An overview of the biblical plan of evangelism found in the book of Acts.

<p>An overview of the biblical plan of evangelism found in the book of Acts.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Adventist City Ministries

Jeff McAuliffe

ACM: 2 God’s Plan for City Ministry

We look for your spirit to be out poured upon us, Lord, that we might have ears to hear what you have to say to us in these last days.

Not only that we hear it, Lord, but that we allow it to change our lives and that we pursue you with all our might and all our hearts.

And Lord, as we discuss more this morning, your plan to reach the cities, we pray that you will implant that within our very soul, Lord, because you love the people who are there.

This morning we're going to pick up on where we left off last night.

And some of you weren't here, so I'm just going to just briefly review and then we're gonna go like crazy, okay, because we got a lot to cover.

Last night we did a study on the idea that there's a model for reaching the cities for Jesus Christ and we started by looking at Adventist history and Adventist counsel towards that model.

And we found a lot of interesting things.

We've listed them here on the board and you should have, I noticed last night that You were listening so intently that you weren't necessarily writing them all down.

And I wanted you to have them in your hand.

So that list that you have this morning are some of the things that we discovered from history, Adventist history, that show that there is indeed a model and that Stephen Haskell was chosen by the church to create that model in New York City and then Ellen White confirmed that over and over again in that there were certain elements in that model that were necessary, not like the past that we had gone through several types of things from 1873 forward that we were trying to do to have an impact on city ministries and they were all just seemed to be part and parcel of the whole.

You know sometimes that's what we do we do part of it and that's okay to start but God wanted the whole picture to be in place because that's his design or his plan and God always has plans, doesn't he?

And we talked about that last night, how God has plans and that this is not to be left to man's devising.

And so we found out some interesting thing from that model and 1 of 1 of the things that was exciting is this right in the middle of the development of the whole model for city ministries which in the beginning most of the leadership didn't want to do right in the middle of it there was a reform with regards to the gospel of Jesus Christ in the church, or a clarification, or whatever you want to call it in 1888.

And that's what we're going to start with today, because today we're going to look at the biblical model.

We're going to just use the word of God, and we're going to see, does it match up with the model from history and counsel.

It would be important, wouldn't it, for that to be the case.

And sometimes when you're sharing it with your brothers and sisters, that's where you have to go these days, right?

You have to show them in the Bible, and we always should do that.

In fact, we've had opportunities where pastors from other faiths have stopped by the mission and say, Can you teach us how to do this?

And I say, Sure, we can show it to you right from the Bible.

We can show it to you right from the Bible.

It provides opportunities those kind of opportunities provide opportunities for witness Right.

And so this morning we're going to look at a story we're going to look at the progression of this in the life of Paul and Some people think that the book of acts is just a series of stories and indeed it is but it has a purpose So I want you this morning to turn we're gonna start.

It's important that you stay in your Bible We're gonna start in Acts chapter 16 and we're gonna just kind of go through the stories and see if we can pick out the things that were happening to Paul as he prepares for the Ephesus ministry.

I want you to know that Paul didn't get to go to Ephesus immediately.

It took him a little bit of time to get there.

In fact, in Acts chapter 16 verse 6 and 7 we find out that, or verse 6, we find out that Paul wanted to go and the Scripture says, Now when they had gone through Phrygia "'and the region of Galatia, "'they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit "'to preach the word in Asia.'" Okay, so remember that Ephesus is the capital of Asia, okay?

And it's not Asia like we think of it, you know today.

Okay, and the capital of that state like our capital is Harrisburg the capitalist that state was Ephesus So likely if Paul was given permission at that time to go, he would have gone to Ephesus because that was the primary city, but he wasn't given that permission.

And the reason is, is because, what did we learn last night?

We learned that before men go to a city for training, they need for it to do city work or comprehensive work, they need training.

And Paul had a thing or 2 to learn and you can turn to first thing I want you to there's quite a few of them but I'm gonna point out 1 in particular you can go over to chapter 17 chapter 17 of Acts and we see that Paul, it goes to Athens in verse 16.

And in Athens he begins to work with those who are into philosophy and he meets philosophy with philosophy in the verses between 16 and 21 and he goes to a place called the Areopagus and there he has a great discussion with the great minds of the day and he sort of is trying to use a different approach to the gospel.

He's trying to reason with them, and at the end of the day, the success or the fruit wasn't as great as he had hoped it would be.

And so he came to a conclusion, And we can find that conclusion because the next place he was going to go was Corinth.

We can find that conclusion in 1 Corinthians chapter 2.

And this is how fast I'm going to go today in the Bible, so Keep your hands and fingers warmed up.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 2, we find that's the next place that Paul would go after.

And we find that he has some thought about how he did his presentations.

And brethren, and I brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or wisdom Declaring to you the testimony of God just the opposite of what he had done in the Areopagus.

He came with lots of knowledge and tried to meet philosophy with philosophy, but now he says I Determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Okay, so we have something here about which we need to kind of focus our attention on.

I'm going to take just a moment for this because it's an extremely important point.

Sometimes we go into the cities with an agenda, an Adventist agenda, and we should have the flavor of Adventism because We're like Joseph in Egypt when we go someplace, okay?

But the most important thing we can do is understand that most people's comprehension of the gospel whether or they're not they're churched or not is incorrect and that the very existence of the Seventh-day Adventist Church as the remnant Church, just think about this for a moment, is to restore the knowledge of the gospel in the world because that's the saving power.

Now we, a lot of us get confused about that.

Those things come to fruit or come to our understanding in the light of the gospel.

If they aren't gospel-based, they're valueless.

They become valueless because they become simply works.

And so if you can't explain Sabbath-keeping in light of the gospel, you've got problems in terms of the rest of the New Testament.

He said, OK, from now on, it's going to be the gospel.

I'm going to start with Jesus, and I'm going to end with Jesus.

And I don't know about you, but when I go into the city, what the world and what the cities need is Jesus.

Now what Paul was doing, and listen very carefully to this, what Paul was doing, he was going into cities that were what we would call pre-Christian, because the pagans there had never heard of Jesus Christ before.

This is why it's so relevant to us today as we enter the cities because now the cities are post-christian, okay, which is a little bit different.

Because the culture has rejected Christ in a lot of ways, and we're not as post-Christian as places that I've been in Europe, I can tell you that, but we're heading in that direction.

We're a post-Christian, so the pagan philosophy that we often meet in the cities is the very same misunderstanding or no understanding of the gospel as what Paul encountered.

That's why Paul's ministry is so relevant to today, because his intent was, we're gonna go to a city, We're gonna have an impact on that city for Jesus Christ And we're going to use a certain model to do it.

Okay Okay, so Paul decides that from now on He's gonna preach Christ in him crucified.

So now let's get right to the story and Acts chapter 18 Coach you turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 18 and we're going to be looking at verse 19.

Now what I want you to do on your papers you have this list and if we come out cross a verse that is expounding the same principle as you see on your list I want you to write it down under the Ephesus model it's not going to be in order we're just going to see if these things come up and the fact that I put them those things on the list is pretty good clue that we're going to find these things in the Bible.

It's exciting that we can go to 1 source, history and counsel, and every detail we can see in the Bible.

And I find that with most...every time that I run into a council I don't understand I Spend time in the Word of God because I know it's based on the principle in the Bible and I can find it and you Can find it too if you take the time Okay.

Acts chapter 18 verse 19 is a wonderful story and He Paul came to Ephesus and left him there.

So Paul still remained a good while and then he took leave of the brethren and sailed for Syria and Priscilla and Aquila were with him and he had his hair cut off at Sancria for he had taken a vow.

Okay I'll sacrifice a lot of things but the little bit of hair I have left probably isn't gonna happen just so you know.

But Paul did because he had taken a vow in verse 19 and he came to Ephesus and left them there who did he leave there Aquila and Priscilla now Aquila and Priscilla were his co-partners and Paul always traveled with other people and in this case they were living together in Corinth their tentmakers as well according to chapter 18 and Paul takes them with him to Ephesus so this was part of his team so to speak And because Paul comes to Ephesus and he decides he's going to move from Ephesus He's got to go back to Jerusalem to fulfill a vow.

He leaves them there Okay, so this is what we're kind of looking at.

You can see that somewhere on here that we can see that last night we learned that the Haskells were sent to New York.

Now we're learning that Aquila and Priscilla were left to do the ministry or start the ministry in Ephesus.

And we called them, it was just a convenient thing because it was Aquila and Priscilla and their names start with A and P and we turned that into a name where we called them an advanced placement team.

They were advanced placement and they moved in, Paul asked them, okay, you start the work, I'm gonna come back with a team and we're gonna do a fabulous work in Ephesus.

So this is a principle that we want you to understand in city ministries, is that there's some mission structures that are in place that Paul puts in place in the word that we can use.

And we're gonna touch on each of these throughout the weekend.

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ACM: 2 God’s Plan for City Ministry

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