Latest / Teachings On This Day On FerventWord / On Jul 08, 2020: Acts 13:42-52 Spirit Filled Ministry To People
Transcript
- You are listening to FerventWord, an online Bible study ministry with teachings and tools to help you grow deeper in your relationship with God. The following message was taught by Jerry Simmons in 2020. Turn to Acts chapter 13. Acts chapter 13, as we continue to work our way through the Bible in three years, we are now in the book of Acts and considering the ministry of the Apostle Paul and His commissioning here in chapter 13 with Barnabas being sent out from the church at Antioch and embarking on the first missionary journey. And chapter 13 records that from the beginning as they're commissioned and sent out. And we're jumping kind of into the middle of their missionary journey, right? As it's about to come to a close and then they're going to head home as we go on into chapter 14 tomorrow. But here at the closing part of chapter 13, we get to see their ministry at a city called Antioch, which is a different Antioch than they were sent out from. But they're in Antioch and have some important interactions that we need to take note of. And so we're going to be looking at verses 42 through 52. as we spend our time together this evening. So let's go ahead and read through that passage and then we'll dive into the message that the Lord has for us. Verse 42 says, "'So when the Jews went out of the synagogue, "'the Gentiles begged that these words "'might be preached to them the next Sabbath. "'Now when the congregation had broken up, "'many of the Jews and devout proselytes "'followed Paul and Barnabas, "'who speaking to them persuaded them "'to continue in the grace of God.'" On the next Sabbath, almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God. But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy and contradicting and blaspheming, they opposed the things spoken by Paul. Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said, "'It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first. But since you reject it and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles.'" For so the Lord has commanded us, I have set you as a light to the Gentiles, that you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth. Verse 48. Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. And the word of the Lord was being spread throughout all the region. But the Jews stirred up the devout and prominent women and the chief men of the city. raised up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region. But they shook off the dust from their feet against them, and came to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. Let's pray. Lord, as we spend this time with you in your word this evening, we pray that you would bless this time, that you would minister to our hearts, that you would teach us, Lord, how to minister with the empowering of your Holy Spirit. to the people that you've placed around us. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, as we look at these closing verses of Acts chapter 13 this evening, I've titled the message, Spirit-Filled Ministry to People. Again, as we are looking in the book of Acts, we are looking at the beginnings of the church and how the Lord established the church there in Jerusalem, spread it out to Judea and Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth, which is what we're seeing happen here in chapter 13 and throughout the rest of the book of Acts. We'll see the gospel go throughout the known world as the Lord sends out the apostle Paul with this missionary journey, and he is filled with the Holy Spirit to accomplish the ministry of God. And so he's out there, he's filled with the Holy Spirit, along with his team. He's got Barnabas with him. He's got John Mark with him for a little bit. And as they're going about, they're filled with the Spirit and they're ministering to people. But as we look through these verses, we see that there's different responses and different types of approaches that are happening. And so I think there's some great insights for us, really maybe four things to remember, to think about, and to consider for ourselves as we seek to, first of all, be filled with the Holy Spirit. and then to be ministering to the people around us. Now, as we get started in this, I just like to give a little bit of context in the geography. And so here on the map, you can see Jerusalem there in the bottom. And that's, of course, you know, where the temple was and where the church began. And then as the gospel began to spread, it was just immediately surrounding Jerusalem in the region of Judea and Samaria to the north. But then the apostle Paul, you remember a couple of weeks ago, we looked at Paul being sent out of Jerusalem because the Jews wanted to kill him. And they sent him up to his home, which was in Tarsus. And you can see that a little bit farther north above the tip of the Mediterranean Sea there. That's Paul's hometown. And so he spent several years there, maybe seven, maybe 10 years or so there, kind of in obscurity until Barnabas goes and fetches Saul and brings him to Antioch. which is in Syria. And so that's the starting point of this missionary journey because there Paul and Barnabas are ministering. They're growing the church. They're ministering to the people that God is bringing and then God commissions them and the church lays hands on them and sends them out. And so what they do is they jump on a boat. They cross over to Cyprus and begin traveling through the island of ministering the gospel, sharing the good news, having different kinds of experiences. Again, we're all reading about all of this in Acts chapter 13 over the past couple of days. They get to the other side of Cyprus, and then they hop on another boat, and then they go north into the rest of the places on their trip. Now, you can see that dotted blue line. There's a departure that happens. That's when John Mark leaves the missionary journey, kind of right in the middle. And that's an important factor that'll come up later in Acts chapter 15. We'll see the contention between Paul and Barnabas. But once they hit land, they just continue on. They're going from town to town, from place to place, working their way through the region and ministering And so we find them here at the end of chapter 13 at the other Antioch. And so they're at the top of the map there, the far north. And this is the city where they're ministering. They'll move on to Iconium, and we'll see that in chapter 14, and then make their way back to Antioch. from there. And so we'll get to continue along with that journey. But I find it helpful to have a little bit of a sense and a picture and understanding of what these things were looking like. And one other thing to consider as we look at this is how God changes our roles from time to time and season to season in our ministry. It's interesting as you follow along with them across the island of Cyprus, it begins with Barnabas as the lead missionary in the missionary trip. And it's always Barnabas and Saul, Barnabas and Saul, Barnabas and Saul. But by the time they get to the other end of Cyprus, and you can see this here in chapter 13, it switches up and God changes the roles. And now Paul is the lead missionary and it's Paul and his group, Paul and his party, Paul and Barnabas from there on out. And so... God's doing a lot of things in this missionary trip, and he often does that. If he commissions you and calls you out somewhere, maybe it's a short-term, maybe a long-term thing, you can expect that there's going to be all kinds of experiences and great depth to the things that God will do in your life and in your midst as you step out in faith and follow him on the trip that he has set before you. But getting into the main things that the Lord has for us tonight, we're going to jump into verse 42 and 43 for the first point this evening. Here's point number one. Persuade people to continue in grace. Looking again at verse 42 and 43, it says, So when the Jews went out of the synagogue, the Gentiles begged that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath. I like to highlight some of these things and spend some time considering them because As I've been sharing over the past couple weeks, sometimes we can build up in our minds ideas and concepts that are not really laws, and we have ideas in our head that are just wrong. We have a bad idea of what it means to be spirit-filled. And sometimes we can have in our mind either a really strong positive view of persuasion or a strong negative view of persuasion. You know, sometimes we can kind of take the approach that there's no persuasion necessary, that there's no, you know, kind of intense persuasion conversation and persuasion in seeking to convince people of something that, you know, hey, that's really not, you know, what I'm going to be doing or what's something the Holy Spirit might be doing. But I think it's interesting to consider this. Now, here's Paul and Barnabas, and they're ministering, first of all, in the synagogues. This was their practice. They would go into a new place, and they would jump into the Jewish synagogue and begin to share the gospel with the Jews. And typically, by and large, the Jewish people of the area would reject the gospel, and then they would go to the Gentiles and minister to them. And so here you see this taking place. They go to the synagogue, they're ministering to the Jews, but meanwhile, the Gentiles are there, and they're begging to have that message brought to them. They're seeking for this message. They want to be preached to. They want to hear the gospel. Now, as this is going on and the service disbands and people are going about their way, some of the Jews and devout proselytes A proselyte was someone who was not a Jew, but had converted to Judaism. And so you have a gathering here of Jews and Gentiles, but these Gentiles had converted to Judaism. And so they were really intrigued by what Paul had to say and really ministered to by Paul and Barnabas. And so they stayed with them. They hung out with them after the service. And what is clearly said here in verse 43 is that Paul and Barnabas persuaded them to continue ministry. in the grace of God. They gave them some strong arguments, some strong reasons. This is why you should believe this and continue in it. The grace of God, of course, is an important understanding for us to have and to know the gospel of grace and that salvation is by grace. It's God's gift to us. But we also need to remember that it doesn't just Start with grace in the believing the gospel and the conversion experience, and then we move on from grace after that. But here, Paul and Barnabas persuade them, hey guys, don't go back to works. Don't go back to legalism. Don't go back to, you know, rituals and sacrifices, and don't go back to trying to please God with your efforts, but move forward now. Continue in in the grace of God. And so there was this strong persuasion that was given to them. And this is important because for the Jews in particular, of course, they had this culture, this heritage of legalism and following the law, and that was their approach to God. It was kind of ingrained in them. And so there was going to be a strong pull back to legalism for them. But it's not just the Jews who struggle with that. It's for us as well. That There is a strong pull back to works or towards works if we were never involved in a works-based relationship. There is a tendency for us to get wrapped up with trying to please God, trying to approach God on the basis of what we do, how well we do, how much we succeed, how little we fail. And there's these systems that we build, either that are given to us and we follow them or we build our own legal systems. And we try to approach God on the basis of our efforts. But here Paul and Barnabas persuade them. They have some strong arguments. They say, look guys, you must not go back to works. You must not try to approach God thinking about your efforts, impressed with how well you do. And you must, the other side of grace is, you must not stay away from God, even if you've failed, even when you've failed. You can tell if you are caught up in works if you stay away from God when you failed because you've put yourself on timeout. God hasn't, but you have been caught up in a legal system. And so there's this persuasion that is necessary to continue. Pastor David Guzik puts it this way. Continuing in grace is as important as beginning in grace. Far too many only think of grace as the introduction to the Christian life, but God wants grace to remain as the foundation for for our life with him. We always approach God by grace. And so, filled with the Holy Spirit, as we minister to people, it's really important that we come back to this, for ourselves, in approaching God, but also in ministering to others. People need to be reminded, to be encouraged, they need to be persuaded to continue in the grace of God. And boy, Pastor Chuck was really great at that, wasn't he? He always had that message of grace, that exhortation to approach God by grace. And it was a theme throughout his ministry and for us as well. There is this opportunity and this need for people to be persuaded, for us to give strong arguments to help people agree to continue in the grace of God. Well, as we move on to verses 44 through 46, we'll get the second thing to consider and think about. Spirit-filled ministry to people is also going to involve, well, stopping the preaching to some people. It's going to involve us ceasing and being quiet and taking a step back. Check out verses 44 through 46. It says, on the next Sabbath, almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God. But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy and contradicting and blaspheming. They opposed the things spoken by Paul. Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said, it was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first. But since you reject it and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles. Again, it's important to consider this because this is one of those things that we might not relate to being filled with the Holy Spirit. But here's Paul and Barnabas filled with the Holy Spirit, and they say, we're not going to preach to you anymore. We're going to stop delivering the gospel message to you. And what was it that brought this about? Well, you can see there in verse 44, this huge response. Remember the Gentiles were begging, hey, next week, can you come and share with us too? And And so the next Sabbath, almost the whole city comes out, it says. There's this massive crowd. There's this huge response. They're so eager to hear the gospel message that Paul and Barnabas bring. But when this big crowd comes, it stirs up some envy within the Jewish people, the unbelievers. They're not happy about this crowd. They're not happy about this response. You know, you can kind of think about it, you know, being one of the members of the synagogue there and perhaps, you know, you're seeking to get people to convert to Judaism for your whole life, right? And, you know, there's all this resistance and there's some proselytes, but it's very few. But then all of a sudden, here comes this new group in town, Paul and Barnabas, and then, whoom, the whole city just shows up. It's like, yeah, we want to hear from them. And here you are. You're like, I've been working at this so hard. And so instead of rejoicing that God was reaching people, They're filled with envy. And they begin to contradict and to blaspheme. They're openly interrupting the preaching. They're blaspheming Jesus while Paul is seeking to preach. They oppose the things spoken by Paul, it says. And so Paul and Barnabas got scared and shrunk away and hid in the crowd. Now, that's not what it says. It says that they grew bold in verse 46. They said it was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first, speaking to the Jewish people, because that was the order. The Jews are God's chosen people. And so whenever they went out, they brought the gospel to the Jews first. But he goes on to say, you reject it. And you've judged yourselves unworthy of everlasting life. You've decided you don't want everlasting life. And so behold, we turn to the Gentiles. We're going to turn away from you. We're going to stop preaching to you. We did preach to you. That was right. That was appropriate. That time is over now. You have rejected this message, and we're turning to the Gentiles. They stop preaching to the Jews, but it's not out of fear. It's not because their feelings were hurt. It's not because they were discouraged. It says that they grew bold. You know what one of the chief characteristics of being filled with the Holy Spirit is? It's boldness. Jesus said, when you're filled with the Holy Spirit, you'll have boldness and you'll be a witness to me. You're going to have power. It's going to be a work that God does as he fills us with his Holy Spirit. It's Acts chapter 4, Acts chapter 5. The church prays in the face of persecution and it says that they're filled with the Holy Spirit and they speak the word of God with boldness. So here they are, filled with the Holy Spirit. They have great boldness and they tell the rejecting people clearly that You rejected the gospel. We're going to stop delivering it to you. We may not connect spirit-filled and stop preaching in the same idea or the same thought, but it's sometimes what is appropriate. Now, that doesn't mean we stop every time there's opposition or we stop every time it's not immediately received, but there is a time. And I think that's the important thing to consider. Sometimes we continue to preach in the face of opposition and in the face of rejection, but we need to also be open to and understand there is a time when the Lord would say, okay, stop. You're filled with the Holy Spirit. You have boldness. You kept the priority. You kept the clarity. Now stop. They stop preaching with a rebuke. They let them know. They don't just kind of like fade out and say, okay, nevermind and just speak. They let them know. We're gonna stop preaching. You've rejected the gospel. We're going to be quiet now. We're not going to bug you with the gospel anymore. We're not going to preach the gospel to you anymore. Filled with boldness by the Holy Spirit, they stop preaching to those who are rejecting it. Now, I don't imagine Paul and Barnabas doing this with joy. It's not exciting to them. They're not happy about it. It's tough. They want these people to hear the gospel. They want them to respond, to receive forgiveness. They want them to be transformed and changed by God. But The choice is up to those who are hearing the message and sometimes they will not receive it. And so filled with the Holy Spirit, we have to let the Holy Spirit lead us to stop, to turn away, to move on to verses 47 through 49. Now point number three, minister to people who are glad to listen. Sometimes we have to continue preaching to those who reject. If you think about the ministry of Jeremiah, that was his whole ministry, right? God called him to a ministry to people who were going to reject him for the whole duration of his ministry. So we don't always quit, but sometimes we do. And sometimes filled with the Holy Spirit with great boldness, we say that's enough. We're going to stop preaching now and we're going to move on to minister to people who are glad to listen. Jumping into verse 47. It says, As Paul is interacting with the Jewish people here, he quotes from Isaiah chapter 49. He says, And he says, look, God has called us to be a light to the Gentiles. Jesus is a light to the Gentiles. And so we're going to bring Jesus to the Gentiles. Salvation is not just for the Jews. It is, well, to the ends of the earth, for all people. And when the Gentiles heard this, it says in verse 48, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. They rejoiced. They celebrated. Oh, praise the Lord. This message is not just for Jews. And we'll see this progress as we continue on in Acts as they have the great council in Acts chapter 15. The question hasn't been resolved yet for the church, for the people. Do you have to become Jewish in order to be saved? And the answer is no, but it wasn't widespread. It wasn't well known yet that that was the case. So the Gentiles hear this. All right, they're going to come preach to us now. They're going to come minister to us the gospel. They're going to bring forth the word of God. And God's going to work in our lives. And so there was this excitement. There was this joy. There was this gladness. And again, it's important to see the contrast. They stopped preaching to this group that was rejecting. They turned instead and began to minister to the Gentiles who were excited and overjoyed at the opportunity to hear the message. Pastor David Guzik says, Paul shows wisdom in not spending all his time trying to persuade hardened hearts. We know that he still prayed earnestly for the salvation of Israel, but he spent his missionary time ministering to more open hearts. Paul expresses throughout his letters his love for the Jewish people, his prayers for the Jewish people. He never stops caring for them, even though they reject him in the gospel. But that's not the ministry that God had called him to. Now, if Paul had... The ability to negotiate with the Lord and accomplish His will instead of God's will. It's likely that he would have continued to seek to minister to the Jews. But here he submitted to the will of God and said, this is what I want more. This is my goal. This is what I hope. I really want to see this happen. But filled with the Holy Spirit, I need to stop pursuing that. And I need to then move on to this new door that God has opened here. and he begins to minister to the Gentiles. And there's gladness, there's rejoicing, they receive the gospel message. Now it tells us in verse 48, and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. It's an interesting verse, an important one to consider. Opens up a long-lasting debate for the past 2,000 years. The sovereignty of God versus the free will of man. which is it, you know, which one is dominant or which one is true. I'm not going to try to rehash or resolve all of those arguments, but as you look through this passage, I think it's pretty clear in this passage, both are true. God is sovereign and he has given man choice. Some decided to believe, some decided to reject. We see the Jewish people reject the message and filled with the Holy Spirit, they turn away and return to the Gentiles. And so there is the choice that is being made by those who are believing and by those who are rejecting. At the same time, there is the sovereignty of God in that there are those who have been appointed to eternal life. And that's a difficult thing for us to wrestle with. And we can wrestle with those things. How can both be true? And we can take one to an extreme or the other to an extreme. We can try to find balance in the middle. We still kind of wrestle with this idea of how can both be true. I think the best way for illustrating this, for myself anyways, is thinking back to that Wednesday evening. It was about 17 years ago now when I proposed to Kim. And I did it on a Wednesday night. You guys, some of you were here. Some of you remember. I showed a little video of telling our dating story and then walked up at the end. It was after service and proposed to Kim. And as soon as I proposed, well, she had no choice. She didn't get to say yes. She said, okay, yes, sir. You know, that's what she said. Because I chose her, so she didn't get to choose. No, she got to choose. I got to choose who I proposed to. And she got to choose also, right? We both got to choose, right? There was the plan. I had an idea of what she was going to say, right? There was the plan. And in a similar way, I think it illustrates God gets to choose, but also you get to choose. And there's both choices involved. There's both parties involved in the choice. And so there is the sovereignty of God. There is the responsibility and free will of you and I to hear the message, to be glad to listen, and to respond to it. And so that's what happened. Many of these Gentiles believed. They received the word. They made the choice. God made the choice. Both choices combined meant salvation took place. Verse 49, and the word of the Lord was being spread throughout all the region. The gospel was going out. There was a great work happening, a ministry that was happening. And again, connecting these two thoughts. Because Paul and Barnabas, filled with the Holy Spirit, stopped sinning. investing in this group that was rejecting and started focusing on and investing in this other open door that God had set before them, ministering to people who are glad to listen. Again, that doesn't mean we always stop whenever there's rejection, but also at the same time, we don't always persist when there is rejection. We need to be led by the Holy Spirit and sometimes the Holy Spirit will lead us to say, that door is closed. You've been banging your head against it for a while now. Look, this other door is open. And as you go through that door, there's a different reception, and there are those who are glad to listen, and the word of God is spread. There's a multiplied effect on the work as you move on to the things that God does have for you. Well, moving on to verses 50 through 52, the final point to consider in spirit-filled ministry to people is is to dust off rejection and move on. In verse 50, it says, Again, we see the disciples are filled with the Holy Spirit. They're on their missionary journey. And as this work progresses, as it continues, they now experience some persecution. They're here in Antioch. They minister to the Jews first. They reject. As they see the response of the city, they get envious. They fight against. But Paul now ministers to the Gentiles there. And there's a big response. And people are getting saved. And there's ministry happening. We don't know how much time is happening during all of this. But after some amount of time, The Jews, still upset about this whole situation, stir up the prominent people, the chief men, the prominent women, and they begin to persecute Paul and Barnabas. And the idea here is they forcibly remove them from the city, from their region. They drag them out of town. And so it tells us in verse 51 that they shook off the dust from their feet against them. Shaking off the dust of their feet is a very symbolic gesture here. saying, hey, everything about you, I have nothing to do with it. You have no part of me. It's a clean break, a clear break. And there comes a point where sometimes we have to shake the dust off. Not necessarily literally, but just saying, look, I can't have anything to do with you. There's a full rejection here. Not only am I not going to preach to you any longer, but I'm going to move on. I'm And it's interesting to see this, right? Paul and Barnabas don't insist and rush back into the city. Now there's other occasions where Paul does. He even gets stoned to death, right? And then goes back into the city to preach the gospel. So again, these things are not laws like we always do it this way. But at the same time, sometimes we need to know when it's time to call it quits. Dust off the rejection and move on. We need to know when it's time to let people choose. Say, okay, you've made your choice. Again, I think this is very tough. I don't imagine Paul and Barnabas doing this with joy. They're not moving on with joy. They're heartbroken as they move on, but they have to move on. That's where the Holy Spirit is leading. Doesn't mean we have to give up easily, but we also need to learn to let God deal with people. Paul and Barnabas were not, you know, the last chance, the last opportunity for these people to hear the gospel and respond to it. The whole burden of their salvation does not rely upon Paul and Barnabas. They're part of the work. They're part of what God is doing. But the responsibility is on God. And he will do his best to reach them. He loves them more than Paul and Barnabas do. And so at this time, they don't try to force it. Filled with the Holy Spirit, they shake off the dust from their feet, and they move on. Sometimes rejection causes us to give up, to be discouraged. And okay, we don't move on. We move off, right? Like we just want to quit. And Here, as we look at Paul and Barnabas, they experience the rejection, but they dust off the rejection and they move on to Iconium. They're now going to the next city and they're going to minister there and they're going to start over in the synagogue and preach the gospel. We'll get to see that played out here in chapter 14. But it tells us in verse 52, and the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. Here they are experiencing persecution and These disciples, it's not clear. Are they referring to the disciples in Antioch where Paul and Barnabas were just expelled from? Are they the disciples in Iconium where we haven't seen them get there yet, but that's where they're going? Is it the disciples that are Paul and Barnabas and their group that are going with them? I would suggest it's just all of the above, right? Like this is the general work of God. The disciples are filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. Rejection and persecution does not stop the Holy Spirit. Rejection and persecution doesn't stop the disciples. Rejection and persecution does not stop joy within the disciples. It doesn't stop God's work from going forward. It happens. We deal with it. We face it. We experience it. We need to learn to dust it off and move on and experience the continued work of the Holy Spirit and the joy that he wants to provide. Commentator Adam Clark says, The happiness of a genuine Christian is It's a tough one to wrestle with a little bit. Martyrs in the flames had more joy than persecutors on their comfortable beds. That's the reality of what we have in Christ. That's the reality of what we have as we are filled with the Holy Spirit and walking in close relationship with the Lord. We have a joy. We have access to joy that is there in spite of circumstances. And it doesn't mean we don't experience sorrow and we don't experience difficulty. It doesn't mean that things aren't hard. But at the same time, in the midst of it, we can have joy, abundant joy, abundant life, as the Lord said. It's one of the fruits of the Spirit, right? Galatians chapter 5. Joy and peace. We can have joy as we are filled with the Holy Spirit in the face of victory and celebration as people are getting saved, but also in the face of rejection and persecution as the gospel is rejected and we're pushed away and we have to dust our feet off and move on. It's sorrowful, it's hurtful, but But at the same time, we can still experience the joy of the Lord. And the work of God is not done, even as we move on. And so this evening, I would encourage you to consider these different aspects of Spirit-filled ministry to people. There are a lot of occasions, a lot of times, where we, being filled with the Holy Spirit, need to persuade people to continue in grace. to inject ourselves and be very persuasive and forward and say, you must continue. Don't, you look, you're slipping into works. Look at this pattern that you're following and you're keeping yourself away from God or you're trying to approach God on the basis of your efforts. Stop it. Approach God according to his grace, according to his goodness and mercy, his gift, his work, not ours. Being filled with the Holy Spirit, sometimes we need to stop preaching to people to know when the Holy Spirit wants us to let it go. And it doesn't mean that we love them less. It doesn't mean that we have, you know, given up and that we were their last hope. But as the Spirit leads, now again, we don't always stop. Sometimes God calls us to a lifetime of ministering to stubborn people who reject. And that's just as valid. But we need to be open to the idea that sometimes the Holy Spirit wants you to stop preaching. Sometimes the Holy Spirit wants you to be quiet and to not bring it up again, to not bring that message again. And instead, minister to people who are glad to listen. If that's not your ministry, if that's not who God wants you to minister to and speak to and encourage and build up, then there's an open door somewhere else where God has a ministry for you. There's people who are glad to listen. And there's an open door for you to do the work of God in some other way. And so when he closes one, he opens another. Minister there. And it may not be your first choice. If you could negotiate with God, you would have a different way. But let the Holy Spirit lead you. on the path and the plans that he has for you. And when there's rejection, dust it off. It's likely to happen and move on. Move on. There's more work that God has. There's more people that God wants you to minister to. There's more things that God wants to accomplish in your life and through your life. So be filled with the Holy Spirit and minister to the people that God has placed there in your life. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to minister to people. We thank you for the opportunity to speak the truth and to bring forth your word to the world around us. I pray, God, that you would fill us with your Holy Spirit. We cannot do this work on our own. Lord, we cannot rely upon our own wisdom or understanding. We can't rely upon our own arguments. We can't rely upon our own powers of persuasion even. We need to be filled with your Spirit, God. And so, Lord, empower us, fill us, enable us, to perform the ministry that you've called us to. And I pray, Lord, that you would open our eyes to the opportunities around us. Lord, there's people around us in our lives that we see day in and day out, and sometimes we forget. But those people that you've connected us to are the ministry. They are the mission field. And we don't have to go off on some missionary journey and go to the island of Cyprus and move on into Asia Minor and go from city to city. Maybe you call us to that. But Lord, first you call us right where we're at, to be filled with your Holy Spirit and to minister to the people that you've placed in our lives. So Lord, give us boldness, give us strength, give us all that we need to endure hardship, to represent you, and to offer your gift of life, to help people stay on the track of grace and not deviate and get hijacked or shipwrecked in their faith, but to continue in that relationship with you that is based entirely upon who you are and what you've done for us. And Lord, we thank you for that relationship. We come to you now because of your grace, receiving your goodness, your mercy. Help us then to pass that on. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. We pray you have been blessed by this Bible teaching. 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