The Word Made Plain

Voiceover: Welcome to The Word Made Plain with senior pastor Tony Clark of Calvary Chapel Newport News in Virginia. Currently, Pastor Tony is teaching a study in the book of Acts. Please open your Bible to Acts chapter 21 verses 7 through 9.

Tony Clark: Now the Greek word for forgetting is a long Greek word that you won't be able to spell anyway. It means to overlook, it means to forget, it gives the idea of failing to take notice. And this is what Philip is doing in these verses and what Paul had to do as well. Paul was saying, "I'm going to forget all of the terrible things people have done or thought about me in the past. I'm going to reach forward to those things which are ahead."

In other words, Paul was saying, "I will not allow what's behind to shackle or chain me to that past hurt. I'm not going to allow my past, watch this, to hold me as a prisoner and keep me from reaching forward to that which God has for me." Whether you believe it or not, there are many people who came in here with a ball and chain on their ankle.

They're chained to the past hurt, they're chained to the past hurt people have done to them, to the past hurt of a relationship, to a past hurt of a job, to a past hurt someone did to them, and you came in dragging a ball and chain with a smile on your face as if you've gotten used to dragging it. You've got to bury the past, you've got to bury that, because it's keeping you from running the race God has for you.

Whatever that hurt is, Philip had to put it behind him to let Paul stay in his house. Can you imagine the things folks were saying about Paul? Paul used to kill Christians, and we would say they're saying these things with justification. But Paul still said, "I've got to forget those things which are behind."

This is why Paul said, "I'm the chief of sinners." He said, "I used to kill Christians, and God showed me mercy. Therefore, I'm going to be merciful toward all those who have something negative and evil to say about me. I've got to bury that stuff. You will never be able to move forward to all that God has for you when you're still shackled to your past hurt.

Whatever it is that someone has done to you, you'll never move forward. You'll be stuck. This is why I've seen many people, unfortunately, I've seen many young ladies who were molested and sexually abused growing up. Whenever that started, whatever age that started, even though their age kept moving on with each birthday, they still acted in that way of the age that they were abused.

I remember a girl that was 13 years old and she got abused, unfortunately, got abused. Even though she was 18, she still was 13 mentally. Shackled to hurt, shackled to the past. It's a lot of unfortunate hurt that Jesus wants to set people free from. A lot of hurt. Life is a big hurt, just a big hurt, and we all will experience those things.

If we want to move on, and many of you want to move on, I know you do. If we want to move on, we've got to allow Jesus to move us on. There's things we have to bury. We have to bury those things, and this is what Paul is saying that he had to do because it would keep us from reaching forward to those things God has for us.

Here is Philip allowing Paul and his companions to stay in his house. In Acts 6, watch this progression, in Acts 6 we see Philip as a devoted worker. In Acts 8 we see him as a dynamic preacher in Samaria. And now we see him as, don't miss this, a devoted father. Verse 9 says that he had four virgin daughters who prophesied.

We don't see Philip's wife mentioned, either she passed away or what was very common in this day, she left him when he was converted to Christianity. This is very common around the world with more severe consequences. Those leaving Islam for Christianity are not only losing their families but they're also losing their lives.

Don't be shocked to see people break off relationships with you because of your new or, watch this, your deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. As long as you're on the surface, you kind of casually come to church, kind of casually believe in God, they'll stay connected to you. You know why? Because you're still doing everything they're doing.

When the rubber meets the road, when you begin to get deeper in your walk with the Lord, when you begin to really begin to draw closer to the Lord, and you begin to become like Jesus Christ, more and more like Him, then they're going to start breaking things off with you. "You've changed, you're different." I would hope so. I'm walking with Jesus now, I would hope I would look differently and act differently.

I love how verse 9 emphasizes, watch this, the purity of his daughters, they were virgins. This is huge because the city of Caesarea was a beach town and could care less about spiritual things. It was a wicked town, yet in spite of all of this, Philip's daughters were singled out as being pure.

How we should be emphasizing this to our daughters and granddaughters, the importance and blessings of purity, the value of virginity, even among our boys too with the myriad of porn sites available to them for free. All they have to do is type in just one word and then their eyes would have a smorgasbord of impurities.

Philip was able to raise his daughters to be pure in a sinful culture by modeling purity in the home. It's an old saying by John Maxwell but it's so true: "We teach what we know but we reproduce who we are." This is something that we must understand, showing us that we can do the same thing as well.

We need to be known for our purity but so often, when you have what I think it was 68% of pastors hooked on pornography, so can you imagine the numbers with those in the churches that they oversee? It's about 78% of men, and I think it was about 28 to 30% of women hooked on pornography.

No wonder there's no revival in the church because there's no purity in the church. I just say, "Lord, help us. Lord, help us." Satan has us right where he wants us, which is a lack of power. We just exist. He's okay with us just existing and make sure we stay in our four little walls and huddle and sing Kumbaya. He's okay with that.

As soon as we start getting serious about the Lord and going outside of these four walls, now he has a problem. We're told to be the salt of the earth and salt is no good if it stays in the salt shaker. For salt to be used, you've got to shake it out of the salt shaker, and sometimes God has to shake us through allowing persecution and things to shake us out of the salt shaker and be spread out around the world. This is what we're called to do.

Now Philip was able to raise his daughters to be pure in a sinful culture. They were known for their purity. Watch this: what are you known for? What are your daughters known for? Well, all you've got to do is look on social media and their social media sources and you will see what they are known for.

Philip had to teach his daughters, he had to, in Proverbs 6 and verse 32 which says, "He who commits sexual immorality destroys his own soul." He had to teach this to his daughters. He had to teach them this. I'm amazed, and many parents and grandparents are amazed, because I hear from my kids what's happening today in today's time and the different sites and things.

I'm old and I'm old school, so all I know is Facebook. I hear about Twitter, I don't have it. I hear about the Gram, Instagram. I have an Instagram account, I don't know who set it up but I have one, and I think I've been there three times. I'm hearing about all these sites you can pay and have people pay you either lump sum or month, and it's almost like a pay-cam site.

It's just crazy, crazy stuff. I'm hearing and I'm sitting there listening and one eyebrow is up and I'm kind of twitching and I'm just like, "What?" I'm hearing about this stuff and our society, our world is so impure. It's so impure and the church is starting to reflect the world in every kind of way.

No wonder the church is powerless. Philip had to teach them Proverbs 6:32: "He who commits sexual immorality destroys his own soul." Sexual intimacy between two married people is a beautiful blending together of one another's souls. This is what Jesus meant in Matthew 19 and verse 5 when He said the two shall become one.

Children are the result of the blending together of one another. But when two people are not married, sexual intimacy has the opposite effect. Watch this: instead of blending of one, there's the destroying of two, of two people. Two lives being torn apart. Let me give you an example of this.

This is why the world, especially boys and young men, in my day when I was growing up and many of you, I'm looking out there, you're my age and older, you remember this, we referred to sex as "I got a piece of her." Well, you sure did. Outside of marriage, a piece of one's soul is, watch this, permanently removed with each sexual act.

It's like an onion. If you keep peeling away layers, pretty soon there's nothing left. I believe that a lot of intimacy problems in marriages is because of this issue. People have been so destroyed by so many sexual relationships before marriage, peeled away so much that now they are married, they have nothing left for their spouse.

This is just my humble opinion, but Proverbs 6 verse 32 seems to support what I'm saying. Souls are being destroyed with every sexual encounter. I'm hearing about young ladies boasting of having sex with over a hundred different boys. I can't imagine that. A kid was boasting and said, "Well, you had over a hundred, I had about a thousand women."

We're getting into Solomon's category who had 700 wives, 300 concubines. I'm just blown away at what I'm hearing today. Parents, we must teach our children what the Bible says about the dangers of sexual immorality. The answer isn't in contraceptives, safe sex, or abortion. The real issue is that the soul is being destroyed and the damage is irreversible.

Once you give away your virginity, you can never get it back. Never. Oh yes, God can forgive and forgive and forgive, but guess what? Your virginity is still gone. It's just like, yes, you can have sex and get pregnant and God can forgive you, but you're still pregnant. It's irreversible. Oh, let me illustrate this point.

Let's take a piece of wood and you hammer, let's say ten, ten nails into the wood. That is you, and each nail represents ten sexual encounters you've had outside of marriage. God, He forgives you and watch this, and removes the nails. The removing of the nails represents God forgiving you.

The holes are still there. Even though the nails are gone, the holes are still there. This is why a lot of women and young ladies feel empty afterwards because of the holes left in their souls. The men and young men grow more and more numb and insensitive and begin to look at women just as a piece of meat to satisfy their sexual desire.

It's sad. It's almost like Amnon in the Old Testament when he raped his half-sister and afterwards he said, "Now get out." He hated her afterwards and then shamed her by saying, "Now get out," and told his friend to bolt the door behind her. This is the insensitivity that we see with a lot of young men today.

Then the woman or young girl is like, "Why haven't you called me?" and he's ignoring her and he just don't want nothing to do with her because he already got what he wanted from her. This is what we see today. We're not teaching them that sex is bad, that's what we're not going to do.

We're not teaching them that sex is bad. It's just bad outside of marriage, outside of what God intended it to be used, which is marriage. That's where it's bad. I remember one girl, she was taught by her mother, "You better not have sex before you're married," and she pushed it so hard that when the girl got married, she wouldn't have sex.

Because her mother made it like a bad thing. That's not what we're trying to do. We're not going on that extreme. Sex is not bad, it's just bad outside of marriage. That's what we need to teach them. There are many of us who can tell horrifying stories of the devastation and destruction of sexual immorality in the past outside of marriage.

The destruction, the heartache, the tears that were shed, the unwanted pregnancies and all kind of stuff. Many of us can teach some horrifying stories. Philip is to be commended to be able to raise his daughters with a purity in a beach town like Caesarea. So not only the purity of Philip's daughters is emphasized but also the power.

Notice it said that they prophesied. Joel chapter 2 and verse 28 says, "I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy." We know prophets did two things: they foretold future events and they forth-told the word of God. We know in the New Testament it says in 1st Corinthians 14 and verse 3, prophecy consists of three things.

Number one, words of edification means to build up. Number two, words of exhortation which means to stir up. And number three, words of comfort which means to cheer up. Philip's daughters were women not given over to gossip, not taking selfies on social media all the time, nor were they arguing with their father as to why they couldn't go to the latest beach party.

They were building up, stirring up, cheering up those who were devastated by the beach life. You may be here and you say, "Well, that was fine for Philip, but you don't know what goes on in my home." I would turn around just say, "Who's the leader of it? Are you or your kids?" Well, you don't have to answer that because I can just look.

I know many of you, I know who's running that home: your kids. Your kids and their sporting events and their demands, whatever they want, you cave to it. That wasn't like that in Philip's home. Philip said what Joshua said, "As for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord here." Sweet little daughters, if it become an inconvenience for you to serve the Lord, God bless you, I'm going to miss you and I'm going to pray for you.

I'm going to pray hard for you because you think it's better on the other side. The grass is not green on the other side, you need to get the water bill. Once you get the water bill, you'll see why it's that green. There's a price to pay. That was Philip and his situation and he is to be commended because Philip's home was this way.

He modeled for them that God, church, and spiritual things took a priority in his home. The results? He had four virgin daughters who spoke the word of God to those in this beach town of Caesarea. Philip spoke God's word at home and his daughters spoke it outside the home. What your children speak outside the home is so often of what they hear inside the home. Not in all cases, I said so often.

It's funny, people used to say if walls could talk. You don't need walls talking when you have children, they tell it all. You ought to hear the stories I hear of the children, your kids, in the children's ministry and the things that they say. "My mommy and daddy were yelling at each other last night," or "My mommy pushed my daddy." Oh, you'd be surprised what they say.

Now you're going to be saying, "Now when we go in this church, you better not open your mouth or you're going to get it." They say some incredible things. What happened next? Well, we're going to pick it up next week, what happened next. Let me conclude with this: now in part two of this message called Focus On The Family, we saw how Philip modeled in his home that God was first and the kingdom of God has priority.

Parents, grandparents, we must do the same thing. Make spiritual things a priority in your home. Establish some kind of Bible reading and prayer with your children and grandchildren. It was funny, just yesterday I was reading to one of my granddaughters. She got a couple of new books on Easter and all that kind of stuff. "Come on, hop up on Pop-Pop's lap."

We know to get the blanket, and she just snuggles up under the blanket and Pop-Pop reads to her. I read to her about the story of Easter and about Jesus and what He did for us on the cross and all that kind of stuff. Her dad comes down and she said, "We were reading. I was reading with Pop-Pop, reading about Easter." He said, "Well, what was it about?" She said, "Jesus died on the cross for our sins."

You see what I'm saying? That's what we're called to do. This is what we're called to do. Establish some kind of Bible reading and prayer in the homes. Get them involved in children's and youth groups and what they are doing. However, if you reverse this order and instead of seeking first the kingdom of God, you seek first the kingdom of your family, trust me, you will find that your family will be out of order.

Our families must see that God, church, and spiritual things, they have a priority in our home. They must know that. Yeah, there's going to be times by which there'll be some sporting event or something that will go on during church times, but let this be the exception and not the rule. Let it be the exception because Satan is very crafty.

He will craft all sporting events and practices and recitals and all kind of craziness on Sundays and Wednesdays. Why do you think that's a coincidence? What days that the church meet? Sunday and Wednesdays. What time are practices and games and recitals? Sunday and Wednesdays. Don't think that's just a coincidence. He knows what he's doing. Once again, we'll pick up where we left off in verse 10: God's will next week.

All right, now as we're going to be closing in prayer, we're going to ask the worship team to come up and those who are serving to go out and get to their post, so once again you can have a great experience going out as you did coming in. Now we're just going to close in prayer and just give you an opportunity to respond to the message, to respond to what God is doing in your life.

Maybe you need to repent. Maybe you need to get right with God. Maybe you have a situation where your life is a piece of wood and there has been several nails in it and you want God to remove the nails and forgive you. He will forgive you. He will do just that. That's the kind of God we serve. He's a forgiving God. Yes, there are consequences to our actions, yes, but who don't want to experience forgiveness? Who don't want to come and get things right with Him?

Voiceover: If The Word Made Plain has been a source of inspiration and encouragement to you, why not consider becoming a Word Made Plain giving partner to keep this listener-supported program on the air? As a giving partner, you join forces with Calvary Chapel Newport News' kingdom vision of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.

You can make your tax-deductible gift online at calvarynn.org or send your gift of any amount to 15553 Warwick Boulevard, Newport News, Virginia 23608 and receive a gift from Calvary Chapel Newport News as our thank you. In addition to your financial support, we ask that you pray for The Word Made Plain broadcast, that it touches hearts and generates change in the lives of people around the world. We pray you've been blessed by God's word today and hope you'll tune in next time to hear The Word Made Plain.