The Lord is with Paul - Pastor Tom Loghry
In Acts 18:1-18, Paul settles in Corinth for a long stay, but never stops sharing the Gospel.
Transcript:
As many of you know, I joined up with the Chopmist Hill Volunteer Fire Department close to a year and a half ago. I came into it knowing absolutely nothing about firefighting. After so many years of educational training to be a pastor, it felt a bit strange to be starting from square one. It's also been kind of a refreshing experience for me, a helpful reminder of what it must be like for a person to first begin following Jesus, starting from square one, knowing nothing about the faith. I've learned many things, and yet there's so much more to learn. When we have a fire call that comes in and we pull up on a house that's on fire, I'm ready to serve, but I hardly feel self-sufficient. When we're getting ready to walk into a burning building, I know who I want with me. I want my captain to be with me.
He's a retired East Providence firefighter with decades of experience. I feel confident following him. He knows where we should attack and what dangers we should avoid. He looks out for me and any others that are under his command, so that even if there's dangerous things going on around us, I feel safe with him. I feel assured that we'll make it out just fine.
As we think about Paul, we know that he is ready to serve. The cities he enters are kind of like burning buildings. He wants to save the occupants. And yet in a cruel twist, so many of the people he goes to do not want to be saved. Instead, they want to see Paul himself surrounded and destroyed. He has escaped death, again and again, and again and again God has sent him into the burning buildings. Imagine if you were the Apostle Paul. If you were Paul, wouldn't you begin wondering, will this be the one that traps me? Will this be the one where I don't make it out alive? As we read Luke's record of Paul's time in Corinth, we can perceive that Paul must have begun wondering just that. So turning to chapter 18, we find Paul setting himself up in Corinth in a way that is a bit unfamiliar to us, at least at this point in our, in our reading, so we're looking first at verses one through four.
In Acts 18, as has been read, we note that Paul has left Athens, he's gone to Corinth. Now Corinth, the distance from Athens to Corinth, you can see it there. Athens is right there at the end of that peninsula, Corinth is over there. It's about the distance from Boston to Providence. Again, by their means of travel, it's still, you know, it's a lot, but not too, too far away. Now, Corinth is a Roman colony, even while it's also an ancient city. Previously it was an ancient Greek city, but it was destroyed by the Romans in 1 46 bc. Then it was basically abandoned for close to a hundred years until it was rebuilt by Julius Caesar in 44 bc. And so the city that Paul goes to is very much Roman in its character. It's a city of at least around 140,000 people, probably more. I had a difficult time trying to pin down the exact number, slaves would've boosted the number up. And just as kind of a side note here, if you wonder how they try to get these estimates sometimes is they look at the occupancy that was available in some of the theaters in these cities. So they had a theater that could hold 14,000 people, and they said the theaters usually represented about a 10th of the population. So 14,000 times 10, you get 140,000 people. It's a big city.
It's a significant city because it acts as a bit of a, a crossroads, not only just north to south, but also thinking east to west and west to east in terms of water transport. So this Google map makes it a little bit more vivid here. You'll notice if, if you're traveling from, from Italy and, or if you're going to Italy, you could go all the way around this peninsula here, the Peloponnese, but tradition says that this was very dangerous going around this edge here. How much easier would it be if you could just cut through here, right, and go right through and then just jump over, rather than having to go all the way around. Well, that's exactly where Corinth is now. They did want to build a canal, but historically it was very challenging to try to do that, and they weren't actually able to build a canal until the late 18 hundreds. And so what they would actually do is they'd bring the goods to Corinth, they would unload the cargo. If it was a small ship, they would actually transport it over land, it's just four miles across. And so Corinth is very interesting because it actually has two ports in it, one on each side. And so you can imagine why this city would've been really a great place to go with the gospel. Not only is, you know, it's a big city, but you have a lot of coming and going. And so if you convert people that are there temporarily, they can take the gospel elsewhere. So it's very, very, very strategic.
As with all these cities, very pagan. You have the emperor, the cult to the emperor. You have a, a temple for Poseidon, no surprise, right there on the ocean. Poseidon's known as the God of the, the Seas. A temple to Aphrodite, Apollo, just a very pagan city.
And, um, we have a picture here of, this is what it looks like nowadays in ruins. But we actually have a, this map also that kind of gives you the layout of the city. So you can see it was a very, a very beautiful city, some really great impressive architecture. And I want you to keep this in mind here because this is kind of the administrative center of the city, and that's where judgments take place in that little plaza there, and, and Paul's gonna have an encounter there. So Paul is in Corinth.
In Corinth, he encounters a Jew named Aquila, which in English means Eagle. He's from Pontus, which is kinda from the northeast end of Turkey, near the Black Sea, and his wife Priscilla, which is kind of just a diminutive form of the name Prisca, which means ancient. Not sure if she's a Jew or a Gentile, but we do know that Aquila is a Jew at least, and they're from Rome. And the way that they ended up in Corinth is that Claudius, the emperor, issued an edict saying that the Jews had to leave Rome. Now such an edict is not that surprising. It's not the only time that it occurs.
Antisemitism was not uncommon then. It's not uncommon now. But there's a very interesting corroboration here. In this case, we, we do have a historical record that matches what Luke is telling us here, and also the cause of the expulsion of the Jews from Rome at this time is very interesting. Now, just as a caveat here, we don't have to imagine that every single Jew got kicked out of Jerusalem, I mean, not Jerusalem, out of Rome, but we know that some would've had to have left Rome. And the reason was this, Suetonius, a historian of kind of the following generation, he's not a Christian, writing in 1 21 AD says, since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the, instigation of Chrestus, Claudius expelled them from Rome. And you see that Chrestus, that, that looks a lot like Christ, Now, that's not the word for Christ. The word for Christ is Christus. But we can understand why there might be some confusion here in the language, and that's what is, many reasonable historians suppose here is that actually Suetonius is making reference to is the controversy over Jesus as the Messiah. And because of that controversy that was forming in Rome, the Jews were being kicked out of Rome.
Now you might be wondering, well, how is it that they, how the gospel got to Rome before Paul got there. Well, this is just a reminder to us that there's things going on beyond Paul's sphere of ministry. We remember on the day of Pentecost, you had Jews from all over the empire come to Jerusalem for that feast, they got exposed to the gospel and then they went back home with the gospel. And so there, there could have already been a church, established here in Rome at this time. And we know that the church is established in Rome before Paul makes any visit there himself. We find that in, in the book, book of Romans. So it's some, some powerful testimony here to just the historical accuracy of the scriptures. Now at the time in which this expulsion took place, historians estimate between 41 ad and 53 ad. And we're gonna suggest that it's at 49 ad based on some other details that we're going to discuss.
So Paul encounters Aquila and Priscilla. Now it doesn't say that he converts them, it may be that they're already Christians, but in any case, Paul stays and works with them. And he joins them in their work as tent makers. This is apparently a skill that Paul possessed. We don't know where he got it from, whether from his youth or from later on. Something to know about tent makers is that another way to describe their work is being leather makers, so it wouldn't have been restricted strictly to tents. But the tents, some of the best tents, the tents were made of leather. Actually I have an example of this. This is a Roman Legionary tent that was found in Germany, or at least it's a reconstruction of, of such a tent. And you can see it's all made out of leather, which I'm sure had some advantages to it in keeping the weather off of, off of you. And so Paul would've been in the business of making such tents, perhaps making awnings.
The reason why Corinth would especially be a place where you might expect there to be good business for such a trade is that it was the host of the Isthmian games, which is kind of, it's very much like the Olympics. It was a very famous competition that took place every two years in Corinth. So, great opportunity for Paul. Now, you might be wondering, well, why does he bother in, in doing this? Well, apparently the reason is he doesn't have any outside support as a missionary at this point, and so he has to support himself, and we see this continue today. We have missionaries that have skill sets and they, they have jobs as teachers or they have businesses overseas even while they're also missionaries. We have pastors that are bi-vocational pastors. In fact, I was reading a report, about a third of the pastors in the US are bi-vocational.
Now, Paul could have charged people to hear his teaching as some of the philosophers might do, but we hear later on in his letter to the Corinthians that he didn't want to do that. In 1st Corinthians nine verses 14 through 15, and verse 18, Paul says, in the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel. But I have not used any of these rights. And I'm not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me, for I would rather die than allow anyone to deprive me of this boast. What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of of charge, and so not, so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.
So what Paul is saying here is, is he's saying that it's, it's right and good for workers of the gospel to receive support in their work. But in this case, he is not seeking their support. Now, we might ask, well, why is that? Why, why was he not interested in seeking their support? Well, we can imagine initially, as soon as he shows up in Corinth, there wouldn't have even been enough people just to immediately support him. So he's gotta do something. But we can also imagine he would've had concerns about this idea of patronage, of kind of being owned by the people that he was, he was going to. Also, it could have brought him into association with these philosophers known as Cynics that were known to beg in the city, and he didn't want to get associated with, with them. We also would imagine that maybe Paul perceived there could be some opportunities for him by going into the workplace to share the gospel in those spaces. So Paul works as a tent maker, and even while he works, he also continues his customary practice of going to the synagogue on the Sabbath to reason with the Jews and the Greeks, trying to persuade them that Jesus is the Messiah.
This is how Paul gets his start in Corinth. Now eventually Silas and Timothy join him, and this frees him up to do even more. We read in verse five it says, when Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. But when they opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, your blood be on your own heads! I'm innocent of it. From now on I'll go to the Gentiles. Then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul believed and were baptized.
So Silas and Timothy catch up with Paul, and when they show up, it enables Paul to go full time in preaching the gospel. How do they do that? Is it because they, they pick up jobs themselves? Perhaps, maybe they came from Philippi with a gift that offered support for Paul. The details we have are incomplete as far as the, their travel itinerary.
So whatever the case, it enables Paul to go preaching full time. And what he's preaching is what he's been preaching all along, all along, which is that Jesus is the promised messiah, and whenever this is mentioned, I like to just give you a, a passage just to kind of bring to mind the sorts of things that Paul would've been presenting to them. So we consider Isaiah 42, verse one and verses 6-7. We can imagine Paul referring to a passage like this where it says, here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I'll put my spirit on him, and he'll bring justice to the nations. I, the Lord have called you in righteousness; I'll take hold of your hand. I'll keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.
Now, the thing about a passage like this is that we see how there's this anticipation that God's promised servant, the Messiah is going to be a light to the nations. He's going to call the Gentiles to himself. And this is part of Paul's message in pointing to Jesus as the Messiah. And it's usually what gets him in trouble with the Jews, and argue as he might with them, they refuse to listen. And so it says that Paul shakes out his clothes. And you're thinking, that's kind of a weird thing to do. Well, it's a cheaper thing than tearing your clothes, which sometimes the semitic peoples would do when they're very upset. But he shook out his clothes. Now what does that mean? It's very similar to knocking the dust off your, off your feet. It's a sign of condemnation. In Nehemiah 5:13, we see a, a similar thing said, it says, I also shook out the folds of my robe and said, in this way may God shake out of their houses and possessions anyone who does not keep this promise. So may such a person be shaken out and emptied! Now, what Nehemiah is talking about there is how the leaders of the people among the Jews, were to no longer oppress the poor. So he is saying, if, if you refuse to keep your word on this, God's gonna shake you out. You're, you're gonna be in trouble. So Paul's making that same sort of sign here and what's more, he is saying, he's saying that responsibility is on you now. I've done my part. Your blood is on your own heads. And this recalls Ezekiel 33:5, where it says, since they heard the sound of the trumpet but did not heed the warning, their blood will be on their own head. If they had heeded the warning, they would've saved themselves.
So Paul is going out kind of like this watchman. He's giving this warning. It's an invitation, but it's also a warning. As we heard when he was preaching in Athens, God is inviting people to call on himself, but he's inviting them in anticipation that there is a day of judgment that's coming, and if you do not turn to Christ and find refuge in him, you are going to face that judgment. And so Paul's saying that's what you're bringing upon yourselves, you're bringing God's judgment upon yourself. And so he says, I'm going to go to the Gentiles. And very conveniently, he just has to walk next door to the house of Titius Justus, who is a worshiper of God. He was a Gentile. Apparently he had enough space to host them. And what's more, Paul converts one of the, the synagogue leaders, Crispus. Now as a person that was a synagogue leader, he could have just been a Gentile who was a major sponsor of the synagogue. Um, we don't know for certain whether he was a Jew or Gentile, but he and his whole household come to believe. Very significant figure for the synagogue, he believes, they're baptized. They may have been baptized in some of the public fountains or baths that were available in Corinth.
Altogether, it is just a total coup. I mean, Paul, Paul is making a real disturbance here. Now you might think, oh, this is great, right? They're forming the church, getting these significant people. But again, just put yourself in Paul's shoes. Imagine the tension of that situation. You're literally right next door to the synagogue where you just stole their leader. You can imagine that it would've, it would've put him in a position of being quite frightened that what happened to him before is going to happen also, again, which is that a mob is going to form and that he's going to get kicked out of the city. He can feel the threat forming around him. Realizing this, we would expect that Paul might be a bit on edge. But on this occasion, God wants to assure Paul that he should be prepared to remain there in Corinth, to stay in the burning building, even if it appeared the flames were growing. So continuing on in verse nine, it says, one night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in the city. So Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.
We know that this isn't the first vision that Paul has experienced. The most recent was that which kind of set him on course here, which was the vision that he had of a, of a Macedonian man, which brought him into Macedonia. In this case, the vision that he receives from God is instructing him to essentially stay, stay put. Paul is to stay put, to keep speaking. Why? Why can he do that? Why can he have the confidence to do that? Because the Lord is telling him, for I am with you. I am with you. It recalls the words of Christ to his disciples in Matthew 28: 20, where he assures them, and surely I'm with you to the very end of the age, always with you. It brings to mind the words of God to Jeremiah in Jeremiah one verses four through 10, four through eight, where it says, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. Alas, Sovereign Lord, I said. I do not know how to speak; i'm too young. But the Lord said to me, do not say, I'm too young. You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you.
That's the kind of assurance that God is giving Paul here. God has a special plan and purpose for Paul here in Corinth and, and altogether. Now as we think about ourselves, though, we too can have this assurance of God's presence with us. That promise applies to every Christian. In Hebrews 13 verses five through six, the writer of Hebrews reminds Christians that their confidence doesn't need to be built upon money as their security. They have something better. He says, keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. So we say with confidence, I will not be afraid. What can mere morals do to me? That's the sort of confidence that. God is trying to inject into Paul's spirit in this moment, even as he feels like maybe the, the roof's gonna come crashing in on him.
It's a great reminder to us that Paul's human too. Just as we would need that kind of reminder, Paul needs that sort of reminder, also that assurance, and he, and he has this even greater assurance given by God, which is that no one is going to attack and harm you because I have many people in this city, the Lord says. So it seems that in some way or another, those that are going to be coming to Christ are gonna act in some way as a, as a shield for Paul, such that it'll be safe for him to remain in the city, and so he stays for 18 months, a year and a half. It's the longest he's stayed in any place in his missionary journeys. Imagine what a privilege it would be to be able to sit with the Apostle Paul for a year and a half and hear his preaching. I'm jealous of the Corinthians. And what's also incredible too is then you read his letter to the Corinthians and he has so much more he has to try to teach them because they apparently didn't get everything.
But he's able to make a great foothold here in all this time that he spends in Corinth. In the course of time, though, trouble does arise. We read in verse 12, it says, while Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews of Corinth made a united attack on Paul and brought him to the place of judgment. This man, they charged, is persuading the people to worship God in ways contrary to the law.
So we have a new figure introduced into the scene. Gallio, proconsul of Achaia. He's basically the governor of that whole region. Now, he's not an anonymous fellow to us. He, we actually can know who he is based on the historical record. Gallo was the son of Seneca, the elder, and the older brother of Seneca the younger. Seneca is a, a renowned, stoic philosopher, he was a mentor to the Emperor Nero. He came to have his name be changed to Gallio by way of a testamentary adoption, which is, basically, he was made kind of a legal heir of a famous Senator Rhetorician named Gallio, hence his name is also Gallio. And later on in his career, he would be a herald of Nero. So he was right in the thick of it, I mean, only way I can make a comparison here would be like, if, if you were brought before someone that was like the brother of Marco Rubio or something like that, like the important political figure. Very connected, significant man.
Now he's serving a one year term here as proconsul. He did not last long in Corinth, however, because he began feeling ill. Now, we don't know if he was actually ill or if he just didn't like the area, but there was theories that if one felt ill, you should take a sea voyage, it would make you feel better. I guess they didn't have problems with sea sickness or something, I would think that would make things worse in some cases, but I guess they thought, you know, getting out on the ocean, it'd make it better somehow. So, so he only lasts in Corinth for a few months time. Now that's, now the reason why I'm telling you this is it helps us narrow our timeline as to when Paul would've stand been standing before him.
And we have some historical corroboration here for this based on an inscription called the Gallio Inscription, and that's his name, it appears, it appears there. And in this inscription, as it's been pieced together, it says Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, 12th year of tribunician power, acclaimed emperor for the 26th time, father of the country, sends greetings to ... For long I have, have I been well disposed of the city of Delphi and solicitous for its prosperity, and I have always observed to the cult of Pythian Apollo. Now since it is said to be destitute of citizens, as my friend and proconsul L. Iunius Gallio recently reported to me, and then I won't read the rest of it. But you have, what, what this inscription provides for us is a, is a time and place in which Gallio is, is serving in this capacity. And it's, it seems as though he's, he's serving sometime around like 51 52 ad and there's at least one suggestion that this, this might be happening specifically within the time span of, between July and September of 51 ad. Incredible to be able to nail it down that close. And as we think about the expulsion of the Jews, this is how we come to kind of reason that the expulsion of the Jews probably took place around 48-49 AD, if it happened long before it seemed weird that it was as though Aquila and Priscilla were just leaving Rome like six years later. That doesn't make sense. It had to be rather recent.
So the Jews have united in Corinth to bring Paul before Gallio on trial. They probably thought this was a really advantageous moment to do so, he's just started his rule, we'll get Paul now. And where they would've brought him was in that square I showed you in that beginning, that arch, forum area. And they would've brought him before what's called the bema or a rostra. This is the actual place where Gallio would've sat in judgment over, over Paul. It's about seven and a half feet high, so he's sitting up rather high above those that are coming into his court. Now, the charge that they make in verse 13 is they say, this man, they charged, is persuading the people to worship God in ways contrary to the law.
Now, we have to remember the context here of, of what they're suggesting. They're, they're suggesting that in some way or other, Paul's probably being traitorous. The cases that Gallio would've heard here were strictly criminal cases. He didn't bother with the little civil disputes, so it's like they're going to the high court. This is kind of a do or die sort of situation. Now, the way that they're bringing their case, though, kind of suggests that they're being a little tricky here. He's persuading people to worship God in ways contrary to the law. Are they talking about Roman law or Jewish law now? We would expect Paul to kind of step up here and make a speech in his defense, Paul always usually has plenty of things to say, but he doesn't get the chance here. In verse 14 it says, just as Paul was about to speak, Gallio said to them, if you Jews were making a complaint about some misdemeanor or serious crime, it'd be reasonable for me to listen to you. But since it involves questions about words and names and your own law, settle the matter yourselves. I'll not be a judge of such things. So he drove them off. Then the crowd there turned on Sosthenes the synagogue leader and beat him in front of the proconsul; and Gallio showed no concern whatever.
We see here that Gallio is a man who has no patience for cases that really are of no concern to the Roman Empire. He's, he's a sound lawyer, he has a reputation for the, for that, for really knowing the law and in this position, he needs no favors. When we go to Judea, you know when you go to Israel, you see sometimes the Roman governors there, they're trying to negotiate with the local religious leaders 'cause they need to be on good relations with them so the people don't start a riot. In Corinth, Gallio does not need to worry about that. He doesn't need to be in their good graces. So he is just looking at the facts of the case and he's like, why are you bringing this to me? Because as he understands it, it's a dispute about who's the Messiah within the Jewish religion. And he's like, you're not in the right place. Stop wasting my time, basically, and, and with good reason, because he had to hear a lot of cases. He would hear cases for about 10 hours a day. I couldn't believe it reading it, but one commentator was suggesting that he would hear like over 700 cases in a day. So we're talking about rapid fire, that's why he makes a rapid fire decision. Alright, I don't have time for you guys, next, next up, next case.
He, he didn't think this was probably very significant, but in fact, his ruling here is very significant for Paul and for the early Christians, because it provides a record, and they could actually go back on the legal record and find his, his ruling here. It provides a record that the Christians were not guilty of any wrong-doing here in, in their religious matters. It basically ruled that this was just an intramural Jewish debate, so they couldn't be accused of introducing a new religion. This would've been kind of a significant ruling to present to Luke's audience. Remember, his audience is probably mostly Gentiles, people that would've been interested in, well, how do Christians relate to the standing authority here?
And we can imagine that Paul may have taken some lessons from this experience. So in Philippi, he learned that it's useful to call upon his Roman citizenship in defense of himself, and here he learns that sometimes the Roman rulers can actually judge in your favor. And we're gonna see how that comes into play later on when he's brought before other Roman rulers to be judged by them. Now, it's more than likely the Lictors, remember those guys that I told you about that stand by the proconsul with their, their arms, and they, they probably drove off the Jews and then they, there proceeds to be a beating that follows, not by the lictors, but by the crowd.
A mob forms, and again, this is probably a antisemitic response. Remember, I mean, they got kicked out of Rome, the Jews, so it was culturally, there's just a lot of pressure against them. It appears that the Gentiles turned on this man named Sosthenes, who was either a co synagogue leader with Crispus before he got turned to Christ, or maybe he was a replacement for Crispus, but he's the one that takes the brunt of the, he, he's the one that gets beaten up here. Gallio is shown to be apathetic. He's sitting up on his, on his bema up there and he's just like, yeah, whatever. I'm not worried about them. And Luke's telling us this, this because it reveals the danger of Roman rule.
He's not recording this in a positive sort of way. Roman rulers could go in your favor, but then they could also absolutely neglect you. The sword cuts both ways. And we can imagine how this experience might've informed Paul's teaching in 1st Corinthians six, where he tells believers, don't take each other to court, to civil court, settle matters within the church. Christians should be able to do that without going to a guy like Gallio to settle your differences. Now what's really interesting about this guy Sosthenes, though, is we have to wonder, did he later turn to Christ? Did he become a Christian? Or maybe we're just misunderstanding this passage and he was already a Christian. I don't think that's the case. I think he may have been turned to Christ later on because of this. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, starts it out in verse one by saying this, in 1st Corinthians one, one, he says, Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes.
Our brother Sosthenes. Is there a chance that there's just another Sosthenes, I guess, but the fact that Luke mentions him and then Paul mentions him suggests it's one and the same person. Not that crazy, though, to see someone make that sort of turn, because we've seen that happen with Paul himself. He went from persecuting Christians to becoming a Christian himself. So maybe the same sort of thing happened here with Sosthenes.
What we see here is that the Lord is true to his word. Christ is with Paul, he's protected him from harm. He enabled Paul to do exactly what he was called to do.
So I wanna ask you, what is God calling you to do? Where's the burning building you need to step into? Or maybe you're already in it. Maybe you're exactly where God wants you to be. Now, hopefully death isn't literally looming around you as a possibility, but there might be plenty enough for you to dread. You might not be called to be a pastor or a foreign missionary, but I wanna remind you that you should never think that you are on the sidelines.
Remember that Jesus tells all of his disciples this in Matthew five, verses 14 through 16, you are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven.
You, you are God's man or woman, his boy or girl, wherever he puts you, wherever he directs. You are a light in the dark places. Many workplaces, many schools, many situations and circumstances are dark places. Maybe you feel the heat, you smell the smoke. Maybe you wanna just get out of dodge. And of course there's times where you should definitely move on. But there are also times to stay put. And you can do that. You can do that, you can do all things, not because you have it all figured out, but because your captain is with you. Christ is with you. And so with this assurance in our minds, let us pledge ourselves to him. Let's pray.
Dear father, we confess that it's very easy to just wanna run away.
Father, we know that you understand our fears, our concerns, our suffering, you know the difficulties that we face.
Father, we thank you that we do not face these things alone, but that we have the assurance of your presence with us, that we are assured that Christ is with us. Father, we pray that you would help us do as you've called us to, as you lead us to, to stay when we need to stay and to go when we need to go, father, but to stay even when it's difficult father, when you're guiding us to do that, depending not upon our own strength, but your power, that you can do things that seem unimaginable. Help us to do that collectively, father, as a church. Help us to do that, individually as your children. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from the Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us in person or virtually this Sunday as we worship God and hear the preaching of his word. It's our joy to welcome you into our community
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)