16.Jan.2008 God’s Redemptive Nature
Acts 18: I love the New Year – the thought of another chance – the thought of what’s possible. There is so much hope in the air this time of year. God loves to give us another chance. The whole nature of God is redemptive. He wants to wash away the past, get our feet on high ground and get us looking forward. God is all about forward. Although some things we have done in our past effect us and leave scars. God wants us to learn from those things and move on – not be defeated by it or let it hold you back. He wants us to allow the lessons of our past to help us make great decisions for our future.
Start talking about what’s possible. The New Year is a great opportunity for fresh vision. In this chapter, Paul has just left Athens. Despite all of his efforts there, he hadn’t had much success – no big miracles, no large churches established, no real breakthroughs. Athens was focused on philosophy and not open to God. Athens was as close to a failure as Paul could get. So Paul left for Corinth. Corinth was a port city – very wealthy and lustful. Paul met Priscilla and Aquilla while preaching in the synagogue, who had been kicked out of their homes in Rome for being Jewish. They all came together in Corinth. They were all in a place that felt a bit like failure, asking “God what’s next? What are you doing?”
Paul began preaching in the synagogues each week, but the Jews in Corinth opposed him. At this point, Paul had been facing opposition for a long time. Imagine living a life where day in and day out people opposed you, threatened you and harmed you – opposing what you thought was a vision from God. You really had a sense of what you thought God wanted you to do – a calling…You started with hope and vision only to be consistently opposed.
v9 – One night, God spoke to Paul in a vision. God is always speaking. There is prayer, and there is prayer without ceasing. It is like the difference between dial up and high speed Internet. When you establish a relationship with God and make the connection through the redemptive cross of Christ, you don’t “dial up” God anymore – you have a direct, constant connection with God. You don’t “go to God” because He is always here. You are ALWAYS connected to God. God’s always watching. He sees everything. We invited Him in and in He came. That was Paul’s revelation. God is always there, but sometimes He will appear to us and speak to us about specific things.
God told Him, “Don’t be afraid. Speak out and don’t be silent. For I am with you, and no one will harm you because many people here in this city belong to me.” This is the Apostle Paul – one of the greatest Christians ever. God’s first words to this hero of faith are Don’t Be Afraid. He would do anything for God. He had traveled the world for God, had been beaten nearly to death, betrayed, shipwrecked, starving, living in poverty – and God says don’t be afraid! Despite what you are facing, despite the failures you had last year or in the past, God doesn’t want you to be afraid of what is coming – what is about to happen. We can’t receive what God has for us if there is fear in our hearts. We need to deal with the fear of something not happening right now. If God has to tell Paul not to fear – a champion of faith – then of course he will tell us not to fear. Corinth ends up being a key strategic city in the early church. Paul’s letters from Corinth form many of the foundational doctrines on which the church was built. Corinth wasn’t ordered and nice like Athens, but yet God chose to use Corinth.
Fear is almost the counterbalance of faith. It is the precursor to unbelief which leads to the disarmament of God. Fear causes us to not believe and restricts God’s movement in our lives. Fear of the vision God wants to speak to us about automatically ties the hands of God to move in our world. Fear manifests itself in many different ways – sometimes it’s rebellion, disobedience, bad choices. When we decide not to do what is right, or not to do what God is speaking to us about because of fear in our hearts, we start to dismantle the work of God in our lives. Fear will manifest itself in losing confidence – confidence in who we are in Christ and what God wants us to do. What that says is “God you aren’t big enough or faithful enough to bring me into what you want me to do.” That leads us into disbelief.
Speak Out. Paul has devoted his life to preaching about Jesus yet God says “Speak out and don’t be silent.” Sometimes it is the simple thing – the obvious thing – that we have been called to that we forget to do. We forget who we are, what we do, the gifts and talents that God gave us. We forget the visions God has given us and we don’t even know who we are or what we have. Speak out and do the things I have called you to do. Act on and live from the revelations I have given you. Once you get a revelation from God, it is a revelation forever. They are foundational. We are the sum total of our revelations. Don’t stop living from your revelations! Don’t go silent – don’t forget – don’t stop doing what I have called you to do, no matter what your circumstances try to tell you. Success and fruitfulness can be just as decapitating as failure because we have a short memory. We struggle for years and God gives a revelation and brings us out. Once we make it, we can forget where we came from. That is why it is also important to stay humble. Don’t forget what God has given you and don’t forget how you got to where you are. Speak and don’t be silent. I am with you and no one will harm you.
