03-22-26 Study of Acts Chapter 16:19-40 How to Turn Persecution into Production Part

➡ This Bible study focuses on Acts chapter 16, discussing three key figures: Lydia, a demon-possessed woman, and a jailer. The story highlights how the church began in the Gentile world, with Paul removing demons from the woman, leading to Roman persecution. The jailer’s story is emphasized, showing how an earthquake led him to ask Paul about salvation, to which Paul responded, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” The study concludes with a critique of how society treats the elderly, suggesting businesses should better support retirees.
➡ The text discusses the concept of a ‘midlife crisis’, where people often seek new experiences or possessions to combat feelings of boredom or dissatisfaction. It suggests that people often put their hopes and dreams into these new pursuits, referred to as their ‘little box’. However, when these pursuits fail or are lost, people can feel devastated, as their ‘little box’ has been broken. The text encourages turning to faith, specifically in Christ, as a means to overcome these crises and find true fulfillment.
➡ Paul, a preacher of the gospel, freed a girl from a spirit that was being used for profit. This angered her masters, leading to Paul’s persecution. However, the text suggests that persecution can lead to growth and blessings, especially for the church. It warns against infiltration by Satan, which can be destructive, and encourages embracing persecution as a means to strengthen faith and spread the gospel.
➡ The text discusses the spiritual dangers of wealth and the love of money, using biblical stories as examples. It emphasizes that wealth can become a god-like figure in people’s lives, distracting them from their spiritual path. The text also warns against working in industries that promote evil or idol worship, as it can lead to spiritual downfall. Lastly, it highlights the importance of focusing on spiritual growth rather than material wealth.
➡ The text discusses how Paul and Silas, two biblical figures, faced persecution for their beliefs and actions, which were seen as disruptive and against the law. Despite this, they remained bold and used their persecution as an opportunity to spread their message. The text also draws parallels between their experiences and modern-day issues, suggesting that similar forms of persecution and resistance to change still exist today.
➡ Paul and Silas were bold preachers who faced severe persecution, including being beaten and imprisoned without a trial. Despite their harsh treatment, they remained steadfast in their faith, using their time in prison to spread the Gospel. They saw their suffering as an opportunity to grow and reach more people, even converting some of their jailers. Their story serves as a reminder of the power of faith and the importance of standing up for what you believe in, even in the face of adversity.
➡ Paul and Silas, while imprisoned, chose to praise God despite their suffering. They believed that their hardships were part of God’s plan and that they were being prepared for a greater purpose. They maintained their faith and trust in God, who they believed was unchanging and always worthy of praise, regardless of their circumstances. Their story teaches us to focus on God, not our problems, and to trust that all things work together for good.
➡ This text discusses the importance of living a life guided by the Holy Spirit, which brings joy and resilience in the face of problems. It emphasizes that focusing on God and spiritual matters, rather than earthly concerns, leads to a fruitful life. The text also explores the concept of desires as a divine calling, and the need to discern their source. Lastly, it touches on the idea of the left and right brain hemispheres representing the physical and spiritual aspects of life, respectively.
➡ This text discusses the idea that the Bible symbolizes the left and right brain, representing different aspects of human nature. It suggests that many concepts, including political ideologies and spiritual beliefs, are based on this left-right dichotomy. The text ends with a prayer thanking God for guidance and protection, and asking for continued blessings and understanding.

Welcome. This is our Sunday morning Bible study. We’re into the book of Acts. We’re, we’re moving through it slowly. We’re in chapter 16 and we’re looking at three aspects of the church. We looked at two ladies over the last two weeks and this week we’re, this week we’re going to look at a, at a third part of it dealing with a, a jailer. Okay. And we’re going to get into that. We’re going to go through verses 19 through 40 and then basically we’ll hit in chapter 17 that starting next week. But, but, but in Acts we’re coming really to the chapter that is going to leave an impression on all of us.

I think actually, actually how the church again this is historical. Look at, view at it. This is actually how the church actually got started in the Gentile world. And as you recall, we talked about Lydia and her marvelous liberation. And then we went and looked at a woman who was demon possessed divination, who was a medium that Paul remove the demons from her. She was possessed and, and her handlers, which gives you the picture of how this all works. Her handlers got very upset at Paul because they, he took away their income by removing the demons from her.

And that’s what led to the Romans persecution of Paul that we’re getting into in with this jailer. So we come now to the third instance in this chapter that is going to, in Italy impress it on our minds. And it’s very familiar story about a Philippian jailer and how God reached him through the earthquake. All right. God uses everything as his tool set in order to reach people for him. And he did this through earth earthquake that got him rattled if you will and began to talk to Paul. So, and, and you, a lot of you can relate to this.

Okay, you can identify with a Jeller. Now it might not be a Jeller that you identify with, but you’re going to, you can identify with the aspects of the, of the individual that is the Jeller. And, and many of you can apply this individual to your life. So we’re going to look at 19 through 40 in Acts chapter 16. And it’s a long portion, but it’s quite a bit narrative per se. And it’s, and this passage of Scripture is very easily set up and simple to understand. So this is this purse, a portion that just one little facet that leaps off the page to us.

Because in this passage the ultimate question that a man can ever ask is asked. All right, and we find that in verse 30 what must I do to be saved? This is. If you look at this passage of scripture and, and see the conversation between the jailer and Paul, you, you will pick up on Paul’s explanation of doctrinal and theological points in regards to salvation. And the only answer is given, it says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, we believe that all men need to be saved. And at the same time, we believe there is only one way to be saved by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ.

All of these other things in our history and in our current society that says ritualistic, you must do this, you must do that, or you got to go through these steps. Whatever, that’s completely false. So at the beginning of, at the beginning of this, we need to look at the Scripture. Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under the heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. That’s the critical element that we need to look at as we, as we begin this discussion. So basically, this is the story of salvation.

Now, as all records in scripture, there are many facets to it, and we can focus in on the story of salvation at the beginning and then see it in the flow of the context, at the same time picking up other very important and helpful truths. Okay, this is going to be another history lesson today. All right, so the man said, the jailer, what do I need to do to be saved? And the answer came, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. I think sometimes we don’t recognize the fact that people are really looking for salvation. I believe that people are seeking deliverance and they equate deliverance to salvation.

And it is not the same thing. I think we get the idea that when we go out to somebody to present Christ to them, that we really are intruding on their lives, when in fact we may just be giving them that which they are desperately searching for and maybe don’t know where to look. Are aren’t willing to admit that they’re looking in the first place. I think everybody that is, even to some extent those that are demonically oppressed or even possessed are looking at alternatives. So. So when a man comes to the place of terrible distress over his own life, the man who is ready to hear the message of salvation, now that’s what we have here.

The jailer got so rattled by the earthquake, he thought he was going to die, and therefore it rattled him such that it moved him to ask the question to Paul. Now, another reason we know that people are looking for salvation is because there are so many systems of salvation that have Been invented. Look at religion. Every religion’s got it added. We talked about. We talked about this last week. We talked about it on Thursday night when we looked at the reboot of the ideal Church for revelation. So people only invent what they think is going to sell.

That’s what church is today, all right? It is a corporation with a product to sell, and the product is backsides in a pew. How do I get more people into the pew which is going to foster this business growth? And that’s. They look to that and figure out how to sell it. And that is 180 degrees opposite of what you’re supposed to do when you present the gospel. So there are all kinds of systems. I was reading about this and I found a new way of salvation the other day in a magazine. It’s through a particular kind of occult trance operation, but it’s another way of delivering men from meaninglessness and sin and guilt and boredom and loneliness and the dread of death and insecurity and anxiety and whatever it is.

But there are all kinds of panaceas being attempted and being offered to us in regards to salvation. Now, the man in this account, a Jeller. It’s a crusty, hard, ex Roman soldier, most likely, who was sort of put out to pasture and ran a stinking, rotten jail in the city of Philippi. Now, how do you know it was stinking and rotten? They all were, okay? Every jail cell in ancient history was a dungeon, okay? Even the castles were lords and governor. Governors resided. They had a dungeon in their home. Okay? When I. When I was over in Scotland, I’m doing a corporate venture, I had the opportunity of riding to all of the castles on horseback that Braveheart was filmed at.

Okay? I was doing it three weeks after the filming had stopped, but I had the opportunity to do that stint on horseback. And every one of the castles had a dungeon, and there was not a ladder to go in and out. They just threw you down and you were there. Oh, and how did they feed you? They fed you like dogs. They just threw FL f food on the floor and you grabbed it and you ate whatever you wanted. It was kind of interesting. What was also interesting with those guys must have been humongous. Now, they were short, okay? You can look at the house and see that they were short, but they were stout as all get out because I put on a set of armor and I couldn’t walk.

It’s like, you’ve got to be kidding me. They rode horses. They had battle in this armor, and it was just way, way Too heavy. So this man is a jailer and he’s an ex Roman soldier and he’s sort of a hard nosed character and really just lived and died for the fact that he had a bit of honor left by being a jailer. In his older age at least he had a commission from Rome to do that job and lived for that thing. A lot of people in this ancient times when they retired for our word here, when they actually left their duty, they were just sort of cast out.

So everybody, sooner or later who doesn’t have salvation reduces his life to some little box that gives it meaning. That’s what really happened back in the ancient time on the elderly side of things. And we do that today, by the way. We box elderly people in at 65 and say, you know, got to retire and sort of put them out to pasture and, you know, without a plan. I think one of the things that businesses lack on is to support their retirees in what they need to do to maintain life. I’ve seen people die within two years of retiring because they just sat around and did nothing.

All right? So that’s not what the Bible says to do anyway. So for some people it’s about money. For some people it may be prestige or popularity. For some people it may be a promotion. Others maybe a new car, new house. But when their life starts to get boring, they buy something else, okay? They either buy a car, they get another wife, there’s something they want, something new, okay? And that’s exactly what happens today. And we call that, what we, we call that, you know, old age. We call it going back to your youth in certain, certain ways.

So, and it even goes to, to sex, to people. For some people it’s athletics. They want to get involved in something else. And there’s many, many things like this. For some people it’s, it’s, it’s a drink. For some people it’s dope. And others, people who get into their little box and it falls apart and they kill themselves. Suicide. All of these things, yeah, are midlife crisis, okay? You just go through them and if you don’t know, if you don’t deal with them correctly, all they’re going to do is eat you alive. Well, that’s the ancient time, all right? But in reality, hopefully they have a face to face with reality and, and get out of their box.

But whatever the little box is, they put everything into that little box. And if that little box goes, that’s the end of their life. And in a lot of you, a lot of ways that’s what some of you think as well. So the man had a little box. His little box was prestige and status. All he had left was his name as a jailer and the fact that he had some honor because he was commissioned by Rome to occupy the jail. In the midst of this little account, do you know what happened to his jail? By the way, if you read this passage, you’ll.

You’ll figure out that it fell apart. All the doors flew open, the chains fell off the prisoners, the stocks were separated, and every prisoner was loosed. And you know what the man decided to do was to kill himself. Why? Because his little box had been broken. Now, back then, if. If a jailer had an escaped prisoner, by Roman law, they were executed. So he knew, based upon this earthquake, he knew that what was going to happen to him was he was going to be executed by no fault of his own, Because if all of his prisoners got away, he lost it.

And no matter how he tried to wiggle around and call it an earthquake, somebody would have blamed him anyway. And there wasn’t anything to do but draw a sword and kill himself because he had nothing to live for, because he was going to get executed. So that’s exactly the way it is in our society today. They reduce life to some kind of simple commodity that they can stick their hopes in. Okay, might be gardening. It could be woodcrafts. It could be, you know, a lot of things that you basically begin to. To deal with to reduce your life to some commodity that you can put all your hopes in.

Or maybe they ran so fast around in their little box, they didn’t realize that they didn’t have anything to live for. But they’ve got to escape somehow. All right? That’s the condition. So we can. We can interpret what the jailer is going through in our own personal life, all right? We can. We put ourselves in a box. We worship our little box. We put our hopes in that little box instead of in Christ and all of the blessings that he has, Ephesians 1:3, that he’s given us. So we. We, as I said, if you have issues, go look in the mirror.

We do it ourselves. Well, and this man, like many of us, had no answers. He had no escape. And he came to the biggest crisis in his life up to this point, and the only thing left to do was kill himself. Now, there’s many ways to kill yourself, all right? You don’t need to take a gun or a sword or a knife or drugs or anything else. You can kill yourself with your Mind. But instead of killing himself, God had something else in mind for him. And you know what he did? He just fell down at the feet of Paul and Silas.

And he asked the right question. What do I do to be saved? How do I get out of this mess of having my little box broken? Where do I turn to get rid of my fears? Anxiety, loneliness, meaningless life and the fear of death and all of this? Well, let’s just go over those things. In Revelation, we’re going to begin to look at the church churches again. And in the end of every letter of the to those seven churches, it talks about the overcomer. And when we studied, when we started Revelation the first time, before we jumped out to Ephesians so that you could actually look at yourself in regard to your individual Christian life, we had articles on overcoming.

How do you do that? Well, that’s exactly what this Jello represents to us. We have all of our issues today and we need to figure out what those issues are and then look to Scripture in regards to how do we overcome them. Say, because the answer is pretty, pretty easy. It says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you’ll be delivered not only you, but anybody else in your house who believes. Now that’s the main pass message of this passage. This whole thing is about overcoming the church, overcoming all of the issues that a church goes through.

Now you’re the church, so it’s all of your issues. It has to be because it’s the main message of Christianity every day you have to overcome the mindset is to overcome. The basis of the foundation for that mindset is your relationship with Jesus Christ. How do you do that is through. You get that through sanctification, wisdom and knowledge of Scripture. And you apply that individually from an Ephesians 4, chapters 4, 5 and 6. So that basically you positioned yourself to allow Jesus Christ to overcome whatever issues you may have. That’s really the blueprint of this. So this, this discipleship team was made up of four men that we learned about.

It was Paul, Silas, Luke and Timothy. John, Mark and Barnabas had split off to its own team that would later come back and reunite with Paul. They would actually come to come to an understanding and they would reunite together. But this team was made up of four individuals and it was hard to beat that kind of grouping. Now this, these men are, are their own little group. They have arrived at Philippi, which is the beachhead, into Europe. So what is, what’s gone on? We have moved from Greece, Greek territory, Asia Minor, into Europe. Now as a, as A second leg in regards to spreading of the gospel around the world.

So the gospel had landed in Europe. And the first thing, God directed them down by the riverside, if you recall. And they met some women there, some women who were worshiping the true God. Why was that? Because he didn’t have enough men to create a synagogue. If you call, remember that history from the last two weeks. So they had no, they didn’t have enough men to create a synagogue. So the women were meeting by the riverside at Gangats river. And they were, they were praying. And so Paul and his entourage went to the river and God directed them to these women.

And the one woman in particular by the name of Lydia. Now God opened Lydia’s heart and she was saved and her whole household was saved. And if you recall, she invited everybody into her house to, to not only fellowship, but to stay a while. You’re, you’re, you’re supposed to be hospitable and you’re supposed to offer hospitality to your brethren. So, and, and you know what happens immediately when God begins to work, Satan begins a counter work. All right, that’s the church. All right. Now if you recall, when Satan lost the battle with Jesus Christ, he immediately turned to the church.

When the mystery of the church was disclosed through Paul, and Satan immediately went after the church. So immediately they ran into another woman, right? This was the woman that was possessed. And in verses 16 through 18, it records that little incident which we talked about last time. And she followed Paul around and she did what Satan loves to do. She began to infiltrate not Paul, but the church that Paul was ministering to. She said, oh, they’re telling you the truth. You ought to believe them. And so what was Satan doing agreeing with what Paul was doing? Well, he does that.

Remember, he gives you half truth. So he’s going to give you enough truth to get you to come to his way of thinking. So Satan will agree long enough to get into the organization are you, and to be accepted as part of that same system. And then he’ll begin to do what he wants to do. He’ll redirect the playing field. And so Paul didn’t like this kind of agreement. So in verse 18, he just turned around and didn’t even talk to the girl. He just talked to the spirit in her. He said, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ, come out of her.

And the spirit came out at that same hour. Now, the two women who we’ve met in the last two weeks, one liberated and one enslaved, the enslaved lady became free and you Might ask, what is the reaction to all of that? Well, the reaction was very typical for these kinds of people. Look at verse 19, self assessment here. And when her master saw that her, the hope of their gains were gone, they caught Paul and Silas, drew them into the marketplace under the rulers. And it becomes very interesting to see the play that Satan uses in rulership to persecute the teachers of the gospel.

Why is that important? Because if you’re doing that, if you’re ministering to others and teaching the gospel, you’re going to come, go through the same process. Playbook’s the same, different tool sets, but the playbook’s the same. So the reaction was negative on the part of the guys who were using this girl to make money. Now the reaction sets up what happens in verses 19 through 40. Satan’s infiltration plan failed because Paul just cast out the demon. Now if Satan can’t, can’t infiltrate, he’s got another alternative. By the way, it never works, but he does it anyway.

He does his playbook. And if you, if you study the scripture in detail, you will understand his playbook and you will see what’s coming into your life. Because the playbook never changes. It’s called persecution. Infiltration works. Persecution doesn’t. So what happens when the church gets persecuted? It grows, right? We only grow when we are have an issue. You don’t grow up and things are going okay. Your mind doesn’t work that way. You see, the blood of the martyrs has always been the seed of the church. That’s what Christ told the disciples, by the way. But Satan’s so up tight about the church, he can’t resist whacking away at it even though he, he knows it’s not going to work.

There’s a great principle here. You can see it over and over in the book of Acts about the church. Now this is not you as an individual. This is you as the church. Okay, we’ve already, we’ve already broken that those two components down. Persecution always results in blessing. You persecute the church in chapter four and what do they do? They multiply. You come back and persecute the church in chapter five and what do they do? They multiply. As if it’s not enough, Satan comes back and persecutes church over and over and over again. What is Christ, what is Christ doing? He’s using Satan to grow the church.

In chapter eight. What happened? Well, the church scattered. Oh, what is, what’s. The Great commission goes throughout the world. This is how God did it. He Scattered the church in order to move the gospel throughout the world. They went everywhere and they multiplied. So persecution brings blessings. Infiltration is what destroys. We talked about this some time back, and I said you need to rejoice at persecution, okay? If you’re, if you’re not seeing persecution in your life, you’re not growing, okay? You’re now complicit. You’re now, you know what, you’re in a situation that you’re doing no good for the kingdom.

See, that’s why in all these people walking around talking about this is such a great day for the church and so forth and so on. This is probably a time when Satan is. Is as active as he’s ever been. Because we’re not under persecution, which really, which really causes us to grow. We’re under the presses of infiltration, which is Satan’s subtle and effective work. If he can infiltrate your life now, he’s not possessing you, okay? That’s not what we’re talking about. He’s infiltrating your process of your life. And in that, he’s going to win. How does that happen? You open the door.

You want persecution. You don’t want infiltration. Strategy. Lay out your plans to be persecuted. When you do that, you now have a defense mechanism in place to not allow the infiltration to occur. God overwhelmed infiltration in the case of the Maid, and he’s about to overwhelm persecution. And we’re going to see how it works out here. Now we’re going to look at five feature sets and I put a. This is probably the first time I’ve done this. I put a little outline together for me in, in regards to this. So the question is, how do we turn persecution into production? Okay, here’s your defense.

If you seek strategy of persecution without infiltration, you’re going to grow and you’re going to be productive. So what is the process or what are the steps or what’s going to happen to bring about a positive result from a negative situation? Well, there are five things. See, Suffering, persecution led to singing praises, which led to preaching salvation, which led to seeing production, which led to securing protection. And the cycle ran full. It was. It is a cyclical process. Start with the first point. Suffering persecution. Now this can get really exciting because as soon as you start to suffer, you’re going to start seeing something happen.

It’s inevitable in the book of Acts. Absolutely inevitable. If you structure your strategy in this way. Paul cast out the demon from the girl her master saw. The hope of their game was Gone. It hit them right in the wallet. So this girl was essentially doing what all the rest of those women, soothsayers, fortune tellers and palm readers all do. That, and they do today. No difference. She was making a fortune. Only. Only she had some agents who were taking in the gravy. She was just getting the residue. And it’s amazing to me that their reaction was what it was because it shows that they didn’t care about the girl.

They could have cared less about the girl in the fact they didn’t say, oh, she’s delivered from that devil. These guys must have been supernatural. Let’s find out about this. They said, oh, no, no, no, no, no. We lost our income. Now, you know, that is not so abnormal, by the way, if you go back to Mark, chapter five, when Jesus took a little boat across from the Sea of Galilee and came to the land of Gardas, there was a. A manic there. I mean, this guy was really a maniac. When he was about. When he was asked his what his name was, what did he say? Legion.

For we are many in that passage of scripture. More. He was infested. This guy was infested with a legion and demons. And he cut himself and he lived in the tombs. Cut himself. That’s a process of being infiltrated. You want to hurt yourself. You do not want to treat the body as the temple. You want to hurt yourself. Pains, everything. And he lived in the tombs, and they tried to bind him with things and he broke them. And women and children were panicked at the guy. I mean, you know, wouldn’t even go out of your house if this man was around.

He was a complete madman. Oh, think about society today. You want to walk down New York Street? How about. How about around Lake Michigan at night? Downtown Chicago. Oh, streets of Philadelphia in some parts. I would never go to South Dallas, by the way, or South Houston. I don’t know why the. The areas are all south. Oh, because why? Because they’re down, see? So you don’t want to go south anywhere, really. So this is not abnormal. Jesus came along and met the guy, by the way, in Mark 5 and cast all the demons out of him.

And the Bible says he was sitting at the feet of Jesus clothed in his Right mine. Right to mine. All right, now we’re going to get off on some point in all of this. We’re going to get to right and left brains here, all right? Because. Everything is based in your mind as hemispheres. Well, so are the process from the garden, if you recall the knowledge Knowledge base. So is the like the Sea of Galilee, it’s broken up into two identities, left and right brain. So you would say that people in town would say, oh, thank you, thank you, thank you for delivering us.

No, Jesus sent the demons out of him into what? A herd of pigs. Remember he that this, this person or the legion asked Jesus to put them into the pigs. Do you know why Christ couldn’t send him to hell yet? It’s because he didn’t have his glorified body. All right, he wasn’t glorified yet. So while he could cast things out, he could not put them where they needed to go because he had not done what he needed to do to get that set up. Remember that, that whole, this whole process that we live in today from the ability to go home, being able to cast out and move demonic spirits into hell as the apostles did, that we’ve learning in the, in the mystery of the return of the gods, all of that was set up based upon Jesus ascension so he could cast them out, but he couldn’t move them.

He cast them out and put them in the pigs. And what did they do? They ran right off the edge of the cliff, right into the sea and all drowned. While the pigs drowned. The demons didn’t. Okay, but these same demons were the demons of the nephilim, right? The fallen angels who impregnated daughters of men had Nephilim for 120 years, generation after generation after generation. So all of these demonic spirits, evil spirits, unclean spirits, these demons live in spirit waiting upon a host body, right? They have to have a host. So the pigs were their host until they drowned.

And now they were just roaming from place to place. So the reaction of the townspeople then, they didn’t come out and say you’ve healed the maniac. They said, get out of here, you killed our pigs income. You have killed our income. You need to go away and see, this is the crash response that’s typical today. Think about it. We just watched the documentary on Stonewall in that was that you can go into your own neighborhood societies today and see it in your face all the time. They didn’t care about the girl. They only cared about their game.

What’s our government doing worldwide? They don’t care about you. They care about their wallet. And how are you? How do you know that? Well, do you know that basically if they would just take all of the corrupted dollars out of this, we would have a not a balanced budget. We would be in the green. They stealing your money? The Bible is very explicit when it says that money can get into the way of spiritual perception. Remember, the governments are there to minister to you, not to rule over you, to minister to you. But they’re there in rulership.

So the Bible says for the love of money is the root of all evil. It doesn’t say to love money. It okay, you can’t. You can have none of it and love it. You can have a lot of it and not love it. It’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil. Christ did not make you poor. Christ did not tell you to live in slavery. What did he say? He says, I win at everything. And if I win at everything, you ought to win at everything. Why? Because we’re to be like Christ. All right? We get the blessings.

We got them before the foundation world. Why is it that we live in poverty? It’s a mindset. So he said that they would be rich, fall into temptation and snare and into many foolish hurtful lust which drawn men in destruction and loss. People get messed up because of money. And you guys know teaching for eight years on this aspect of your life, all right? We began hitting that square on the nose eight years ago. Listen to this. In Mark, chapter 10, verse 23, Jesus looked around about and said unto his disciples, with what difficulty shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God? Now, he had just talked to a real a rich young ruler, yet remember this story.

And the guy was not willing to say, if you want all of my money you can have wasn’t that he’d get saved by giving away his money. It was just the fact that it was obvious money was his God. And Jesus said, boy, well, if it’s so difficult for rich people to get saved, why, because they can’t get themselves out of the way? I want you to think about that. Think long and hard about yourself as things begin to happen in this world. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? See? And the disciples were astonished by his words in verse 24.

But Jesus answered again and said unto them, children. He liked to use the word when they didn’t understand what he was saying. Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God? Why did he ask? Because of his response. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. What is he saying? Who’s saying a camel can’t go to the eye of a needle and rich guys can’t go to heaven, all right, because their money is their God.

Now, you can speculate about it, but it must be a small camel or a big needle or whether the needle means a little gate, etc. You can apply it all kinds of ways. Narrow is the gate, wide is the road, you know? So what Jesus is saying is it’s hard for rich people to get saved. And you can say, why? All right, because money becomes such a God, such a dominating thing in their life. They were astonished out of the measure, saying among themselves, who then can be saved? And they didn’t like the answer that Jesus says, with men it’s impossible, but not with God.

For with God all things are possible. Now there are a few that’ll get saved because God can do miracles, enrich people’s lives. But the majority of the wealthy are the elites, which are what? The ones that are in the ruling class. Olivia, straight evilness, Self assessment, your own strategies. He said, this is. Jesus said, it’s harder for rich people to get saved. Now here were these guys making money like crazy off of this girl. All right, we’re getting. We get all of that foundational by coming back to this girl, all right, this girl that we talked about last week.

And they were so preoccupied with money as. As it relates to their pocket. So money is a tremendous chapter of your heart, a very large tremendous chapter of your heart. The majority of issues in relationships are caused by money. So you begin in your thought process to worry about how rich or how poor you are. Guys can’t tell me you did. Don’t think about that, all right? It’s like ever present on your brain. And in doing so, you’re falling into many hurtful snares. Just the thought about one of those two extremes will snare you in such a way that you erode your relationship with Jesus Christ.

In the 19th chapter of Acts, what happened at Ephesus? Paul was teaching there for three years. He turned that city inside out. You can imagine Paul’s teaching night and day for three years in the same town. If you think about that, do you think he’d have an effect on that town? Yeah, big, big in a big way. Ephesus was tremendously effective. All kinds of things were happening. People were getting healed and saved and demons cast out. And many believe first 18 many beloved confessed, showed their head deeds. And many of those who are who use magical arts brought their books together, burned them before all men.

They counted the price of them and found it 50,000 pieces of silver. So mly grew the word of God and prevailed. Do you know what reigned in Ephesus? The word of God dominated the city of Ephesus. Do you know what does to people who are in the idol making business? We’ll see what happens. Verse 23. At that time there arose no small stir. That’s putting it bodily, by the way, for a certain man named Dimitras, a silversmith who made silver shrines for Diana. Diana was the goddess over the temple of Diana that was erected in Ephesus.

They used to make these little silver shrines for Diana. Probably had a magnet on them. Think about that. And stuck it on the front of their chariot like you would stick it on the front of your refrigerator. But they bought no small gain unto the craftsmen. They were profitable items. And it says they called themselves the workmen of like occupation. He says, sirs, you know that by this craft we have our wealth. We made our money on these little statues. Moreover, you see in here that not alone in Ephesus, but all throughout Asia, this Paul. You can just see them getting uptight.

This Paul has persuaded and turned away many people saying that they are no gods which are made with hands. All right, let’s set a press. Let’s. Let’s set a foundational point here. God says work. God says if you work, you should get paid what you do. And he tells your master, your employer, all right, to pay what you’re worth. But you’re not to be working in areas that create idols. Think about that. Those of you who work in industries that tend to be associated with evil, you’re complicit. You’re working in areas of idol worship. They’re saying our little deals aren’t for real.

So that not only our craft is in danger to be set at naught, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be dis. Despised and her magnificent should be destroyed. Who? All Asia and the world worship. Money making businesses that create idol worship is exactly what this scripture is talking about today. And all of the dumb people is the crowd. In the crowd. I’ll say, oh, great is Diana of the Ephesians. And all the city was filled with confusion. Apply that to today. All right? Same conditions exist today. So let’s see what happened.

They hit them right in the wallet. See? Money, money, money, money. The Gospel messed up selling little idols. Let me say vested interest always reacts negative to the Gospel. And the same thing happened over here. If you go back to chapter 16, when this girl lost her lucrative capacities, then of course they got mad. They drew them into the marketplace, drew them Paul and Silas into the marketplace. During such a gentle word. The word literally means dragged by the hills in Greek. They dragged them in. Now that’s a switch for Paul. You go back to chapter eight, verse three, and you read that.

It’s what Paul did. He dragged Christians, all right? Remember, it says hauling them out of their houses, both men and women. That was what Paul was doing before the Damascus road. And you’ve heard what the Lord said to him after he was in Ananas’s house, after he had his vision. He said to Ananas, now you go tell him that he’s a chosen vessel and made to speak to the Gentiles. And also tell him, by the way, he’s going to suffer many things for my namesake. So Paul now was being treated as he would have treated the Christians.

He was being dragged by the hills and probably remembering how many times he had been doing the same thing. What does that teach you? Whatever you do in persecuting of others, you will get persecuted for it. In like manner, Treat others as you wish to be treated. That’s. That was a commandment, right? No, how you treat others is exactly how you’re going to get treated. Well, they dragged him away. You know how Paul spells persecution? Paul sees it as an opportunity. What did I say? You need to build persecution into your strategy, because that is your opportunity and it’s also your way of deterring infiltration.

So here came opportunity and they dragged him off. And it says they took him into the marketplace, agora in Greek, which is equivalent to the Latin word forum. That was a big center area, center, city center, with all of the senate houses, courts and temples in the place of public office. That’s where they took it. Everything was in this big agora in the Greek cities. The magistrates and the dignitaries congregated there and did whatever they do. So they, they brought him in verse 20 to the magistrates who brought him, the Romans, the men who lost their money from the removal of the demonic spirits from this girl.

Every Greek colony, Roman colony, in a Greek city given to these men. They ruled. Much like your mayors today. Remember, our whole, our whole governance system is based upon Roman law. So when you have, you have governors and you have mayors just like they did back then. So. And they rule their cities. Oh, you don’t believe it. Just look at Mandavi in New York. See what great job he’s doing. And so basically what we see here in chapter 18, verse 2, you can read about Claudius Caesar actually commanded all, all Jews to be thrown out of Rome.

Now, maybe the edict of Claudius which had been made reached Philippi. And so these people were just kind of picking up on that edict anyway and said these men being Jews and they cast out a terrible contempt toward Paul and Silas who were Jews. It’s a marvelous thing that God had just the right men who were, were the right nationality with the right citizenship and all the right background to do exactly what he wanted to do. There were juice which added to the contempt by the way, which added to the beating, which added to the jailing which resulted in a man’s conversion.

All planned by God. Your persecution gives you blessings. So their anti Semitism they haul these two guys in the first they had just cast this kind of contempt at them from the standpoint of their Jewishness which is interesting in itself. Then they go from there to this. They’re do exceedingly trouble in our city. Oh what trouble is that? They cast out a demon and hurt my pocket book. And the term exceedingly trouble means to throw into total disorder. These guys are just really throwing the city into chaos. These guys, Paul and Silas, they’re hitting evilness head on.

Now in a very technical sense, Paul and Silas were right. What, what does verse 21 say? They teach customs which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe. Being Romans. Well that’s a correct statement. According to Cicero and Tertullian and some other writings, the Romans had a law that no Roman could believe in or follow the teachings of any religion that had not been pre approved by the Senate. Okay? The church, Christianity. Do you see how the history of the church is being so p persecuted that it’s being put in a box? Because a point in time, after the apostles go, you now find that the Roman Catholic Church is taking order over religion.

Right? Why? Because they want to persecute Christianity. Think about history from this point forward. What happened? You got Constantinople, you got the Nicene Council, okay? Putting in the edicts in as to what Christians can do and not do. You’ve got the Inquisitions by the Roman Catholic Church. You’ve got the, the, the the makeup of Islam as a religion by the Roman Catholic Church funded by the Roman cat church. And their Quran was written by the Roman Catholic Church. To do what? To persecute Christians and Jews. See this is the foundation of your history. What we’re learning about right here.

This is how it comes to bear. All right, so the framework of a Roman government. They desired most of all that the people worship what the Emperor. What does your governments want you to worship today? Oh it’s in your face, lbgtq. Satan himself. Oh, Supreme Court did it, right? Took prayer out of school, legal abortion, same sex marriage. Do you not see how this is all the same thing that happened then? Might not. I mean, yeah, they had same sex marriage back then. They had homosexuality then they had a different way of, of abortion, but they did abort.

Okay, what did they do? They gave their babies sacrifice to mullet. All right, different way, but the same process. All right? Everything that is here today existed in ancient time, just different tool set. So nobody in Rome could worship anything that was not already pre approved by the set. So apart from that, they allowed certain worship in order to keep peace and pace in some of the lands that they had conquered. But nobody could worship in any way that was not approved by the Roman law and Roman Senate. So you get Christ coming on the scene, all right? And I, I have said that Christ is the most political figure that ever existed.

All right? Not only did, because it wasn’t his time to take rulership, okay? He didn’t come in this first coming to take rulership. It came to provide you the way home. So what Christ was doing was a really big new deal at this time. And all had not gone through the approval of the Senate, by the way. He didn’t care about the Senate. You want to take me? He says, you want to take me on? Take me on. And so they said they’re teaching things that are anti Roman and we have not allowed the people to believe them.

What’s your government doing to you? What your church is corresponding to the government who signed up to further the agenda? So you got to understand right there on the spot, you heard this term they had a kangaroo court. Do we not have kangaroo courts today? You, you ask me, why is this happening? Oh, we got the same court system as they had. It’s corrupt. It’s a mob scene. And at that time in history, a lynching was all it was. They executed everything. I want you to think about that. They executed everything. And in scriptures, capital punishment was a, was a, a law given by God to Moses and given by Christ to the church.

And what have we. What’s happened in society today? Everything is just pushed out. Oh, they’re actually letting them out of jail after they’ve done the deed. So the Senate blamed Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke of creating disorder throughout the town. And then they said it’s all because they’re teaching something that we have not allowed them to believe. So here comes the situation. Point one, suffering persecution. They got into this mess in the first place, by being bold. I said build persecution into your strategy. They got into this by being bold. Don’t ever restrict your boldness for fear of persecution.

That allows for infiltration. Persecution only translates your boldness into new opportunity. Remember Acts, chapter four? They preached, so they threw them in prison. And what did they do when they got into prison? They preached in the Sanhedrin. They sent them out and told them not to preach again. And he preached again. People got saved every time. They did it boldly. The law did what brought results. Your strategy, you need to be bold in your strategy which leads to persecution, removes the possibility of infiltration. And blessing is an opportunity is the outcome. Say Satan, he has to learn the dumbest thing you can do to a Christian is put him in prison.

Because the cross turns into what? The crown. And so here they are, the Romans are dragging them off first before they put them in jail. They’re. They’ve got something else that they want to do to them. Oh, yeah, now they have this little kangaroo court thing going on. There was no trial, there was no questioning, no inquisition, no hearing, nothing. Verse 22. The multitude rose up together against them. Now, somebody could do a terrific study on the multitude just throughout the Bible, that word multitude. I thought about that. Why did I think about that? Protests. Peaceful protests.

So great big gob of people, mindless, like a pot of water. Somebody sticks a fire under them and they boil it and haven’t got any idea what they’re doing. Oh, what’s going on in our system today? No different. You got paid protesters by oligarchs who want nothing more than control. You rule your life over what you do. Religion, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it’s happening today just like it happened then. So the multitude rose up together against them. Oh, can you imagine, like you saw in the documentary a couple weeks ago at Stonewallen, that the swelling of the crowd, the agitation, the grow, the, the, the, the commonality of a mindset to make complete chaos exist.

A model swirling around, screaming in your face. And what happened then? The magistrates came down, ripped off their clothes till they were naked and commanded them to be beaten. That’s what happened to Paul and Silas. Now, the mag magistrates had a group of guys that were the local police. They were called lectors. They’re a kind of policeman at that time in history, but synonymous with police today. They carried around for the purpose of punishment in these places where Greek people lived, like Apollo, rods wrapped together, they were like birch rods that were very, very hard. And they would wrap Them all together.

So you would have not one rod, but you would have a bundle of rods that actually you could put your hand around and hold it like a baseball bat. In the middle, they would insert an axe. And the axe was for the purpose of capital punishment when it was needed, And on despite if so chose by one of these lectors, they had the right to execute you right there. They didn’t need to go to a court. They didn’t need to go get a warrant. They didn’t. They had the right to execute you right there on the street.

So when they needed the axe, they laid the axis. When they didn’t need the axe, they laid the axe aside, take the bundle of rods, and just frail people with them. Well, that’s what they decided to do. To Paul and Silas, this was a Roman punishment. I want you to think what’s hidden today from you? What do you think’s going on in the streets? What do you think’s going on in those neighborhoods that you don’t travel in? And then what do you. What do you think’s going on in prisons around this world, Huh? Was beaten three times.

The rods are made out of birch wood. And we find this in 2nd Corinthians 11:25. Paul was beat three times by these Romans, one consecutive after another. It’s sort of fascinating thing to even conceive of this kind of a beating. And Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 11:23, he says, in stripes above measure, there were so many wounds inflicted by this mass of sticks fring away that you couldn’t count them. No trial, no nothing. They just laid many stripes. Verse 23. And not even being able to count them, Paul simply said, above measure, they threw them in prison after beating, charging the jailer to keep them safely.

And what happened when he received the charge? He thrust them into the inner prison. He was told to secure these people in a prison. Most secured area of the prison. We don’t want them out of there. So he put them in the inner dungeon. What did I tell you? They’re all dungeons. Put them in an inner dungeon and made their feet fast in stocks. In other words, they. They put shackles on their feet. In today’s language. Now, the jailer was just doing his job. There was no sympathy in him. He had seen prisoners before, dead, come and go.

He was an old, crusty character. They didn’t face him. He just chucked them into the inner dungeon. Dirty, filthy, dingy, unsanitary, gel. To make it worse, he put them in stocks. Think about early America, they used to put people in the street in shackles, remember head like and arms in wooden things like down in the street for people to come and mock and do whatever, you know, with your feet and your hands, which is bad enough. According to archaeology, the stocks that were used in those days had a series of holes that got wider and wider.

And the idea was to spread the legs of the individual so far as they could go in order to induce cramping. Okay, so let’s think about this. You got shackles on each foot, you got a bar that goes between those that you can actually move out. So you’re stretching the legs, okay, to the point where basically you’re putting individuals in serious pain. And so after all of the beating was done in this filthy dungeon where they were would be living in absolute filth, their legs were stretched to the extreme to induce cramping. That was excruciating persecution.

Now, already having been frailed by a bundle of heavy rides in the hands of the experts, their backs would have been in horrible plot, you know, just bloody. Sometimes these things caused internal hemorrhaging and almost always injury to organs. Smashed vertebrae, broken ribs, and very often death could occur. I want you to understand what’s going on in prisons today. They endured every bit of that. Then the aching, bleeding, limping men pushed into the dark cell, far from the light and far from the air, in solitary confinement, lice, rats, disease in infested 1st century gel. The prisoners were forced to exist in their own filth.

Their legs were slammed into shock stocks which cramped them. And that’s the way they had to exist when they were in jail. Think about it. And you say, but all of that just to preach, huh? You guys, you get yourselves in the message. You don’t calm down now, I’m quite sure some dear soul would have said that. Or Paul, you just go out there and you get in all of that trouble. Then you say, pray for me, pray for me. Why don’t you stay out of trouble? If you don’t get into those messages, you wouldn’t take so much of my prayer time.

I remember talking to a football scout and refereeing a college game after the game and he was, he wanted, he was watching a running back and he commented on the running back by saying that he’s reckless. And he says this was a game to be played better in recklessness. Well, I thought about that this week as I was thinking about this discussion. I’m going to tell you something. Being effective in the Lord’s work, you Better have abandonment to the cause. Recklessness. Take no thought for yourself. You just cast yourself into the melee, present Christ, and let it all fly.

And it will. Boldness. Boldness. Most of us are going to go through this carefully, very carefully, through this evangelism thing. Why? Because you don’t want to offend anybody another term. You don’t want to upset the apple cart. Well, the Gospel’s supposed to upset the apple cart. And if you’re going to be bold, you might as well be bold. Be reckless. I didn’t say do things stupid. Reckless is just an adjective to associate with boldness. Well, they did what they knew was right to do, and they suffered for it. But that didn’t bother Paul. Can you imagine? Paul’s getting up in age, and now he’s beaten three times, he’s put in prison.

He’s going through all kinds of hell. And pretty much, he lived his life in and out of prison. He wrote a letter back to the same Philippines, Philippians, I’m sorry. And he said in Philippians 1:12, he said, Brethren, the things which happened to me have fallen out unto the furtherance of the Gospel. He says, I’m in jail again, but, boy, it’s terrific. But persecution was opportunity. And at the end of the letter, he says, all the saints greet you, chiefly that are of Caesar’s household. Do you know what he was doing in prison? He was winning the soldiers to Jesus Christ.

He was using the opportunity in persecution to grow. You know, scripture and some teaching says that. That Paul was chained to soldiers. But I think in reality, when you look at the narrative of what Paul was doing, I think it was the other way around. God selected a soldier to be chained to Paul, to listen to what Paul has to say. Philippians 2:17. He says, if. If I be offered on the surface, if I be offered up on the sacrifice in service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with all, with you all. He said, you, dear Philippians, if I died on your behalf, I’d be happy.

And that’s just about what he was doing in this prison at Philippi. But see, that’s how he saw his ministry strategy. That’s how he saw his ministry. He was reckless because he was expendable. He had nothing to fear. He wasn’t seeking to protect himself at all. So he cast himself into it. And he says, I even bear on my body the marks of Jesus Christ. He got a certain glory and joy out of receiving wounds that were meant to Jesus Christ. When he got to stand in Christ’s place. And so Paul’s real ministry began with suffering persecution.

And that’s just what set it in motion. The second thing that happened after suffering persecution led to singing praises in everything. Give thanks, good or bad. See, the way to handle persecution is a change of attitude. Now, I don’t know if any of us, any of you have ever had yourselves beaten with any type of rod or whatever. And none of you have ever been in an inner prison like that, I don’t think. And probably none of you have ever had your feet in stocks. So I don’t know that we have ever suffered anything that could even begin to relate to Paul.

But you got to see the attitude of these guys in the midst of all of this suffering dream. It’s overwhelming. Look at verse 25. And at midnight. And you know what happened? They couldn’t sleep. Well, number one, could you sleep in those circumstances? I don’t think I could. But at midnight, Paul and Silas prayed. They just talked to God for a while. And then Scripture says and sang praises unto God. And the prisoners heard them. They wanted the prisoners to hear them because they wanted to be a witness for Jesus Christ. Boldness you must. You might ask, what did they sing? I don’t know what they said.

Scripture didn’t tell us, but it was praises. It says that they sang praises. Maybe they sang Psalms 113, 118. Maybe they sang some wonderful hymns that somebody had gotten together in the early years of the church. I don’t know what they sang, but the scripture says they sang praises to God. Well, you might ask, what are they going to praise him for? Well, this is just where everybody gets mixed up in the Christian life. You say, how could they praise God in this situation? On what basis could they praise God? Well, simply this. God never changes.

He’s the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. God never changes. If God is worth praising right now, he’s worth praising any moment. Oh, but you might say, oh, if you knew my trouble. See, praising God has nothing to do with your trouble. Paul said in Philippians 4. 4, Rejoice in the what? In the Lord. He didn’t say, rejoice in your circumstances. I know I can’t rejoice in my circumstances. Paul didn’t do that himself either. He said, I have continually sorrow and heaviness of heart. You say, God, I don’t know what this is all about, and it sure hurts.

And it cramps my style and hurts in the front and my back’s killing me. But I know you’re on the throne and I love you and I praise you for what you’re doing. See, a Christian is defeated. He’s dead. When he begins to focus on his problems and not on Jesus Christ. I want you to get that. When you get your eyes off of God, you have a problem. Habakkuk did that. What was the back his problem? He couldn’t understand his problem. Oh, many like you, you could. You know, I don’t understand why this happened to me.

Habakkuk finally said, forget the problem, God. I’m going to talk about you. He felt so good. He said, God, if the whole world goes crazy, I’m going to keep praising you. Now, I don’t know anything about the problem. I can’t figure out the answer. But I know you’re there. I know who you are, and I know what you are, and I know you’re consistent. See, to know who you are means that you know who Christ is. Christians sometimes say we’re having this problem. And they question, where’s God in all this? What’s happening to my life? Why has God forsaken me.

As God? Oh, you know what they’re really doing? They’re ringing around circumstance after circumstance after circumstance. They got a big old telescope looking for all the circumstances instead of having a narrow eye, focus on the Scripture. God hasn’t changed. Oh, it’s required to be patient and wait. Why? Because God is perfecting you. And God is about to unfold some fantastic ministry in your life. And so they’re there singing away in pain. That’s unbearable. And singing praises. They’re not singing the old, nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. They’re singing praises to God. So you got to be above your circumstances now, right, to do that? Listen, guys, you got to get a grip on who God is.

I said that if you. If and what he wants to do with you, you’re not going to know what he wants to do with you until you know who Christ is. Because then you understand who’s in control. And it’s only after you suffered a while that he was going to make you perfect. That’s first Peter. Now, if you’ll only realize what Romans 8:28 says. Okay, what does it say? And we know that all things work together. For what? For good. For good. We all read it and recite it, memorize it, and we just don’t believe it.

You know what Jesus says in John 16? He’s talking to his disciples, and he knew that he was going to be leaving soon and it was going to be rough on them because he was not going to be there. And he says, you’re going to have some sorrow, but your sorrow shall turn into your joy. And then he said, it’s like a woman who has a baby. It is the same pain that makes her cry, that makes her laugh when the baby is born. It’s not that these are bad circumstances and later I’ll get good ones.

No, it’s the same bad ones that cause the pain, that will in issue the joy. You must be persecuted if you’re following Jesus Christ. Is it perhaps. Children that’s born out of the pain that causes the mother’s such joy? They’re just there, they’re in the labor pains now. They’re waiting for the child to be born. They’re praising God for what’s going to happen and for the fact that God hasn’t changed. Listen, the Christian life depends upon your knowledge of God. You need to get it all right. We’re moving past your individual self and applications of Ephesians 4, 5 and 6 into the church, which the church rolls into.

Revelation in times doesn’t talk about you individually. It applies to your attitude and your application of the principles. But in revelation it’s talking about the church, the collective whole. You can base your whole Christian life and your whole Christian attitude on who you really believe is God. That’s up to you. Solely yours. When you understand that God does not change. And that’s why I’ve said over and over again that the Jesus movements that bother me because they end up in a kind of sentimental humanism that is, that’s the basis of the church today. That is why I, I, I talk to you guys so much about this corporate religion.

And the Holy Spirit movements bother me because they end up in kind of an emotionalism. That’s why I like God movements. Because then you get things in perspective. You got to know who God is in order to know who you are. And when you understand who God is, then you’ve got everything else in perspective. Your attitude is right. You now have a renewed what mind and you think things differently. God doesn’t change. Well, Paul and Silas never let their problems alter their theology. That’s an important one. Most people’s theology comes from their own situations. You build your theology based upon what? How you want your life to be.

You want your life to be. See, I don’t know if God can do to provide you that situation where you can just build your own theology. I don’t think you can do that. Okay? Because he didn’t. And you know, a lot of people today just organize God around their own circumstances instead of allowing God to direct their circumstances. So Paul and Silas were suffering purposely and they knew it. Build it in your strategy, your life’s goals, your strategies should be based upon persecution. They were just sitting there singing away, waiting for God to do what he was going to do.

Now God didn’t allow them to wait too long in this process. Things began by scripture that to happen real fast. Ephesians 5:18. Be filled with the Holy Spirit. Then you will speak to yourselves in psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord that comes out of the spirit control life. If somebody is not a happy person, they’re not spirit filled. When I meet miserable people, I try not to be so bold. But I say, you got a problem and your problem isn’t your miseries. Your problem is, is the fact that you’re not really living a spirit control life because the spirit gives a song joyful heart.

You can tell if somebody’s living in the spirit, they’re joyful. And it doesn’t matter what’s happening. When you’re spirit filled, you’re going to have problems. It’s just the glory of being able to go through them knowing that you have victory over them. You’re not going to succumb to that. Second Corinthians 4, 8. We get a little insight into Paul’s heart. He says this. We’re troubled on every side and not distressed. We are perplexed, but not in despair. What he’s saying is we have problems, but they never get us down. They never take charge of us. We’re persecuted, but not forsaken.

And the next phrase. And, and Philip says we’re knocked down but never knocked out. Well, you might ask the question, how can you handle that like Paul? Well, he says in verse 16, for we don’t faint. We don’t say, oh, you know, we don’t fall under this thing. Now. Our outward man is perishing, but our inward man is renewed every day. We’re plugged in, we’re tuned up, we’re on the right frequency. To the inside supply. What happens on the outside is completely immaterial, Except when you get stung by bees. I’ve been stung by bees this week four times.

And it’s not like they’re coming at me and stinging me. They’re, they’re, they go and grab inside my shirt and then they go to, hey. They go all over the place. Always stood like this. He always had this. He said, he knew this guy. Very frustrating. I don’t know why I brought that up. Sorry about that. It was so bad that I. I felt the last one. Stunning right here. And I reached in and I got it and I threw it across the room. And then I couldn’t find it to go kill it, so. Oh, my gosh.

I’m gonna let this thing loosen the house and he’s going to come back and get. That’s what I thought. Anyway. Let’s finish this up. So Paul says our light affliction is only for a moment, and it works for us. A far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Now, here’s our secret in all this, and we’re going to close with this today. We look not at the things that are seen. Remember, your physical eyes can only look at physical things, but at the things which are not seen. That is what you’re supposed to be looking at.

You’re supposed to be looking at the things above, not the things of the earth. And that more and more of the wisdom. God’s wisdom and revelation will open your spiritual eyes. We’re to be looking eternally, not external. You know who he looked at in his problems? Paul. He looked at the eternal God. That’s who he looked at. See, that’s the key. Your focus on the Spirit and who God is is your main focus of life. Ephesians 4, 5 and 6, Acts, starting in verse, chapter 15, all the way through 28 and then the Epistles. You get your mind on the Spirit and on who God is and not on what you create as your circumstance.

When you do that, now you have the right perspective. And it’s that right perspective that gives you the right mind, that gives you the attitude adjustment that you need to seek out the daily renewing of salvation. Every day, a continuous thing. We talked about that. You got salvation past, salvation present, salvation future. Salvation present is a daily cleansing that you need to do in your heart. That is your sanctification. And that’s where your mind needs to be. That’s the only perspective that’s going to give you success. That’s the only perspective that is going to give you a fruitful life.

Everything else is immaterial. Self assessment. We’re going to stop here. Self assessment. Where yet? Where yet? I’m going to close there. Not going to. We’ll get into the others next week. So. Questions? Comments? Yeah. Victoria, Good morning. Hi. I am. I don’t know how to start, but my journey with the sanctification is. Is moving along nicely. And the desires of the heart. And I think you touch on this a bit. Have. Have changed. I believe I started off like, oh, physically. Okay, physically. You know, just for example, where do I really want to live? For example, not happy in my spot.

And. But as I read the scriptures, like even with Psalm I think 37, 5, you know, commit to the Lord and trust him and he shall bring things to pass. Another one on 37, four. I think 37 is amazing. Take delight in the Lord. He’ll give you desires of your heart. So as we move along, I’m always wondering, is this a desire of God’s giving me, or is this a desire for me? So then I go into the idea, well, the desires are. Hello, can you hear me? Yeah. So can you just touch on that a bit? He.

He provides a different type of desire, correct? Well, I don’t know how many. Like, this is the meeting. Remember, remember the calling process. Your desire of a desire in your heart formulated by God is a calling. Everything that happens in your life in this physical world is a calling of whatever it is. A desire moving you in a specific direction. That means that God’s calling you to move in that direction. So when you follow scripture, you test the spirits and you’re called, you respond and you get third party validation of the calling. So if you’re moving ahead of the process of understanding, everything in your life is a calling.

If it’s coming from God. Well, matter of fact, everything in your life is a calling. It’s a matter of the source. What source is calling you? That’s. That’s the reason why you have to test the spirits. And if God is the one that’s doing the calling and you pos, you positively respond, there will be a third party confirmation. That’s how Cohen’s work. Plan is a plan is a plan. Process is a process is a process. It doesn’t change. So when you look at yourself and you’re saying, oh, is this is really what happening to me? You need to understand that if it is by God, he will do the calling one way.

That’s it. And you’ll get confirmation. Does that answer your question? Yeah, I. I think so. You just have to be aware of who’s calling. I guess it’s all. It goes back down to obedience. If I’m hearing something, is it. Is it like you said, test of spirits? I guess I’m already, already doing that, getting better at it. So, yeah. Thank you. Uhhuh. Anything else? Guys, It’s Barb here. Can you hear me, Jim? Yes, Kim. Okay, great. I have to get my headphones off. So you had mentioned earlier, you mentioned the left brain and the right brain hemispheres.

So in all of this today and in everything in our life, then we have to get out of the left brain thinking, which is the flesh, our ego and all that, and move more towards the right brain thinking, and we’re more in our left brain because that’s up the world. And our right brain is basically the spiritual aspect of where we find God. Does that make sense? Yep. Okay. The Sea of Galilee is split between two brains. And I. I want to get into Galatians in. In a big way because it. It adds to the church by looking at the two sides of the see of Galilee.

One is right brain and the other one’s left. And there’s a particular narrative that is in Galatians that gives you that storyline that actually says. Barbara, just what you said. Okay, thank you. I find it fascinating about mapping the body onto the land, the geographical. I just think God is so brilliant. Oh, my goodness. So brilliant. Thank you. I was right, by the way. I was writing more on. On Substack, getting. Getting ahead of all of this a little bit at the end of April, but I was. I was fascinated. Again, I get when I go through Genesis, it’s like I.

I just wish I could just stay in Genesis for a long time. But it’s fascinating to look at the garden and the makeup of the. The two hemispheres, the four rivers, which is the four components of your brain and. And the interaction between them. Just like what you said. Everything is. Everything in your body can be mapped in this world geographically. It’s so amazing. What else, guys, is equal? Chapter three, you’re talking. Okay. I was studying that the other day. All right, thank you. Yeah. When the story is about an individual that is moved from the left brain to the right brain.

Right. And it’s mine. Left mind to the right mind. And it deals with a deep, deep, deep study. It deals with homosexuality. And. And fascinating narrative when you get down into the depths of it. The whole Bible is actually about your left brain and your right brain. It’s two systems. It’s. Yeah, it blows my mind. It’s two systems. That’s all it is. It talks about two sisters, evil and goodness, and your body is met that way. Why is it that the left is labeled liberalism and the right is labeled conservatism? Why is that everything in this world is based upon the knowledge of left and right? Oh, here’s another one.

It’s not about up and down. It’s always left and right. Another tidbit about the Bible. It’s always left, right? Not up and down. Why do you think that the comic people way back when had the two angels, one on one shoulder and one on the other shoulder and always the devil was on your left shoulder. Why is that now? Such that you know that they have to tell you everything truth about this world. They’re doing it in such a way that you just gloss over it and say, well, okay, they do it in the flesh and not in the Spirit.

And because we don’t know who we are, we just watch it and think entertainment. We. The messages are clearly there. It’s just that we don’t know our. Who we are on both sides, right? Yeah, but. And the entire new age and quote, unquote, whatever it is, is all based on the left hand path. And they say everything, you know, receive from the left, give from the right. It’s all backwards. All backwards, Yep. Anything else, guys? Let’s pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for an opportunity to get back into your scriptures. It’s always a.

It’s always a unique and pleasurable activity that we go through and understanding your word, understanding the truth, how it applies to us, both in body functioning as well as in spirit, control mind, being filled with the spirit and all the things that relate to that. Father, just thank you for continues to work with us in our sanctification process, understanding who you are, who God is, whose Christ is, so that we may again comprehend who we are in that. In that environment. Father, thank you for your son. Thank you for the death on the cross. Thank you for resurrection that we may have the way home.

Father, we ask that you just continue to bless this world. The leaders that are making changes in accordance to your plan, and those soldiers who are implementing, standing in harm’s way and implementing that plan. You with those families. We ask protection, we ask for guidance mainly we ask for your control. Be with us this week. As this world gets more crazy and as more disclosures are made and more of you revealing yourself to us, we give you all the praise and the glory and we just want to thank you. Ask these things in your son’s name.
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