I invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to the book of Acts chapter 18, Acts chapter 18. We'll be reading together the first 18, I'm sorry, yes, 18 verses, 17 verses of Acts chapter 18, found on page 1179, if you're looking for that in your pew Bible. Let's give our attention this morning to the word of the Lord. After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them, and because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and worked, for they were tent makers by trade. and he reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath and tried to persuade jews and greeks when silas and timothy arrived from macedonia paul was occupied with the word testifying to the jews that the christ was jesus and when they opposed and reviled him he shook out his garments and said to them your blood be on your own heads i'm innocent from now on i will go to the gentiles And he left there and went to the house of a man named Titus Justus, a worshiper of God. His house was next door to the synagogue. Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord together with his entire household. And many of the Corinthians, hearing Paul, believed and were baptized. And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you. For I have many people, many in this city who are my people. And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. But when Galileo, the proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal, saying, This man is persuading people to worship God contrary to the law. But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Galileo said to the Jews, If it were a matter of wrongdoing or vicious crime, O Jews, I would have reason to accept your complaint. But since it is a matter of questions about words and names and your own law, see to it yourselves. I refuse to be a judge of these things. And he drove them from the tribunal. And they all seized Stasosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the tribunal. But Galileo paid no attention to any of this. There ends this morning the reading of God's Word. Well, it seems often in life, the most difficult thing about it is the feeling that we're moving nowhere and we're going nowhere. Every day it's that same thing, isn't it? It just seems like the same thing. We get up, we're going to go do the same thing over and over. And at times it feels immensely uninteresting, especially when there's nothing exciting about it. It gets tiresome, you become weary, all the more so when things are not going well. Life seems to go that way. We hit periods where nothing seems to be going well. And even if you're not feeling well, you can have a whole bunch of things that accumulate and make you feel like giving up. This is a common experience to life. This is a common experience to all of us under the sun, living in this life, going forward with our plans and nothing quite working out the way that we planned. You know that ministry is just like that? There are times you feel that progress is minimal. There are times you feel like things are just not moving. There are times it seems that nothing really is happening. The labor doesn't seem to be doing much. It doesn't seem to be affecting much the way that you want it to. And then comes all the spiritual warfare at these moments. In the midst of all of this, it's incredibly difficult. You become weary because you don't feel you're moving anywhere. I tell Darcy often, I feel like I'm on a treadmill at times, running as fast as I can, and I'm not moving. I'm just not going anywhere. That's a kind of common experience of life. All of it brings discouragement. Endurance is hard. Staying the course is difficult. We often want to become recluses and hide and not continue what we're doing. I want to encourage you today because all of that is very natural to life under the sun because of sin and because of our struggles. And it is exactly what we have in front of us here in the ministry with the Apostle Paul. I believe we've come to a point in Acts where the Apostle Paul is weary and tired and discouraged and feeling like things are not progressing as he thought they would and at some ways ready to give up. And I'm hopefully going to show that to you today, hopefully make that clear to you to see how and why this particular passage is so important because we come to one of the brightest moments in the book. I've never been for red letter editions of the Bible, but I like this one because right in there, there is one big section of red letter. And when I first read it, it didn't need, I read right over it. I passed right over it. In this section that I thought, how in the world am I going to preach this? Comes one of the greatest encouragements in the entire book. This is what it's like studying the Word of God and reading the Word of God. When we come to things like this, it's so easy to read right over what was just said to you. This is one of those moments. It's a beautiful moment in the book of Acts. And these words have the intention of encouraging us in the same, that not just for life in general, but in our callings as Christians, whatever that calling might be, as those who are witnesses of Christ, in that particular command to be a witness to what the Lord has done for you, don't give up. I never like pastors being coaches, but I feel like one right now. Don't give up. That's the heart of this. It's the Lord telling us, I've not given up. I'm committed to this project. I'm going to complete what I said I'm going to do. No matter how things seem, no matter when everything is slow, No matter when everything seems to be unraveling at the seams, this is when we stop and listen to what the Lord is saying to us right here. And that's why Acts 18, I hope, will have a special place when you come to these moments in life. As I look at this text this morning, I see the apostles' weariness. I see in response to that the Lord's encouragement. And then I see the Lord's working in His providence to prove that to the Apostle Paul. And this is so helpful for us this morning. Let's look at this. Last time, we spent time studying Paul in Athens. What a different place. What a unique place to go and to take the gospel. And I tried to show you that everywhere Paul went, it was either revival or riots. The man thoroughly stirred up everything. Yeah, people came to faith, but the riots and the hardships were unbearable, it seemed, at times. More riots than revivals. You'll remember Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, he was provoked, particularly in Athens, by the idolatry, and he preached his heart out there. We looked at that message last time, and what did he face? Nothing that great. In other words, by the end of that whole discourse, we love the preaching of Paul on Mars Hill, but by the end of it, it seemed uneventful to some degree, didn't it? You had the majority of them, it seemed, who were laughing and mocking him. You had the next group of people who were sitting there and saying, oh, maybe we'll hear you again on this. That's unbelief. And then it says some, and only two names are given that believe. Some of them did believe. But if you're looking at it with human eyes and evaluating things from our ministry standards, it was really not a great successful place, event that took place in Athens in the preaching of the gospel. That's how we would see it. As I'm following Paul's missionary journeys here, as we're following them and tracing them, I'm starting to think to myself, I don't know how well I would hold up. I mean, seriously, there's limits to what we can bear. He's passed them. I don't know anyone who could read these chapters and not see that. Let me just read this again so you know when he summarizes his struggles. Five times from the Jews, I received 40 lashes minus one. three times i was beaten with rods once i was pelted with stones three times i was shipwrecked i spent a night and a day in the open sea i've been constantly on the move i have been in danger from rivers and danger from bandits and danger from my fellow jews and danger from gentiles and danger in the city and danger in the country and danger at sea and danger from false believers I've labored and toiled and have gone without sleep. I've known hunger and thirst and have gone without food. I've been cold and naked. Beside everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who's weak? But I don't feel weak. You want to talk about weakness? Who's led into sin? Do I not inwardly burn? I mean, this is, one of you said to me, going through Acts has been good because I feel like we're studying real people. We tend to put these people way up here. These are real people with real struggles in the crucible, in the grind, and it's hard. The question for me is, how is this man holding up? I'm sure if I went around right now around the room, it'd be interesting to survey the room today, the church today, and to see who here is feeling weariness. Who through all of this constantly bearing down on us in life, in society, everything that we see, the hardships, the seemingly little success of everything we're doing. I want to make it worse for you for a minute. I'm good at that, okay? With all that in mind, It gets a lot worse for Paul. We read that he went to Corinth. Stop. We have the advantage of reading 1 Corinthians. I preached that book. One of my favorite books to preach for the church today. You remember how many problems were in that church? It was the most compromised church in the New Testament. You had a Greek city filled with Roman culture. everything that embodied rome was in corinth it was a melting pot of all peoples and cultures mixed into the roman way rome dominated their laws their religion it was called the most dazzling of all the greek cities three quarters of a million people in its heyday were in corinth That is remarkable when you think about it for considering what's in Escondido. What, 150? All of this wealth, and here's what's so important to study. Everyone in Corinth was, of course, pursuing the Roman dream. The city was set up for anyone with social status and advancement. Everyone was pushing for wealth and honor. Everyone was pushing for position. You had the best entertainments of the day. You had all the allures of the day. here's the point. There was one major wicked problem in Corinth that dominated the city, and you know what it was? Sexual morality. You know what became a common idiom? We say all the time today, well, people, when they fornicate, we use certain words for all of that. In Corinth, it was called Corinthianizing. There's nothing new under the sun. We have used it even for California to call it Californicate. All the cities knew about the girls in Corinth. In fact, when the guys came over to Corinth, if you had a Corinthian girl, that was a euphemism for saying she was a prostitute. This is Corinth. What a different city than Athens. Combination of what I've described. There's no way you could be a Christian in this and not be affected by it. That would be like assuming that no man here is, are you totally unaffected by our culture's emphasis in this, men and women, men and women. Sure, we've got big problems with pornography. We've got big problems with all this stuff. You can't be unaffected by it. And Paul wasn't. He says that. You know what he said to the Corinthians when he wrote to them? I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. Why? I came here and I had one big emotion. I had one big problem. I was overwhelmed with fear coming to this place. You think about it. He walked into Athens and he sees all the idolatry. And there's the gods of wood and stone. own, right? He was provoked by the idolatry, so he preached Jesus. Now he walks into Corinth and he sees an entirely different kind of thing. I'm thinking he looks around at what would be a lot like walking in for us, Vegas. This is what Mike Brown was telling me the other day, that when when Italians come to the U.S., they want to go check out Vegas, right? It's just mesmerizing. It is just, wow! Paul's looking around thinking, this is a seductive trap. How in the world am I going to minister in this and be effective at all? I know this is right, because you just look and trace what the church in Corinth fell into, and you know this is a right assessment. Everything that was recorded of what happened in Corinth was this, in the extreme. One pastor said, at least in Athens, they were interested in debating ideas. And Paul could speak of Jesus and the resurrection and get a hearing. But not in Corinth. The youth in particular were interested in sex and sport more than that than talking about religion. Does that sound familiar? I'm sure he felt, I don't even know how headway is possible. maybe you have experienced this and felt this. If you had been stoned and beaten and imprisoned as this man had been in cities of lesser consequence, can you imagine stepping into that? Thinking to yourself, I know what's coming. I know what's coming. I'm sure he thought, it's absolutely inevitable. this one scares me to the extreme. How can I say anything against any of this and not have them come down on me? All of a sudden you start to realize this is kind of our setting. This is kind of our work of ministry is sort of paralleled as we compare what happened in Corinth and what Paul had to face in Corinth. This is us. This is our day. These are the challenges. I mean, look at what you're trying to do. raise children to love the Lord in this. Look at all the temptations. Look at all the sensuality. Look at all the lure of Babylon in all of its glory. You've got it here. And then try to say it's wrong in some kind of public forum. When it comes to this issue of sexual immorality, you know what you're going to get. We're trying to do ministry in this. We're trying to minister the gospel of Jesus and offer Him as an answer when this is what's being offered to them? Some of us are weary of giving in to this kind of stuff all the time. We're weary of the seeming little progress. We're weary of the way our children are responding. You can go right down the line here, can't you? You can go right down the line with a whole series of things where you would say this feels like absolutely mission impossible. And the more battle wounds, the more scars that you have, the more the weariness envelops you, the more you are scared, the more you want to give up. Well, what happens from here? Let me make it a little worse first, and then it'll get better. In verse 4, we read that he did his typical thing of going first to the Jewish synagogue, and he was there trying to persuade the Jews and the Greeks. And verse 6 tells us that they opposed him and reviled him. They were calling him a blasphemer. This is an intense assault on him, reviling him. And it almost seems that Paul now breaks away from the whole thing. He has hit rock bottom when he blurts out and says, your blood be upon your own hand, head, I'm innocent. From now on, I go to the Gentiles. Done. I'm done with you. I've been a watchman on the wall. I've been Ezekiel sounding the alarm. No one's listening. You did not hear. I'm washing my hands. He's using the language of Ezekiel here. I am washing my hands. Your blood is on yourselves. I've been cleansed from this. Huge moment in ministry actually. Here, shouldn't read over it too quickly. He finally broke from his way of doing things and no longer went to his own family. Hear me. He no longer went to his own family. His countrymen, he was done. Now you need to know that when you read this, it comes across as sort of frustrated, angry, cold. But this is not what Paul said was going on internally in him. Paul said this in Romans 9, which he wrote from Corinth. I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. Why? For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. This is like watching your whole family depart from the faith and leave the church and reject it all. How do you think that would make you feel? Many of you couldn't even handle that. Those of your blood. Those of your children. He is totally ripped up inside. Some of you have had loved ones who've done this. Some of you actually have had children who've done this. You see why I'm saying you have one discouraged apostle? He hasn't even made it into the streets of Corinth. And out of the gates, they've all rejected it. How in the world are you going to make headway in this? And I think he throws up his arms and he begins to say, is this working? Is it? I said to somebody the other day, look at the masses of people all around us. How many, Lord? How many are believing? How do you not look at this and think to yourself, this is a massive project, failure. And our typical response is to say, I just want to tuck away from all of it. I want to be done with it. I want to become a recluse. The more I can just avoid thinking about things, the better it all will be. This is somewhat, some have said, what happened to A.W. Pink at the end of his life. It's a recluse. We fight it all the time. I fight it all the time. It would just be so much easier to disengage. So much easier. Disengage from all of this. Let somebody else do it, right? Let somebody else. See, I'm not just describing what happens in Christian ministry to pastors. I'm describing what happens to you every day in daily life. The fruit is so little, the problems so many, And we're just often perplexed about it all. At the apex of this discouragement comes the red letters, if you will. I love this. This is where you read and you stop and you say, wow, what a moment in the book of Acts. The Lord comes in the night and after all this discouragement, the Lord Himself encourages Him. And I want you to know that this is a long-standing pattern of the Lord that goes all the way back to Abraham. In fact, if you want to turn there, you can. But in Genesis 15, before we look at this, listen to this. In Genesis 15, when Abraham had just been out through the battle at war, trying to recover Lot, he is absolutely exhausted. He is absolutely burned out. He is discouraged. He is weary. And here comes the Lord. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision. Listen to this, and then you can compare it to what we have here. Fear not, Abram. I am your shield, and your exceedingly, and your reward shall be very great. Abram, I'm giving you meat. Don't fear. Don't fear. Notice particularly here, I wish I had all the time here today to go through the Scriptures and show you how often in the moments of great discouragement and great fear the Lord would come to His sheep and speak like this and talk to them this way. Notice how tender He is. Listen to what He's saying to you. This is all the kind of treatment that comes out of the covenant of grace. I am your God, you are my people. Listen to it. It's so beautiful. Do not be afraid. But go on speaking and don't be silent. For I'm with you. And no one will attack you to harm you. For I have many in this city who are my people. It's the truth that's always displayed in the Scriptures. The Lord is my helper, so I will have no fear what can mere people do to me. The Lord is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. There is absolutely nothing in life that He has ever left us alone to face. Do you understand that? Nothing. And as Jesus Himself is speaking to His servant here, maybe I've missed it and I'm speaking here off the cuff. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe we find Jesus speaking to Paul like this since the time of his conversion. When he brought him out and struck him down on the road to Emmaus, and now here he is, when he said, I'm going to show him how much he must suffer for my name's sake. But here's the Lord lifting up his servant and encouraging his servant and strengthening him through his word. It's just beautiful. I want you to go on speaking and to not be silent, Paul. Don't do it. Open your mouth. You keep doing what I set you apart to do. You give them hope. You keep preaching Jesus. You keep doing what I told you to do. You give them the answer in the midst of this. I don't want you looking around at everything and thinking to yourself, look at the discouragements, look at the effects, look at the fruits, look at all this failure and judge what you are called to do based on that. I don't want you doing that. I want you faithful right here. What I've called you to do is open your mouth and speak. Isn't that just the verse every day for getting up? I've called you. You're my child. You're my son. You're my daughter. Get up. This is what I'm calling you to do. And then he gives this remarkable statement that makes us a little uncomfortable. For no one will attack you to harm you. In this case, that would be true. But that is eternally true. There's nothing anyone can do to eternally harm you. You understand that? Nothing. Here's what's so wonderful about the encouragement. I want you to speak. Hear me speak. Why? For I have many people in this city. Who wants to tell me God's not sovereign? He wants to tell me there's not a doctrine of election. He wants to tell me the Lord's not in control of the mission. Here you go. And yet it's the most wonderful news ever. Did you hear it? I've got a whole bunch of people in this city and they don't know they're my people right now, Paul. They don't even know it. So guess what? Guess why you're here? I need you to speak because this is how they're going to come in through the means of you speaking. This is why we're here today, by the way, and you're listening to sermons and preaching and gospel. I was walking on Broadway the other day, and there was a young man behind me, and he was listening to rap. I know what rap is because perilously I used to listen to it. None of you young people better listen to that stuff. And listen, it was awful. I heard every word under the sun. I felt like Paul in Athens. I'm provoked. So I said, what am I afraid of? I turned around to him. And I said, I've got the best news ever in the world for you. Would you like to hear? Thinking to myself, I'm not sure that's going to work. And you know what he said? Sure. Sure. So out on Broadway, I sat and I explained the gospel to this young man. And I said to him, have you ever heard this? You know what he said? No. Now we live in a post-Christian culture and we have all assumed people know this. You got a whole generation coming right in front of you. They have never heard some of this stuff, ever. And then I said to him, do you have a Bible? he goes i think my mom might all the young people right now should be immensely thankful for you hear this every week from your parents and your church and your sunday school classes and you have how many bibles in your homes here this young man has no hope in this world what if i'd have never spoke i realize the lord's going to do his saving and it's not, I'm the one doing the saving. I'm not putting that kind of pressure on anybody. But the reality is, is that the Lord has called us to witness. The Lord has called us to speak. Speak. You see? What are you afraid of? What's that kid going to do to me? Speak. Notice it says right after this that Paul stayed a year and six months teaching. It's a long run. for the apostle. God didn't make him come in in floods. It wasn't 30,000 in a stadium. It was long, slow work according to Acts standards. But the encouragement was, even though it seemed that everything was falling apart, the Lord was telling him and telling us, I'm building. I'm saving. Jesus is speaking here and saying, I've given my life to purchase a people, and Paul in Acts 20 is using this language from now on. There are purchased people. There are people purchased by the blood of Christ. That has happened at the cross. That has happened when Jesus died. There's a whole bunch out there for whom I've died that still have not come in. That's why you're here. That's why I'm here. And speak. There's the authoritative speaking that comes that God sets up, bring your friends. That's one wonderful thing you can do. Invite your friends. Bring them to church because this is the primary way God loves to do it. But yes, most certainly He uses your voice out in the world. Use it. You've got good vocal cords. Use it. It's the greatest encouragement, isn't it? I'm with you. Don't be discouraged. Don't fear. I'm never going to leave you. I'm always with you. You've been given a responsibility. tend to it and my projects going forward well what happens from here this is one of the cases where you always want to read providence backwards because if you're looking at things it seems like what the lord just said was a lie which isn't true for what happens the jews right after this begin a united attack against the man and they grab him and they bring him in front of the bema seat the judgment seat of galio the proconsul of the day and this is all reminiscent of jesus isn't it the jews tried to charge him that he was bringing a new religion against what was recognized by rome the jewish religion was recognized this is new this is what they did to the early christians galio wouldn't even listen to it and you stop and you say ah the lord holds the king's heart in his hand, you see. This is your own petty stuff according to your law, Jews. He doesn't like them. You stand back from the passage and here's what you get now when you stand back and look at it. Here's what you see. The whole time the Lord's been working and you've missed the encouragement. Let me give them to you. First, you'll notice here now Christianity because of this was given permission in Corinth. It didn't have permission, it just got permission. And Paul said, well, then I need to stay. Now it was publicly recognized. Galilee would do nothing against it. That gave it credibility. Second, verse two, and he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla because of Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them, and because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and worked, for they were tent makers by trade through this, that this is what happened. So you'll notice here, all of a sudden these encouragements are coming. We're going to study Aquila and Priscilla next time. What a couple, man and woman in the faith, who ministered to Paul and helped him greatly and advanced the gospel. So here, all of a sudden, these people are surrounding Paul that are of huge consequence and huge encouragement to him, taking him in, helping him. He's working here to provide for himself, and they're caring for him. And then, number three, third encouragement, Paul stays with a man named Titus Justice. Notice verse 7. His house was next door to what? I mean, that's just awesome. Paul is next door to the synagogue with another house now. It's moved away from the synagogue. This was a break from the synagogue. The early Christians still did this for a while, but there was a clear break here and now they're in homes. And here it is in Titius Justice's house, a church is being established. And what does the Lord do? He brings in one of their leaders from the synagogue into the faith, Crispus, and we know Paul would baptize this family. So, it says many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized. So now, right next to the synagogue, the church is growing. And what appeared to be like walking into a crucible, a beautiful working of God's providence was happening, and what an encouragement. The gospel was prevailing, God was saving, the Lord was accomplishing everything he intended when he sent Paul to Corinth. So what am I to say today? I pray that in the life of this church we'll remember this. That at times it'll seem like we're going nowhere. I don't think we say that right now, do we? I feel a lot of joy and excitement and energy in this place. But it'll seem like the challenges are impossible living in this day. You know this as parents. All the routine, all the daily grind, the Lord is telling you, I don't want you giving up. I don't want you being afraid. That's His command. It's the best command you're getting. You have a Savior who's committed to not just being with you, but saving a whole bunch of more people. You know, my grandfather on my mom's side did not believe. Most sitting here have not known that. My mom, over the whole course of her life, would pray for my grandpa, pray for my grandpa. He was a hard man, a tough man, died at 92. I remember going in on his deathbed and saying to him, Grandpa, you need to believe the gospel. Do you know what the gospel is? And of course the words came back, I've been a good person, Chris. Grandpa, you've not. You've disobeyed God. This is His testimony. But I've got really good news for you. You believe in Jesus and turn from this. Right now, you can be saved. I don't know what happened. But I know I was called to speak. And all of you have people like this in the course of your life. Speak. Open your mouth. Don't give up on the project because your God's not giving up on the project. And the mystery to it all is He won't lose one. Isn't that amazing? He won't lose one. Don't be discouraged. Don't stop praying. Don't stop talking to God about this. Fulfill what the Lord has given you to do with eagerness even when it's hard. He'll strengthen you. He's with you to the end. He's promised that not one of the sheep will be lost. Speak, for He is committed. He is committed to this project so we should be committed to being His witnesses. Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, what a wonderful word You've given us today. Thank You for encouraging us. We need it. Thank You for coming through Your Son and lifting us up. You're so tender to us. You're so kind to us. Treat us as sons and daughters when we have been foolish and hardened to You. I pray that, Lord, we would open our mouths. We would speak. We would know You have said You are our God and we are Your people. You've said You'll never leave us nor forsake us. You're with us to the close of the age, Lord Jesus. So help us then and save Your people go get them Lord and use us to do it bring in all of your elect from the four corners of the world and may your gospel prevail in all of this darkness for your praise and your glory in Jesus name we pray Amen