Acts 16.16-40
Roberto can tell us what it is like to be in a prison for the Gospel.
So can Lei Ming, a dear lady in Flushing, from Mainland China, who was in prison there for the Gospel. There are literal prisons.
There is not one recorded escape attempt in the Bible! From Joseph in Genesis to John in Revelation, and all in between, they submitted to the injustice and God powerfully used them and blessed them!
Daniel
Submission to His Sovereignty
It is a wonderful thing when we recognize the Sovereignty of God. His rule and overrule. More of His overrule is needed to be seen and appreciated in our lives. It takes maturity to see this.
How many times He has waited to answer my prayers so He can line other things up and weave them into my life and His wonderful plan. I have learned patience through this process. I have come to appreciate the wonderful ways of God which are beyond my finding out, but revealed often as we go through them.
Then the Sovereignty of God is wonderful when we don’t understand. As Spurgeon said, “When we cannot trace God’s Hand we can always trust His heart.” This is true in a prison. There are some God wants to deliver us from today, others we must endure looking to Him.
Submission to Sovereignty of the Nation
I Timothy 2 I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— 2 for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 3 This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth
vs.35-40
Our land, our laws
There are figurative prisons...
There are similarities with a literal prison.
*You are confined.
*Your rights are taken away
*Your severely limited.
*Your freedom is taken away.
Fear is a prison. God has not given us a spirit of fear but of love, power and a sound mind.
Worry is a prison.
Envy and jealousy is a prison.
Grief can be a prison if we let it.
Working for a tyrant can be a prison.
Does not have to be.
1. Pray
I love that at midnight they were praying!
Some of my best praying seems to be in the middle of the night lately.
I would love to know what they were praying...
I do not think that they were praying to be released but they may have been.
Perhaps, “God use us here. Do what You know best. We are your servants.” Both prayers were about to be answered.
Often we pray to be released. And if it is fear, or worry of envy or jealousy or anger or unforgiveness we have every right to ask God to deliver us.
Luke 4.18 The Words of Jesus quoting from Isaiah
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free,”
Pray right now to be delivered. We will have prayer at the end of the service up front as well.
There are other prisons.
Bad Marriages
Physical Impairments
Lack of Education
Family Dynamics
Pray, ask for God to show you His purposes.
Pray, ask God to teach you His ways.
Pray, ask God to use you.
Ask that it will result in His Kingdom going forward and the Gospel going out.
Paul wrote from imprisoment to the Church at Philippi, Philippians 1.12 Now I want you to know, brothers that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the Gospel. 13 As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. 14 And because of my chains, most of the brothers have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.
If we can get to this point concerning imprisonments that are in God’s plan, we will be more than conquerors. We will soar on wings like eagles without ever leaving the ground or in some cases our chairs.
We need to pray this way over our fellowship. With so many churches in decline and many closings can we look to God to do immeasurably more than we can every ask or imagine?
I have been a member of 7 Nazarene churches in my soon to be 62 years on the earth.
3 have closed.
2 are flourishing
2 are at a crossroads.
Survival today is admired. Not commended in the scriptures rather as a point of urgent instruction.
Revelation 3.7 “To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write:
These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. 8 I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept My Word and have not denied My Name.
2. Praise
“Praise the LORD anyway.”... never cared for that phrase.
Psalms 113 - 118 and 136, which the Jews called the "great Hallel"
This is what they sang at the Last Supper.
They were singing God’s Word back to Him. We are careful what we sing here in our fellowship. We sing songs which glorify God, songs to the LORD for the most part.
The best hymnbook is the Bible, in the Psalms. Hymns that have been written by Fanny Crosby and Charles Wesley and others verbalize our experiences with God based on His Word. “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” or “How Great Thou Art” are example of Hymns that are based on scripture. I love singing them when I am just hanging out with the LORD or walking to my Jeep after a hospital call or visit.
What do you do in a prison?
3. Preach
II Corinthians 3.2
You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone.
God has pastor and evangelists to preach the Word. I feel like Moses:
But Moses replied, "Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the LORD's people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!" Numbers 11.29
We are all witnesses.
The woman at the well in Samaria... went to tell the whole town, “Come, see the Man Who told me everything I ever did.” Jesus’ words in John 4.35 Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.
I never saw that verse like I did this week. Jesus is getting their eyes off the physical and material and talking about the importance of a soul. We too often fill our prayers for the sick and fail to agonize over souls. Healing is for this time. It is temporal at best but salvation is for eternity. We need to pray more like that. Pray the LORD of the Harvest! Jesus always pointed to the importance of the soul, greater than gaining the whole world!
We can all share the Word.... even from prison!
The song we often sing at the end of our time on Sunday mornings, “He Who began a good work in you...” was written by Paul, the apostle in prison.
4. Personal Evangelism
With the jailer and his family and household. The earthquake brought this encounter about. In the middle of the night, imagine, they have people come to Christ, baptize them and have a meal together! That is New Testament Personal Evangelism.
That is what we need to be in the midst of.
There is a church that I know very well. It saw great days and it’s past. Then a number of years ago it experienced some very difficult times. People ended up leaving. It looked like this church was going to dissolve as many churches have in our time. The people prayed. But it did not seem as if God was answering there prayers. At this point it becomes very easily to lean on our own understanding. It is tempting to look at it purely from human standpoint. When this happens we get into jaded thinking. We start trying to inventory what we have.
We forget we serve a supernatural God. He is not limited by our resources. Like the hymn says when we reach the end of our hoarded resources our Father’s full giving is only begun. Today that Church has a bright future. In the last four years it has tripled in size. But that’s not the whole story. It is influencing it’s community in ways it never has. The people continue to pray and God continues to work. The land that the church owns is about to be doubled. It is a poor church as far as money goes. And they could not have done this without God. People have looked at this work and said “this is so God.” Others have said “God is all over this thing.” What did the people do in this church? They stopped looking at their resources and how humanly that we get their church rebuilt and they begin to look to the LORD. He has opened up the heavens on that little church down in Haiti. There are wonderful things happening this week are totally unexplainable.
We have here in the United States now the science of church growth whatever that means! It does not allow enough room for the LORD to work and so often He does not.
Here we are at the crossroads, another crossroads in this church, our church. We can walk by sight and we can get discouraged or we can walk by faith and trust her in the LORD. For instance just in the last week we have had nearly 450 people view the service from last Sunday.
I have had a number of pastors say to me that they spiritually envy my situation. I don’t know that there’s many churches in the whole world that are like ours right now. We have our building to use and yet we’re not paying the utilities and the upkeep or the bills. At this point we’ve been set free from that.
This is our time. If we inventory our resources we are looking in the wrong place! An interesting thing is happened in my own life in the past 10 days, for the first time since I started working when I was 13 years old as of next month I don’t have to work any more. There are several options that are open to me. One would be to move to Haiti and take my Social Security there and live very very well. Another possibility would be to take care of my mom as she turns 89 in September and I am free to do that. I cannot believe these options are open up to me next month. I cannot tell you the freeing sense I get when I think about them. It has made me light hearted.
The third possibility is to stay right here and for the first time in my ministry work with the knowledge, from a human standpoint, not to make a living, but because I want to do this. I have moved into a position of being a bond servant. The bond servant was once a slave and was set free. Because he loved his master he stayed on and served out of love, not because he had to but because he wanted to.
As I said we’re at a crossroads here and we can take a pass of continuing to maintain the status quo or we can dig deeper with God. We can launch out into the deep we are there are oceans of fish waiting to be caught... remember Jesus said I’ll make you fishers of men.
We could probably even continue and think well we’re doing the mission work in Haiti and we’re supporting missions around the world from this whole congregation and even say well there’s hundreds of people watching us each week. But I believe in my heart God wants more than that. He sent an earthquake to the prison that Paul and Silas was in and a church was born out of it. The church at Philippi became poor sweetheart church.
We’ve had some earthquakes in our history but this is our time, this is God’s time, I love that line as of the Lord of the Rings Frodo says I don’t want the rings anymore and Sam answers that’s not our decision to make what we’ve got to do is decide what we are going to do with the time we been given.
I’m calling on you as a congregation to dig deeper to pray more fervently that God will pour out his Spirit on this place in such abundance that we would not have room enough to receive it. The LORD can do anything! He took a church that was in ruins down in the mountains of Haiti, in that secluded place, where few Americans travel too. And now this October we have the largest team assembling that we’ve ever had. We are ready to put the roof on the church! This week the money will be sent wire down already has been wired down to put the doors and the windows in.
But there’s much more happening than a building going up. Here we are we have a building that is paid for that is ours to use without cost. God is speaking to our hearts to our church. We dare not miss what He is offering to us. Be committed to Him like you have never been before! Watch Him work. Watch Him multiply boys lunches and stop storms and listen to Him do not say four months and then the harvest I tell you look to the fields they are ripe for harvest! And that whole city came to believe in him. I believe that can happen here. It is a matter of faith that just will live by his faith that was the word that God spoke to Habakkuk back when he complained about what was going on in the nation, when he complained that God was not answering his prayers. The word of the LORD to Habakkuk was look at the nations we need to do that and watch and be utterly amazed for I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe even if you were told.
I think one of Satan’s chief ways of working on us is to get us to focus on the problem rather than the LORD. You get your focus off Him and you got real problems!
Wait for the earthquake! Wait on God for a new Pentecost! Get in on what He wants to do.
We are in a rut here. Some of us have become spiritually lazy. Our prayers are really good when we pray for the sick and we should. However we need to focus on the LORD, praying that He will help us. Praying that we will see Him add souls to this church. In the Book of Acts, in each chapter, they were either at a prayer meeting, going to a prayer meeting or coming from. Prayer meeting. Thir prayers were centered around God being glorified by His Word going out. That is what we need to do.
We are suspending the Bible Studies the next 7 weeks. We are going to focus on praying, asking God to help us. We will meet for prayer on Wednesday Evenings, in the church basement, in the old nursery room at 7:30pm. We will call out on God for this church, His Church. Seven weeks of prayer. Do not limit it to the prayer meeting. Pray together for the church, for God’s Kingdom to go forward. Pray in your homes. Let’s saturate the air with prayer! Let’s see what God will do! We will not be meeting on this Wednesday, being the 4th, but pray at home. Begin today to cry out to God for Him to work in us and among us. Then beginning July 11 through August 22 on Wednesday Evenings we will come together to pray for the church. When God’s people humble themselves and call on Jesus and they look to heaven expecting as they pray... I just feel like something good is about to happen and Brother this could be that very day. We could look back on this as a turning point in our ,, j. ,
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