The God Who Saves

SERMON: 2017-08-20--ac17177--the-god-who-saves-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:36:03.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The entire recording appears to be continuous sermon material, including introductions, scripture readings, theological exposition, and conclusion. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- I want to pick up this morning where we left off last week, The God Who Saves, part two, and I want to blend it with our ongoing series of studies in the book of Acts. And so our scripture reading is Acts chapter 20. We're going to read the verses seven through 12. It is the story of Eutychus who falls out of the window and who gets raised back to life by the apostle Paul. Just to put it again, in historical context, Paul is on his third missionary journey. He is revisiting all the churches that he established in his first and second missionary trips. He traveled all the way to Corinth, planned to go back from Corinth to Jerusalem, heard about plots of the Jews directed towards him, changed his plans, and he backtracked all the way to Philippi. Then he sent his companions on ahead of him to Troas, and then he and Luke, who had rejoined the party, took a boat from Philippi to Troas. And Troas is where we pick up the story this morning. Let's read the verses together, Acts chapter 20 beginning at verse seven. "On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight." Now, you know what I'd like to do with that. "Kept on talking until midnight. There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. Seated in a window was a young man named Eudicus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. 'Don't be alarmed,' he said, 'he's alive.' Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted." Let's pray before we get into that passage. Father, we're so grateful for your word and we're grateful for your power to move mountains. We're grateful for your willingness to listen to the cries of your people and we're so grateful for your willingness to use us as your hands and your feet. And so as we take some moments now to reflect on this passage and on what I think you're wanting to say to this community through this, Lord help us to have eyes that see and ears that hear. May our lives be strengthened in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the midst of all the ups and downs of life that we experience, may we faithfully serve you and walk before your face knowing that in the Lord there isn't a mountain too high, there isn't a valley too deep, and there isn't the chasm too wide. But in Christ Jesus, you have already assured us that we are more than conquerors and that as agents of your grace, we can bless others all around us. So give me the words that I need this morning, Lord, all of us hearts to hear and to believe and to step out in faith and may you be honored in all that we do and all that we say this day in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I have a confession to make. The temptation for me this morning after reading this passage of how Paul went on and on and bored young Eudicus to death is to say to you, I never again want to hear you complain about a long sermon or a service that goes over time or the youth that are bored, because I want you to know the apostle Paul has got us all beat big time. That said, I'll resist that temptation because it probably could come across as just a dead self-serving, but it is intriguing to note the spiritual hunger of these believers in Troas. Now I assume they all were working folks and they had to get up the next morning to go back to work and here they were not only till midnight, but until daybreak the next morning. It shows you, I think, that they understood that they probably would not see the apostle Paul again and they wanted to absorb as much of his spiritual wisdom and insight as they possibly could and they were willing to pay the price for that to happen. If I compare that to sort of the lackadaisical, laid-back, comfortable, self-serving interests of much of the church in the western world, then I'm convicted that we have a lot of growing to do before we share a biblical hunger for God and for God's truth. Wouldn't you agree? How many of us are prepared to pay that kind of price just to grow in our walk and in our relationship with the Lord? Now what I want to say this morning is that what I want to focus on is none of that. What I want to focus on is the fact that God uses Paul to raise Eudicus from the dead and I want to do that in the context of last week's message entitled "The God Who Saves." You might recall that I pointed out last week that the troubles of this present world often serve as a backdrop for God's saving power. God is a God who delights to save, Psalm 68 verse 20. Our God is a God who saves, Psalm 74 verse 12. But you, O God, are my King from of old, you bring salvation upon the earth. God wants to make things better. He wants to see his creation restored. And I pointed out last week that's rooted in two realities. It is rooted in the character of God. He is gracious and compassionate, doesn't wish any to perish. Then it's rooted in the covenant that he made with Abraham and with his offspring. And God promised Abraham and to his offspring that he would deliver him from the powers of hell and death and he would restore to him the inheritance of the earth that Adam and Eve had lost because of their sin. That promise, you know, was fulfilled in Christ who is King of kings and Lord of lords. And you and I through faith in Jesus become heirs of the covenant made with Abraham. And what that means is that when life is difficult and rough and whatever else comes at us, we can boldly and with confidence go to God knowing that he will either avert all evil or he will turn into our good because he is a God who saves us, very anxious for us to understand this is the heart and the character of God as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ and mediated by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now what I want us to do this morning is build on that and point out that while God is perfectly capable of manifesting the saving power all by himself. He typically uses people as the vehicle to accomplish that in the here and now. And that I think is one of the significant points of the story before us where Paul is used in raising eudicus from the dead. You know the story. We just read it together it's pretty straightforward. Eudicus is a young man. He's getting sleepy and he's getting sleepy I suspect not only because he is bored perhaps by Paul going on and on and on. But he's getting sleepy because the text tells us the room is full of lamps. What does that tell you? Think oil lamps, think candles. What do you think was left of oxygen in that room? Not a whole lot. So what does eudicus do? Climbs into one of the open windows trying to get some fresh air. Does it help him? No. It's past his bedtime. Falls fast asleep. And if you've ever worried about your kid falling out of the upper bunk in the middle of the night going thud hoping they didn't break their little necks you can imagine what a thud it was when he fell three stories down. So they pick him up and the Bible says he's dead. Kind of brings the meeting to a screeching halt as medical emergencies tend to do in church you might recall. So they all go rushing down. Paul throws himself on the boy, puts his arm around him and lo and behold the boy comes back to life. They all go back upstairs and then they keep on going as if nothing had happened until morning breaks. What do we learn together from this story this morning? Three or four things, let's see how far we can get. First of all, accidents happen and they happen sometimes even to God's people. I was talking just this past week to somebody about Keith Green and his death and that of two of his children in a plane crash. I don't know how many of you remember Keith Green. He was a rising star in the contemporary music world back in the 70s and early 80s. He and his wife Melody were soundly converted in 1975, felt a call then to open their home to the last and the lost and the least and as the year went by eventually they had as many as 70 people living with them if you can imagine. That eventually morphed into the last day's ministries. They bought property in Lindale, Texas. They had a staff at that point of a hundred people. If you talk to son-in-law Tino, he was part of that ministry for a season. I have another friend who was there also and in a July morning of 1982 they were entertaining a young couple or a couple that was moving out east to become church planters and they had promised their six kids that they would get an airplane ride in Texas. So they all piled into this leased two engine airplane. The couple, their six children, Keith Green and two of his children plus the pilot. Eventually the plane was overloaded by more than 400 pounds. The center of gravity was misplaced. The plane never got off the ground and hit the treetops down the end of the runway and crashed, burst into flame and everybody died. Terrible tragedy. And I so remember it because Keith Green was a shining light in the contemporary Christian music industry at the time and what made his death particularly tragic apart from all the other things that you associate with the loss of a husband and two children was that he was on the verge of launching a worldwide missions tour calling people back to Jesus and calling people back to repentance. And I remember the conversation in Christian circles. How can God allow this to happen? Was it the devil that took out Keith Green? If it was the devil, where was God? Where was the sovereignty of God? Why didn't God do something about it? All the questions that Christians always ask when life is difficult. And the reality is that many times we don't know the answer to that kind of question. Sometimes we don't know that answer until many years later. And one person whose life illustrates that I think is another person whom you know and that would be Oswald Chambers. Oswald Chambers is best known for his devotional, his utmost, for his highest. How many of you here have read or have heard of his book? See all kinds of hands. The book has been never has been out of print since it was first published. It's been translated into more than 30 languages. But of course Oswald Chambers himself never saw it because his wife compiled the book after his death of his writings. He was 43 years old, serving as an army chaplain in World War I in Egypt when he developed appendicitis. He refused to go to the hospital because he didn't want to take a bed which he thought was needed for the soldiers. By the time they operated on him, it was too late and he died. Tragically snuffed out a brilliant theologian, a brilliant pastor, a brilliant leader. Would have been the end of his life. Except that his wife, Biddy, her real name was Gertrude, I think Biddy is probably better than Gertrude, no offense to Gertrudes, my mother-in-law was a Gertrude. But in her youth she had aspired to be secretary to the Prime Minister of England, if you can imagine this. And so she took shorthand and developed a phenomenal ability to write shorthand at a rate of 250 words a minute. So she took notes of all his presentations and all his preachings and all his teachings. And so after he died, she collected his writings, put it into print. His utmost for his highest was the most popular version of this with something like 50 editions of his speaking was published by her after his death. Would have never happened had he not died. Sometimes it takes a long time before you see good come out of what appears to be evil. And sometimes I suspect we won't see it until the age to come. My point is accidents happen, Eudicus' death was an accident. Being a Christian doesn't automatically make us immune to accidents even though we know that God is sovereign and has promised either to avert all evil or certainly turn it to our good. That's one lesson I think that we learn here. A second lesson that we learn is that accidents can serve as a backdrop for God's glory. Accidents can serve as a backdrop for God's glory. Touched on this a little bit last week but I want to come back to it and expand on it just a little bit. One of the questions that people often ask, particularly when bad things happen, is why does God allow bad things to happen? If he's sovereign, why doesn't he stop it? And you can go back all the way to the creation of the world and the fall of Adam and Eve into sin. Why did he not keep Adam and Eve from sinning? Do you ever think about that? If you haven't you ought to because that's a big question. Look at all the trouble in the world that could have been avoided if God had just not let them sin. Well the reality is that the brokenness and the sin of the world serves as a backdrop to reveal the fullness of God's character. I've talked about this before, I don't want to belabor it, but God cannot show his saving grace unless there is something for us to be saved from. And so the bad things, including the accidents that happen in the world, will sometimes serve as a backdrop for God to reveal a side of his saving grace and power that we'd never experience if that reality were not true. And as I was thinking about that, there are two stories in the New Testament, both in the Gospel according to John, that are powerful illustrations of this particular truth. Both of these stories you will know, I'm pretty sure. The first is the story of the man born blind in John chapter 9. And you will remember that the disciples came to Jesus and they asked him, "Who sinned? Was it this man or was it his parents?" Because that was the paradigm of their theology. Something bad happened to you, it was because you did a bad thing and therefore you had to bear the punishment of the bad thing that you did. Who remembers the response of Jesus as recorded in John chapter 9 verse 3? "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened why?" Read it with me, "so that the work of God might be displayed in his life." Say it again, "so that the work of God might be displayed in his life." See, it's one thing to heal a blind person who used to see and now has become blind, because then at least you know it used to work. To heal a man born blind is another story altogether and serves as a further demonstration of God's power because nobody's ever heard of a man born blind getting his vision back. That wasn't just a psychological block that kept him from seeing, clearly he was truly blind. Now the second story that is very similar to this happens two chapters later in John's gospel and you'll know this also and that is the story of Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead. Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha, were very close friends of Jesus, they were very wealthy people, they lived in a village called Bethany, two miles or kilometers away from Jerusalem, Jesus loved spending time with them, Mary was the one who poured out the expensive ointment according to John's gospel and washed Jesus' feet with it, loved him intensely, Lazarus got sick. They sent word to Jesus, the one whom you love is sick, the implication being please come and help us, and you know the story, Jesus didn't just go rushing into the picture did he? He hung around for two days, by the time he got there Lazarus had already been dead for four days. Remember how he explained it to his disciples before he went to Bethany, John chapter 11 verse 4, when he heard this, that is that Lazarus was sick, Jesus said the sickness will not end in death, no it is for God's glory, so that God's son may be glorified through it, it's for God's glory that God's son might be glorified through it. See it's one thing to heal the sick, I mean that's a pretty big thing, but to raise somebody from the dead after they've been dead for four days, that is a much bigger thing. And so here's my point, I haven't made it clear enough, sometimes the bad things that happen in life including accidents, happen so that God may use it as a backdrop to reveal his power and his glory. Now here's what we need to keep in mind, this revealing of God's power and God's glory in the face of bad things, can take the place, comes in two forms, and we need to be very clear on that, lest we lose faith when it doesn't happen the way that we anticipate. One of the ways in which it happens, and that's how it happens with Eudicus, that's how it happened in these two stories, is that the glory of God can be seen in the miraculous acts of God. Paul says concerning the gospel in 1 Corinthians 2, 4 and 5, "My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power." God is very interested in removing the blockages to people's faith, and so there will be those times when bad things happen, like people are born blind, or Lazarus dies, or Eudicus falls out of the window and gets picked up dead. God will step in powerfully and demonstrate his power by restoring life. We read in Psalm 98, the verses 2 and 3, "The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations. He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God." And the Bible and history are filled with examples where God stepped in into an impossible situation, and he moved powerfully and mightily to demonstrate to the nations that he is the true and the living God. Some of you will recall a story that I've shared with you previously that comes from the ministry of Watchmanee. He makes mention of it in his little booklet, Sid Walks Stand. Sid Walks Stand is an exposition of the book of Ephesians. We're seated with Christ in heavenly places, we learn to walk with Christ, and then we learn to stand on the truth of his word. Watchmanee, who was a Chinese evangelist in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, before he was captured by the communists and then imprisoned to the end of his life for being faithful to Jesus, at one point took a small team of six others to an island off the coast of China for a mission trip. And as they were preaching the gospel to this particular population of about 20,000 people, the response to the gospel was very, very slow in coming. They couldn't figure out why are these people not turning to the true and the living God. Well, it turned out that they already had a God. His name was Tawang, and he was a God who was so faithful that every year they would hold a procession in his honor, and the God would guarantee that there would not be any rain on that particular day. This is during the New Year's holiday season in China, which lasted 15 days. So they asked the question, "When is the procession this year?" The date given was January 11, and they had this young fellow on their team. He was 16 years of age, barely a new Christian, and he comes out with, "Well, this year it's going to rain on January the 11th." Talk about freaking out the team. What are we going to do now? Well, they go to prayer, and they agonize, "Lord, is this of you, or is this not of you?" And at some point, the Lord comes through prophetically, speaks to Wauchmanee, and says, "Where is the God of Elijah? Where is the God of Elijah?" And so they conclude from that that God is going to show his power over the evil spirit Tawang to this population. So they go on to another island, and they preach. Now it is January 11, the day of the procession. They wake up in the morning, and the sun is brightly shining. A little bit of a panic, you think? Like, "God, where are you? Are we dreaming of this?" And again, the word of the Lord comes, "Where is the God of Elijah?" So they're having breakfast, they're standing in faith, sit, walk, stand, and lo and behold, it starts to rain. It not only starts to rain, it becomes a torrential downpour, the procession in the honor of Tawang washes out, the people that are carrying him stumble, the God gets broken, they fix his nose, they keep on going until they are defeated by the floods. Now what do you think they'd had? "Oh, we got the day wrong." It wasn't January 11, it was January 14. So, more preaching, and the Lord says, "Where is the God of Elijah?" Now it's the 14th. The procession is supposed to happen at six o'clock. The sun is brightly shining. Where is the God of Elijah? God, you better come through. That's a true story. Six o'clock comes around, the clouds come rolling in, and it's even a bigger downpour than before. Do you think after that preaching the gospel might have been simple? Indeed it was. And lots of people come to faith because you see God wants to demonstrate that he is the true and the living God. Don't ever question God's desire or God's ability to demonstrate to unbelieving hearts that he is the true and the living God. And he hears the prayers of his people. Even little 16-year-old new converts who put their foot in their mouth and who get everybody into trouble. Now that said, it's very important to understand that demonstrating his miraculous acts is not the only way that he makes himself real in the face of tragedy or difficulty. There is a second way, and that is God's power can be seen in his sustaining grace. That is to say, his ability to help us bear up under the most adverse and difficult situations. The story, of course, that immediately comes to mind is that of Johnny Erickson Tata. A lot of you will have heard of her. She was what, an 18- or 19-year-old girl diving into the Chesapeake Bay, misgaged the depth of the water, hit her head on the bottom, broke her neck, was paralyzed from the shoulders down. Terribly difficult tragedy. And the cries of her heart and the cries of God's people were, "Lord, wouldn't it be wonderful if she could be healed? Wouldn't it be a great testimony to your power if she could get up and walk around and say, 'Well, you know, this is what God did for me.'" And you can imagine how discouraging it was for her and the people around her when the fact is she's been a paraplegic for all these many years. But what's remarkable about her story, of course, is that God has manifested in her life His sustaining grace. She's written 38 books. She has recorded multiple albums. She has starred in a movie. And wonder of wonders, God married to Ken Tada, who has been her faithful and supporting husband ever since, and God's power has been made perfect in her weakness. Would she rather have been healed than go through all—I would rather think so. Has God's power in her life given glory to God and encouragement to other people who suffer from disabilities, who clearly have not received the healing hand of God? You bet your bottom dollar. And the Apostle Paul, who knows what it is to be used in other people's lives by the power of God so that people can come to a living faith and a living God, himself knows the reality of experiencing that power in his life. Here is how he describes it in 2 Corinthians 4, the verses 7 through 10. He says, "We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard-pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body." You see the contrast? We carry in our bodies the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in us. Sometimes God shows his glory by the big miracle. And I believe there are a lot more big miracles that God is prepared and willing to do than most of us ever have enough faith for. But I also know there are instances where it doesn't matter how much and how big your faith is, God's glory is going to come not so much through the big miracle as it is through the sustaining grace. And when day after day we can put one foot in front of the other and keep on going under the most difficult of circumstances then God is glorified in that too because people can see in us the resurrection power of Jesus. Does that make sense? That's the balance that we need to keep in the family of God. A lot more that I had planned to say about this, I think we'll stop here this morning, pick it up from here next week, how God uses his people to extend his saving power and how the saving power of God produces comfort for God's people so that we can keep on going [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:35:59.860; remove through 00:36:03.000] no matter what it is that life brings to us. [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:36:03.000; resume after this marked segment]