The Power of the Gospel: Transforming Lives in Corinth
The sermon presented by Pastor Josh Massaro on February 23, 2025, provides a profound exploration of Acts chapter 18, where the Apostle Paul embarks on his mission in Corinth—an emblematic city marked by moral corruption and paganism. The pastor elucidates the challenges that Paul faced, particularly the vehement opposition from the Jewish community, which ultimately led him to redirect his evangelistic efforts towards the Gentiles. This pivot underscores a critical aspect of the Christian faith: the gospel is inherently powerful and capable of effecting change, even in the most adverse settings. The narrative reveals that many Corinthians, upon hearing Paul’s message, believed and were baptized, showcasing the transformative impact of the gospel when faithfully proclaimed.
Pastor Massaro further emphasizes the theme of divine encouragement as he recounts God’s reassurance to Paul through a vision. Here, God instructs Paul to remain courageous and to continue speaking boldly, even amidst fear and uncertainty. This significant moment resonates with the modern believer, as it reminds us that fear is a common human experience, yet it is through faith and obedience that we overcome such trepidation. The pastor draws parallels between Paul’s experiences and the struggles faced by contemporary Christians, urging them to trust in God’s presence and to engage actively in sharing the gospel message.
In wrapping up the discussion, the sermon addresses the essence of authentic church life, advocating for a focus on teaching Scripture and nurturing discipleship within the community. Pastor Massaro articulates that true ministry is not merely about numbers or programs, but about fostering relationships grounded in the truth of the gospel. He calls upon the congregation to reflect on their role in the church and to commit to being active participants in the mission of reconciliation, as outlined in the New Testament. This call to action serves as both a challenge and an encouragement, reminding believers of their vital role in advancing the message of Christ in a world that desperately needs hope and truth.
Takeaways:
- The apostle Paul encountered substantial challenges in Corinth, yet he persevered through God's encouragement and presence.
- It is imperative that believers proclaim the gospel of Christ even in the face of opposition and cultural rejection.
- The effectiveness of the gospel is not determined by our doubts but by the transformative power of God's truth.
- Discipleship and teaching the Word of God are essential for a healthy church, as demonstrated by Paul's ministry in Corinth.
- Believers must confront their fears with faith and obedience to God's calling in their lives.
- The assurance of God's presence and purpose provides comfort and courage for believers amidst trials and tribulations.
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This podcast is produced by Ralph Estep, Jr., host of the Ask Ralph Podcast, a daily podcast on Christian Finance you can find it at https://www.askralphpodcast.com/
00:00 - None
00:17 - Exploring the Word of God
05:46 - God's Encouragement to Paul
10:24 - Overcoming Fear with Faith
18:17 - The Promise of Purpose
22:30 - The Ministry and Challenges of Paul in Corinth
28:13 - The Challenge of Discipleship
32:25 - The Importance of Reconciliation Ministry
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Hello and welcome to the Middletown Baptist Church podcast, where we are proclaiming the truth to the world.
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My name is Pastor Josh, and I want to thank you for listening to this podcast.
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I hope that this podcast can be a blessing to you and strengthen you in the word of God.
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Now, come along.
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Let's look into the Bible and see what God has for us here today.
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Well, we're in Acts, chapter 18.
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If you have your Bibles turn there, it's wonderful to hear how God is working in your life.
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And no doubt all of us could have a testimony to give about how God is working in our life.
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Um, we're going to see here in Acts, chapter 18 that as a believer, there's going to be times where we are challenged.
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And in the challenge, we can respond in a few different ways.
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We're going to see here that in this challenge that Paul faces here in Corinth, he is met with the encouragement of God, and therefore he's enabled to move forward and to do the work of God here in this city that is characterized by evil.
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I remember what we talked about two weeks ago to.
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To be a Corinthian meant to live a life of debauchery, to live a life of paganism, to live a life of sensuality.
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And so at that time frame, there would be people talking.
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And so for them to describe someone who was evil or sensual or living a life of sin, they would say, that's a person being a Corinthian.
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And so Paul goes to this place, a place that is in opposition to the truth, a place that is in opposition to the holiness of God.
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And he is called to proclaim the truth of God to these people.
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And so verses 1 through 8 tell us that that initial story of Paul going there and reasoning in the synagogues and the Jews rejecting him, and then he preaches there to the Gentiles.
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And.
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And we see at the end of verse 8 says, and many of the Corinthians hearing, believed and were baptized.
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And.
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And so what does Paul preach to them?
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Well, we see in verse 5, he preached to them that Jesus was the Christ.
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And he testified to the Jews, he testified to the Gentiles that Jesus was the Christ.
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It's very similar to what we talked about this morning.
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We must preach Jesus and Jesus crucified.
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We must preach Jesus and Jesus resurrected.
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We must preach the true Jesus.
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And that's what Paul was preaching.
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He wasn't preaching man's tradition, he wasn't preaching law.
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He wasn't preaching, hey, just do this, this, and this to get yourself saved.
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He was preaching Jesus alone for salvation.
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And many people were upset with that.
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But the beauty is, is that when we preach the gospel, things change.
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When we preach the gospel, hearts are turned to Christ.
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And we see at the end of verse eight, that was exactly what happened two weeks ago.
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We left off there with the miraculous thing that the Corinthians heard and believed and were baptized.
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And so we connected that to today.
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Sometimes we are tempted to think that the gospel message isn't effective.
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And the reason why I say that is because really, it's not necessarily what we say, but it's by what we do.
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And many times we don't act in the gospel or proclaim the gospel because we lack our trust that the gospel is still effective, that the gospel can truly change lives.
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Now, now, by theory, we'll all say that the gospel is powerful, but the way we live our lives is really, as the Bible says, ashamed of the gospel.
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And Romans, chapter 1, verse 16 says that we should not be ashamed of the gospel.
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Why?
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Because the power to save.
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And so when we see this here, Paul is going into a place of really rejection to the Word, yet he proclaims the Word and we see people saved.
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I would tell you here tonight, here in Middletown, in Delaware, in the United States, in this world, if we proclaim the gospel, people will believe.
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Now, who is it going to be?
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I don't know.
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That's not my job.
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It's not my job to decide who is going to receive and who is not going to receive.
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All our job is as a believer is to proclaim.
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And the Bible says that the power of the gospel, the power of the Spirit, will change lives, will transform lives.
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And so we know that the Corinthians were changed.
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Now, were the Corinthians perfect?
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No.
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They needed some discipleship.
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And we're going to talk about that here this evening.
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And as we studied the Book of Acts, we.
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We thought about this acronym, and hopefully I quoted this acronym enough that you can remember.
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But it's authentic church through Scripture.
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How can we be an authentic church through what the Bible has called us to be?
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And one of those things would be to first and foremost proclaim the gospel in places that are opposed to the gospel.
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Right.
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Corinth was not a place characterized by righteousness.
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Corinth was not a place characterized by.
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By holiness and.
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And.
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And honoring the God of Israel.
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There was religion there, and there's gonna be religion where we go.
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But the truth is, is that when we proclaim the Word, there will be people who believe there will be transformation happening.
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And that's what we want to see here in our community.
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As.
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As I look out into our church right now, I know that many of you know that there's a lot of people that are sick, right?
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It's going around, and.
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And we pray for them, and we.
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We want them to get better, maybe even, you know, cook up some chicken noodle soup and go over to their house and deliver that.
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But you know what?
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That's a good thing.
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But when we look out into our community, there's a.
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There's a deeper sickness.
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And that is the sickness of sin.
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And that sickness always leads to death.
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And the truth is, is.
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Are we going to have compassion upon a community?
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Are we going to have compassion upon those souls that are lost enough to tell them the truth about Jesus Christ?
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We see here that Paul does.
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And there is.
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There's results, there's fruit.
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And then we're gonna get to verse number nine.
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Because verse number nine really is God's special encouragement to Paul here in Corinth.
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Because what we can understand through what God says to Paul is that Paul was struggling.
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There could have been multiple reasons why Paul was struggling, but what do we see happen here?
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One, verse nine, then spake the Lord to Paul.
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And I think that God comes to Paul here right when he needs it.
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And if you can understand how Paul is struggling, I think you can identify with him maybe to a degree and say, you know what?
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There has been times in my life when God came along right when I needed it.
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That message was preached right when I needed it.
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That devotional was there right when I needed it.
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That song was there right when I needed it.
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That that verse came to me right at that time.
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I needed it.
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And God comes to us in that moment in comfort.
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The Bible says in Second Corinthians, chapter one, that God is a God of all comfort.
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And in Second Corinthians, chapter one, we see that God is a God of all comfort who comforts us in all of our afflictions.
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But then he gives a reason why we receive the comfort.
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We receive the comfort so that we can comfort others in time of need.
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And so Paul is going to be comforted by God here.
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And in so doing, Paul is then going to comfort those around him and their struggle that they are facing.
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And so what does God say to Paul?
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Says that he comes in the vision in the night, and he says this.
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Be not afraid.
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So if God is telling Paul to not be afraid, what is the implication that he is Afraid.
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And I don't know if any of you have ever dealt with fear in your life transparently here this evening.
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One of the struggles that I have faced in my life is the fear of man, the fear of failure, the fear of inadequacy.
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And that fear can sometimes grip us so much to the point where we are petrified, meaning we cannot move, we cannot take that next step.
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We.
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We are silenced.
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We are limited.
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And what God is telling Paul here is, look, be not afraid.
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And then he says here, but speak.
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And so the obedience to God, the.
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The.
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The opposite of the fear would be to follow him and to proclaim.
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And.
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And so the implication behind this message was that Paul was afraid of something, fearing that here in Corinth his work would be cut short by either the opposing Jews, the religious people of the day, or rejected by the highly charged worldliness of this area in Corinth.
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And so he had faced already a culture shock in Athens.
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If you remember, he went to Athens and there was all these false gods lined up, and he preached that message on Mars Hill about the unknown God.
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And now he's coming not just to a culture shock, but here at this point, he.
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He is facing a.
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A really what we would call a moral shock.
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He's not used to seeing this immorality, and.
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And now he's surrounded by it.
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And sometimes when we're surrounded by evil, we're tempted to give up, we're tempted to give in.
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We're tempted to say that culture is winning.
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And so here we see God say, be not afraid.
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The verse that I claimed for my life a long time ago is Joshua 1:9.
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And it talks.
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It says, be not afraid.
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Be strong and courageous.
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Be not afraid, for the Lord thy God is with thee.
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Withersoever thou goest.
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The same reminder that God gave Joshua is the same reminder that God is giving Paul here.
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And it's the same reminder that he gave all of us In Hebrews chapter 13, when he says, I will never leave you nor forsake you.
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And the truth is, is that the moments that we come to a place of fear in our lives, there is a response.
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And that response can be fight.
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We can fight God on an issue, or we can.
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We can flee away, or we can find God in faith.
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And so what we see here in this case is that God tells Paul the remedy to your fear, the solution to your fear was for Paul to obey Jesus command to not be afraid and to proclaim, to speak and not be silent.
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Paul could have been tempted to leave Paul could have been tempted to stop.
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He could have been tempted to be silent.
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But yet God said to speak the opposite of probably what he was feeling to do at that point.
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And, and I would tell you here at this case in your life, you, you might have faced a time where you were fearing something.
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And the remedy to that fear is not just become more brave, get stronger.
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The remedy to your fear is to face it with faith.
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The remedy to your fear is to obey God.
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The remedy to the fear is to trust in what his word says, to go back to what we know.
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I.
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I don't know about any of you that.
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Speaking of my kids, brother Sam, you know, I don't know if any of you ever had to deal with your children being scared of the dark or scared of monsters under their bed or in the closet, right?
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And I had to go, you know, remind them, guys, that's not real.
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That's not.
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That's not true, right?
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Dad is here.
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There's nothing here where everything's okay.
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We have to remind them of reality.
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We have to remind them of the truth.
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We have to remind them that there isn't anything to fear.
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That's the same thing that happens for us as believers.
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Sometimes we start to think about all those things that aren't there and we begin to doubt.
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And maybe we're fearful of things that are there.
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But yet God says, I've got you.
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I'm protecting you.
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You're in my grip.
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And that's what he tells Paul next.
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He says, don't be afraid, but speak and hold not thy peace, meaning, don't be silent.
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And so get the word of God out.
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That's what he's saying.
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He's not saying, paul, talk more, right?
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That's.
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That's not what he's saying here.
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He's not saying, hey, be more of a talkative person.
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He's saying, paul, proclaim the word of God more.
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Don't allow your fear to silence you.
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And I would say for a church and for the individuals that comprise the church, when we are tempted to fear and to be silent, God says no, to proclaim to.
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To.
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To proclaim the word of God.
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Don't be afraid to say what the truth is.
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Don't be afraid to tell people why you have the hope that you have.
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The Bible even says that.
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The Bible says in the New Testament, be ready to give an answer for those who are asking the reason of hope within you.
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Right?
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With.
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With gentleness and respect, with meekness and fear.
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And so what we see here in the Book of acts is that Paul is being encouraged by God, comforted by God.
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Really what we would say is exhorted by God to move to his ministry of proclaiming the word.
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And then he gives him a reason why he doesn't need to be afraid, for I am with.
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It's the presence of God.
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It's the presence of God in his life that reminds him that he is not alone in this endeavor.
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Even though he had Silas, even though he had Timothy, even though he had others around him, the temptation for Paul was probably to think that he was alone, that nobody was there, no one had his back.
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And you might have had that temptation in your life.
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You might have been surrounded by people, but yet you feel alone, you feel isolated.
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I.
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I can tell you that for whatever reason, ministry serving God can allow you to get to a place of feeling isolated.
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You could feel lonely.
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You can look around you and say, well, look at me.
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I'm trying to do something.
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But it doesn't seem like anyone else is on board with me.
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It actually seems like sometimes people are against me.
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Yet God says, hey, it doesn't matter if everyone's against you.
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I'm for you.
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I'm with you.
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So it's a reminder of the presence of God.
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And really we see it in a few different ways as God reminds Paul of his presence.
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He's reminding him, yes, of his presence, but he's reminding him of his compassion.
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He says, paul, there's a lot of people here that are not having compassion for you, but I have compassion for you.
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Um, he's reminding him of his cooperation with Paul.
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Like how I'm working with you.
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I'm.
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I'm in this with you.
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It's my word that you are proclaiming.
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It's my power that you're tapping into.
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It's my direction that you are following.
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And so in this case, Paul is reminded of the presence of God.
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And sometimes we need to be reminded of the presence of God.
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Remember that he will never leave us nor forsake us.
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And when we rest in the presence of God and we claim the power of God, the Bible says in Philippians chapter 4.
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We mentioned it this morning, that the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, can rule our hearts and our minds.
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And I think that's important to.
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To remind ourselves of.
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Because sometimes the struggle is in our hearts.
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We know the right thing, but our hearts tell us something else.
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Our emotions tell us something else.
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Like.
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Like, I know that God is with me, but I'm not feeling it right now.
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I.
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I don't feel like he loves me.
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I don't feel like he's blessing me.
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And so when we allow the presence of God and the power of God to rule in our life, we can have the peace of God that rules our hearts and our minds.
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Sometimes our emotions are right, but our minds are off.
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Our truth is off about what the word of God says.
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And so what the Bible tells us here in this case is that the peace of God protects our hearts and our minds to the sense that we are able to rightly divide the word and rightly fight against this fear that Satan is trying to put into our life.
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Be careful or anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.
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The Bible says there's a lot of reasons that we can come to a place in our life and look at the circumstances and question it and have anxiety and have fear and have apprehension, or we can face God and we can turn to him and we can say, lord, I'm trusting in you.
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I'm asking you for guidance.
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I'm asking you for clarity.
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I'm asking you for peace, I'm asking you for power.
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And I'm resting in your presence.
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That's exactly what Paul is being reminded of here.
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It says, I and with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee.
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Now that's a.
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Interesting thing that God says here because he doesn't say that no man is gonna, that no one's gonna like, hey, this is, this is what he's basically telling him.
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There's gonna be people that come after you, but they're not gonna hurt you.
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Now, now we know that Paul has people come after him and hurt him.
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So, so what is he talking about here?
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Well, I think of what Matthew, chapter 10, verse 28 says.
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And, and I think that so many times in our life the fear of man grips us so much to.
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To the place where we fear man more than we fear God.
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Matthew chapter 10, verse 28 says this.
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And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him which is able to destroy both the soul and body in hell.
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And so what we can see here in this case is God is warning Paul to not be gripped by the fear of man.
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Why fear someone that can hurt your body when they can't take your soul?
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God is in control of our lives.
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And certainly there's times in our life where we might feel oppressed, we might feel in pain, we might even feel persecuted.
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But yet what God is saying here is that don't allow that to happen.
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There's a promise here.
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There's a promise that there will people that come against you, but no one can hurt you.
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For I have much people in this city.
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And so the promise here is that your, your job is not over with yet.
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There, there's still a purpose for your life there.
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There is still an opportunity for you to be used by me.
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And so therefore, what is Paul to do?
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Paul is to continue to proclaim the Word, to not allow fear to grip him.
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And so I, I, I always tell people this and, and I can't necessarily point you to chapter and verse on this, but if you're taking in breath, I think the reasonable response is that God still has a plan for your life.
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Right?
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God knows when our time is up.
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And when our time is up, our time is up.
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Uh, but if you're here and you're alive, which I think all of you are, there's a purpose for your life.
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And that's what he's telling Paul here.
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Hey, look, rest in my presence because of the purpose that I have for you.
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Don't worry about what people are gonna do to you.
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He says, I, I, I'm with you.
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And, and so this additional promise to him was, hey, there's not gonna be anyone that can hurt you.
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There's no, there's not gonna be anyone that can stop this work that I have for you.
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And the other promise was that, hey, you know what?
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There are still people in need.
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He says, I, I, for I have much people in this city.
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Maybe Paul has some doubts about the survival and the health of the Corinthian Church.
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Maybe Paul, maybe it wasn't a struggle of fearing the attack of the Corinthians.
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Maybe it was a fear that this isn't worth it.
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What I'm doing maybe isn't even resonating with these people.
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Look at what they're doing.
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Look at how they're worshiping.
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Is it even worth it?
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I'm just going to move on.
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God says no, I have a purpose for the Corinthian church.
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Most of you have read 1st and 2nd Corinthians.
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Some of you get to go to the Greece trip.
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You're going to see Corinth.
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God had a lot of plans for Corinth.
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God had a lot of plans for that church.
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And so Paul is challenged to stay on track.
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I quoted this verse to someone here this week, and it's, it was actually interesting.
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You, you know, it's amazing how God works.
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I was struggling with a few things recently, and Galatians chapter 6, verse 9 came to mind.
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And let us not be weary and well doing, for in due season we shall reap.
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If we faint not.
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Then I had someone come in talking to me, and they said, you know what?
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I just.
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I just don't feel like I can continue on.
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I don't feel like I can do this.
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And you know what?
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I thought of that verse, and I said, hey, let me tell you something.
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This is not an accident.
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God has just been working in my heart about Galatians 6.
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9.
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I want to write this verse down for you, and I want you to commit this to memory.
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And I think that's all of us.
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In some way, we need to be reminded of Galatians 6.
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9.
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Don't get weary and well doing, for in due season we shall reap.
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If we faint not, it's worth it.
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Go to the end of First Corinthians 15.
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Man, this.
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If.
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If.
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You know what?
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Some of you.
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I got to use you guys as an analogy.
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When I was in West Virginia, I was talking about getting excited for the Lord, and I said, you know, we have some people in our church that were really excited a few weeks ago when the Eagles won the super bowl.
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And they were like.
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Because they were all West Virginia Mountaineers fans.
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They had nothing about the Eagles.
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Um, but.
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But I say, you know, we got excited here, and.
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And if you can't get excited about the verse I'm about to read you, I don't know what will make you excited, but at the end of First Corinthians, chapter 15, we could start at.
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Well, let's.
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Let's start.
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I mean, you could start in the whole chapter, but let's go to verse 56.
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He says, the sting of death is sin, and the strength is in sin is in the law.
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But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.
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For as much as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord, it's a reminder that because of Jesus conquering death, and because of him extending everlasting life to us, we can know that our labor for him in Christ is not in vain.
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Even if it feels like it's a waste, even if it feels like it's worthless, even if it feels like it's not resonating, there is a promise of God here that we can go back and not be Weary and well doing to know that our work is not in vain if it's done in the Lord.
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And so therefore, that is what Paul is being reminded of here at the end of his second missionary journey.
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I go back and see Paul as a superhero sometimes.
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Sometimes I'm guilty of that.
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Sometimes I'm guilty of going back and saying, man, Paul was just this amazing guy that got up in front of thousands of people and was strong and was powerful.
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But if you read the description in First Corinthians about Paul's preaching, he was, he was broken, he was, he was trembling.
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He, he had a sin that so easily beset him.
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He had a thorn in his flesh.
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There was a lot of things that Paul struggled with, but yet he pushed forward.
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And so, so, so we can't look at Paul and go, well, well, I'm not a Paul, right?
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So of course I'm going to feel a different way.
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Paul struggled with the same things we struggle with.
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But Paul felt oppression.
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Paul felt rejection.
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But yet in this case, God encourages him and reminds him to stay faithful.
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So he says, for I have much people in the city, so what does he do?
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Paul has a response which is an obedient response which we should all respond in says.
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And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the Word of God among them.
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Now, it would be very easy to gloss over.
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That last verse kind of seems like a summary.
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And I did, the first time I read through it, I just said, okay, God spoke to him, encouraged him.
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And then, then, you know, then it describes what he did for the next year and a half.
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But Paul was in Corinth longer than pretty much all the other places that he went to.
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It seems to be longer than any other city where he founded a church.
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And his ministry at Corinth was described this way.
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If, if, if he could have a summary of his year and a half, what was it?
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It says, it right there, says that he was teaching the Word of God among them.
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I, I believe that that is the most important ministry a church can have.
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Obviously it's outreach, but in reach.
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What's the most important ministry?
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The teaching of the Word of God.
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It must be the centerpiece.
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It doesn't.
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It, I mean, maybe I'm wrong about this and maybe I'm reading too far into this, but, but it doesn't say, you know, they were having.
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Not that they didn't have potlucks.
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I'm sure they had potlucks, but that wasn't what was characterized by the year and a half, the year and a half was the preaching of God's word.
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And so what I see there is, obviously Paul has a heart for evangelism, but Paul has a heart for discipleship.
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The duration of Paul's stay here in Corinth shows that he had a heart for ministry.
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He wasn't an in and out guy.
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You.
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You've ever heard of people that come in for a weekend, they drop a bomb and they leave the mess for the pastor.
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Paul.
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Paul was invested into the Church of Corinth.
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And sometimes church, authentic church, can be messy.
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I.
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I wish I could tell you that everything was easy in a church.
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I wish I could tell you that everyone's life was perfect.
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I wish I could tell you that everyone agrees with everything that we say.
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And I wish I could tell you that ministry is easy, but ministry is messy.
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If we do it right, it's difficult.
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If we lead people to Christ, we've got to disciple them.
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And as we disciple them, we have to redisciple them.
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And sometimes I have to be discipled, and sometimes I have to be exhorted, and sometimes I have to be edified.
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And it goes on and on and on, and it's never ending.
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And so Paul stays here for a year and a half and teaching them the Word.
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You know what?
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It's so important to know the Word.
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Why?
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Because when that messiness happens, we have to go back to the Word.
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We can't go to what culture tells us.
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Let's say a husband and wife come up to me and they say, hey, you know what?
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I can't stand looking at my spouse and I can't be with them anymore.
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They're frustrating me.
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They're doing everything that I said that I wouldn't be with.
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And I go, well, you know what I was watching on TV a little while back?
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You know, you should trade in.
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Go up.
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Go try, you know, try to get better.
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Right?
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No, that's terrible.
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That's.
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But that's the worldly culture.
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Worldly culture says, get.
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Get what you can when you can, and, hey, enjoy yourself.
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But what do we have to do?
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We have to go back to the Word of God.
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Counseling and fellowship and edification and teaching has to be based, as we see here, in what Paul says in the Word of God.
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And so he continued there a year and six months, teaching the Word of God among them.
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And so I.
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I think that he was committed.
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He was a man committed to making disciples there in Corinth.
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And I think that we should be a church committed to making disciples.
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I have A pastor friend that says, there are some churches that are only focused on nickels and noses.
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I was like, what, what is he talking about?
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He's talking about nickels.
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What?
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They're giving noses people in the pews.
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Okay, folks, if we are a church that's just worried about the bottom line, and we're a church just worried about how many people are in the pews, we're not doing the work of the ministry.
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That's not authentic church.
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Authentic church is creating disciples.
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What's a disciple?
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A disciple is a committed follower of Christ.
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If I am too busy to disciple my fellow brother, I am too busy in the ministry.
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I'm too busy in my own work.
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I must be willing to say it's the people and not the program.
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So easy to get into the machine of church that we miss out on the individual person that needs that discipleship.
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I've been that busy.
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Pastor Spice, some of you remember Pastor Spicer, a great, great man.
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I love Pastor Spicer.
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He had this sermon.
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He, he talked about God's interruptions.
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And it was this idea that, you know, if you knew Pastor Spicer, he always had a checklist in his pocket right here, and he always was writing things down, and he had all of his bullet points for the day.
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He's like, all right, Pastor Josh, you gotta start carrying a three by five card.
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I said, well, Pat, Pastor Spicer, I've got a phone here.
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I just type in what?
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No, you need a 3 by 5 card in your pocket to write down everyone's needs, and then you gotta make sure you're checking them off.
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But then he reminded me, you know, there's times where I have to put that 3 by 5 card down and take care of the situation at hand.
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And I think that's a good lesson in ministry that, you know, we can have a purpose and we can have goals and we can have desires of growth.
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But folks, you know what?
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The, the real major issue at hand is the souls of men.
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And, and I'm not in the business of selling a product.
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I, I, I'm not in the business of trying to fill a building.
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The Bible says that I am as a pastor, and we as a church are in the business of souls.
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And, and we should be praying for each other as we do, we should be encouraging each other, we should be exhorting each other.
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And that's what Paul does here in, in Corinth.
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Now, lest you think that everything's okay right after that, what happens next?
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We got about 10 more minutes.
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We're Gonna look at the thing that immediately follows this.
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We don't know exactly the time frame.
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About a year or so that this happens.
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A year and six months.
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And it says, and when Galileo was the deputy of Achaia, the Jews made insurrection with one accord against Paul.
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So the Jews obviously don't like Paul, so they make an insurrection and they, they brought him to the judgment seat, saying, this fellow persuadeth men to worship God contrary to the law.
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So the accusation against Paul from the Jews was that Paul was teaching this new religion that was opposed to the law, meaning, hey, follow God, but don't follow the law.
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And when Paul was now about to open his mouth, so Paul's about to defend himself, which we know he, he doesn't really like to do, but he knows that he has to do it here.
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Galio, which was the kind of the, the governor, the deputy of the area, said unto the Jews, if it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness, oh ye Jews reason would that I should bear with you.
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Meaning I would agree with you that this is a problem if he was doing something lewd or if he was doing something wicked in our culture and trying to pull down our culture.
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But if it be a question of words and names and of your law, look ye to it.
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He's like, this is your problem, not my problem, for I will be no judge of such matters.
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So God uses this Gentile deputy to defend Paul against the Jewish people.
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And verse 16, and he drave them from the judgment seat.
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Then all the Greeks, the Gentiles took softenes, the chief ruler of the synagogue, the Jewish ruler.
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And by the way, you, you know, there are things in Scripture that are prescriptive that we should do.
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And there, there's things in scripture that are descriptive, meaning just describing what happened.
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This is not God condoning what we should do to our enemies.
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But the Gentiles grabbed the leader of the synagogue and beat him before the judgment seat.
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And Galileo cared for none of those things.
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And so what happens is, is that the Gentiles actually revolt against the Jews.
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And, and this isn't so much, I think people defending Paul as much as people just didn't like the Jews.
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And so that's their response.
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And, and so that's, that's kind of the, the end of, of that story, verse 17.
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And that's where we're kind of going to end tonight.
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Uh, but, but ultimately what we can see in this case is that Paul is protected.
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God keeps his word.
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Um, you know, in this case, Paul probably could have had some questions about.
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Wait, God.
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I thought you thought everything was going to be okay.
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Now they're going to put me before the judgment seat.
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And right when he was about to talk about defending himself, God allowed this individual to defend him and God preserved him.
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I, I did find it very interesting though.
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Like if you, if you look at name.
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If you're, Some of you might not be people that are interested in names, but if you look at verse 17 says, then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the synagogue, and beat him.
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But then we see in First Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 1, Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God and Sosthenes, our brother.
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And so some commentators believe that this very same Sosthenes that got a beaten as the chief ruler of the synagogue actually converted and came to Christ.
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I, I don't know if those are the two of the same, but I was reading some commentators and they said that, and I found that interesting, but I don't know necessarily if that be the case.
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But again, it's a simple message here this evening when we face opposition, what are we gonna do?
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Are we gonna fear?
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Are we gonna faith?
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Are we gonna.
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Are we gonna rest in our own self pity?
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Or are we gonna rest in the presence of God?
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That will bring the peace of God, which will eventually bring the power of God through the message of the gospel.
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I don't know what God's gonna bring our way this year, but I encourage you to stand up for the truth.
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I encourage you to proclaim the gospel.
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Find a.
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As Second Corinthians says, a ministry of reconciliation.
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We all have.
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I'm talking to the Sunday night crowd.
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We all have a ministry, but what is a ministry of reconciliation?
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It's like.
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Pastor.
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I don't know about that, Pastor.
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Ministry is something that I just do on a Sunday just to check my box.
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I just want to do that.
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I don't want to be a.
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What's a ministry of reconciliation?
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Ministry of reconciliation just means this.
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It's a ministry that points people to the gospel.
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It's a ministry in any capacity that allows the gospel to be seen through you.
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Well, Pastor, how can I be having a ministry of reconciliation when I watch those babies in the nursery?
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Well, you can love them with the love of Christ.
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You can minister to the parents.
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You can tell them about things that, you know, the child did and encourage their hearts in that way.
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Folks, we can be creative with the gospel and, and you know, well, I'm, I'm on the security team.
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How can I be having a ministry of reconciliation?
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The list can go on and on.
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I, I would tell you that everything that we do, if we do it, the Bible says to do it in the name of the gospel.
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Whether therefore ye eat or drink or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God.
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That verse tells me that whatever I do, I can do it to the glory of God.
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Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father, which is in heaven.
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These are all things that remind us that whatever we are doing, not just on Sunday morning, not just once a month, not just when we get together and we have to make sure we're on our best behavior for church, but in every aspect of our life that we take the gospel out.
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You know, there's a lot of people that ask me, hey, hey, Pastor, how can we get the word out into the community?
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Well, I mean, there's websites, there's flyers, there's, you know, we could take out a billboard.
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These are all good things.
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But I'm going to tell you, you know what the greatest method of sharing the gospel and bringing people into churches is Christians taking the message and sharing that with other people.
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I mean, we can spend a ton of money on advertising and we can.
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There's no problem with that.
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But the greatest advertisement for the Lord and the greatest message of the gospel is by the saints taking the message into the world, word of mouth.
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And if God has challenged you to do that here this year, I encourage you to take steps to invite someone, to bring someone in to tell people about the truth of Jesus Christ.
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Don't necessarily tell them, hey, you know what?
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We.
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You could tell them, hey, we've got a lot of great ministries at our church.
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We've got a lot of great things that you can do.
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But ultimately, the whole point we have here is to tell people about Jesus.
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That's what Paul said.
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Paul said, hey, it's about Jesus and Jesus crucified.
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It's about Jesus and Jesus resurrected.
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And I don't know about you, but I see the time ticking and I think of that verse that says, redeeming the time because the days are evil.
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I don't know how much time God has for us, but all I know is that I feel more and more of a desire to get busy about the things of God and the time that he has given us.
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And so I hope that that's something that you also feel as well.
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Well, we'll be back next week studying Acts chapter 18.
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And we're going to continue here at the end of, of Paul's second missionary journey.
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And you know, I, I've really, really enjoyed the study in the book of Acts.
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It is a historical account, but I think there's a lot that we can learn when it comes to the early church.
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And I think that we as Christians have allowed other things to seep into church and put those above the things that God has us to be serious about.
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And so my desire is for myself and others at the church to realign ourselves with, with what matters.
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I go back to the.
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Well, rewind.
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About two and a half years ago, I was in this very podium and I was preaching on trials and we got in our car, we drove away.
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We got in a pretty serious car accident.
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I can tell you that when our car was flipping, I wasn't thinking about all the things that really don't matter.
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I was thinking about the thing that didn't matter.
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I was thinking about my children.
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I was thinking about my Savior.
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I was calling out to God.
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And that's what mattered about a year ago when Silas was born.
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I don't know if any of you guys have those moments in your life that you can go back to that are like, like cornerstone moments in your life that change you.
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The night that Silas was born, I remember, I won't go into the whole story, but I remember the moment where God woke me up to things that like, matter and don't matter.
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And I remember in the waiting room outside of Silas's surgery, there I was, I was talking to God and it was probably one of the most real prayers I've ever had to him.
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And I remember saying, lord, I'm, I, I apologize to him.
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I said, I'm sorry for wasting time and things that don't matter.
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And, and it was sobering and, and so from that time frame on, I've realized that we have a purpose and that time is short and that we must be busy about the things of God.
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And so God forbid, things have to happen to get our attention like that, but God did enough in his word to get our attention and I think that that's something that we should think about.
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So anyhow, I'm getting a little bit emotional.
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I don't wanna go too emotional here tonight, but encourage you guys to think about those things in your life that cause you to think about what truly matters to the cause of the gospel.
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Thank you again for listening to the Middletown Baptist Church podcast.
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I hope that this sermon has been a blessing for you.
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You would like to find out more information about our church or this sermon.
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You can find us at middletownbaptistchurch.org or find us on Facebook or YouTube.
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You can also email me directly at Josh Massaroiddletownbaptistchurch dot com if you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and follow along for future podcast and updates.
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Thank you so much.
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God Bless.
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Have a wonderful day.
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