Antivenom in Ministry (Part B)

Prayer is not a demand. Prayer is finding out from God which way we're going. Bringing something to Him.

Making out. He encourages us. Be anxious for nothing but in all things through prayer and supplication. With thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

Because there's a lot of work that goes on in prayer internally. I am matured. I am enhanced.

I'm made stronger by talking to God. But it is not a demand. Okay God, I've made my prayer.

I'm waiting. It is not what I give to God. It is what God has already given to me. When you make your offerings or you sign up to serve, ideally you're saying, I am giving back to God. He's blessed me. He's made a place for me at His table in eternity.

I will share the rest of eternity with Him, because of Him. And so for that reason, in serving, it is not what I give to God, it is what God has given me. This is the antidote for the venom. This is the anti-venom in ministry.

Have faith in God. For the venom. This is the anti-venom in ministry. Having this understanding that I don't serve to help God, my serving is my gratitude.

It is an outward expression of my gratitude for what He has done for me, my soul. You who serve and you get weary, that comes with it. If you don't get weary, something's wrong with you.

Well, it ain't going to happen. You're going to, at some point, you're going to get weary in the work. Moody's favorite saying is, you know, you get weary in the work, not of the work.

I'm sure he amended that, but he just didn't make it on paper. There were times he got weary in the work and of the work, and of how God does business, because our flesh can't take it. And that's the war with the Spirit and the flesh.

This was the attitude of the first heroic Christians, and God wrote it down for us so we could see it ourselves and be challenged. Now, verse 4. So when the natives saw that the creature, the creature hanging from his hand and Paul screaming like a girl.

All right. I would have been screaming like a guy, which is the same thing. Anyhow, when the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, verse 4, they said to one another, no doubt this man is a murderer whom though he has escaped the sea, yet justice is not allowed to live.

That's their opinion. Here's Paul. I mean, again, if it was me, it would have been an opera. If you think you're attending an opera, I would have been screaming so loud. No 9-11, Nicole, but unquestionably, it's presented to us in such a way as the venom was injected.

It wasn't a snip. The serpent not only sunk his fangs into him, but he latched on. Now, I mention to you that Satan is involved with this. Job, chapter 2, verse 7. So Satan went out from the presence of Yahweh and struck Job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.

He's allowed. That makes him the god of this age when Paul brings that up in 2 Corinthians. He's saying he's got power. Don't go thinking this.

He's just a raw. He can damn souls if they let him, but God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, be you kind to one another, tender heart, forgiving one another, of a sound mind, which a lot of Christians opt out of. I have no time for a sound mind. I want to show everybody how filled with the spirit I am.

That's too common to stay on. God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of love and of power and of a sound mind to do something with. He doesn't give us that, so now I got it. I'm going to go home and eat Cheez-Its or something. You've got to put it to work. Now, maybe you don't serve. Well, this is tricky because, number one, it is not my job to whip you up into serving. I don't think anybody should serve until the Lord nudges them, and He is the one that appoints servants. However, it is also my job not to make you feel comfortable in not serving. So there's something for everybody to do if you say, well, I don't know what I can do.

Well, get with me after service. There's a bunch of things. Just dusting. This is a big building.

You know how much dusting is? It takes a lot. So anyway, then there's prayer. There's the prayer chain. Speaking of prayer, here is Paul attacked by Satan because if Satan could kill Paul, then he could discourage others, and if he couldn't kill him, then he could just maybe ruin his ministry.

That's hell's strategy. But we don't read of them the believers praying for Paul. Why is that downplayed as the wisdom of God? Do you know if you are filled with the Spirit to the point that you're more interested in being filled with the Spirit than Christ? If that overshadows the Lord Jesus, it ain't the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will testify of Christ.

That's what He will do. And so God has to sometimes downplay certain instances because we'll overdo it. Prayer is not a demand. Prayer is finding out from God which way we're going, bringing something to Him, making out. He encourages us, be anxious for nothing but in all things through prayer and supplication. With thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. Because there's a lot of work that goes on in prayer internally.

I am matured, I am enhanced, I'm made stronger by talking to God. But it is not a demand. Okay God, I've made my prayer.

I'm waiting. So I think that the Holy Spirit downplays that here so that we don't look at prayer as a crystal ball. Or not a crystal ball, but as an open sesame kind of a thing. It is most certainly not. I don't doubt that they were praying for Him. It's just the omission of its statement to me is a teaching in itself. That we are to pray, but it is not prayer that gets things done. It is God who gets things done. And He uses prayer sometimes.

But I can tell you, there are a lot of people in this church that have been here for a long time that I have so much respect for as Christians. And I didn't ask God to send a single one of them. He did it without me praying.

He did a really good job. So you see, there's a lot more to Christianity than me asking. There's God. That's what it comes down to. And to have a healthy understanding of what prayer is and what God does is to our benefit. And to get tripped up there, the next thing you know, you're naming and claiming it, which is right out of hell. Positive thinking injected into Christianity. We're not positive thinkers. We are to be faithful people, understanding that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, of power, and of a sound mind. What more do I need than that? Well, I'm giving it in Scripture.

Well anyway, that's important to me, and I hope it was good for you. It continues here in verse 4. They said to one another, no doubt this man is a murderer, who, though he has escaped the sea, yet justice does not allow to live. These are conclusions without fact, without logic. There's no evidence for this conclusion. We cannot judge a soul based on what happens to that soul.

Job's friends did that, and look what happened to them. They, you know, God was not happy with them. They were self-righteous, and they were judgmental. And what happened to Job was not because he did something wrong, but because he did everything right. What is happening to Paul is not because he did something wrong.

He's doing everything right. Now they mention justice does not allow to live. Well, they had the Romans, and this teaching found its way to Malta also. They had personified justice as one of the daughters of Zeus. Justitia was her name that they gave to her.

The Romans came up with this one. And so they're saying, this goddess is judging Paul because he's really bad, and he survived the sea. Well, we're not going to make sure justice is served. And there's no, because there are really bad people that don't get justice in this lifetime, and the Bible talks about that. Anyway, these are false assumptions, and it made it into the Scripture because God wants to expose the spiritual error and misinformation from such observations. Verse 5, but he shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm.

There you go. The antivenom in ministry is serving Jesus and shaking off Satan. You've got to shake him off. Or what's the opposite? What happens if you have the viper bite you in life and you don't shake it off? You get bitter, resentful. You hold a grudge. You don't get past your hurt feelings.

All you think is me, my, and I. And what can God do with that? Sideline you.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't get sidelined. They go on and they spread that somewhere else. Revelation 20, verse 2, that serpent of old who is the devil and Satan. He's a lying slanderer, devil, and he's an enemy who prosecutes, accuses us, Satan. That's what those two words mean. Revelation 20, verse 10, the devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophets are, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. That is justice.

That's what's going to happen. When we think about fire and brimstone, you probably think about Sodom and Gomorrah. I should say to you that the fire and brimstone that rained upon them was not little drops of fire and brimstone. Basketball size, maybe larger. Volkswagen size, just slamming into Sodom and Gomorrah.

There's actually some archaeological evidence for just that thing. Anyway, here's Luke, the physician, medical doctor. He is there with Paul, but he's powerless, present and powerless.

No slight against him or the medical profession. Paul loved Luke. He wrote to the Colossians, Luke, the beloved physician, is with me.

Mark chapter 16, though, is what this is attached to. Speaking of those in ministry and the miraculous things they endure. They will take up serpents, whether they are literal or in the form of people or Satan's attacks. They will take up Satan's, and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.

All of that we're going to see happen in this chapter, not the drinking of the poison, though you have the venomous bite. But there will be the sick. Of course, the flesh seeks satisfaction in sensational things, not spiritual things. And we'll call spiritual things of God, they will try to make it sensational.

That's where it seeks its satisfaction. The faith seeks satisfaction in obedience, in Christ-likeness. And so, of course, you've got snake handling churches that are tempting God, trying to show off, look how faithful I am.

And, you know, they've died, some of them, doing this. It's not biblical, it is unbiblical. No church in the Bible behaved that way. No church in the Bible understood Mark 16, 18, the way the church, the snake handlers do it. I just couldn't, I don't, the capacity of human beings for evil is one thing, the capacity for stupidity in human beings is quite another thing, but they're both in the same major league. Verse 6, however, oh let me pause there, maybe you've met somebody who believes in that stuff, but they're a nice guy, they love the Lord.

Well, those things may be, but on that point, they are out of bounds, and there's no justification of it. In fact, in fact, it works against Jesus Christ and the faith. Coming back to this verse 6, however, they were expecting that he would swell up, or suddenly fall down dead. But after they had looked for a long time, they saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds and said that he is a god.

So we have a little bit to say about this one. They anticipated a natural outcome to a spiritual event. Remember, Satan is attacking Paul, God is allowing the attacks, but God is also countering the attacks. This is clearly serious, miraculous, and unforgettable for all those that are witnessing this. So they changed their minds and said, oh, he's not a felon, he's not a murderer, he's a god. They forsook one era and embraced another era.

How many times did you see that? You know, these people leave one religion and go to a false religion, or leave one false religion for another, or just in other places in life. You know, I left a New Age thing, but I became an evolutionist.

I mean, he's still stuck. They changed their minds and said that he was a god. And the mind without Jesus Christ can be the devil's plaything.

And it will spiritually be the devil's plaything. And quick to solve spiritual error, incidentally. They're quick to share this amongst each other, patting themselves on the back.

We got this one right. Good people, these were. No question about that as decent people go, but they were wrong about God. And that puts their eternal state in jeopardy, great jeopardy.

They were wrong on both counts. Paul was neither god nor murderer. Their criteria for deity was formed without asking God. Their criteria for making a god was formed without asking the true God. Well, that's the case of idolatry as we go through Isaiah, as we go through the Bible. Faith must be by revelation, with authentication, and not speculation.

I know it sounds, I'm not trying to make all those words just flow out like that, but that's the fact. We can only know about God if he reveals himself to us, and he has through his scripture. Peter said we didn't follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power of his coming.

Who do you think I am? I'm going to re-read that verse in a minute. But it does require revelation, and God does have his proofs built into that. We call them confirmations of the spirit, and the alternative is that you guess about God, which is idolatry and insulting to God. Which brings us to experience theology, which corrupts souls. There are those who profess Christ, and they exhibit behaviors and hold on to teachings that are based on their experience, and at the same time those experiences contradict prohibitions or permissions in scripture. It overrules God.

Well, I felt it in my heart, brother. Yeah, but that's not the Bible. The Bible says no, that's not right. What you felt is, who knows?

It's unimportant. You can't overrule God because you experienced something. Well, the Bible is just not enough for some people like that. They demand sensationalism, pseudo-mysticism, deeper experiences.

Just not enough to come to a church and hear the word of God preached and insights from scripture given. They need to make stuff up, and many false religions are born this way. In Lystra, they did this to Paul and Barnabas. After they healed a man, they wanted, you know, they're bringing an ox and a slaughter to them. This must be Hermes and Zeus, you know, and boom, false religion. Just based on the consensus of misguided souls.

And so somehow this is common, a common move of Satan, and a lot of people just help him out with this. True Christianity is established by the apostles and prophets based on indisputable revelation of God. And if you're born again, you know it.

You don't care what anybody says about anything. You met God. That's the born-again experience. You've been touched from above. The light's turned on, and you saw it all.

Overview, not the details. That comes later. Matthew chapter 7, therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on a rock. And we know what happened to the one who did not obey the words of Christ in that parabolic illustration.

They were wiped out. So now Peter again, you know, Peter was, where would we be without Simon Peter? Just an incredible man, and a no-nonsense kind of guy. He's the kind of guy that if you, you know, you told him something miraculous, his first words would be, get out of here.

Show me. Until he learned, of course. Anyway, he says this in his second letter. For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. And he's writing to people in 2 Peter that were being persecuted for being Christians. They did not meet Christ eye-to-eye like Peter did, and yet they're suffering for him. How is that?

There's more to me than my ears and my eyes. Then Ephesians, Paul gives us this theological statement. Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. That puts the New Testament. The Old Testament is under the authority of the New Testament. They're both God's word, but that's why he says apostles first and then the prophets. And of course, Judaism rejects this, but this is Christianity.

Verse 7 now. In that region there was an estate of the leading citizen of the island whose name was Pubilis, who received us and entertained us courteously for three days. And it happened that the father of Pubilis lay sick of a fever and dysentery. Paul went to him and prayed and laid his hands on him and healed him. So Malta's mayor's father had the Malta fever, which was believed to be from the goat milk on certain islands, Gibraltar and other islands in the Mediterranean, Malta being one of them. And the fever was said to last with the dysentery, and that's Luke writing. He's a doctor and so he's giving doctor language. Not to us, but in the original writings that's where it's coming from.

Anyway, it was said to last for four months, sometimes a few years to get past the effects of this bacteria. So we notice that there's no mention of Paul preaching to anybody. There's no mention that when he heals, anyone is coming to Christ.

Acts chapter 28 verse 9. So when this was done, the rest of those on the island who had diseases also came and were healed. So they're experiencing miracles. It doesn't mean they weren't saved.

It just means that probably my take on it is because of the language barrier, Luke could not be sure they understood. But experiencing miracles does not guarantee saving faith. If it did, then Judas Iscariot would never have become a betrayer of Christ. We picked this up John chapter 12 verse 37. But although he had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in him. And so sometimes it works, but the bottom line, we are saved by faith and by grace through faith.

Verse 10. They also honored us in many ways, and when we departed, they provided such things as were necessary. Well, their gratitude for the miracles was seen in their provisions. They were very grateful for this visit, and probably all of the shipwrecked passengers and crew were also given provisions.

It would not have been difficult, and you have everybody in the neighborhood contributing. But again, here is where we had hoped to read, and many believed, and many came to the Lord. And Paul left, you know, Aristarchus there on Malta to build the church. So did this add to Paul's discouragement in ministry?

I think so. It's hard enough preaching to people who want to hear the word. And imagine doing miracles, sharing Christ, and not having this clear outpouring of the Spirit on the people. And in back of that, the two weeks at sea being tossed around, the drama with the soldiers, that had to be very real.

You know, most of us have not been in a situation where someone's pulled a gun on us and they're about to shoot us. Paul was in that situation. God did miracles to kind people through his servant, and after three months, with their decency, again, we read nothing else. Neither convert or critic.

And because there's no critics listed, that leads me to suppose there must have been a language thing. So we can leave a place as Paul now is leaving, and I'm finishing up with this, and maybe the teens are saying, phew, now we get there. We can leave a place better. You could leave it the same. We could leave it worse. Which one are you when you go somewhere and there are decent people?

It's something to think about because they left this place better than they found it. Paul, with the healings, the anti-venom in ministry is serving Jesus Christ and shaking off Satan. I think if we get nothing else out of this passage of scripture for those who serve, it's shaking off Satan.

If you don't shake off Satan with your feelings, then the venom is going to do its thing. You've been listening to Cross Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston, of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, today's teaching is available free of charge at our website. Simply visit crossreferenceradio.com. That's crossreferenceradio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can subscribe at crossreferenceradio.com or simply search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app. Tune in next time as Pastor Rick continues teaching through the book of Acts, right here on Cross Reference Radio.