Packing for a Missions Trip
Across the Street
Part 1
Acts 17:16-34
Part 1
Know God is in Control
Know what Christianity really is
The Essentials of the Gospel
People must believe that…
…they are sinners separated from God
…that Jesus is the Christ, God in the Flesh
…That Jesus Died for their sins
…that Jesus Resurrected from the dead
Part 2
Know the Culture
Know How to Communicate
Acts 17:16-34
Slide
Intro
I was in Florida last week.
I got to spend some time relaxing as well as doing some planning for the next 6 months in terms of sermons and thinking through how to lead through the growth we have been experiencing.
I want to thank Rich Pyle for speaking last week. I heard he did an awesome job.
But I want to ask you, when you prepare for a trip, what kind of packer are you?
Are you one of those who begin preparing and packing days before your trip?
Thinking through all of the stuff you need, what the weather possibilities are, the possibilities of the things you may do so as you know what to bring?
Or are you like me, who grabs a suitcase the night before or morning of, throws a bunch of clothes in and heads out the door?
Laura is a packer who prepares, thankfully.
The problem with my way is that I have been known to forget things.
I have forgotten bathing suits, toiletries, even dress shoes for the nicer pants that I have packed.
Laura, because she has planned and prepared, usually has everything prepared and is helping others think through what they need.
Business trip
Now these are just clothes and it is not terribly important if something gets forgotten, but if I was going on a business trip and I forgot the plans and proposals and the contracts that I was going to a client with, it could cost me the sale or my job.
Transition
There are some trips that we need to be better prepared for and make sure we have everything we need packed if we are going to be successful in accomplishing the purpose of the trip.
Slide
Today, I want to talk about what we should pack when we go on a mission trip.
Now I am not talking about what we pack in our suitcase.
I am talking about what we need to pack in our minds so that we are able to help others to be prepared for the eternal trip we are all going to take one day when we leave this world in death.
We have been focusing on missions this month and our theme has been
Across the street and Around the world.
Today we prayed for the persecuted church.
The message of the gospel is so precious to these saints throughout the world that they willingly suffer and die for their faith and to share that faith so others might have eternal life.
And while many of us have not received a call to foreign missions, each one of us have been called to be missionaries. Missionaries in the place God has placed us, in our neighborhoods and in our workplaces.
The way we live, the way we speak, the way we interact with those around us effects how we do in fulfilling our mission.
Peter tells us in 1 Peter 3:15 to “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect”
Each one of us needs to be prepared.
We need to have the suitcase of our mind packed with all that we need so we can give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope you have even when we have been called to reach the person just across the street.
Do you have everything you need packed?
Are you prepared to unpack the gospel to someone who wants to know how they can have the hope of everlasting life for eternity?
Today we are going to help you pack so that you have everything you need available so you are prepared for that missions trip across the street or around the world. (Use your inserts today. Fill them out, study them, keep them in your Bible as a resource.)
To help us, we are going to look at Paul and how he was able to share his faith with the people of Athens in Acts 17:16-34 (p. 785).
Slide
We are going to discover all the things that we need to have packed in our minds so that we will always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that we have.
Now before we get into our text, I want us to see an essential thing that we need to have firmly packed into our minds so we can effectively be used by God.
We need to
Know that God is in Control
Slide
A little background before we get into Paul’s work in Athens,
He is on his second missionary tour.
As they are going along on their journey
Slide
we learn in Acts 16:6-10 that the Holy Spirit keeps them from going to Asia, so instead they tried to go north to Bythinia, but the Spirit would not allow them to do that either. So they went to Troas and Paul had a vision of a man calling them over to Macedonia. They concluded that that is where God was leading them.
From there they go to Philippi (Acts 16:9-40) where the Philippian Jailer is brought to faith and many women believe.
From there they head to Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-9) where a multitude of Greeks believe but also an uprising occurs.
They leave there and head to Berea where some Greeks believe and another uprising occurs. Paul gets out of Berea due to the uprising and they take him to Athens.
Now, imagine for a moment, you try to go one place and can’t. You try to go another way and you are blocked.
You finally find a way to go and yes, there are people that are receiving your message, but it seems that everywhere you go, there is conflict and uprisings against you.
It would be easy for us to assume that God was not in this journey.
Otherwise, wouldn’t things be going more smoothly?
We need to realize that as we follow the Lord, things are not always going to go smoothly. But God is still in control.
Slide
Paul knew this. We need to keep that in our minds all the time.
We talked about that 2 weeks ago when we discussed Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
God was in control of where they were and the things that were going on.
God is in control of where you are at.
You live where you do for a reason.
You work where you do for a reason.
Now this doesn’t mean that you can never move or never leave your job.
Part of the reason you are where you are may be to get you somewhere else. You need to be praying about those decisions.
But no matter where you are, part of the reason that you are there for a believer in Jesus Christ will always be to share your faith with others.
God is in control of where we are and there is purpose for it.
Paul was where he was and went through the towns he did because God was in control.
Now Paul is in Athens because God is in control and wanted him in Athens.
Now let’s read Acts 17:16-34 to see what else we need to pack in our minds for our missions trip across the street or around the world.
Read Acts 17:16-34
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, "What is this babbler trying to say?" Others remarked, "He seems to be advocating foreign gods." They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean." 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
24 "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27 God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28 ’For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ’We are his offspring.’
29 "Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone-an image made by man’s design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead."
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, "We want to hear you again on this subject." 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
Pray
Ok.
Paul finds himself in Athens. He is on a missionary journey and He knows God is in control of where he is.
Paul is burdened by what he sees in this culture and begins sharing with them the “good news about Jesus and the resurrection” (Acts 17:18)
He is able to do that because he has packed with him on this missionary journey the knowledge of Christianity, what we have to believe about
Christ and
what He has done
to be a Christian.
That is what we need to be packing as we prepare for our missions trip across the street or around the world.
We need to
Know what Christianity really is
Slide
Paul knows what Christianity really is.
He is not confused over what to tell them.
In our society today, and unfortunately in some of the churches today, there is confusion over what it means to be a Christian.
There has been a tendency in many churches to preach a social gospel, a gospel that is all about works.
Doing good is not bad, but it is not the gospel.
Doing good should be a result of the gospel and something that is accomplished in the power and strength of a relationship with Christ that comes through receiving the good news about Jesus and His resurrection.
But our good works done in our own strength aren’t going to get us anywhere.
Isaiah says that “our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6) when they are done in our own strength and not by the power and strength of the Lord.
A gospel of good works is not good news, but bad news, because we can never do good in God’s eyes apart from Christ working in us.
So what is the good news about Jesus?
The good news is that God made a way to restore our relationship with Him when we could not restore ourselves to Him. He did that through sending Jesus to die and pay for our sins and defeat death by resurrecting.
Paul preached the good news about Jesus and His resurrection.
This is what we need to know and have a firm grasp of so that we can share with others the reason for the hope we have. We have hope because of the good news about Jesus and His resurrection.
So what do we tell people?
Believe in Jesus?
In our society today, we need to be a little more specific about who Jesus is and what He did that we need to believe because there are people bandying the name of Jesus around that are not Christians.
There are people who say they believe in Jesus, they believe He was a person and lived and was a good man and a moral teacher, but He wasn’t God and He didn’t resurrect from the dead.
Let me be clear.
That person who believes in a Jesus like that is not a Christian.
Even in Paul’s day, there were people that were using the name of Jesus in their preaching, but they were not preaching the Jesus of the Bible and the gospel (2 Corinthians 11:4)
So what is true Christianity? What is it that Paul is preaching about Jesus?
Well, he is telling the Athenians the same thing he told everywhere. And we can see exactly what he told the Corinthians which is where he went right after he was in Athens.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul reminds the Corinthians of the gospel he shared with them, the same gospel he shared in Athens.
Listen to what Paul reminds them of.
1 Corinthians 15:1-4
15:1 Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
Acts 17:18
Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.
If lives are going to be changed, if people’s eternities are going to be altered from being in hell to being in heaven, then we need to be sharing with people the good news about Jesus and his resurrection.
This is the gospel. This is what we need to know and understand and be able to relate so that people have an understanding of what it means as they did when Paul preached it.
Now, there is some theology tied up in here that needs unpacking for people today, but I tell you that the gospel is still as simple as it was when Paul preached it.
The essentials of the Gospel
People must believe that…
…They are sinners separated from God
Slide
1 Corinthians 15:3 – Christ died for our sins.
People need to believe that they are a sinner if they are going to recognize they have a need.
Now this normally isn’t too hard.
Some people may think they are pretty good people, but it is not too hard to help them see that they have done something wrong.
I am 100% certain that they have lied before.
They have probably stolen something at sometime in their life.
They have certainly been filled with hate at some point.
They have probably lusted, not honored their parents in some way, used the Lord’s name in vain, etc.
If we encounter a person who thinks they have not sinned, it should not take too long to convince them otherwise.
Scripture confirms this as well.
Romans 3:23 – All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Now, once they recognize they are sinners, they still may not still see their need.
They may think a few sins may not send them to Hell.
They need to understand that their sin has separated them from God.
Isaiah 59:2 - But your iniquities have separated you from your God;
Romans 6:23 – The wages of sin is death …
but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
People need to understand that God’s standard is perfection.
If we aren’t perfect, you don’t get to go to heaven.
When they understand that, they will recognize their need for a Savior by recognizing that they are separated from God because of their sin.
Secondly,
People must believe that…
…Jesus is the Christ, God in the flesh.
Slide
1 Corinthians 15:3 – Christ died for our sins
What does it mean to be the Christ?
People today may not know what it means to be the Christ or Messiah.
The Christ is ‘the anointed One of God.’
The Christ is the Son of God. In the NT, this is commonly found together.
John 20:31 “but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God…
Being the Son of God is not like being one of the sons of God. The way Christ called God as His Father was exclusive. It excluded other people and it equated Himself with God.
Listen to what Jesus says in
John 5:17-18
"My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." 18 For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
Being the Christ, the Son of God was an exclusive claim that meant He was really God in the flesh.
And
Hebrews 2:14 tells us that
14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death-that is, the devil-
God became flesh so he could suffer death and defeat death for all of mankind.
And this is the third thing that
People must believe that…
… Jesus died for their sins.
Slide
1 Corinthians 15:3 – …Christ died for our sins…
Jesus death to pay the price for your sins is essential.
There had to be a sacrifice to atone for your sins.
Romans 3:25 - God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement,
Isaiah 53:5 prophesied about the sacrifice that would pay for our sins.
Isaiah 53:5 - But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
If Jesus did not shed his blood and die, we would not be forgiven.
Hebrews 9:22 without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
The death of Jesus in his own body is an essential part of the gospel.
Finally,
People must believe that…
…Jesus resurrected from the dead
Slide
1 Corinthians 15:4 - He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures
Acts 17:18b – “he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection”
This is the really hard part for many people.
They can see that they are a sinner.
They can believe that Jesus is really God who became flesh
They can accept Jesus’ death for their sins.
But to rise from the dead?
That is not something you see everyday.
Is this really essential?
1 Corinthians 15:14, 17 - if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty….you are still in your sins.
If Jesus did not rise from the dead, you have no hope that your sins have been paid for.
It is Jesus’ resurrection that show us 2 things.
The resurrection gives proof to his deity and his power to keep his promise of forgiveness.
Romans 1:1-4 - “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God- 2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3 regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, 4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.
There have been lots of men who died claiming to be a god, but there is only One who has backed up that claim by rising from the dead never to die again.
And not only does his resurrection prove He is God. It assures us that a day of judgment is coming and that Jesus, Himself, will judge the world in righteousness.
Acts 17:30-31 Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead."
Jesus’ resurrection means not only that He is God and He has power to keep His word and offer forgiveness to those who receive Him as their Savior, but that He is going to judge the world in terms of righteousness and those who are not relying on the righteousness they have received from trusting in Jesus will find that they are not righteous at all, and will be judged and eternally separated from God in Hell.
His resurrection assures that that judgment is coming.
Conclusion
Perhaps you are here today and this is new to you. You have never heard that gospel truly presented and have never repented of your sin and turned to God to receive Jesus as your Savior and receive His forgiveness and righteousness.
I want to tell you today, this is your greatest need.
Romans 10:9-10
9 That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.
Won’t you do that now?
I want to pray and if you would like to receive Jesus as your Savior, won’t you do that by confessing Him as Lord.
Bow your heads and pray.
And for those who have trusted Jesus as your Savior, take your outlines home, keep them in your Bibles, study them so you can help a person
Recognize their sin and realize they are separated from God
Recognize that Jesus is the Christ, that He is God in the flesh
That He died for their sins and that
That He rose from the dead to
defeat death and
prove that He is God and show He has the power to forgive sins and
assure that he will come back and judge the world in righteousness.
Share with People the Good News that Jesus brings, salvation to all who believe.
Let’s rejoice and sing about that Desire to see Jesus lifted High so that people everywhere can know the truth that, as Peter told us in Acts 4:12, that “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."
