Now, how does that all work with the title, Useful to God Part 4 of 12? Well, here’s how it works. But here I want us to realize all of it is being viewed in light of something permanent and something eternal. We’ll continue on in the next section of his sermon and we’ll look at that next time, Lord willing. He’s recounting literally 2,000 years of biblical history from Abraham to Christ, and all of these are reminders to us, and we can’t get into all of it because it’s really where we have to stop today for the sake of time. Jesus celebrated the wins, even the temporary wins, but there was something he could do to see through those wins, which is precisely what Paul is doing in this sermon in Acts Chapter 13. It won’t provide you money forever.” I mean, that’s probably not the kind of Christian I want you to be. You’ll probably get fired one day or you’re going to retire. Your friend in a small group says, “I’ve been praying for a job, I haven’t had a job,” and they get a job, and you go, “Yeah, but you’re not going to work there forever. It’s not kind of how I want you to think. Because you will then be at some, I mean, I don’t know, you could have been at Lazarus’ resurrection and as soon as he pops out of the grave and everyone’s crying with tears of joy and rejoicing and dancing around, you say, “He’s just going to die again.” You know. Now, I know that even thinking about life and saying every win, every triumph, every blessing, every answer to prayer, it’s an imperfect preview, you’re thinking, I don’t want that perspective. And that’s becoming painfully clear when years later, Mary and Martha are planning Lazarus’ second funeral, right? That was a big win, but not even perfect. And I’m just trying to remind you that it’s an imperfect win. Your brother was dead and now he’s alive. And I’m thinking if there’s a big win in your life, that’s a big win right there. And after four days, literally rotting in the grave, Jesus shows up and pops him out of the grave. Mary and Martha are just distraught over the death of their brother. I mean, I can illustrate it in the most dramatic way. Even the dramatic things that you’ve prayed for, you’ve said, “God, I’ve got a big problem here and I’m praying that you would solve it.” And then when God solves it, I just want you to know that it’s imperfect. Every victory, every attainment, every blessing, every triumph, everything that you’ve experienced, that you say, well, this is a good thing. It’s actually an imperfect preview of something permanent and something eternal. You start to see a lot of your problems solved, and that’s good.īut what I want to make sure we understand about our lives, which I think is going to be illustrated, by the way, with Paul’s preaching here, that every win in your life, every win in your life is imperfect. You get sick and you pray and you take medicine or just tough it out, you get better. I mean, some of them, I mean, you may not have solutions for every problem, but you get a lot of solutions to some of your problems and, think about it, you don’t have a job, you get resumes out, you get a job. Your life, I want you to think about this, is filled with problems. We’d like to have a mindset that is useful to the Lord and that subtitle there, imperfect previews, I want us to start to think the way that Paul is clearly thinking here, not just about the Bible, but really everything in history, including everything in your history. Well, this is the section where Paul starts preaching to the gathered synagogue here of mostly Jews and some God-fearing Greeks and Romans that he’s going to begin by reviewing some biblical history, going back 2,000 years before Christ and thinking about the patriarchs. And it may take a while to figure out like, how do those things fit together? Well, you would think in the passage that we’re studying here then today, beginning in verse 17 in Acts 13, that there must be some imperfect previews in this passage. “Imperfect Previews.” That seems a bit cryptic. I mean, you’ve established that successfully. If you’ve been with us, you think, OK, I get that we’re studying Acts 13 and 14, and Paul and Barnabas are being useful to the Lord, and we’re examining that, we’re taking a look at our lives. It is on the digital worksheet, “Useful to the Lord Part 4 of 12. You should look at that on the worksheet there. But it may be the first sermon I’ve ever started by having to draw your attention to the title and the subtitle. I was just letting you know this is not my first sermon. Well, I have preached a few sermons before.
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