Grace Chapel Bible Ministries

worship Call 1089 As you go - 2024/11/26

This sermon focuses on the Great Commission and the call for Christians to actively engage in serving and spreading the gospel, as seen in the various passages that highlight missionary work, personal testimonies, and a life of service in Christ.

Duration:: 34m
Broadcast on:: 26 Nov 2024
Audio Format:: other

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Welcome to "Worship Call" with Bible Teacher Buzz Lullbeck. Bible Ministries located in Duncan, South Carolina. This ministry is dedicated to the verse by verse teaching of God's Word and discipleship programs aimed at strengthening the faith of God's people. Now here's today's message. [BLANK_AUDIO] All right, now how about now? There we go. There we go. All right, a little bit of distraction there and not where we're supposed to be. Hang on. There we go. And then, as excited I was this morning about getting started. I'm getting there. Hold on. There we go. I think that's it? We still have that. Get you a picture. There we go. I think we're good. I'd better disappear. All right. Well, everything's going on one time. All right. All right. Where are we started? Let's start off with the -- look at this. I want to shut down and start all over again, but we're going to continue on. All right. Let's sermon today. As we continue on, we're going to focus on the Great Commission. And when we're looking at the UNIC, the Ethiopian UNIC, and as Philip -- I'm going to get this -- as Philip. The Lord is expanding its ministry, started out in Jerusalem, and then it's going to expand. Now we sing with the persecution that's happening in Jerusalem. Now it was -- you have Peter who was up in Jerusalem, and he was winning many, many souls to the Lord. And many where I should say the Holy Spirit was doing it through Paul, or through Peter. But then just as important as the multitudes, there was the one over in Samaria, over the one that the -- or down -- actually on the road from Samaria, on that -- that Philip is sent down to the Ethiopian -- the Ethiopian UNIC. And just as important as the many as the one. So we begin with that. And I appreciate the thought as we were talking about yesterday. I appreciate -- good gracious Mike. These things are just screwing up altogether. Here we go. And we'll try that. All right. Here we go. We're back. And let me make sure we got that. All right. So I appreciate the fact that Philip had a divine appointment, because God gives us divine appointments. And that there are divine appointments. I hope you have them. And those divine appointments, everything okay? As a divine appointment, when we are walking in the Lord, we're taking in the Word of God. And our divine appointments may be with many -- it may be with the one. And they're always exciting when we know that this is the hand of God, placing us to -- at the right place, at the right time, as he did with Philip, with this Ethiopian UNIC. And to open up the Word of God. The Word of God is so important. It's vitally important. It is message from God. In this case, Philip was an angel. He was a messenger. He was a place that here is someone -- and think about it this way. Here is Ethiopian. And he's going to be able to tell the story. And I could think of this Ethiopian in his old language, of course. He said, "You know, it just so happened. I was on a carriage." And I was looking at the scroll here, and I was trying to make some sense of it. I just didn't understand what was going on. You know, I was reading it. I was wondering it. And all of a sudden, here comes this guy out of nowhere. I don't know where he came from. And he asked me about what I was reading, and if I understood it. And next thing I know, he crawls up in the carriage. He comes up in the carriage, and he begins to explain. We sat there for hours, and he taught me about this passage right here. And this Ethiopian would go on telling others, "This is what he taught me." And Philip would have -- when they parted, Philip would have no more contact with him. But how many people did this unit have? With just this passage, this so important passage of Isaiah 53, that he would be able to communicate to others. It's kind of dark today, isn't it? All right, we'll leave it to that. Everything else screwed up this morning, except for the message. Here we go. The message is from the Lord. It's going to be right on point. So apparently this Ethiopian was a devout man already, coming to Jerusalem to worship. Remember that the temple had a place for the Gentiles to worship in, and that's where he was going. And he apparently believed in the one true God. And now, we're just getting darker there. Let's see what we're going to do there. By golly, what's going on today with everything? Yeah, it could be my martyr's going out. That's fine then. All right, it's not for destruction support, but hang on now. We've got a message here. So this Ethiopian, apparently he was a believer. He knew his God, he knew his Lord, and he, Yahweh, and he was like many of the other Jews. They were already believers. Remember that we're talking about crossover believers. They didn't come into the Christian faith and become believers. They were already believers, believers who came into the Christian faith. We call them crossover believers. And he apparently believed in the one true God. And now it was time to be introduced to the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And while Philip had a ministry, or going back to Peter, while he had a ministry, of many, while he was leading many to the Lord, or the Holy Spirit leading many to the Lord. Here it was that Philip was sent to the One. And I recognized this yesterday. It was so rewarding. And I, we, I had a divine appointment up when we went to Gillian's, a book Christian bookstore up in Statesville, and I ran in. It was just a guy I was standing next to, Eddie, and he struck a book. I mean, he just, out of the blue, he said, "What books are you interested in? What, you know, what kind of books?" or whatever. He started a conversation with, and from that short conversation, we're already good friends to talk to him yesterday on the phone. And, and I do believe that was a divine appointment. And I recognized this, and I talked to Eddie this yesterday, and there was, and we were talking, and he was talking, he just had, and I could hear it in his voice, and he just had a small ministry and a small, a few people of 20, 25 people. I said, "For me, that's a mega church." And, and, and I, and I, to encourage him, because it's just what I learned in the morning and through this, that, that one, that one Ethiopian was just important to the Lord because there were many thousands that were being saved up in Jerusalem. And so, it is not the size of the, the congregation, but it's the size of the faithfulness of, of both the pastor and the few that are sitting under that faithful pastor. So, the easy open was not reached from within an assembly. We think that we reach people only by dragging them into church and hearing their pastor speak, but we have a ministry outside of that, of, of outside of that church wherever we go. And, um, how we prepare and what kind of, um, our, our, our time in the Bible and our time and study is so important to reach people outside. You know, I just read this morning from Andrew Murray, and actually I think it was something I was reading yesterday from Andrew Murray and today it's a little different, but, um, Andrew said that the Lord, when the Lord said, "Follow me." And he said, he said to Pete, I think it was to Peter and Andrew, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men." And the, the following is the fact that we, we, we're walking daily in our spiritual lives. We're taking in the Word of God day by day. We are, we are in our prayer life. It is our prayer life. It is our spiritual life. It is our walk with Him. The, the Word of God is the Lord speaking to us through His Word. Our prayer is speaking back to Him in our, uh, our regulations, our professors, our chance given, our supplications, and walking in the boundaries of His love. And doing so, He makes us, He brings us into that position where we are reaching out to others. We can take that spiritual life because that spiritual life, first of all, is inward. And then, as we're growing, it's not enough to contain, to keep it inward, it goes and touches people all around us. We talked a little bit about the figure of speech that, uh, and, and yesterday I went more on the miraculous, supernatural side, but this morning, sometimes I have to, you know, sometimes I wake up in the morning and, and recognize, and that wasn't so right. And it's like the Spirit talked to me. He says, we had, we had just this teaching a little bit. Feel back a little bit because we recognize a little bit more on the supernatural side of this that, that, that when we read this, let's go back to our passage. Shall we and see where we're at on here? Let's go Acts 839. Bring this up. You got it? There we go. When they came out of the, when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away. And it, and the eunuch no longer saw him, but went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at, at the tas, and as he passed through, he kept preaching gospel to all the cities until he came to Caesarea. And, um, I went, I made a little bit to do on the snatching away, as, you know, a, a, um, supernatural kind of way, but I got to thinking about this in the morning when it, when it hit me. And, um, and can we say, do we know that the Bible has figures of speech? And why would it use harpazo and, and the snatching away as it were? Um, he, he was snatching, and what was he snatched away from? When you're snatched away, you're snatched away from someone. And when we're talking about the Ethiopian, here's the Ethiopian, this was about the Ethiopian. This was central to him. This was personal to him. He had a divine appointment, the one that he spoke of and would continue to speak of. He was this angel, he was, this was someone, and sometimes our divine appointments are people that come into our lives. And in there, they quickly go, they're quickly there. They're one moment there and they're one, you ever had, you ever had somebody like that? You ever had somebody that just, just, they were, they came, they came in for a short period in your life. And all of a sudden it was like the Lord snatched them away. This is how I'm going to look at this, this morning. Um, that this poor, and there are people that are snatched away. They might be snatched away to go to another divine appointment. They were, they're just for, in this case, just for a moment of time. But there are others that will stay with your, stay with you. Um, there were, there were those that you want to stay. Can you stay? It's kind of, when Jesus was at Samaria. We could also say he was snatched away to continue on in his journey. He had other divine appointments to make. It was a short period of time to be there and then he had to go. And, um, sometimes, and it's sometimes even through deaths. Sometimes we wonder, why is it that someone died so early? I remember a, I remember a, um, a Marine that, um, he was going to be a pastor. A very devout man. A man that would, a man that was impacting people's lives. And the Lord took him out. He died very young and we scratched our heads. Why? It was like he was snatched away. It was like he was removed that the Lord took him out. I mean, we serve at God's good pleasure. And so it's the moments. It's, it's not the, here's another thing. It's not the size of our congregation or the, or the, and, and this aspect. It's not the length of our Godly influence upon others. The Godly influence to us. It's not the length of it, but it's the impact of it. And Philip may have had some hours with this unit, um, several hours up till the baptism. But at the baptism, it was time for Philip to go his direction. It was time, and they never saw each other again. So I'm going to stick this morning. It sounds, it makes more sense to me as it is a bigger speech that he's being snatched away. That he was serving at God's good pleasure to, to, and then after his, after his, the divine appointment, there was no longer for, um, built to stay. And he was, he was, let's just say, whisked off to another destination. And, um, and the Lord can quickly and redirect the course of a person's life in such a way that you may think that you're being whisked away. And, and, and so it is with divine appointments. You know, I stopped arguing. I stopped grumbling. At least I tried stop grumbling. At least I'll repent from grumbling. When I set out to do something, when I go out to a direction, I set out to do, I set out to go. And circumstances dictate that I'd go a different direction. Or, um, or, um, or end up someplace else. And, um, I've stopped arguing about that because it's, um, I recognize that God's providential hand. He brings us into a place, he quickly takes us out. Um, so we'll go on. Coming back to Acts 839. When it came up out of the water spirit, the spirit of the Lord snatched Philip the way. And so let's just leave it at a figurative way of saying that Philip's work was done there. And that the spirit had other urgent matters for Philip to attend to. And the unit no longer saw him. Philip had to move on and so did the unit. But he went on rejoicing. He went on, and I could imagine, as we said before, that he went on telling others about his encounter with, um, with this, um, apostle. And, um, Acts 840. And Philip found himself at Azotos. And I hope I said, "Esteros." And as he passed through and kept preaching, the gospel took all the cities until he came to Caesarea. Let me see if I can... This is a place, Aztod, it says on here. And I'll bring the map up here. Okay. Where are we? There's Aztod right there. Just below it. Okay, Caesarea is right here. He was on the road down here to close to God. So now he's on his way up to Caesarea. Got that all, got that all jumbled up. But anyway, he finds himself there. And, um, and again, we're looking at the wording here. But Philip found himself. I like that he found himself. And again, we're dealing with divine appointments here. And again, I ask you, as being men and women of God, how many times have you found yourself? Have you ever found yourself someplace? And you ask yourself, "How did I get here?" Some of you might be smiling right now, some of you might be chuckling a little bit. But you ask yourself, "How did I get here?" What were the circumstances get here? And like I said, sometimes I'll argue and grumble about what brought me to a certain place. You know, maybe a flat tower. It may be out of gas. It may be somebody calls and redirects my place. But it's really not the circumstances. If you recognize the providential hand of God, that God will move those whom he chooses to wherever he either to serve or for some dot dot but divine appointment, even the unbeliever. Listen, Enoch or Enoch. Enoch had to be at that place. So not only was the Lord direct in the hand of Philip, he was also direct in the Ethiopian to a particular place where they would meet. And so it is by God's good pleasure if today, which I think I'm going to Greenville, that I end up in Charlotte. Or if by this weekend I end up going up to Maryland and seeing my brother Mike, or if we end up going to Jacksonville. It's by God's hand. And when we recognize there go I, by the grace of God, then it is his hand that's directness. Here is Philip, but Philip found himself at Ashtod. And again another kind of figure of speech which reflects the providential hand of God to place us. So apparently Philip didn't plan to go there. And so it's not the circumstances. It's not the providential hand of God, I should say, that gets a person here. So I have a few points of doctrine on this. Let me see if I put it up here. Everything else is kind of gone crazy this morning. All right. And that's not the one I'm looking for. I'm going to laugh at this, this morning folks, because I had the points of doctrine. Number one, to those who recognize the hand of God in their lives, they are not weary of sudden changes in the course of their lives. To those who recognize the providential hand of God, they do not get wear some. They do not get upset at changes of their plans. And they seem to be inconveniences. They seem to be things that are holding you back. I think sometimes we're going to, when we get to heaven, we're going to realize what, by the hand of God, what he kept us out of. But the man and woman of God recognizes God's appointment. And so when their plans are going in a certain direction and God says, "Uh-uh, he ain't going that way." The man and woman of God recognizes that, and they're not so upset. Number two, the change in circumstances in life are seen by a godly man or woman as God's hand redirecting their place of ministry. Okay. We may think that we, listen, we want to pray, and we want, for God to bless, or we want to make our plans. We want to, we want to set our course, and we want to pray to God that he will bless our plans. Rather than praying to God say, "God, show me what your plan is, and I'll go where you have me and go. I'll do what you have me to do. I'll be what you have me to be." Amen. And so we're not so upset when, again, when God redirects, and we find ourselves some place that we should not, that we never plan to be. And sometimes never want it to be. Number three, the prayer of that person might be, "Lord, here I go. Lord, here I am. And Lord, now open my eyes of why. Why am I here? What is your purpose for your servant? Now let me caution you here. You may not know. He may say, "Ah, I'm not going to let you know." Why? Because wherever you go, if you're taking your spiritual life with you. And so here it is, Philip. He found himself here. He wasn't planning to be there. He apparently just found himself there. But what did he do? What did he do from that point? And first of all, Matthew 28-19, remember the Great Commission? Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. And sometimes we might sit dormant. Listen to this. Sometimes we might sit dormant, thinking God is not using me. This might be you. If this is you, you're probably on priesthood. You're there. I don't know. I don't know where you are. I don't know what you're sitting there. I may have had these thoughts myself. I think maybe all of us have had these thoughts at one time or other. And you feel like God is just not using you. You love the Lord so much that you want to be doing something. Tim's talked to me a number of times, and I remember now on occasion or two about this. I just felt that I need to be doing something. And Pastor Tim, my buddy, he said, "Well, what is it that you think you ought to be doing?" And I think he was doing, I think it was a rhetorical question. But we think we ought to be doing something. And I'm not saying no, you shouldn't be doing something. Listen, you want God to, well, maybe I should be a pastor. Maybe I should go into the ministry. Maybe I should be a Sunday school teacher. Maybe I should be working on a soup line. Maybe I should be doing this. Is God calling me to go on a mission field? Is God calling me to do this? And you wait for God's calling to do this, and that, and the other thing. That going back to the man and woman of God, all of us, the moment that we have trust in Lord Jesus Christ, we are in full-time Christian service, and we remain there. And you may think that your life is a dormant life, and you're not doing anything. Your Christian life, again, going back to the spiritual life, your spiritual life is touching people around you. So when you asked God on that last point that I had, when you asked God, why am I here? You may not get an answer, because your spiritual life is why you're there. And I believe that if you're living as unto the Lord, going about your day, going about your business, whatever that routine might be, then, and you're serving the Lord, you will never know the people whom you will impact on a day-to-day basis. I believe that a man and woman of God who recognizes this, that they will be in heaven, and they will admit people that they will have never even known their names in life, that they will meet and say, you know, what God was doing through you and the way that you responded to God's Word and you were living your life, it really impacted me and my life. And that may be just a short acquaintance. And again, you may have met somebody and been whisked away, parpods opened out. In that short period of time, God impacted someone's life through you, which had ripples that went through the rest of their lives. If you're a Christian, you're not in a routine life. Christian, you're not in a dormant life, so shake off the feeling and move on. I'm not just preaching to you, I'm preaching to myself as well, okay? All right, so let's go on last few points of doctor, which I sure they had up here. First of all, the Christian is number one, the Christian is in full-time Christian service always, always. Point number two, Colossians, 323, whatever you do, do your work heartily, heartily, as the Lord rather than for man. And number three, you may not never know how God is using your faithfulness to advance his plan or the life or the lives you touch without even knowing it. So that is our time today, sorry for all the distractions I'm excited about because the Lord says, "Well, my spirit is enough," and so wherever the distraction was, I'm just going to chuckle about it and realize the message was why we're here. So let's start and close out and pray our Father in Heavenly, thank you for your love, your grace, your mercy, and I pray Heavenly Father that you continue to help us to recognize that we are, we serve at your pleasure, that if your hand that guides us, that if we're going in one direction and our plans are thwarted because we want to do this and we want to do that even if we think that we're doing it for you, and we're trying to go here and our ministries are just not working out and maybe even close down, that we serve by your good pleasure, that we will go where you have us go, do what you have us to do and be what you have us to do, according to your will and not our own. Help us to recognize these and these things in Christ's name we pray, amen. All right, another fine day in the Lord, we have our service this evening, we'll continue on with, I think it's the priesthood that we were called into the priesthood, so as we continue in the Book of Revelation, I believe Revelation 1-6, so anyway, until then stay motivated, Lord, keep your armor on and keep fighting good by the faithful, we'll see you in the AM. You can hear this message again, as well as previous lessons, and get note by visiting us online at www.gchapel.org. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .