You're listening to audio from Faith Church located on the North Side Of Indianapolis. If you'd like to check out more information about our church and ministry, you can find us at faithchurchindy.com. Now, here's the teaching. I graduated high school, in Oklahoma City in the mid eighties and, started attending college in Virginia about 1,200 miles away. And, back in the day when it was still 55 mile an hour speed limit, that meant it was like an eighteen hour ride.

And in those days, we by the way, kids, this is your the way we did it in my day part of the sermon. We didn't have cell phones. We didn't have Bluetooth connectivity on our car stereos. We didn't have SiriusXM. We had AMFM radio.

And, these things, anyone under 30, know what one of these is? People the people older 30 are laughing. Right? This is a cassette tape. This is how we stored and shared music.

So, for a drive that long, eighteen hours, you needed to have a lot of cassettes. So, you know, it was they were in these little boxes. You had actually a little case, like the size of a small carry on that might have 20 or 30 of these cassettes in them, because you need lots of tapes for your drive. So one time I was driving back to college, across Interstate 40, going east across Tennessee. I hit, Nashville, I think probably about rush hour.

And, I was keeping one eye on the road, while I was down here looking in the passenger seat rummaging through my tapes for, you know, the next tape I needed. And, you know, I'm kinda doing this and and traffic's moving along okay. And I'm figuring, you know, going back and forth. What am I gonna listen to next? And I look up and traffic had come to a dead stop.

And I did not have time to slam on my brakes and avoid hitting the car in front of me. I jerked the wheel over, and thankfully, there was nobody in the lane next to me. I didn't even have time to look and see that beforehand. I managed to pull over to the shoulder and, spent several minutes just trying to get my breathing under control and, and to get my heart rate to come back, down into, double digits from the triple digits that it spiked to. And, I remembered, I, you know, I had I remember that experience vividly.

I had grown up in church. I wasn't really following Jesus at that point in my life. I I believe there was probably some kind of a god who was out there in some way, but I didn't see any evidence of him being involved or present or doing anything in my life. But I also recognized very clearly that things could have gone very, very differently, and that could have been a deadly accident. And I knew that I had been saved.

I had been delivered. I had been rescued by the kindness and the mercy of God. Maybe you have a story like that. Maybe you have multiple stories like that. Maybe you have a story like that from this morning.

Maybe you're even just reminded of God's goodness because you saw somebody else's car off in the side of the road today. Maybe it's healing from illness. Maybe it's the way God has provided for you. Maybe it's the person that God has brought into your life that you didn't think would ever be there. Maybe it's, how he's provided for you financially, how he's given you a good job, how he's done good things in your life that that lead you to recognize his goodness.

Or maybe you're not there. May maybe you're in a place right now where you need God to step in and deliver and rescue and save, and it doesn't seem like that's happening. In fact, it may seem like things are heading in the opposite direction, like all the circumstances are being orchestrated to get you in the other direction of where you ought to be going. We're continuing our study in the book of Acts, a story, the history of God's work through his people in the first followers of Jesus. And, last week, we saw how the apostle Paul was, in prison under guard in the Roman garrison in Jerusalem.

And, God had promised that Paul was going to be his witness in Rome. That was Paul's prayer. And God said, I'm with you, and and I'm going to I'm going to make that happen. But what was happening immediately was this threat to his life. And we pick up this account here in the end of chapter 23 where this plot against Paul's life has been made known to the Roman commander, and God delivers him.

And we get to see how God delivers him. Because so far, it seems like the the steps of fulfilling this promise are confusing, uncertain, unclear. But what we see here is God rescuing Paul through a great deliverance from almost certain death. Luke is letting us kinda look behind the scenes, behind the veil, so to speak, through what's going on even that Paul is not actively involved in so that we can have confidence and hope that God is at work in our lives too, that God is working behind the scenes, that God is delivering, that God is advancing his purposes. Now, at the surface level, we see, a Roman commander, a tribune, writing an order to guard a prisoner as they transfer him to the governor's headquarters.

One level you'd be excused for wondering why is this even in our Bible. This is like reading, dispatches from some government bureaucratic office. But I wanna suggest to you that what we see not so much is those things, but God through those things. And we actually are meant to see God's hand orchestrating all these things. How God works deliverance for his witness.

How God is reassuring Paul when these soldiers show up. How how God is saying, I'm not just going to deliver you. I'm going to deliver you greatly in an in an impressive amazing way. I'm gonna get you where you need to go. That's the kind of God that we have.

You have a great deliverance in Jesus, a great salvation. God has done a great work. And I think that's what this passage is pointing us to see, reminding us the great God makes a great deliverance. A great God brings great deliverance. If you haven't already turned, in your sermon journals or on your phone or in the Bibles in front of you to acts, chapter 23.

It's on page one thirty eight if you do have your, acts journals. And I I want us to look at, just three elements, I think, that we see in this passage of what makes for a great deliverance. What is God's great deliverance here? And the first thing is that great deliverance often comes out of a great distress. Great deliverance often comes out of a great distress.

The greatness of deliverance is first seen in contrast to the danger that God rescues us from. The the more dire the circumstances, the more glorious the deliverance. Paul is in a very clear and present danger. If if you remember last time, the section that we looked at starting in chapter 23 verse 12, a group of Jewish people make a plot and bind themselves by oath than either eat nor drink until they killed Paul, and there were 40 of them, more than 40 who made this conspiracy. More than three dozen men have said, I'm gonna make sure that Paul doesn't see the light of day.

And and if I don't succeed, may God curse me, may God judge me for not doing this. That they have motivation. They have means. They have an opportunity. They've they've gotten the religious leaders to go in with them on this plot.

They they have a plan in place. And out of that danger, God brings this great deliverance. The plot is made known to, the Roman tribune, the commander. And in verse 23, he calls two of the centurions and says, get ready 200 soldiers with 70 horsemen and 200 spearmen to go as far as Caesarea at the third hour of the night, so about 09:00 at night. And also provide mounts for Paul to ride and bring him safely to Felix, the governor.

Four hundred and seventy men to guard this one prisoner against these 40 would be assassins. This is, commentators say probably half of the entire strength of the Roman garrison in Jerusalem. And this is an overwhelming show of force that God brings to bear here. And God seems to like it when the odds are against his people so that he can deliver in an amazing, powerful way. Joseph in the pit and in prison in Egypt, David facing Goliath, Daniel in the lion's den, David Daniel's three friends in the fiery furnace.

The disciples of Jesus, remember, are in a boat on the Sea Of Galilee in a storm, and and Jesus is asleep in the back of the boat and they think they're gonna drown. Lord, don't you care? Don't you see what's going on? The danger, the distress that we're in. And I think sometimes God, not just from this text, but in our own lives, he would say, sometimes God delays, and he allows the distress to become greater to show the greatness of his deliverance.

Remember when Mary and Martha send word to Jesus that their friend Lazarus, the one that he loves is sick, and, lord, come and heal him so he will get better, and Jesus stayed where he was two more days before going to see Lazarus and ultimately says, this is ultimately for Lazarus's deliverance and God's glory. Sounds great when it's about someone else's sickness and death, but God does that in our lives. Sometimes the distress, the the danger, the difficulty builds and builds a little bit more, a little bit more so that when God shows up, we will appreciate his deliverance. We'll give him the praise because he's the one that's done it. And we can see how desperate we were and how greatly he's delivered us.

And that is never more true than when it comes to our sin, our brokenness, our guilt before God. Do do you understand the danger, the deadliness of sin? And the danger that you're in if you are under sin, if you're carrying that sin yourself, the stress that it causes. The the the Bible says the wages of sin is death. And that all sin and disobedience deserves God's judgment, condemnation, and and punishment.

And and if and if you've never recognized that about yourself, I pray that today you would see the danger that you're in, the destructive power that sin has in our lives and how God wants to free you from that. Because when you see that the depth, the ugliness, the brokenness of sin, that makes God's deliverance so much more beautiful, so much more profound. The the Bible says, Paul writing in Romans five that where sin abounds, grace abounds even more. So one, Paul is saying that we are never in so bad a place that God cannot rescue us, but it's also saying that we we don't make light of sin. We don't diminish the seriousness of sin because to downplay sin is to downplay God's deliverance.

If I believe that my sin is not that big of a thing and I'm I'm fine and I I don't need all that Jesus stuff, we're downplaying what God has actually done to rescue us. The more distressing, the the more deadly, the more dangerous we see our sin is, the greater the deliverance that we see that God has provided in Jesus. We also know sometimes he while he delivers from sin, he doesn't always deliver us from danger and difficulty in this life. And sometimes he delivers us from the distress, and sometimes he delivers us through the distress. Sometimes he gives us strength to endure.

Sometimes he gives us faith to just take the next step forward. Sometimes he just gives us hope to persevere and to deliver us in the difficulty. And so when we see the the greatness of the distress that we see the greatness of God's deliverance. And and that leads us to the second thing that's going on here, that great deliverance comes from a great God. Great deliverance comes from a great God.

Not simply because of the danger and the distress that we're in, that that we're awed at deliverance, but because of the one who's doing the delivering, which seems to be the exact opposite of what's happening in this passage. Look, back at, verse 25. So Lysias writes this letter to the governor saying, this man, Paul, was seized by the Jews, was about to be killed by them when I came upon them with the soldiers and rescued him, having learned he was a Roman citizen. And desiring to know the charges for which they were accusing him, I brought him down to their council. I found out that he was being accused about questions of their law, but he didn't seem to have done anything worthy of imprisonment or death.

And when I became aware that there would be a plot against the man, I sent him to you at once, ordering his accusers to state before you what they have against him. Who's delivering Paul here? It's it's all about Lysias himself. Right? It's all about the Roman governor.

Look look at how much this letter is full of him, how many times he talks about me and I and and what I did, and, he introduces Paul to the governor. This man was seized by the Jews and about to became killed when when I came upon them and rescued him. And and having determined he was a Roman citizen, notice, of course, he just, you know, skips right past the part where he found out he was a Roman citizen because he had illegally stretched him out and was getting ready to flog the truth out of him. And I brought him to the council. I'm delivering him to you.

Now, you know, back in that day, again, even older than when I grew up, no selfies, no Instagram. You know, he couldn't, like, cozy up next to Paul and get a nice little selfie to to say, hey, just here carrying out justice today and rescuing this innocent Roman citizen. But that's basically what he's telling his boss. Right? Like, he's sending the memo of here's all the great stuff I did that you should be impressed with.

It's a common common theme in scripture. I mean, Daniel chapter four, king Nebuchadnezzar taking credit for what God has done. We we saw it earlier in acts, remember, in chapter 12 when Herod gives this beautiful speech and the people say, oh, the voice of a god. And Herod says, yeah. That's right.

Look at me. Listen to me. It's the anthem of of our flesh, of the secular mind, of the world that we live in. I did it my way. I pull myself up by my bootstraps.

I am responsible for all the good that I have accomplished in my life. I make things happen. And part of the reason this is here is, I think, to almost help us see how laughable this is. Because Lysias because we know the story, it's it's almost, you know, funny how he's just, like, going so out of his way to try and make himself sound so impressive to his boss. But we know what the real story is and how he really almost got in really deep water, and it wasn't really all about him.

And the Bible is helping us here and in other places to recognize that it's not just that God is good, but that God is great. God is powerful. God is above all, and he is the one who deserves the credit and the glory. Psalm 45 says, great is the Lord and greatly to be praised because he's created us, because he saved us, because he sustains us, because because we're here today because of his grace and goodness and power. My lungs are taking in air and expelling carbon dioxide, and my heart is breathing and blood is coursing through my veins because Jesus is actively sustaining me by his power.

That's what Paul writes to the Colossians. In him, all things hold together. The stars continue in their course as the Earth spins on its axis because Jesus is the great God who sustains you and has brought you here and who cares for you and who delivers you. And the Bible tells us this because that's reality. That's the reality that we align ourselves to, that we need to be reminded of, that that we're not people who are interested in trying to get credit for ourselves.

I didn't seek God. God sought me. I didn't find God. God found me. I didn't save myself.

God saved me. I don't keep myself faithful to the end. Jesus keeps me faithful to the end. It's because of what Jesus has done. There's nobody in heaven pointing to themselves.

You get those pictures from the book of Revelation, particularly where we get these scenes of worship in heaven when every voice is pointing to the throne and to the lamb and saying unto you, God, be worship and glory and honor and praise forever because you alone are worthy. And if you have good in your life, if God has done good to you, if God has delivered you, if God has cared for you, it's an opportunity to give him the praise because he is great. And he is greatly to be praised. It's Christ who has made it, not we ourselves. It's Jesus who's delivered us, not us.

God is great, and his deliverance is great because of his greatness. That's an opportunity to be reminded of then why he's delivered us. Great deliverance demonstrates a great design. Great deliverance shows a great design in the deliverance. There's a purpose behind this rescue.

There's there's a plan behind this deliverance, and and the greatness of deliverance is knowing that God has designed it for a purpose. Paul, I think, could echo, the words of, Joseph, remember, in in prison or out of prison in in Egypt all the way back in the old testament. You meant it for evil, Joseph is able to say to his brothers, but God God meant it for good. He took what you meant for evil and overruled it and had a purpose and a design even in your evil intent to accomplish something great. And God has designed that Paul would not only have the opportunity to speak before these people, but to go before the governor Felix and to preach the gospel and ultimately King Agrippa and ultimately go all the way to Rome.

And how in the world is that gonna happen? He's locked up in Jerusalem. And so God takes a plot, a murderous evil plot against Paul and uses that to accomplish his purpose of getting Paul to Rome, just as he had promised and communicated to him. God is the one who orchestrated, allowed this plot to happen. He's the one who, directed, this plot to be made known to Paul and then to the tribune and who moved through the tribune to send 470 soldiers to send one guy to Caesarea, Because God has a plan in this deliverance.

Paul was not just delivered for the sake of being delivered. I mean, that that's nice. It's great. But he told Paul, remember, back earlier in acts that he was going to be his witness to gentiles and before kings, and Paul has carried his word to gentiles, but he hasn't spoken to any kings yet. And God's just promised him back at the end of chapter 11, I'm gonna take you to Rome.

He's getting there. This is this is the next step that is fulfilling God's plan for him, for his witness. Look in verse 31. So the soldiers, according their instructions, they took Paul, brought him by night to Antipatris, and on which was a little way point halfway between Jerusalem and Caesarea on the coast. And on the next day, they returned to the barracks, letting the horsemen go with him.

When they come to Caesarea, delivered the letter to the governor, they presented Paul before him. He asked what province he was from. When he learned that he was from Cilicia, he said, I'll give you a hearing when your accusers arrive, and he commanded him to be guarded inside the the fortress there in Caesarea. Last week, I I mentioned this part from Paul's letter to the church in Philippi that he he writes from his imprisonment in Rome, which is still going to happen a little bit in the future from here. I want you to know that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel.

So there's actually served to advance the gospel. So that has become to the imperial guard and to everyone that my imprisonment is for Christ. Then if you go and you look in the end of the letter to the to the greetings that he sends, from the believers in Rome, he says, all the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household. Do do you see the beauty of what God is doing here? Paul, I'm gonna take you to spread the gospel to Gentiles and kings.

Paul, you're gonna be my witness in Rome. I have a plan for where I'm taking you and what I'm allowing to have happen in your life. And the result of it He said people in Rome hear the gospel and come to know Jesus, and they they are delivered. God has a a purpose in your deliverance and in my deliverance, it is bigger than just you and me. It's about the people that God is going to reach through us to bring into his kingdom who don't yet know him.

Back in Acts chapter 18, you may remember a while ago, we looked at this. Paul was in Corinth, and the lord appears to him in a vision and says, do not be afraid. Keep on speaking. Don't be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack you to harm you, and I have many people in this city.

Paul, I've got you here in Corinth in spite of the opposition because there are people that need to hear the message about Jesus. They need to know that they can be forgiven and set free. They they don't know it yet, but but they're going to come to know me, and I'm gonna use you to do that. Could we say that about ourselves? God has me here in Indianapolis because God has many people in this city.

And we don't know who they are, and we don't know how he's gonna reach them except that if we're witnesses to Jesus, he's gonna reach them through us. He has a plan. He has a design for delivering us and bringing us from death to life and from slavery to freedom with the message so that other people could come to know and worship and be set free and made alive in Jesus. Paul knew that God was gonna take him to Rome, but he had no idea how, when, or under what circumstances. And, honestly, if we're in Paul's shoes, it's kinda hard to imagine, you know, like a murderous plot is the great plan that God has for my life.

And yet that's exactly what God is working through. There there's a there's a mystery of our own lives and of God's providence. We're living in the middle of the story, and we just don't know how all the dots are gonna connect. But God has said they will, and and I'm at work in it. I mean, that's our lives.

Right? I've I've got a plan for you. I I've got a a destination for you. God gives us a glimpse maybe of a of an ultimate plan for our lives, but he hardly ever reveals the details to us, except one step at a time as we just continue to walk by faith. So we focus on the big picture and trust God to work out the details that what is happening in my life is not by accident.

It's not a mistake. It's by God's design. God tells Moses to tell Pharaoh, remember, let my people go. And sometimes that's like we hear it or we hear it sung or quoted as though that's all God says. But he he doesn't just say that.

He says, let my people go that they may come and worship me. There's a design. There's a purpose. There's a reason for us being delivered. I'm not delivering them just to deliver them.

I have a a plan and a purpose so that they would know me, they would see my worth and build their lives around who I am and and my direction and guidance and purposes for them. And if you and I have been delivered, if we have been rescued from sin and death and judgment, he he's not saved us just to give us fire insurance, not just to not send us to hell, not just to send us to heaven someday. He saved us so that we would worship him, so that we'd be witnesses for him, so that our lives would reflect what he is like. That's God's purpose for us. It's God's design for everyone that he is saved to to demonstrate his greatness, to tell of his greatness so that other people would see and know the the life and the freedom and the hope and the joy and the peace that God has given us in Jesus.

It's not the first time that Paul has, experienced God's deliverance, and it's certainly not gonna be the last time. I mean, he's and Silas are delivered from prison in Philippi when an angel comes and, you know, opens it through an earthquake, opens the doors of the prison. He's in the middle of the night, lowered in a basket over the city wall of Damascus for escape from people who wanna kill him. And now he's being delivered from another plot to end his life. Paul knows God's deliverance.

Do you know that deliverance? If if you're here this morning and and you know that Jesus has come to save you and deliver you, then let this be an encouragement or reminder to to see the greatness of the god who has saved you and what he saved you from and what he has saved you for. And and if you don't know that that's true, even if you're not a follower of Jesus, god has been merciful to you this morning, waking you up, putting breath in your lungs, bringing you here safely, bringing you to a place where you could hear God's word, where you could be encouraged, where you could grow in knowing and following him, where you might hear about God's mercy and God's deliverance that he's offering to you. That even today, you would be delivered from your sin and yourself and from this world. God delights to deliver.

He is in the delivering business. Sometimes it's hard to see that that's what he's doing in the middle of the confusing realities and disturbing things happening in us and around us and in the world. How has God delivered you? How much have you been forgiven? How much does he love you?

How great is he? That's what this passage is pointing us towards. Psalmist says in Psalm 56, be gracious to me, oh god, for man tramples on me all day long and attack or oppresses me. My enemies trample on me all day long. Many attack me proudly, but when I am afraid, I put my trust in you.

For you have delivered my soul from death and my feet from stumbling that I may walk before God in the light of life. That's what Luke, I think, wants us to see through this what looks like just a mundane, ordinary, legal military process happening here. God is at work. He's delivering, and he's he's pointing us through that to see to see his love for us, to be reminded again of the cross where the son of God hung and bled and died to pour out his life to deliver you, to deliver us, that we would see him again and hear his voice again saying, it is finished. To hear Jesus' voice again saying, come to me all you who weary and are heavy laden.

To hear him say, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. To hear him again say, he who began a good work and you will complete it. Even if we don't know how and when and how long. See the deliverance that God has provided for you because he is a great God.

Let's pray. Father, thank you so much. The reminder from your word of even in what seems like just an ordinary, mundane recounting of activity that you are at work, and we're seeing you in it and above it and through it. And and we're thankful, father, because it gives us hope for the realities of our lives, the suffering, the danger, the distress that we experience that you're at work accomplishing your deliverance, your care, your good purposes for us. So help us to see you, help us to trust, help us to worship you, God, for your deliverance.

We pray in Jesus name. Amen.