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Recharge | The Global Church: Always Worth the Cost · Sermons | FBC Boerne

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Pastor Mark and team.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Happy Wednesday to your church family.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you recall on Wednesday nights, we've we've been walking through a series on the global church because I want us to.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: So last spring uh we looked at uh just uh the nature of church.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted us to think well about church.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um I wanted us to think deeply about the importance of what God calls us to as a church to be united together.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um but this semester uh I want to take that next step.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I want us to see and to think globally.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so we've been walking through the scripture and building a continual case that God's plan has always included the nations.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, ultimately, that plan unfolded in the coming of the Son, Jesus Christ, and the good news about him.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And last week we looked at the Jerusalem Council and the importance and the shift that that made in the global church, because now one of the key things is the gospel goes out.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: The gospel can go anywhere.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: It is not a requirement that to receive Jesus that you become Jewish in your customs and culture because the cultic aspect of worship, the uh the things that involve the temple and the cleanliness laws and uh of dietary and all of those things have been fully fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so now the gospel goes out.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: So today I want to pick up in Acts chapter 19, and I want us to talk about one of the most incredible scenes in the whole of Scripture, and that is the revival that breaks out in the city of Ephesus.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: A revival in the city of Ephesus.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's the stuff that pastors and missionaries dream about, and it's right there in your Bible in Acts chapter 19.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so let's begin with an account of Ephesus.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ephesus is the largest city in uh the province of Asia Minor in the Roman Empire.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it is a top city, a top five city in the whole of the Roman Empire.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: It has a port, it is massive for trade.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: They have a very large population for ancient cities, a quarter of a million people, which is very large for ancient cities.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And above all of that, above being a banking center, just an economic powerhouse, Ephesus was the center of the temple of Diana, or what your scripture calls Artemis.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: It goes back and forth between Diana and this temple was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh the goddess Diana, uh, some special things happened there in Ephesus, and this became the hub, right?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: People would travel from all over the Roman Empire to this temple.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, she was a fertility goddess, so think a lot of sexual stuff that goes into fertility and things that happened at the temple, okay?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's part of the uh Roman cultic worship of the gods, okay, along with a lot of magic arts, okay?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Black magic and spells that went along with that.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, Paul, he had been wanting to go to Ephesus, and he gets there on his third missionary journey.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he began as he usually did in the synagogue, and he would spend three months in the synagogue.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: He would go to the Jew first, but eventually, in almost every stop, the Jews would reject his ultimate message.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some would hear and get saved and respond, but in large part they would reject and they would push Paul out.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there was a Christian who got converted there in uh there in Ephesus, and he had a school that he would teach at.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he allowed Paul in the times that he wasn't teaching in his school, he would allow Paul to set up shop and to teach.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul did this and preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to the masses.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: People would flock to it, and Paul was able to do this over a two-year period of time.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And God allowed the Spirit of God to move in powerful, incredibly powerful ways during this time, uh, as God often does when there is no gospel witness, okay, where the gospel is going into an area for the very first time.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: It is often accompanied by powerful miracles.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so in this area, we see Paul is given an incredible gift to heal.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Paul's handkerchief is actually taken around and heals.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And there's been so much uh demonic activity, casting out of demons, that there's one particular episode that actually blows up and becomes citywide.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: There was a Jewish, I can't remember if he's a priest or something, but he decides that he's going to do an exorcism of a demon, and he he when he does it, he says, I adjure you, by the name of Jesus, of whom Paul preaches, come out of the man.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the demon responds, I know who Jesus is, and I've heard of Paul, but who are you?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then he attacks the man, okay, and beats him to a bloody pulp, and he runs through the city naked.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that account gets told time after time after time, and suddenly before long, what you actually see, there are incredible statements like in Ephesians 9 10.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: He says, And this continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Think about this.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And in verse 18, it says that there is confession and repentance, okay?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: That Christians are working through what it means to follow Jesus.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, there's this incredible scene where Christians have gone through their homes and they have collectively decided the Spirit of God has convicted them.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: They pick up those little black magic books, right, that can cast out spells that deal with all the things involving the temple worship, and they bring their books, and right there in the center of town, they have a book burning.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: They destroy them.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Think about this, because they don't sell them to anyone else, but they have a book burning.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Luke records the financial amount of books that were burned that day, and it's 50,000 pieces of silver.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, to translate that to you, one of those coins was a day's wages.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: 50,000 days' wages worth of all those books.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we read this, and I share this with you because I want you to be so encouraged, because I want you to see that at this point the church there in Ephesus is probably five to maybe even ten thousand people.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: It is causing such an uproar that it's going to have an economic impact because of tourism.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone travels to Ephesus.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: But but the locals, there's been such a change, there's been such a flip to a worshiping of Jesus, and we don't worship Diana or Artemis anymore.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need your trinkets or any of that stuff.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: That the silversmiths are going to rise up because the economic impact, because the gospel of Jesus Christ, has overtaken one of the largest cities in the world in a massive revival.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I share that with you because I want you to be so encouraged and blown away at the power of the gospel to save.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Those that you think are the furthest away, in the darkest setting, the most tied financially to the darkness, all of it.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that is where the most important revival breaks out in the early church.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a first point.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to see that.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Second one, I want you to understand it comes at a great cost.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: It always does.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: It always comes at a great cost.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let me read for you out of 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 8 and 9.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can put this on the screen for me.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is while Paul is in Ephesus.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: He says, For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, about our affliction which came upon us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Paul will later write to the Ephesians, remember Ephesians chapter 6?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Put on the full armor of God.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because our battle is not against flesh and blood, it is against principalities of darkness.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you understand?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: You have to put on God's armor.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you understand that everything that you see in front of you, like it is the Lord's battle.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul had to learn this.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think this revival and those demons left willingly and easily?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, Paul, the one who was stoned and thought dead, the one who received five lashes 39 times from the Jews, the one who was shipwrecked, the one who had endured more suffering than you and I would ever even imagine, said, at this season he despaired of life itself.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: And his only hope was the resurrection from the dead.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was his only hope.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I share that with us simply because it always comes with a cost.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: The way of the cross is take up your cross and follow me.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's always worth it.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's always life and victory and goodness, but there's always a cost.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: So here we are unfolding the greatness that the gospel goes out to anyone, anywhere, can hear the good news of Jesus.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we are called to go.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: You, I mean, even you, Andy, even you, you're called to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's our calling.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's magnificent, it's the greatest truth.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: What could be better?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: But do not be surprised, friends.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: It always comes with a cost.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is life, it is goodness.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Do you not think the enemy is going to fight back and attack and all of those things?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it is always worth it.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: It is always worth it.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Will you pray with me?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: I thank you for Paul's example.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: I thank you for a revival.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: That is the hope of our nation.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: We want our nation to turn to you in masses and passion, especially the youngest generation.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we are filled with so much anxiousness and addiction and so many problems and issues, Father, that we need a breakthrough of your spirit.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: You are the only thing that can set us right, and that is to be able to see you with clarity, King Jesus.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Father, I pray for boldness for us as believers to preach the gospel everywhere that we go.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: And Father, I pray that we have strength and perseverance to endure the opposition when it comes because it will, because our battle is not against flesh and blood, it is against the principalities and forces that are against you.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: But King Jesus, you have won.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: You have overcome the grave, you have overcome the enemy, and you reign above it all.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: You are our hope and trust.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: God bless you guys.