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Recharge | The Global Church: St. Patrick · Sermons | FBC Boerne

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to see you all.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: You guys get me again.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Lucky you.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: We have another history lesson.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I gotta cheer.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: We got another history lesson tonight.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, we can keep you awake and uh give you some exciting things.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: So tonight we're gonna talk about a character from history that you're probably all familiar with in some form.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever been pinched on March the 17th on St.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Paddy's Day, because you weren't wearing green, then you inadvertently were celebrating this guy's life and then death.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: He died on March 17th.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Shamrock Sheik, the Green River of Chicago.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's all kinds of fun things we could talk about for St.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Paddy's Day.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to tell you it's a real person, and it's actually a remarkable story.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And some of the things that come out in the story that I think you'll enjoy is it happens last week we ended about 380 AD when there was a guy who uh who was named uh Theodosus I.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: He was an emperor, and what he did is he and this his co-emperors decided that Christianity would be the official religion of the Roman Empire.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And in that day, Christianity changed fundamentally.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mentioned it last week uh because what happened is this most powerful empire on the planet now said being a Christian was the right way to live.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so imagine what happened overnight.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Christians went from being persecuted, from losing their things for being believers, people having to hold on tight to their faith because it might cost them everything, to it then turning to become the faith of the rich and powerful.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So not only did Christianity go from being uh an opposition group within the empire, but it became popular.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine the difference when you're trying to share the gospel with somebody, or when people are considering whether they should follow Jesus and the whole empire is like, everybody's doing it, of course.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: You should.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Even the emperors themselves now are devoting themselves to God.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened is now the the very church that before had been underground and in secret in hidden places now gains power.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so they start erecting big, beautiful buildings.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've seen some of them.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Have you been to Istanbul, to the high Sophia?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the oldest churches on the planet, and it's incredible because it's 1500 years old.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's a mosque today, but you can look at this 1500-year-old church.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the oldest churches in the world there in Istanbul, and it's incredible the architecture, the mosaics, all the work that went into it, but it shows the difference between Christianity before Constantine and Christianity post-constantine.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now it has power.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: They erect these big, beautiful temples, and they're telling everyone if you love God, you're gonna come to the place of worship, and you're gonna give your resources and your funds.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now you have professional clergy, you've got people who are coming to seminary and they've got to learn Latin.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: For 1,500 years, if you didn't know Latin, you couldn't read the scriptures for yourself.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So this is this is kind of the climate.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: The whole church has changed.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to tell you about this guy.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: He was born in 385.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Five years after Christianity became the law of the land, this guy was born.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: His name was Patrick.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: He was born to a Christian family in the island of Britain.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Britain was conquered by the Romans, so at that time they were a Roman colony.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: His father was a deacon, and his godfather was a priest.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So they had been Christians for some time.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Even though Christianity was fairly recently the religion of the empire, it had been part of his family for a while.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: But in his own words, he said he was a wayward young man who loved to enjoy the fun things of the world and did not enjoy the church.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: But when he was 16 years old, he was with a group of friends and they were kidnapped by Irish raiders that took him aboard their ship and took him to the island of Ireland and sold them as slaves.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so for six years he was a shepherd on the on the island of Ireland as a slave.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: But as a slave, he said a couple of things.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: I want to read you a quote from his book.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: He said this after I had arrived in Ireland, I find myself pasturing the flocks daily.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I prayed a number of times each day.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: More and more the love and the fear of God came to me, and my faith grew, and my spirit was exercised until I was praying up to a hundred times every day and every night as often.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he would say that it was by natural revelation, it was by hanging out in the fields, under the rain, and in the in the outdoors, that he began to have this relationship with God.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the things he had learned from his father and grandfather came back to him, and he began to be very serious about his faith.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: So one night, six years after he'd been kidnapped, he had a dream, and in the dream he felt like God told him to flee from his captors and get to the coast, and there was a ship waiting on him.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: It took him ten days to flee across the land and end up at the coast, and there was sure enough a ship.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: The ship let him get on board and they took him all the way back home.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you think about the miraculous part of the story.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: He ends up back home, he takes his faith seriously, and he begins to go through some theological training.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And 26 years later, okay, he's 48 years old.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: I just want you to know the life expectancy in the fifth century when he was 47, when he was 46 years old, was 40 years old.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: So he's already an old man in his culture.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he had a what he called a Macedonian dream, like the Apostle Paul, where he saw an Irishman speaking in that Irish Celtic language, saying, come over here and bring us the hope of the gospel.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: So he said, I don't know how to do this.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he went and talked to the leadership of the church, and they decided to make him a bishop.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he became, this is why he's so important, he became the first bishop of the Catholic Roman Catholic Church to be sent out as a missionary.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the very first missionaries officially by the Roman Catholic Church is this 46-year-old former slave going to Ireland.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you, Ireland at that time had 150 tribes.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: They were known to be barbarians, they were wild people, they wore clothes that made them look like animals, and they were a messy place.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: But guess what?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: When he was there for six years, he knew the language.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: He learned the culture and the custom.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: So Patrick was uniquely positioned to take the gospel into that place.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you some really fun things about Celtics is at that time they were druids.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: So they had this really interesting relationship with the world, the physical world and the spiritual world.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you might think of all the Celtic crosses, it's a bunch of circles, they don't have any corners or edges, and uh they do everything in triads, everything is threes.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: So guess what?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: When he brought to them the gospel of the triune God, they were like, this is for us.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And they talked about this miraculous Jesus, they began to accept the gospel in ways that were shocking to the world.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: So listen to this.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: In the 40 years of his ministry, he died in his 80s, almost double the age of the regular person at the time.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: By the time St.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Patrick died on March 17th, around 461 AD, he had baptized over a hundred thousand Irish.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: 100,000?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: They think the population was maximum a half a million.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: So 20% of the population came to faith.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: 700 churches and ordained over a thousand ministers in those years.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Historical evidence now, they found over 6,000 churches with labels on them across the island of Ireland that date back to that time.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that probably wasn't in his lifetime, but closely afterwards it spread throughout the entire island.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Across Northern Europe, they have another 10,000 churches that claimed Celtic Christianity within a few hundred years of St.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Patrick.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Later on, around the thousand AD, there was an agreement before the Celtic uh between the Celtic Christians and the Catholic Christians, and all those churches became Roman Catholic.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so you kind of lost, we lost a lot of information on how widespread they were and how many people came to faith in this movement.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a couple things I want you to see in this.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: One is almost every time we see the movement of God in history, it's almost always from the fringe.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's very rarely from the center.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you rarely see the Pope saying, Hey, we need to find a guy to go to Ireland.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: What you have is a slave who came back and wanted to go, and God called him, and they said, Well, if you're gonna go, we're not gonna lose much.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Have a good time.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: We hope the best.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then God does this incredible thing.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's a book called How the Irish Save Civilization.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And in the book, they document all the different ways that the Irish prepared for the Viking raiders that came later and sacked all of Europe.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And some of the scrolls and some of the writings, some of our oldest Christian writings we have surviving, survived because they were in places in Ireland that the Vikings never went to.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, it's amazing how God prepared even our world today by using Patrick in that time in the way that he brought so much vibrancy and vitality to a place that God specifically and uniquely prepared.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: So think about this.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you would want to be captured as a slave to be your introduction to missionary life?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Could you imagine the disappointment, the frustration?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do you probably wonder, God, do you even care about me?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is like a Joseph story, right?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Where God literally took him from his family, put him in that place, and then later as an adult, uh, when you think about the love your neighbor as yourself or do good to your enemy, these are the kind of verses that come to mind when you think about this guy.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: He lived in a time when it wasn't safe to live in strange places, far from home, your life expectancy is low, and he poured his life into the very people that had kidnapped him.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And today we can talk about the incredible, incredible movement of God among the Celts.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: They became a powerful movement of the gospel for a long time to come.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I tell you the story because it's not just about clovers and wearing green on March 17th.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: It really is that we get to remember some of these people who live these extraordinary lives, to give us hope, to let us see that there is a way where we can give all that we are for all that God is, and He can do things we would never ask or imagine.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Just imagine the work itself of baptizing a hundred thousand people in your lifetime.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: The work of God among the Irish through the person of St.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Patrick is an incredible story.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And as we kind of wrap up, I want to tell you every single one of us serves the same God.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Jason talked about it this morning, right?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or this morning, this last Sunday, where you talked about one spirit and one body and one mission.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Guys, we're the same body.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: The same Jesus that was speaking to Patrick is the same Jesus that speaks to you and I day in and day out.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: You may not know, we have several of our members on mission right now.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: We have one of our members, Kelly Nelson, that's in Malawi, finishing up a 10-day mission trip.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's been hard.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: When she landed on the ground a few days ago, they didn't have any fuel in the city.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And they've been struggling just to get back and forth from some of the places that she's been trying to go.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And she sent out a prayer yesterday saying, hey, this fuel thing, she sent videos of the miles-long lines at every one of the gas stations asking us to pray.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: We have two, two of our members that are on the Amazon River today in uh in Peru.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Micah Upton and uh and Kelsey Jett.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: They've been there for almost a week now.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: They've been, the the water is so low that they've had to hike.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: They've had to get out of the boat and hike to some of the villages because there's not enough water to get the boats uh where they need to go.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And what's that?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Lord help them! They're doing great.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're doing great.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Every time they get Wi-Fi, we get a message.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and so we're excited to see how God continues to move and work among them.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a team, you guys know, leaving on Friday, going to the Republic of Georgia.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's one of the oldest places on the planet.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's the coolest little little country in the world.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh they're gonna be serving, caring for, specifically training women, women, women leaders there, how to multiply, how to make disciples among the women's groups.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: We've done this with guys' groups for a long time.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is our first group going specifically to focus on training women to make disciples among the women.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: So pray for them.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: We never know what the impact is gonna be.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: We really never know what it is that God's calling us to do.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I promise you, the day that Patrick was kidnapped, he had no idea what God had in store for him.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And yet God took what was a very difficult time for him and used it in a way that only God can to make a difference in the world that we really can't imagine.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Hundred thousand baptisms, thousands of churches planted, and in an Ireland that at the time was full of barbarian tribes.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Guys, only in the economy of God's work can something like that happen.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I dare you to dream.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: I dare you to dream that God can use you in ways you don't imagine, and I dare you to step out in faith and ask him what he's calling you to do and take that first step towards it, and who knows what God might do with it.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna pray for those cut those family members, those uh members who are scattered around the world, the team that's going uh at the end of this week.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and as we close, let's just keep them in our mind, all right?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Lar Lord, we just come before you say so thankful for the chains of messengers and gospel leaders that have have linked one to another throughout the ages so that we could follow you.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: God, we don't know the names of every link in the chain that brings it to us today.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know what the people are who led others to Christ down through the ages, but we are so thankful that God that chain wasn't broken.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're so thankful that we're included in the family of God today, and we're so grateful for the many ages and eons of time that have come and people have followed you faithfully.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: God, we do thank you for the work of those like Patrick, who sought you in the middle of their despair, who, God, found you in the middle of that difficulty and found strength, found hope, found life and courage.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: We pray, God, that you would use us in the same way.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: We do pray, God, that you would be with Kelly and Malawi, her team, and the team that's moving around with her.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: God, we pray for Kelsey and Micah and the team that's with them on the Amazon.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: We pray that you would use them for your kingdom.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: God, we pray that you would open hearts to your word, that people would see them and bring you glory.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And God, we pray that you would use each and every one of us in the same way.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: We love you, and we praise you for your love and life and forgiveness.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: We pray, God, that we would bring you glory in Jesus, and we pray.