Are You Serving The Lord With All Humility Of Mind?

Tom:

This is our Understanding the Scripture segment, we are in the Book of Acts Chapter 20, and Dave, we will pick up with verse 19.Acts chapter 20 verse 19:“Serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears, and temptations, which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews:”Dave, this is the apostle Paul speaking here,certainly filled with the Holy Spirit, but you know, he’s got temptations, and he’s living in fear of the Jews lying in wait of him who wanted to do him in basically.

Dave:

Yeah, go back to chapter 4, so people are picking it up, they know where we are.He says to them:You know what kind of a person I’ve been as I’ve lived among you.Okay, then he goes on to explain it.“Serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears, and temptations.”Now, he’s not talking about being tempted to sin, but in fact the word really means trials. He is in trying circumstances. Jesus was tempted in the wilderness it says, No, He wasn’t tempted, He was tested to prove that He is pure deity, and there are trials.Paul is beaten, he’s imprisoned, he’s even stoned and left for dead, and this is to test his faith to see if Satan can—Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, well, it wasn’t a temptation, it was a trial.In other words, Jesus didn’t have to grit His teeth and somehow turn away from temptation.He said there is nothing the prince of this world cometh and have nothing in me.There was nothing in Jesus that would respond to that.So, the kind of temptations that Paul is talking about here— It is going to test your faith.God if I’m your servant and you call me to do this, how come this is happening to me?Why are there all these obstacles?I’m not meeting the success that I had hoped for.So, Tom, we all face that in our lives. And you know the old bumper sticker, maybe we mentioned it last week, I can’ remember:Do you feel far from God?Well, guess who moved!So, we are called upon to endure trials, difficulties, temptations, and it is to the glory of God.Peter says, 1 Peter chapter 1:“That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:Whom having not seen, ye love;”So, Lord like Job, Wow, was he ever tempted, did he face trials.The whole purpose was, it was a contest, Satan was trying to break Job, and get Job to curse God.His wife even helped Satan, “curse God and die” you can’t endure this.So that was a pretty desperate situation, and Paul was in horrible situations, and the temptation would be— Tom, what many, if not the majority of people who call themselves Christian ministers of the gospel, have succumbed to today, softened it up a bit.Don’t give them the full truth. Don’t confront them with what’s wrong, but make it positive. Help them to feel good about themselves.Paul says in Chapter 20, Verse 20:“And how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you, and have taught you publicly, and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” So Paul kept back nothing, he gave them the full counsel of God, and I think a major temptation would have been— Well Paul, you could get Satan off your back if you would just kind of soften it a bit. Don’t upset these people, and after all, they are religious and they believe in God, and if you would just stop saying that Jesus Christ is the only way, and that the God of Israel is the only true God, and if you would be a little bit more ecumenical and just say, (as I think we’ve quoted Norman Vincent Peale recently said, “Well, there are many ways to God.You don’t have to be born again, I found eternal peace in a Shinto shrine.”)Now, if Paul had said that—they were laid out, they wouldn’t have bothered him, they wouldn’t have persecuted him. He was just one of them.

Tom:

Dave, another popular approach along this line is, well, let’s just talk about the love verses, Jesus loves everybody and if you love Jesus it will all just work out.

Dave:

That’s what Norman Vincent Peale and his chief disciple Robert Schuller said.Everybody knows what love is. Let’s just concentrate on something that everybody can agree on.

Tom:

But Dave, as we know, God has other characteristics, there’s justice, there’s mercy, but in justice, you know, the penalty had to be paid.

Dave:

Well, Paul says, Verse 20:I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you.That means, nothing that you needed.And to 2 Timothy 3, beginning verse 16, he says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and (the same word there) it is profitable.”Well for what?Doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness.

Tom:

You believe in not necessarily filling your pews in your church or filling the coffers in your church, which is the sad direction we see many churches going.

Dave:

Not going to bring great growth, this is not to promote shallowness in Christianity, but this is what you need.And Tom, I think of this technique of prayer we were talking about a little bit, and I think of the words of Jesus:Your heavenly Father knows what you have need of before you ask. And these techniques of prayer and how to get your prayers answered, and how to get rid of this problem in your life, and that problem in you life by directed prayers. You do this for that problem and you do this prayer for that problem. Tom, the problem may be the very thing we need.God said to the children of Israel—Well, He could have taken them an easier route. In fact He was taking them the easiest route He could, avoided the wars. He said in Deuteronomy 8, I think it’s verse 3, I led you through the wilderness, and I caused you to hunger and thirst.God says, I did this for you so that you would learn that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.And if God has allowed some trial or difficulty in one’s life— Tom, you know that even non Christian psychologists, psychiatrists— I could name Peter Breggin, he says— If you take drugs, that just dulls your senses.Now you’ve missed the lesson that this traumatic experience could have taught you, and he’s not even a Christian!So, we’re not going to keep back anything of the truth.We’re going to try to win men to Christ. But we’re not going to try to ease the path if God doesn’t want it eased, but we can give them our love and sympathy.

Tom:

Dave, we’ve got about a minute and a half, but I want to go back to Acts:20:19Serving the LORD with all humility of mind, and with many tears, and temptations, which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews:
See All....It says— “which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews.”And somebody said, Well, this is kind of anti Semitic.You know, we did have an archbishop not too long ago in the Catholic church saying that the Bible is anti-Semitic, we need to take things out of it, really rework it.Paul was a Jew, he took the gospel to the Jews, so—

Dave:

Jesus is a Jew, still a Jew.

Tom:

This is insane, to even think like that, but some people do, and it’s growing.

Dave:

So the God, the Father of Jesus, was a Jew, born into a Jewish family, who is called 203 times, the God of Israel.He would write an anti Semitic book.No, what He put in there He put in there to teach us something. When you try to change it, you have lost the very lessons that God wants you to learn.

Tom:

And these Jews, this was a religious issue, they were anti Paul in terms of what he was presenting.