Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 22, 2018 | This Is Us - Side By Side

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April 22, 2018 | This Is Us - Side By Side · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, this is Brett and Shelley and the rest of the Trash Mountain team, at least that are here in the office today.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: And we wanted to say thank you so much for the Christmas offering from this past year.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Hey TBC, this is Barry Feeger with the Feeker Rescue Mission and some of my great team members behind me here.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: We just want to say thank you for this incredible Christmas offering that you took this last year.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: We were pretty blown away when we heard the number.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: You've helped us to be able to reach out to some victims of human trafficking in our community to bring the hope of Jesus Christ to them.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is going to provide some much needed support for the staff down at Afe Honduras and just to the professional development, different things are going to need over this next few years.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we just want to do one more thing, and that's celebrate.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And for the rest of us that don't understand what she just said, she said let's celebrate.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: And he gets special kudos for that.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: So but uh, you know, the these two organizations are so thrilled.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: You guys uh gave over$270,000 at Christmas to these two organizations for the uh human trafficking and also for the Honduras School, and they were just blown away and they kept saying to me, What can we do?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: How can we thank you and so forth?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, No, you can't throw confetti at the church, but uh you can make a video.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: What a cool video.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: So that's neat.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: So um we're in a series.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: If you're visiting, if you just stopped in today, if you haven't been here regularly, we're in a series called This Is Us.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: Perhaps you watch the TV show.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: This, however, is a series on marriage, or as we say around our house, mowage and parenting.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: And since the first two messages in the series, the last two weeks, have been on parenting, these next two are going to be on marriage.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna speak about, uh I'm gonna show you, talk to you from the one of the greatest marriages in the Bible, and certainly the greatest marriage we know of, the greatest partnership in the New Testament church.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then next week, Joe, uh Joe D'Alfonso, our young adults pastor, who led a sort of marriage ministry as part of his job at uh the previous church he was at in Phoenix, Arizona, is going to share with you some of the lessons he learned from his experience with marriages there next week.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to talk to you today, however.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh my message is entitled Side by Side.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Say it with me.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: Side by side, which is a really cool title.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: I just gotta confess.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: And the best way to start is to share with you that uh Washington Post newspaper ran a survey.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: They invited readers of the Washington Post to think of uh an element, something of something, uh something, some item that perhaps you'd use around the house or whatever, and decide whether it was a masculine or feminine, male or female type item.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: And and and the results of that, I thought that six of them were kind of funny, okay?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: And they illustrate the fact that husbands and wives are different.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: So someone pointed out to them that Ziploc bags are definitely male because they hold everything in, but you can always see right through them.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: So whereas, and I'll say this really quickly, whereas someone said, kidneys are female because they always go to the bathroom in pairs.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: So, and then um, so, but Swiss Army knives are ma are male because even though they appear to be useful for a variety of work, uh they spend most of their time just opening bottles.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: So, uh, whereas the copier, oh, I'll say this one really quickly, somebody suggests the copper's female because once turned off, it takes a while to warm up.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and then um so the hot air balloon, this is my favorite, is male because to get it to go anywhere, you have to light a fire under it.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: So and of course, department stores are female because they have more than three pairs of shoes.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: So um, anyway, so husbands and wives are different, and because we're different, we uh experience differences and conflicts uh and disagreements, and just we come at marriage differently.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the results of that, that my father-in-law, Melody's dad, used to have a counseling center in Dallas when he was alive, and he used to constantly talk about the push-pull relationship in marriage when he was doing seminars.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: And the push-pull relationship, as I'm sure many of you know, is a relationship where one of the partners is, in a sense, pushing and the other is pulling.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: The one who is pushing feels stifled by the marriage.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: Feels like I need more space.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: In this picture, it's the guy who feels I need more space, I feel dominated, I feel stifled, I feel uh oppressed, and so forth.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so he's pushing her away.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: He's saying, I need more, I need more freedom.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: And on the other hand, and in this picture, it's the wife, she's feeling, especially the more he pushes away, she's feeling abandoned, she's feeling rejected, she's feeling the desire for more intimacy.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: So she pulls and then he pushes, and it just gets worse and worse.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so, unless they go to counseling, it can get really bad, or unless they learn one of the techniques or guidelines.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not gonna get into it.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: This is not my purpose.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: Go see your local neighborhood counselor.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: But one of the guidelines that my father-in-law used to give ties in with our message today because he talked about moving a push-pull relationship to a side-by-side relationship.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: In push-pull, you're looking at each other side by side.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: You are looking outward together, and it takes the stress off.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I quote, when I heard that, I used to think of a quote from the Four Loves by C.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: S.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: Lewis.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: C.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: S.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: Lewis talked about four kinds of love.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: One was eros, one was affection, one was friendship, love, and so forth.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: And he wrote, he preferred friendship to any other kind of love, and he wrote, lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: Friends are side by side, absorbed in some common interest.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so, of course, that lets you know that good marriage is going to have both face-to-face time and side-by-side time, but in modern times, with life so busy, we find that a lot of couples underestimate the value of side-by-side time.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so I want to talk to you about a couple who were side by side, so much so that the six times that Aquila and Priscilla are mentioned in the New Testament, both of their names are always mentioned side by side.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's absolutely unique in the Bible.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: You don't find that anywhere else.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: They're always mentioned together.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: And um by the way, in the six times, one of the things that makes it interesting is Aquila's name comes first two of the six times.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: Priscilla's name comes first four of the six times.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll tell you that I think that's significant, and I'll explain that uh as we go along.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to introduce you to this great couple.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: You should know this couple.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: Open your Bibles if you have them to Acts chapter 18.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: Their story is told primarily in Acts 18, but it's mentioned in four books of the New Testament.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: They are mentioned.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: Acts 18, 1 through 4 starts like this.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: After this, meaning after Paul was on Mars Hill in Athens, after he argued with the philosophers, after he went on the college campus and got made fun of, and so forth, and that's what will happen to you if you preach the gospel on the college campus today.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: After this, Paul left Athens and he went to Corinth.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: And there he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who'd recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: Paul went to see them, and because he was a tent maker as they were, he stayed and worked with them.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: There are a lot of names there.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, there's names of people.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: There's Paul, there's Aquila, there's Priscilla, and there's Claudius.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Claudius was, you know who he was?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: He was an emperor of Rome.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: And we happen to be able to date this because Claudius is well known to have kicked all 20,000 Jews out of Rome in 49 A.D.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: We're told by a historian named Suetonius that the reason he kicked them out is he was sick and tired of them getting into fights with messianic Jews.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: That is, uh, according to text, it is that the Jews were fighting amongst themselves over a one named Cresta, C-H-R-E-S-T-U-S, usually considered to be a misspelling of the name Christ.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: So that's interesting.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, here's a couple that got kicked out of Rome in 49 A.D.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: by Claudius.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: So those are those four names.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: And there's also like four place names.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: There's Athens, there's Corinth, there's Pontus, and there's Rome.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: So let me show you some maps.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: Let me let me what I plan to do is divide this message in two parts.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: The first part is I'll just talk through their lives, show you where they moved and what they did, and then I will challenge you.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'll give you a five-part challenge from this couple about how I think couples can glorify God together, side by side.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: So, first of all, uh we're told that Paul went to Corinth from Athens.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: These are two major cities in the southern part of Greece, okay?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: 50 miles apart, they're about as far apart as Kansas City is from Topeka.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: And back then, we tend to think today of Athens being the Kansas City and Corinth being the Topeka, and that's the way it is today.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: Athens has millions of people.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: They have, in fact, a thousand uh Arab refugees in Athens alone, millions of people.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: And Corinth is just a shell of a town, but in that day it was the opposite.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: Athens only had 10,000 people.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: It was a college town, you know, university town.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh had it had it had the uh you know, Temple of Aphrodite up there, and it had the Acropolis and so forth, but just 10,000 people.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: Corinth was 20 times as big, 200,000 people.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: It was a port city, it was a commercial city, and it was well known, by the way, for its uh sex traffic.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: It had a huge temple up on a hill, a thousand feet above the town, it had 1,000, we're told, 1,000 religious prostitutes up there.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, in those days, all over the Roman Empire, if you were a sex addict, they just called you a Corinthian.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: So it was a wild and crazy town, and Paul has now left, let's say, Little Topeka with Washburn, you know, the university town, and he's gone to, well, I was saying Kansas City, but we should say Las Vegas or something, I guess.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: So that's uh that's the beginning of this, and we happen to know that Paul, we learned from Paul's writing in 1 Corinthians, he's absolutely depleted.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: He feels like a failure, he feels he's he has no more money, and his two buddies have left him and gone up north.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: So when he comes to Corinth, he's emotionally depleted, he's financially depleted, he's at the end of his rope and he's all alone.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: And that's when he meets this couple who will change his life, and he'll change their life, and they'll be friends forever.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the second city, uh third city that was mentioned in 18, Acts 18, was the town or the region or the state of Pontus.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Pontus was a region in what is presently north northwest Turkey on the southern coast of the Black Sea.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: And we think Peter went through there on his one missionary journey, and that's where Aquila was from.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Aquila was given a wonderful name by his parents, it means eagle, and he grew up in this place, Pontus.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I tend to think that he met Peter and trusted Christ as his savior when he was living in Pontus.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: But somehow he made it all the way 2,000 miles to Rome.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody wanted to go to Rome in those days.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so he went to Rome and uh to practice his trade.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: He was a small businessman, a tent maker, a leather worker, basically.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: And now that he's been kicked out of Rome.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: We think, I think he met Priscilla in Rome.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh maybe she met her back in Pontus.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think he met her in Rome, and they got married.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: We're not told whether she's Jew or Gentile.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: I suspect she's Jewish.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: And now they've come 800 miles southeast to Corinth.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: All right, so that's the background.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: We have a photograph of Corinth at 40 AD at this time, and it's really, as you can tell, a beautiful city.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: And um I should hear at least one giggle there.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: So this is not a photograph, but I like to think of it as a photograph.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's really cool.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: And notice what happens is Aquil and Priscilla get there about a year before Paul gets there.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, they get there at late 49.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: Paul gets there in about 50, 51 at the end of 50, and so they go to the marketplace, which is still there in Corinth, the ruins.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: I'll be there in about six weeks, and some of you will be there with me on my Greece tour.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so they're hunted around and they found a place, an open-air place that they could rent, and they set up their leather working place.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: And in Corinth, they needed a lot of sales made, they needed a lot of awnings, they needed stuff like that.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: So they did all that kind of stuff.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: So they got their little shop, and Paul comes in, depleted, staggering into Corinth from Athens, and he always went to the agora first, the marketplace, to witness to people, and and because he was a social guy.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: And he finds them and finds out, I believe, that they're already Christians, and that he didn't lead them to the Lord, or else we'd have been told that.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: And he says, I don't have a place to stay.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: And they invite him to stay at their house.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: And he stays there as long as he's in Corinth, which is 18 months.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: Wouldn't it be absolutely cool?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: I know you don't like to have people staying in your house longer than three days.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I know you had a second cousin once removed who stayed for three months one time and you thought you were gonna die.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: But can you imagine having Paul live with you for 18 months?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this guy is a dynamo.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: So what a privilege, the greatest Christian in church history living with you.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: And anyway, because he was of the same trade, Paul, he stayed with them and he worked with them.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: For by occupation, they were tent makers.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: Now we continue the story later in chapter 18.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: After staying there for a considerable time, 18 months, Paul said farewell to the believers and he sailed for the east, for Syria, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: Now they're all leaving together.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: They close up shop and they're heading east.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: And verse 19, when they reached Ephesus in present-day Turkey, back then in Asia Minor, it's on the that's stopping point on Paul's way down to Jerusalem.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: So they're sailing together.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: Remember, uh A and P, Aquila and Priscilla, have come down from Rome, and now they're sailing with him from Corinth east to Ephesus.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so we read that he left them in Ephesus, Paul did.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: But first went into the synagogue, had a discussion with the Jews, and they asked him to stay longer, but he said no, but he said, I'll return to you if God wills, and then he left.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: He set sail from Ephesus, leaving Aquila and Priscilla in Ephesus.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: Now we read very interestingly that while Paul's gone, a Jewish guy named Apollos, wonderful name, Apollo, Apollos, a native of Alexandria.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: Where's Alexandria?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's the third largest city.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: Ephesus is the fourth largest city in the Roman Empire.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: Alexandria, third largest, it's on the northern coast of Egypt, and it is the oh what, Boston, maybe, the Harvard, the Oxford, the Cambridge of that day.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: It has still has the largest library that we know of in ancient days, and this guy apparently was one of the brightest students in Alexandria.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: He came to Ephesus, he's a learned guy with a thorough knowledge of the scriptures.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: He'd been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor, and he taught about Jesus accurately, but not completely, because he only knew the baptism of John.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: So he only knew about Bethlehem, and he knew about Nazareth, and he knew about Jesus getting baptized, but he didn't know about the parables, and he didn't know about the Sermon on the Mount, and he didn't know about Jesus going and dying on the cross, and he didn't know about Jesus rising from the dead, he didn't know the heart of the gospel.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: So you say, how could he be a Christian?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: Well, he was like the Old Testament saints, right?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: Except he at least knew Jesus' name.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: So he he believed in the Lord, but he didn't know the whole stuff.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: And here they are sitting, you can imagine.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: Here's Aquila and Priscilla, small business set up at Ephesus, this huge city.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: And they go to the synagogue and they hear him and he says, and there's this really cool guy, Jesus, and then he got baptized by John.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, wow, I'm sure looking forward to hearing what happened next.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: And Aquila and Priscilla look at each other and go, uh man, we spent 18 months learning what happened next.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh it says he spoke boldly in the synagogue, and when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: This is their what they do.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: They invite people to their home and they explain to him the way of God more adequately.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the end of the story in Acts of Aquila and Priscilla.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: Now, three other books mention him, so we learn, for instance, that they take a trip up to Rome and plant a church in Rome later afterwards, because Paul writes from Rome to Corinth.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: The churches in the province of Asia send you greetings.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets at their house, 1 Corinthians 16, 19.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then after that, we learn in 2 Timothy, Paul's writing to Ephesus, greet Priscilla and Aquila in the household of Nesaphor.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: So now they move back to Ephesus.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: This couple is a traveling couple, right?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I've got something for you here.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: I've got five side-by-side challenges from Priscilla and Aquila.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: All right, I'm gonna go right at it.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna tell you what this couple shows me and what I think you and I can learn from them.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: Number one, this is a couple who we could describe as learners.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: They were lifelong learners, they were side-by-side learners.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: And every couple who's a Christian couple should be learners.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: They should be side-by-side learners.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the first thing they learned is, of course, they learned about Jesus and his love.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: When did Aquila learn?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: I've told you that I think he learned about Jesus from Peter clear back when he was in Pontus.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, maybe not, maybe he learned about him in Rome, but but we know that Peter went, we think Peter went to Pontus, and when he writes his epistle, he starts it off by saying, I'm writing to the Jewish believers of the diaspora in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia and Bethenia, and so forth.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: Paul never went to these places, just Peter.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm thinking that's where he learned about Jesus.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: We have a we have sort of a deal here at Topeka Bible Church.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: We have sort of a theme, a discipleship theme, and it consists of three words: discover, connect, serve.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: So have you ever heard that before?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we say it a lot.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: Now, discover is just another word for learn, but we we wanted to have our website say discoverTBC.com, not learn.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, so but but that's what we're talking about.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: And when we talk about discover, we tell people we mean we want you to discover God.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: We want you to discover the sovereign God, the creator of all the world.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then we want you to discover God the Savior through his son Jesus Christ, who accepts every single person who comes to him by faith because he came and he died on the cross for our sins.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: And we want you to discover that person for yourself, that person who then went to the grave and then rose again to give us eternal life.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: We want you to learn that person and discover that person.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, somehow, this is a couple that learned about Jesus, discovered him, and trusted Jesus Christ as their Savior.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: All right?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: And it seems to me that happened before they met Paul.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: So they learned and yet they didn't stop there.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: 18 months they have Paul.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: Eighteen months they get to go with Paul to church or actually to the synagogue every weekend.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then when Paul leaves the synagogue and establishes a church at the next door to the synagogue, they're part of that with him.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: And every single night, they're probably staying up to the wee hours asking him questions.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: So they are lifelong learners.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: And dear friend, I hope that you are a lifelong learner.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: Both of you.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: Both of you, not just one of you, but both of you in your marriage are lifelong learners.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: You are learners side by side.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: You both try to learn more of the Bible.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: And if you learn that, then you will become like they did mentors side by side.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: Now, if you have children and you've grown and you raise children, the most important people you will ever mentor will be your own sons and daughters.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: And it's vitally important that you disciple them.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: And by that, when you mentor, disciple someone, it simply means that if they're not your children, that you choose them, you befriend them, you train them, and then you release them.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: You choose them, you select them.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Paul said, select people who are loyal, who are faithful, and who are teachable, right?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: So you select those people and then you get close to them, you befriend them, spend time with them, casual time with them, and you train them, you teach them, and then like an arrow, you release them, you release them.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what they did.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: There's all kinds of mentoring, marriage mentoring, but these people mentored a really sharp guy who had to be a, had to scare them a little.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: Can you imagine being in church and hearing an amazing orator who's got twice the IQ you do, but he says, now, you know, he's not completely got all the facts down, the doctrine.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: And would you have the guts to go up and say, can, can, can you come to our home today?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'd like to teach you some stuff you don't know.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they had they had that kind of guts.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: And they mentored Apollos.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, he was a cool guy, and everybody adored him.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, later when he went to Corinth, remember the whole church, some people were of Apollos.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: They thought he was the man, and some people were of Christ.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's how cool Apollos was.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: But they took him home and they opened up the scriptures and they showed him what he didn't know.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way, then here's something that happened that was really important.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: They released him.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's so hard for parents to release their children, you know, to let them go and to say, because, you know, they're never quite ready.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: And it's so hard for us to release people that we mentor.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Apollos suddenly decided he wanted to go six, seven, eight hundred miles to the west to Achaea, that is, to Corinth and Athens.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: And Priscilla and Aquila didn't say, no, no, you don't know enough doctrine yet.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: No, they encouraged him.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: And when I read that, I couldn't help thinking of how this church did that to me.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: They basically released me into ministry when I was, get this.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: I was 26 years old when they asked me to be senior pastor.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: 26 naive, ignorant, stupid, proud years.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: I have no idea.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: It was incredible.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: I was single.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: And they go, they go, we'd like you to be our pastor.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: I said, nah, I don't think so.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: I never dreamed, never had any desire of being a pastor in my life.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, you know, semi-planned, maybe being a college professor overseas, being a pastor of a church?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: No, thank you.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: And they go, you know, we really think you should.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: Really think you.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, I'm seven months away from getting married, and you're all old, which they weren't as old as I am now, but I mean I, and you know, why would you want me?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: But they took a chance.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I was, when I look back on that, I'm just, I'm gobsmacked that they would that they would take somebody so young.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then I marry an 18-year-old girl.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: Two weeks ago, they had a party downstairs after third service two weeks ago for people who had been around before Noah's flood, you know, in the 70s or whatever back then.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I go downstairs a couple of times and I was looking, and there's pictures, pictures of me and Melody back then.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm looking at this 26 and 18-year-old or whatever, and I'm going, wow, she's a doll, and he is a dork.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm going, I mean, I was, and those are, I mean, she was so alluring, and I was so appalling.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so often in those early years, the elders, you know, I'd feel after a service or whatever, I'd feel a hand on my shoulder, one of them would be loving, put a hang on, one hand on my shoulder.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: I knew what the other hand was doing.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: It was there with the with a little knife, chipping off the pride and chipping off the stupidities and shit, you know, trying to find to hone me.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: They were mentoring me.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: And my point is just simply this.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: My point is simply this.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: It is parents, you'll never be quite ready to release your children, but get them ready and then send them out.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: And when you're discipling or mentoring people, you'll have to send them out before you think they're quite ready.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: But this church was so wise, in my view, to do that with us.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that's part of mentoring.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's part of mentoring.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the third thing, they were not only lifelong learners, and then they were mentors side by side.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: And can I say one more thing about that?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: The interesting thing about this is that once they had learned a lot and become mentors, that's when it changes from Aquila and Priscilla to Priscilla and Aquila.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: So by the word order, it lets you know there that, no surprise here, the woman was a little bit sharper than the man when it came to Bible and theology.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: And at least half of the marriages I know, oh, okay, let's be honest, 70 or 80%.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the wife, the one she has more time to go to the Bethmore things.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's what it is, guys.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean, I mean, you know, it's just a little more natural for her, and she's a little quicker at it.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: And as a result, some of us, unfortunately, some of us guys get threatened, you know, and then we back out of the arena entirely because she's ahead of us in that, and and it sort of threatens this whole spiritual leadership thing that we know we should do, and it's tempting to just, you know, shut down and go and sit on the bench.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: Stupid.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't do this.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: Aquila, Aquila, even though Priscilla clearly became the leader in discipling and mentoring Apollos there in the home, she didn't run away, she didn't, I mean, he didn't run away, he didn't back off.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: And on, and for her part, let's give her credit, because there's the way a woman can handle this.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: If she handles it competitively, like, uh, why don't you just shut up and I'll handle this?
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, where where um where you can threaten your husband, and it doesn't take much to threaten us, wusses.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, we'll be honest.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: But but but but she handled it in such a way that he still felt like the spiritual leader in the home.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so as a result, they mentored together, even though she clearly was a step or two ahead of him in her biblical knowledge and in her knowledge of theology.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: All right, okay?
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: If you get mad at me, that's okay.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: So, anyway, so I moved to the third point is that they're not only learners and mentors, side by side, notice, both of them, and nobody copping up, they're workers side by side as well.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, this is just good marriage advice.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's good to, it's anything that you can do side by side where it's good to work out side by side, it's good to sweat side by side, it's good to play pickleball side by side, it's good to, you know, whatever.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's good to pray side by side, pray together, play together.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_02: Am I right about that?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, uh, just just uh just recently, a young wife at our church was telling me she just she'd been feeling weird because what happened is she and her husband, you know, work in very uh different places, and so and then they come home and then they get the girls to bed, and then he goes down to the computer room because he's in more of an academic job, and so he's got work to do, and so forth, and she finds herself in the bedroom with a book, and she says, you know what?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: Night after night, week after week, I find myself, I just feel separate from him during the day, and then pretty much separate from him in the evening, and then maybe I'll go down and say goodnight, I'm going to bed, but she says, Then I wake up the next morning and I just feel this distance, and it just gets more and more distant.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: So she said, What I tried a week or two ago, this is pretty current, is she said, I thought I was sitting up there with my book, and I was thinking, oh man, you know, I just feel so and so she says I grabbed my and I went down to the room where he was in, and there is an easy chair uh in the room over there, and I just decided I just curled up in the same room, sort of a little ways away from him, kind of by him, and just read the book there.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't interrupt him or anything else, but I was just available.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: And once or twice we said things to each other, not all that much, but I was there for a couple hours, and then I said, I'm going to bed.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so I went to bed.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, The funniest thing happened the next morning.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: She said, you know, uh, we were grabbing a cup of coffee, he had to run off, you know, to work.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Wow, what a great night last night.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, Come again.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Oh, you know, you came downstairs, you know, and and and I feel like we were working together.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you were there, you were reading the book, and I just felt so close to you.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: And she goes, Wow, I didn't expect that.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: All it took was carrying my book down there.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, anything you do side by side, right, can help the marriage.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I show this picture because I mean there was a big headline in some one of these marriage magazines, running a restaurant with my husband saved our marriage.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: Find things to do side by side.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: Now, most of us can't run a marriage, or we can't, you know, make tents together.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have the same occupation.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's really rare, right?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: But here's the most important thing that you can do side by side as far as work.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: And this comes from the wonderful verse in the last chapter of Romans, Romans 16.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: Greet Prissa and Aquila, Paul says.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: Paul, uh, Paul always used the more formal name, the name that was on her driver's license, let's say.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: Prissa is the more formal name.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Priscilla is sort of the more, you know, fun name.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the the cool name.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: So uh so I'm not gonna argue with you, Paul, but I like Priscilla better.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: So uh Priscilla and Cruella, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: Is that the coolest phrase ever?
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you can work in medicine together, you can work in a restaurant together, you can work out together, but can't but working in Christ Jesus together?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, I mean, I mean, and just just think about think about working in Christ Jesus and what that really means.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: I I got back, uh, I spent several days this week on the coast in Oregon with my brother Rob.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: He's a missionary doctor, and we're trying to do that every year.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: We have try to spend three days of prayer together on the beach.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: So um, so it's a lot of fun, but then I get home, and every time you come home from a semi-vacation type thing, I don't know if you're like me, I unpack and I go, I'm exhausted.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: I need a vacation for my vacation.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: Has anybody else ever said that?
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you're tired, you come home from vacation.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: Listen, let me tell you something, you probably won't believe me, but but I'm telling you this is true, because I'm really old, and so I know these things.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: So, um, and it goes like this the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: He restoreth my soul.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: For real R in life, you don't go to Galveston, sit on the beach, and drink a pina colada, or take a nap, or take a trip to Cancun, or take a skiing vacation to Vale.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: You'll just come home and you'll be exhausted.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: You'll be tired from your vacation.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: The way to really get right rest and relaxation is to let the Lord restore your soul, and He restores your soul when you work in Christ Jesus.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: It is those people who work in Christ Jesus, together, maybe side by side in a wanna or Sunday school or mentoring kids or doing whatever else.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: And you'll find that those people just feel lit up, those people feel excited because they're working in Christ Jesus.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just throwing that out.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just throwing that out.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's true.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: And this couple worked in Christ Jesus primarily out of their home.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: Notice there was a church that met in their home at Rome.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: They go to Corinth.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: There was a church eventually in their home in Corinth.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: There was a church that met in their home in Ephesus.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: And in those days, that was just like you having a home Bible study because they just had 20 people.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: They had, it's clear their small business was doing well because most houses were really small.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: So they had a large enough house that they could have, we're told, 15 to 20 people in them.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: That was a house church, and there were a number of those in Rome.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: So they had one of those.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: It'd be like you having a study at your house.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: You're doing what they did.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: You're working in Christ Jesus.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: If you'll open your home like that, and they did that together, not just one of them.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know how sometimes, you know, he wants to have people over and you don't, or she wants to have people over and you'd much rather sit and watch, you know, uh, you know, the golf tournament or something like that.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_02: No, they both, and maybe, maybe it's because he came from Pontus, which by the way, in Greek means hospitality.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe that's just, you know, he's a hospitable guy because that's that's where he was born.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: And she had to work at the hospitality, but whatever it was, they opened their home and and they would just say, Can you come home?
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: And that's something that you ought to consider doing, partly because the Bible tells you to do.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's a command, it's not an option.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: So you ask people home after church, or you invite somebody home that you see.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: You I can't believe that my parents, even with a dozen children and a small home and so forth, would always ask missionaries or other people to come to our house.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I have such vivid memories of people who then became famous, like Luis Palau, sitting around our table, you know, and eating with us.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: Invite people to your home.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: Have a Bible study in your home occasionally.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: So workers side by side.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: Number four.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: Number four, they were movers.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't help putting this in.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't help putting this in.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't mean that they were hired for moving people.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, have you ever seen such a, it's uh the word is if it's called peripatetic, it means such a traveling couple in the whole Bible.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, is this amazing?
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that they go from Rome to Corinth, and they go from Corinth to Ephesus, and they go from Ephesus to Rome, and they go from Rome back to Ephesus.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: They're just, they're just movers because they realized, and it does appear that a lot of these huge moves happened after retirement age.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: After they were, you know, 50 and 60 were like really old in those days.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: And they made these moves back then.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: I am so, I am just, I admire a couple so much.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: You come from our church sat right over there, you know, to my left.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: Charles and Laura Call just made it to Kenya night before last.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, here's a couple who are 70 years old plus.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they have nice spread up north of town with cattle and so forth.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they could be forgiven for saying we're gonna spend the last 20 years of our life just putting up our feet and taking cruises every year and so forth and living off the land, and and and they have the wherewithal, but no, they came to me a couple years ago, said, we're looking for, can you help us find a place?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna check out this place in Africa.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: And then they finally landed on a place in Kenya where they can work with the navigators for a few years and sold off, sold off you know, a bunch of their stuff.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, they are movers.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: They're saying, you know what?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: The world may sell us this bill of goods, advertising during the middle of an NBA game, that the that the goal in life is to somehow put up your feet, to go to Southern Florida, or to play golf for the rest of your life and you know, in Palm Springs or something.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: What a terrible philosophy of life.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: What a great way to live, in contrast, to have hot feet, to allow the Lord to move you in remarkable places to say, why should I waste the last 20 years of my life?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: Why shouldn't now I do something that really means something to have an influence on younger people?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: Movers.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way, I think I think you could you could uh uh uh there's some people who are moving the world here.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yesterday, for instance, Marshall and Amy Meek of our church, what do they do?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: They they flew home yesterday with a child they have they just adopted from Haiti.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's the third couple that I know of in our church.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: You've adopted a child from Haiti this year.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: You talk about moving and shaking your your whole home life.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's radical.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: But they've come home with another child.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's that's that's that's what that's what we're talking about when you look at Aquila and Priscilla, who are saying, you know what?
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: This philosophy of life that says that the goal in life is to get to the weekend or get to age 65 or 70 and then put up my feet is a terrible philosophy, and that ties in, by the way, with I'm just gonna go all in on this, friends.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: This is number five and last, they were riskers.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: Did you notice?
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: They were riskers side by side.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: In Romans 16, they risked their necks.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know when they did, but it says they risked their necks from my life.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know when they nearly died to save Paul's life.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it happened when they had that riot in Ephesus, you know, that you read about in Acts 18, 19, when thousands of people were threatened by Paul preaching the gospel and getting converted, and they thought they weren't gonna sell as much, the silversmiths thought they weren't gonna sell as many idols, and so they wanted to kill them, and they came to drag them out.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: Paul's living with Priscilla and Aquila.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe they hid them underneath the bed, and the people said, you know, if we find out you've got them, we're gonna kill you.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: And it didn't matter to them.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's when it happened.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: They risked their lives for Paul, or maybe they were on one of those shipwreck trips because they were on ships with him a number of times, and and Paul says, I got shipwrecked three times, and we only know him describing one of them.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe they're in a shipwreck and they saw him go overboard and they didn't know how to swim or something, and they dove overboard to save his life.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: But they risked their lives for him.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: Would you risk your life for another believer?
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like 1 John 3.16 says, you know, as Christ died for you, be willing to die for another person.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: Would you risk your life for Jesus Christ?
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: And together, it's not just that he did it as the leader.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: Priscilla did that too.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: She, both of them, risked their necks for him.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's as though somehow they believed one of Paul's favorite lines for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's like they understood that the purpose of life is not to avoid danger or avoid risk or avoid dying, but sometimes to go straight for it because that's what God's calling you to do.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: That maybe Jim Elliott was right, of course they didn't know Jim at that point, who said it is no, uh, he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: And Jesus was fond of telling his disciples, you can't out-sacrifice God.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: No matter what you give up, the prize that you'll receive in heaven, whether it's whether it's family, whether it's possessions, whether it's joy, completely outweighs all your sufferings.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_02: If you really follow Christ, you'll suffer, but suffering's a drop and glory is an ocean.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_02: And this is a couple that risk their lives for Paul and for Jesus Christ.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_02: And and and I so appreciate Topeka Bible Church 30 years ago.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: All the other churches are running to get out of town, and we were right smack in the worst part of town at that time.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: There were drugs, our church was getting broken into, people, stuff was getting stolen every few weeks and so forth, and we had a decision to make.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: Would we run to the suburbs like everyone else?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: And we decided no.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: Bible does not say that the purpose of life is to protect yourself, protect your possessions.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: There are people here.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: We ought to stay downtown, and we did, and I'm glad we did.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: Now the whole neighborhood's transformed now, partly because we bought all the drug houses out and paved them.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_02: But praise the Lord.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: And the neighborhood loves us for it.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: But but you know, uh, somehow you and I individually can get that same feeling.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not against hiring people to guard us and so forth.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: I know their churches getting shot up and schools getting shot up and so forth, and there's a tendency to say, I'm not gonna move into that neighborhood because that neighborhood's not safe.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: I've got to live in a safe neighborhood, and we've got to guard our lives, and yet, but when you open the Bible, you don't see that at all.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: What you see instead is, are you willing to risk your life for the sake of the gospel?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: Are you willing to move forward and take a chance?
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: And if you die, to die is gain.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: To die is gain.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: I know, I know this is coming as a shock for some of you.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not telling you, I don't want anybody to die, but wouldn't it change even the way we pray for people at the hospital and even the way that we sob if we understood that to live is Christ and to die is gain?
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why it's so wonderful to go to Haiti or go to the Philippines or go to some of these places where you don't have direct TV and where you don't have nice roads, and where you don't have indoor plumbing, and where you where you don't have nice warm or cold food, and where there's no ice, right?
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: And where there's these bugs and there's diseases because when you come home, then you stop murmuring, then you stop complaining, then you stop whining, that everything is not just so, right?
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: And you realize there's something more important to life in life than safety and risk avoidance.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: And here are some people, here's a couple who united and together said, we're willing to risk our lives for the sake of the gospel, knowing that to live is Christ and to die is gain.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: What an admirable couple.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: They were learners, they were learners side by side, and as a result, they became mentors.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: Be mentors.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: Find someone to mentor side by side.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: Be workers, workers in Christ Jesus, which is more relaxing than taking vacations to Kozumel.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: And movers side by side.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: Ask yourself, are we willing to move if God would call us to move and go meet a need somewhere?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_02: And they were riskers who said, you know, we're willing to live and die for the sake of the gospel.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because to live is Christ and to die is gain.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: Join me in a word of prayer.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: Father, we thank you for this amazing couple, this model couple.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: I pray for the couples in our church.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: I pray for the singles.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: This is true of singles as well, and especially as they look forward to marriage.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: May they marry someone who has this, has this view that life is not simply meant to be a way of achieving ultimate ease and putting your feet up one day, but it is a way of advancing the gospel.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's a way of living the life of Jesus Christ.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for how Aquila and Priscilla, Priscilla and Aquila modeled this for us, and they did it side by side.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: Lord, may we be a church of side by side couples who look in each eyes with great devotion, but then as quickly as possible turn side by side and say, What can we do for the gospel?
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: We pray this in Jesus' name.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: You're just