(Extended Version with SOP quotes) As the world comes out of a collective lockdown what have we learned? Why has God allowed all the difficulty and trials that we have collectively suffered? The answers to those questions are critical for the Christian. 

(Extended Version with SOP quotes) As the world comes out of a collective lockdown what have we learned? Why has God allowed all the difficulty and trials that we have collectively suffered? The answers to those questions are critical for the Christian.

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.

Newington Three Angels Church

Eric Walsh

After the Lockdown: Extended Version with SOP quotes

Father God, we thank you Lord for this opportunity to study your word.

I thank you Lord that you are a merciful God and a good God, that you've left us in health.

And that Lord, as the spring turns into summer, Lord, we are optimistic Lord that you'll continue to move in a direction.

I pray, Lord, that we've learned the lessons that you want us to have learned through these last few months of pandemic.

And Lord, tonight we will discuss some other lessons on why you even allow these difficulties and trials into our lives.

And Lord, let your people only see your portrait hanging from that nail.

So we're going to jump to the book of Acts, the 12th chapter.

The Bible says in Acts chapter 12 and verse 1, Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hand to vex certain of the church.

And he killed James the brother of John with the sword.

Because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also.

Then were the days of unleavened bread." We're gonna talk more about Herod here in a second, but Herod was the grandson of Herod the Great.

I'll show you some of their lineage here in a second.

He was trying very hard to secure the favor of the Jews.

Now what's interesting is, of course, he pretended to be a Jew, followed many of the ceremonies and rituals, but he was raised in the palace in Rome for a certain part of his life.

And when he took James and he killed him, secretly and privately killed him, the Jews were happy, but they weren't happy that it wasn't a public execution.

So that's why he goes back and gets Peter, Because he realizes that by killing James, he draws the Jews closer to him.

So he goes and gets Peter so that he can do a very public, humiliating execution of Peter in order to try and wipe out the leadership and of course the believers in the early church.

So during this time, I wanna show you that this, if this is Herod the Great, this is the Herod that was alive at the time of Jesus's birth.

These are his children and you skip down, here's his grandson.

This is the Herod we're talking about now.

Herod Agrippa I, who was here from Acts 12, 1 to 24.

There are other ones, you remember Herodias, the wife of, wound up being a wife of 2 of The Herod Herod Philip and Herod Antipas And then there is a Herod Agrippa the second that comes afterwards Salome who's the 1 who?

Danced To get John the Baptist head removed is listed down here Bernice's the sister of 1 of the Herods, of course, that Paul speaks to.

And the Herods, really, they're about 4 good generations of Herods in the Bible and so it can get a little confusing.

So I wanted to point that out and there's a picture of what Herod Agrippa, a bust of what Herod Agrippa would have looked like.

What's interesting of course is that He was friends in the palace with Caligula when he was emperor of Rome, but he had something to do with Claudius as being able to ascend a throne.

So Emperor Claudius gave Agrippa back a lot of the land that had been lost, So he had almost as much land under his rule as his grandfather, Herod the Great.

He's in the line of these people, but some of the crazy sickness that would have caused Herod the Great to kill all the children, all the boy children under 2 years of age at the time of Jesus' childhood, some of that same spiritual madness exists in this time as well.

And so Peter is in prison, as we just talked about, and while Peter is in prison, 1 of the things that the church is doing is that they're praying.

And what a lot of people wonder, and they're wondering this even now is, why is God sending us through some of these trials?

I've talked to people who have lost their jobs.

A good friend of mine I hadn't talked to in a long time, while this pandemic has been going on, she lost her son, her son was murdered.

Some other good friends, another friend of mine, I mentioned in another 1 of the sermons in the series, committed suicide in California, really devastated me.

1 of my favorite ministerial friends and someone I really looked up to lost his wife during this trial to a cancer.

And so, you know, I want to step back from prophecy.

I want to step back from some of the other things that we've been talking about and really look at trials and difficulties because what has become very evident to me over these last few months of this pandemic is the devil does not stop attacking God's people simply because there's a virus floating around.

And God does not stop allowing his people to go through trial simply because there's a virus going on.

In fact, this trial or any trial that you're going through is compounded by the fact that there's a virus.

Imagine you lose a loved 1 right now and you can't gather in large groups to have a funeral or even a wake or anything like that.

Compounded, Imagine you lose your job and at the same time, you have increased difficulty now going out and looking for a job because a lot of places won't even allow you to interview in person.

My point is that the pandemic in some ways has accelerated trial.

And 1 of the things that is most important to remember about this pandemic is how it has attacked the mental health of so many people.

So that as we talked about in another 1 of our talks on addiction and despair, the pandemic of addiction and despair, 1 of the things that we're seeing is a collective rise in societal anxiety.

We're watching society together become more anxious.

People are afraid of 1 another, afraid to touch 1 another.

I've never, you know, never have we seen anything like this really in the world's history, or at least not in modern history.

We are watching a transformation of how people get along.

And here's the irony, in order to have good mental health, you need the touch and interaction of other people.

So we're watching all of these things happen and people are asking, why is God allowing this?

I remember at a Pope early on in this process, the Pope asked, said, you know, I'm going to tell basically, I'm gonna tell God to stop this pandemic.

Of course, it didn't just stop just like that.

People are wondering why spiritual leaders, religious figures, or God himself is not stepping in to stop this.

So let's pierce this down, because the church was wondering the same thing about why Peter was allowed to be in prison.

The first thing I wanna remind you of is that God never says, oops.

God never looks back at what happens and says, oops, I made a mistake.

No, God knows the beginning from the end and he's moving us along a path.

He's allowing certain things to happen because in the end they will fulfill his purpose.

He is in a, there is a great controversy between Christ and Satan.

And what God is doing is allowing the natural consequences of man's rebellion and sin to have its full sway so the whole universe can see how terrible sin is now God being the loving merciful and kind God that he is even as this is happening He uses the difficulties and trials in order to further His purpose.

And in a big scheme of things, He's moving us through a prophetic timeline that even these painful, difficult times as they come up, God is 1 day, as we talked about when we talked about the 7 seals, 1 day he is going to avenge those who have been wronged in this world for their beliefs, especially, but in general.

Now, so trials are a way for God to get us ready for what is to come.

And the impossibility of our trials, once we go through, shows God's power.

I want you to know if you're going through something, and it seems impossible, because maybe your family is falling apart, your children are in rebellion, maybe your marriage is stressed, and people can see the challenges that you all are going through.

When you look at the fact that God delivers you and brings you out of it, it is for some people around you going to be the most tangible evidence they will ever see of the power that God has.

In fact, Judges 7 and verse 2 makes this point.

The Lord said to Gideon, the people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, My own hand has saved me.

God will move you to a place where the problem seems impossible, so that when God works things out for you, people will only be able to look and say, God had to have helped him.

And you will not be fool enough to say, I fixed my own problem.

When Gideon and his 300 men were done with the Midianites, nobody could have walked away from that and said, 300 men beat an army of over 300, 000.

And so if you're going through something as you're listening to this, I want you to know that your extremity is God's opportunity.

No matter how Bad things are, God can make things better for you.

Only once I see my sin can I allow God to work inside of me?

The greatest battle is the 1 that is inside of me.

Because of this, God's trials have been his greatest instruments of growth in my life.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

The scripture says, James says, listen, count it all joy when you go through these trials, because these things will actually move you to a place of steadfastness and perfect you.

Trials are also God's tool to break my dependence on myself, so that I will trust in Him alone.

Some of us are going through these trials because we are self-confident, we're self-secure, we lean on the arm of flesh.

Back to Menu

After the Lockdown: Extended Version with SOP quotes

Transcript

Description

Sponsor

Recorded

Sound Doctrine