August 3, 2014
Ministry:
Some words came before me. Let’s start in Isaiah 50:2a: “I came.” Now turn to John 14:3 and read the second line: “When I come.” Let’s connect that to 1 Corinthians 11:26: “Til he come.” We are currently in between the first and second scriptures Until He comes again, it is our privilege to “eat this bread and drink this cup” one more time.
Hymn 282 – What a friend we have in Jesus
Prayer
Today’s parable will use the word faint. Faint has several meanings; to lose heart or be weary, or to pass out. Last time. we had the parable of the unjust steward. Today we will look the parable of the unjust judge.
Luke 18:1 - 7
In this context, faint means “to lose heart.” We are encouraged to pray and not to give up.
There was a judge who did not fear God or respect his fellow man. A woman came to him and asked him to avenge her of her adversaries; simply put, she wanted him to get rid of her enemy for her. She might have had a neighbour that was bothering her and she wanted him gone. Instead of doing the right thing and listening to both sides, the judge dealt with it the way she would wanted it done. While I was in the grocery store last week, I heard a child begging her mother for a certain food. The mother said no, but the girl continued to beg: this is what the woman was doing. The judge didn’t really care about the women; he just wanted to get her out of the way. Jesus said that the judge was unjust, because he helped her for the wrong reasons. Jesus isn’t like that judge. In fact, He wants us to pray for things more than once. A sister in the Lord, Miss Sclater, prayed for forty years for her brother’s salvation. She didn’t faint and her brother did eventually get saved. Sometimes we do pray for things that are not the Lord’s will. I read a story of a young boy who was having a hard time focusing on his work; he told his grandmother that he need to pray about something. The boy then prayed that he would find a lost marble. The next morning, the grandmother asked the boy if he had found the marble. The boy replied that he hadn’t, but that the Lord had removed the desire for the marble. Sometimes the Lord’s answer to a prayer is to remove the desire for the thing. The Lord used the judge to show what He was not like. The Lord likes us to be dependent and need Him: the last thing He wants is people who can get along on their own, without Him.
A man once said that if we go to a group for help, we will get what that group can give; if we look to our own strength, we will get what our strength can do; if we go to our intelligence, we will get what our intelligence knows; but if we pray, we will get what God can do. Today’s lesson is that we are to pray and not give up.
Acts 16:1 - 15
We saw last week that Paul—with the commendation of the Antioch brethren—started off on another missionary journey. This time he was confirming the assemblies that had sprung up as a result of his first trip. We can see that the work of the gospel was continuing. There were these new believers growing, besides Paul and Silas, and Barnabas and Mark traveling. Paul had been slated for this work even back when he persecuted the church. He was a chosen vessel, a container for holding and spreading the truth.
In 1 Corinthians 3:9-10, Paul tells how he was the one that God sent out to lay the foundation for the assemblies to gather on. He was raised up to establish the truths of the assemblies. Others—even ourselves today—are only building on the foundation that God had Paul lay.
Many today don’t see the truth of the Body of Christ. They feel that they have to be part of this or that organization down here on earth. We are part of a Body whose Head is in Heaven, and we seek to gather as such. We can get weaker and weaker in our convictions if we don’t open the Scriptures to see what they tell us. We need to keep the Lord’s word and not deny His name—the name of Christ, not the name of an organization.
In this chapter we meet Timothy for the first time. We believe that he got saved the first time Paul was in Lystra or Derbe preaching, and he was well spoken of by the brethren in Lystra and Iconium. His mother and grandmother were godly people, and those of us who have had the same privilege can be thankful for it! Timothy’s mother was a believing Jewess, but his father was a Greek.
Paul was attracted to this young man and wanted him to travel with himself and Silas. Timothy was a Christian, but he would be working with a lot of Jewish people, so Paul circumcised him to make him more acceptable to them. This wasn’t always Paul’s practice (we know that he didn’t circumcise Titus), but it would help accomplish the goal of reaching the Jews.
As they travelled from assembly to assembly, Paul gave out the new regulations that had been given by the brethren in Jerusalem. It might have been part of his preaching.
Through Paul’s ministry here, the churches were established in the truth; and that’s very important, both for individuals and assemblies. We sometimes see people today who are not grounded in the truth, and they often drift away to other places. We need to know what we believe, why we believe it, and then we need to live it!
Hymn 234 - Saviour lead me by Thy power
Prayer