlights these three stories.
SPEAKER_00: They were here for a long period of time, but the writer of Acts chose these three, and there's reasons for that, as we'll get into.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna jump back into Acts 16, verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: From Troas we went out to the sea and sailed straight for Samothrace.
SPEAKER_00: And the next day we went on to Neapolis.
SPEAKER_00: From there we traveled traveled to Philippi.
SPEAKER_00: Words are really hard in this text, sorry, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia, and we stayed there for several days.
SPEAKER_00: On the Sabbath, we went outside the city gate to the river where we expected to find a place of prayer.
SPEAKER_00: We sat down and began to speak to the woman who to the women who had been gathered there.
SPEAKER_00: And one of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia.
SPEAKER_00: She was a dealer in purple cloth.
SPEAKER_00: She was a worshiper of God.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message.
SPEAKER_00: And when she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us into her home.
SPEAKER_00: So notice the switch there, us.
SPEAKER_00: That means the writer of Acts, Luke, is actually with Paul and Silas and Timothy at this point.
SPEAKER_00: And she says, If you consider me a believer in the Lord, she said, Come and stay at my house.
SPEAKER_00: And so she persuaded us.
SPEAKER_00: And so they travel a really long way, and they finally end up in the city of Philippi.
SPEAKER_00: And it says, on the Sabbath, they go down to the river to pray.
SPEAKER_00: And this is actually important because normally on the Sabbath, you would go to a synagogue.
SPEAKER_00: And the fact that they don't probably means that there wasn't even one in the city.
SPEAKER_00: Which imagine going to a place that just literally didn't have a church.
SPEAKER_00: We're in Bernie.
SPEAKER_00: You can throw a rock from here and hit a church.
SPEAKER_00: There is a church on every corner.
SPEAKER_00: There's first, second, third, 72nd Baptist church here in this town.
SPEAKER_00: There's none.
SPEAKER_00: This is pagan territory.
SPEAKER_00: This is Lost People Central.
SPEAKER_00: And so as they go down to the river, they meet a woman named Lydia.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the first person that Luke highlights as God choosing to be on his team here in Philippi.
SPEAKER_00: And we're told that she's from Thyrotira and she's a dealer of purple cloth, which is a weird thing to deal.
SPEAKER_00: Like you're out on the streets slinging purple clothes.
SPEAKER_00: Makes no sense.
SPEAKER_00: But what we learn about Thyrotira is that they were actually known for producing really high quality clothes.
SPEAKER_00: And the most expensive of all of those high quality clothes would be purple because it's really hard to make.
SPEAKER_00: You had to like use a shellfish or something and crush it up.
SPEAKER_00: And like it was very rare to be able to get this color of clothing.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why it was considered the clothing of royalty.
SPEAKER_00: Like purple were royal clothes.
SPEAKER_00: And so she was good at this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: She's slinging the high-quality stuff and she's making a ton of money.
SPEAKER_00: And we know she's making a ton of money because she has a house big enough to house all of Paul and his friends.
SPEAKER_00: They can all fit there.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just that she had money, though.
SPEAKER_00: We learn a little bit more about Lydia that she was spiritually open.
SPEAKER_00: Said she was a worshiper of God, but she didn't know God of the Bible, the Hebrew God.
SPEAKER_00: She didn't know Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: She'd never been told that before.
SPEAKER_00: But she was spiritually open.
SPEAKER_00: She had a sensitive heart to the things of God.
SPEAKER_00: She was seeking.
SPEAKER_00: And you see that because she's listening to Paul, and he gives her a rational, reasoned explanation of the gospel about who Jesus was and what he did to die for her sins.
SPEAKER_00: And she listened, her heart was open, and she believed.
SPEAKER_00: There's no dramatic miracle, there's no demon possession deliverance, there's no any crazy thing like that.
SPEAKER_00: She just found that the message of the gospel made sense and she chose to believe it.
SPEAKER_00: I remember one time I had a student who had a similar story.
SPEAKER_00: She grew up in a Christian home, had been around Christian stuff all her life, but had never quite made it her own faith.
SPEAKER_00: And she had these questions.
SPEAKER_00: And she would tell me she had these questions, and over time we started to have conversations about those questions.
SPEAKER_00: And she would ask, and we would answer, and she'd ask, and we'd answer, and she'd get more and more involved in the church.
SPEAKER_00: And then one day she just comes up to me.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, we've been going through this for a while and we've been praying, like, Lord, I pray that she'll put her faith in you.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that she'll be transformed.
SPEAKER_00: Then in my mind, I'm thinking there's going to be some moment at camp, like it's going to be some big cry night, like the cord's gonna hit just right, like all this sort of stuff, and she's gonna get saved.
SPEAKER_00: And it was like, I'm pretty sure before a Wednesday night, she comes up to me and is like, Hey, I think I'm ready to get saved.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what?
SPEAKER_00: Like, just randomly, like, that's awesome, praise God.
SPEAKER_00: But like any like background as to how we just came to this life, an eternity-changing decision.
SPEAKER_00: And more or less, she just told me that, hey, I just realized all my questions have been answered, and that means that this stuff is true.
SPEAKER_00: And if this stuff is true, then there's really one choice left, and that's to place my faith in it.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, okay, gate.
SPEAKER_00: And it blew me away because a lot of times we can think that that we need like some big camp high, cry night, dramatic altar call, but there was none of that.
SPEAKER_00: She just understood the gospel and chose to place her faith in it.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you might find yourself in that spot tonight.
SPEAKER_00: You grew up in a Christian home, you grew up around Christian things, you've lived a pretty normal life.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing, you can have grown up in church your entire life.
SPEAKER_00: You could have been uh coming here in the womb, but there comes a moment in all of our lives where we have to make a decision, is this thing going to be me?
SPEAKER_00: Is this gonna be my own faith?
SPEAKER_00: Because your parents' faith, your grandparents' faith cannot save you.
SPEAKER_00: It does not apply to you.
SPEAKER_00: Eventually we all have to make the decision if we're gonna make this our own.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you're open, but maybe you have questions.
SPEAKER_00: Great.
SPEAKER_00: God is not afraid of your questions.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity is not without reason.
SPEAKER_00: There have been a lot of people who think they're very smart trying to disprove this thing for thousands of years and ain't nobody done it yet.
SPEAKER_00: And so you can have your questions.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to hide behind them, seek answers, right?
SPEAKER_00: Write those questions down and think through hey, what is it that I want to know?
SPEAKER_00: Like what do I need to understand before I can trust this gospel message?
SPEAKER_00: And then find me or another leader and let us help you find those answers.
SPEAKER_00: Don't just trust TikTok by yourself.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of, there's some good things on TikTok, but there's a lot of whack stuff on TikTok.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe don't trust Google in a vacuum.
SPEAKER_00: But find somebody you know that loves you and loves Jesus and let them walk through that with you.
SPEAKER_00: And there's an old illustration I've heard that um kind of goes along with this.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine, like, I've got a bunch of sheet music, for those of you who know what sheet music is, and it all falls on the ground and you put it all back together, but there's this one stray sheet.
SPEAKER_00: And you're like, hey, I need to know if this sheet fits within this set of music.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, okay, well, how am I going to figure that out?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the simple answer is I put it in and I see if it plays.
SPEAKER_00: As I play this symphony or these uh musical notes, if it fits within what's already there, then I know that it's true and I can trust it.
SPEAKER_00: And in the same way, if you have questions, I invite you to ask those questions and just try this whole Christianity thing out.
SPEAKER_00: Like come and see who this Jesus is that we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: And I promise you, as you do, you will see that it fits with reality.
SPEAKER_00: It makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: What's wrong with the world and what the solution is, what we're called to do, where life is found, like it fits within reality.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to just try and convince ourselves that it's real, like it actually works.
SPEAKER_00: And when you figure that out, the only logical step is to place your faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Lydia does, and she becomes a part of the team.
SPEAKER_00: So then we move on to person number two, back in verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: Once we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future.
SPEAKER_00: She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune telling, and she followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, These men are servants of the Most High God who are telling you the way to be saved.
SPEAKER_00: And she kept this up for many days.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her.
SPEAKER_00: And at that moment the spirit left her.
SPEAKER_00: So another time, we don't know the time gap here, but they go back down to pray, and they see this woman who has a spirit who comes up to meet him.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the second person, the slave girl.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the opposite of Lydia.
SPEAKER_00: Lydia was a grown woman, she was sophisticated, she was spiritually open.
SPEAKER_00: This is a young, slave, poor girl that's possessed by a demon.
SPEAKER_00: And that possessed by a demon thing, we got to pay attention to because the word that gets used there is actually it means a python spirit, which you're like, that sounds really weird and out of the movie The Mummy.
SPEAKER_00: What's a python spirit?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Greek word or in the Greek world, Python was connected to this place called Delphi, and it's where people would go to try and hear messages from the little g gods, the Greek gods, and try to learn about the future.
SPEAKER_00: And the idea is that you would go to that place and sometime this python spirit would possess people and give them the power to tell the future.
SPEAKER_00: And for whatever reason, usually it was either young or old women.
SPEAKER_00: And so when you Luke uses that phrase, all of his readers would have known, like, oh, this isn't just like some carnival fortune teller.
SPEAKER_00: Like, this is real spiritual darkness in this girl's life.
SPEAKER_00: She went to a place to try and find comfort and answers about the future, and instead she found captivity.
SPEAKER_00: And because people believed that she could predict things, her owners started to take a bunch of money off of her.
SPEAKER_00: Spiritual darkness had taken a hold of her, and evil people exploited it to make money off her.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing: that is still alive and well today, primarily through human trafficking, uh, which is consumed and supported through certain kinds of videos that are watched on the internet, that darkness takes a hold of someone's life, and people with evil intentions will use that to exploit people.
SPEAKER_00: But she starts to follow around and she screams, These men are the servants of the Most High God who are telling you the way to be saved, which is true.
SPEAKER_00: Like she's not lying, but for some reason Paul got annoyed.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't know why it bothered him.
SPEAKER_00: Like maybe she's saying it sarcastically, maybe she's like scaring people off.
SPEAKER_00: Like if I were to come up to your lunchroom and like try to talk to you, and there was just a random girl next to me, like screaming, This guy's telling you about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Like that's odd for God.
SPEAKER_00: We're not about that.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody would want you to know that you knew me.
SPEAKER_00: Like that would just be weird.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe it was just distracting.
SPEAKER_00: But the word that gets used actually means a lot more like it bothered him than it annoyed him.
SPEAKER_00: Like he saw it and felt like something is wrong about this.
SPEAKER_00: He had a burden for this girl who was suffering at the hands of injustice and evil.
SPEAKER_00: And so he commanded the spirit in the name of Jesus, come out, and it did.
SPEAKER_00: See, this girl did not need some reasoned explanation about the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: She didn't need apologetics.
SPEAKER_00: She needed deliverance from darkness.
SPEAKER_00: She needed the power of Jesus to break the chains in her life and set her free.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Jesus did.
SPEAKER_00: And I had a family member who had a story like this.
SPEAKER_00: She grew up in a culturally Christian home, but when things got hard, uh, she started to turn to some bad places to find comfort.
SPEAKER_00: Parents got divorced, school got difficult, learning disability, had some loss in her life, and she started to turn to things for comfort.
SPEAKER_00: First, relationships, and then it got more extreme: drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, moved out into a place full of drugs and drinking, and it just got really, really bad.
SPEAKER_00: And she actually got involved with a lot of spiritual darkness, Ouija boards, horror movies, and it led to depression and suicidal thoughts and all sorts of brokenness.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember seeing her at her worst.
SPEAKER_00: It was so clear to me that darkness had a hold of her.
SPEAKER_00: It was like a light switch would flip on and off, and she'd be fine one minute and then just off the handle the next.
SPEAKER_00: And it was scary.
SPEAKER_00: But then one day she came to the end of herself.
SPEAKER_00: She hit rock bottom and she found herself at a church, and in that moment she walked into the light and she cried out to Jesus to break her chains, and he did.
SPEAKER_00: And she was never the same.
SPEAKER_00: And she has a beautiful family now, and she's plugged into a church and she's serving, right?
SPEAKER_00: She knew all the answers.
SPEAKER_00: She grew up in a Christian home, but she didn't need more information.
SPEAKER_00: She needed deliverance from captivity.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's you tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you went somewhere for comfort and all you found was captivity.
SPEAKER_00: You got yourself into some dark stuff, and now you're stuck and you don't know how to get out.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need reason, you need rescue.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the answer that darkness that you're in might be bigger than you, but it is not bigger than Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus defeated death and sin.
SPEAKER_00: And if you are his child, it has no claim on you.
SPEAKER_00: You do not belong to darkness, you belong to Jesus, the Most High God.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you that again.
SPEAKER_00: If you have found yourself in the place where you've said one last time, a million times, you've done everything you can do to try and stop.
SPEAKER_00: You might be experiencing darkness, but darkness does not have a claim on you if you belong to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You are his.
SPEAKER_00: Like if you can believe that, you would be amazed how much it will change everything else.
SPEAKER_00: And so maybe for the first time tonight, you need to step into the light and ask him to set you free.
SPEAKER_00: You need to place your faith in him for the first time.
SPEAKER_00: And you might need others to ask, you might need to ask others to pray for that deliverance.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I'm in this darkness, I'm in this struggle.
SPEAKER_00: Will you pray for me?
SPEAKER_00: And you might need to take practical steps of getting out of that sin.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: if you're in Jesus, you can know that you are not fighting for victory.
SPEAKER_00: You're not trying to strive so that you can find victory someday if you work really hard.
SPEAKER_00: No, the victory has already been won.
SPEAKER_00: On the cross, death was defeated.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus got up out of that grave, and if you're in him, you know that you will too.
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes we still have to work into experiencing the fullness of that victory.
SPEAKER_00: But it's important to remember the victory has already been won.
SPEAKER_00: You can know that in Jesus' name you can be free.
SPEAKER_00: If his power is enough to overcome the darkness in that slave girl's life, it's enough to overcome the power of darkness in your life, no matter what it might look like.
SPEAKER_00: And so that takes us to the third person.
SPEAKER_00: So once that girl is freed, a little backstory, uh, her owners get kind of mad because they realize that their cash cow is gone.
SPEAKER_00: And so they stir up everybody against Paul and Silas and get them beaten and thrown into jail.
SPEAKER_00: And they're in the middle of this jail, darkest moment ever, but what you see Paul and Silas show is actually an incredible piece in verse 25.
SPEAKER_00: It says, About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken.
SPEAKER_00: At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone's chains came loose.
SPEAKER_00: And the jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, because he thought the prisoners had escaped.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul shouted, Don't harm yourself, we are all here.
SPEAKER_00: And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and he fell trembling.
SPEAKER_00: Before Paul and Silas.
SPEAKER_00: And then he brought them out and asked, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
SPEAKER_00: And they responded, Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and all your household.
SPEAKER_00: And they spoke to him and to those in his household, and at that hour of the night he took them, washed their wounds, and him and all of his household were baptized.
SPEAKER_00: And then he brought them into his house and ate with them and was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul and Silas are sitting in prison.
SPEAKER_00: They'd just been beaten.
SPEAKER_00: They were in jail.
SPEAKER_00: And you can sense their confusion, right?
SPEAKER_00: God, we did what you asked us to.
SPEAKER_00: And what happened was we got tortured and thrown into the middle of a terrible, terrible Roman jail.
SPEAKER_00: Like, God, why would you let that happen?
SPEAKER_00: But what we find out is that they're worshiping in the middle of all of it.
SPEAKER_00: Like they are in suffering, but in that suffering, the other prisoners were listening and they were intrigued.
SPEAKER_00: And they saw, hey, these guys can have a peace even in the middle of something really, really hard.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have that.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever these guys have, I want that.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's the thing: God allowed them to go to jail so that in jail people could see that they had something different and they would be drawn to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes God allows us to go through hard things so that the peace we have in the middle of those hard things would say something to the world outside that doesn't have that peace.
SPEAKER_00: That you would be a light to others of saying, hey, how can they go through something hard and still have peace and still have joy?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's it's because of that Jesus guy, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: And so when that earthquake hits, nobody moves.
SPEAKER_00: They could have all run away, but they're waiting on Paul and Silas because they're like, these guys look like they know what they're doing, but the guy in charge doesn't know that.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the third person, it's the jailer.
SPEAKER_00: And he's just doing his job.
SPEAKER_00: He has no signs of spiritual openness, doesn't seem to care.
SPEAKER_00: Like he's content with his life, doing his thing, keep people in prison.
SPEAKER_00: And he sees the doors open and he he just assumes everybody ran off.
SPEAKER_00: And in this culture, he knew if I failed to do my job and all these prisoners just got out, they're gonna kill me.
SPEAKER_00: And they're probably gonna do it in a very painful fashion.
SPEAKER_00: So he says, I'm just gonna do it myself and speed this process up.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul sees him, he's like, No, no, no, no, like don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: And the man immediately runs in and he asks, What must I do to be saved?
SPEAKER_00: Which you might think, like, that seems like a crazy question.
SPEAKER_00: Like you think he'd like to lead with thank you or or literally anything else.
SPEAKER_00: Like he immediately jumps to salvation, but not when you think about it.
SPEAKER_00: Because this jailer, he was fine.
SPEAKER_00: He had no interest in God, he was comfortable with the direction of his life, he couldn't have cared left, less.
SPEAKER_00: But then the circumstances of his life changed.
SPEAKER_00: And the walls of his life that he had built for himself, both literally and figuratively, started to shake.
SPEAKER_00: And it made him aware of his need.
SPEAKER_00: His job and his pride, everything that he had he built his life on, he realized this is not stable.
SPEAKER_00: I'm living in a house of cards, and it just got knocked down and he had no idea what to do next.
SPEAKER_00: And he sees Paul and Silas, who are in an even worse spot.
SPEAKER_00: Like they, they, they, they had it worse than him, and they had peace.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says, Hey, whatever they have, I want.
SPEAKER_00: And so he goes to them and he says, How can I be saved?
SPEAKER_00: He says, Believe in the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's baptize me now, and he gets saved.
SPEAKER_00: His world started to crumble, but it drove him to seek a savior.
SPEAKER_00: A picture of this is actually found in a popular football player named Michael Vick.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, some of you guys might not know about him, but he was a cheat code in Madden back in the day.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, great quarterback.
SPEAKER_00: He was always known as one of the highly touted recruits, like first overall pick, signed a hundred million dollar contract back when that was a lot of money for a football player.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he was with the Atlanta Falcons, but uh, something happened along the way.
SPEAKER_00: He he grew up and he was trying to be a good person.
SPEAKER_00: He he would read the Bible, he would pray, he'd even sleep with a Bible under his pillow sometimes, but it was all just trying to do the right thing.
SPEAKER_00: There's no real relationship there.
SPEAKER_00: And when success came, the money and the fame and the career, that all kind of made him think, I don't really need God.
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm doing well for myself.
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm I've got this, I can do this on my own.
SPEAKER_00: But then everything started to come crashing down.
SPEAKER_00: And in the prime of his career, Michael Vick was actually convicted for his involvement in a dog fighting operation and he was sentenced to 23 months in federal prison.
SPEAKER_00: And no amount of fame or money or football talent could help him in this moment.
SPEAKER_00: One of the most talented, popular, famous quarterbacks, like none of that mattered because the house of cards he was living in just came crashing down.
SPEAKER_00: And he said that sitting in that prison made him reevaluate his entire life.
SPEAKER_00: And he said that before he went in, his mom told him, hey, Psalm 23 is going to get you through.
SPEAKER_00: And so night after night, as he's sitting in this prison at the end of his rope, rock bottom, he's just thinking about Psalm 23.
SPEAKER_00: And he said that during those months, he realized, I need God.
SPEAKER_00: I've always needed God.
SPEAKER_00: Because there's something about having everything that you think you can count on in life be taken away from you that makes you realize what really matters.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what happened to this jailer in Acts 16.
SPEAKER_00: His whole world had fallen apart.
SPEAKER_00: And when he looks at Paul and Silas, he's like, they don't have anything left, and they're way better off than I am.
SPEAKER_00: So how can I have that?
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it takes the house of cards falling down that we live in before we finally realize we need a foundation in life that can actually hold us up.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you, maybe that's where you find yourself tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Your world is crumbling around you.
SPEAKER_00: Everything you thought made you successful or valuable or worthy is gone.
SPEAKER_00: You have an injury, you failed a test, GPA is not where you want it to be, you didn't make the teen.
SPEAKER_00: And you might have tried to be a good person and build a life for yourself, but when the storm rocks your boat, you realize that's not enough.
SPEAKER_00: There's got to be something more to this.
SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you, that storm, even though it might not feel like it in the moment, is actually God's kindness.
SPEAKER_00: There's an old Charles Spurgeon quote where he says, I've learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the rock of ages.
SPEAKER_00: The rock of ages is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And what he's saying is, look, in the moment, challenges, difficulties, that stuff might not be fun, but if it makes me closer to Jesus, then I love it.
SPEAKER_00: Give me more of it.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's what I really need in life.
SPEAKER_00: See, sometimes, guys, pain is a megaphone that God will use in our life to make us aware of what's really going on.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same thing in our bodies.
SPEAKER_00: When we feel pain, it's not our body trying to hurt us, it's alerting us to something's wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Something needs a healing, something needs attention.
SPEAKER_00: And in the same way, pain in our life has a way to just wake us up to what's really real and to prevent us from just sleepwalking into destruction.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you find yourself in that place, turn to the one foundation that can actually hold your life.
SPEAKER_00: Turn to the well that won't run dry, the one place you can actually find life, and that's Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so here we have the team.
SPEAKER_00: Paul used to murder Christians.
SPEAKER_00: Timothy, uh odd background, absent father, just doesn't really fit in any world.
SPEAKER_00: Lydia is a clothes dealer.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's a slave girl who used to be possessed by a demon, and then you have a jailer whose life fell apart.
SPEAKER_00: Not quite the Avengers, right?
SPEAKER_00: But that's the point.
SPEAKER_00: And that sermon I listened to, he referenced an old Jewish prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And this Jewish prayer, men would go into the synagogue and they would pray this prayer, and he would it would say something like this they would say, God, thank you for not making me a woman, a slave, or a gentile.
SPEAKER_00: But do you want to know the interesting thing?
SPEAKER_00: The three stories that Luke tells here in Acts is about a woman, a slave, and a gentile.
SPEAKER_00: That's who God chooses to build his team.
SPEAKER_00: And what Luke is trying to get you to see here is that God wants all of you.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter what color your skin is, what type of family you come from, what their bank account looks like, how good you are at sports, what color your hair is, how popular you are, where you came from, where you're going.
SPEAKER_00: None of that matters.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody has a place in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is for you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus died for your sins so that you can become his child.
SPEAKER_00: And not only that, but he wants to use you to build his kingdom because God uses this ragtag group of people to build the church in Philippi that we're about to learn about for the next few weeks.
SPEAKER_00: And years later, this becomes one of Paul's closest and most faithful churches.
SPEAKER_00: They have pastors, they have leaders, they actually financially support Paul.
SPEAKER_00: And we have from church history that this church survived hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years in the future.
SPEAKER_00: The church that started with a clothes dealer, a slave girl, and a foreman Roman former Roman jailer.
SPEAKER_00: And so look, maybe tonight you have questions.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you are stuck in darkness.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe your world is falling apart.
SPEAKER_00: If you get nothing else from tonight's talk, I want you to know that the gospel is for you.
SPEAKER_00: God loves you.
SPEAKER_00: He has a place for you.
SPEAKER_00: Whether you think you fit in in Bernie or Bernie High or Champion or Geneva, whether you think you fit in this place or not, you fit in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't believe that, look to the cross and look what Jesus did for all of you.
SPEAKER_00: And Scripture says that there is neither great Greek nor slave nor Jew nor Gentile, that we are all one in Christ.