Sunday Evening Worship Service | Argentina Mission Service 🇦🇷
by Charlie Fandale
First Apostolic Church of Knoxville (Knoxville, TN)
Kind: sermon
Scripture: Acts 16:34, Romans 5:6-10

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/charlie-fandale--sunday-evening-worship-service-154
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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let me read something to you out of the word of the Lord I'd like to read if if you have your Bibles I still use one of these things um and when people look at my Bible they think it's a coloring book because I've got marked with all kinds of colors I I like to see people that have their Bible marked up shows me they're using it they read it they study it it's good now I don't know if you can do that on an iPad can you write on it can you erase it I don't know if I want one of those I don't know my kids have them I I'm I'm I'm dealing with it chapter 16. the book of Acts and I'd like to read one verse verse number 34. X 16. verse number 34. the word of the Lord says and when he had brought them into his house he set meet before them and rejoiced believing in God with all his house and I'd like to speak to you for just a few minutes on before they got to the house before they got to the house now what we just read it sounded like a very good situation there at the table they're rejoicing they're eating and sharing a good time but in order to get the context of what's going on here you've got to go back and find out what happened before they got to the table when you recap this chapter chapter 16 it's it's impressive how God had begun to use Paul and Silas in a way that was so important for not just the structure but for the strengthening of the church the first thing that we find in this chapter is where they receiving the the words from the apostles they were going from church to church after they had received word that the apostles had gotten together and decided what was necessary for each new Gentile convert to do and so they were going and the Bible says they went from church to church and established them in the faith and increased in number God used them mightily to strengthen the churches and let them know that as Gentile believers they were nothing they were in no means less than the Jewish Believers even though some were very envious and wanted to put all of their customs and their culture upon them and that wasn't what God had intended they strengthened the churches and then from there they went to different areas they went to and some of these these cities I know they're they're not the same now but they went to phergia and galatia and to Missy and Bethania and they traveled and as you as you connect the dots you can see where the apostles went and where they traveled to throw us some latrasia neapolis and de Philippi and when they got to Philippi they made it a point to go to a place where there was prayer made on the Sabbath near the river and to us the river is very important because we have baptized many people in the river there's songs about baptism in the river and it's very very special when you're able to do that when Paul and Silas were there there was a woman by the name of Lydia that received the word that they had shared with them and she was baptized and she asked that they stay with her at her house but any time that people received the word of the Lord and have faith and obey the word of the Lord the enemy is not going to be happy and he's going to stir things up and make things difficult for not just that person but for anyone around and so there we we find it appears a demon-possessed girl and she continually made the Apostle Paul feel uncomfortable about what he was doing and it got to the point that he he he cast out the bad Spirit out of this girl it because it was causing so much confusion and the men that were making money offered the Divination spirit that this girl had brought false accusations before the magistrates and creat created a riot there in Philippi Paul and Silas were beat and they were were put in a prison they were unjustly beat and there in the prison the Bible tells us from the verses 25 and on in that same chapter it said that they prayed and sang Praises unto God and the prisoners heard them they were praying and praising out loud they had no electric instruments no microphones no guitars no choirs no anything but they were able to sing and praise the Lord can I stop there just a minute and tell you that for many many years in Argentina we had no microphones we had no electrical instruments in fact anybody that had electric guitar was rich let alone an amplifier and to haul around electrical equipment was impossible we had nothing and if I told you that some of the best Services we had were with the tambourine and a guitar and people that were willing to Worship the Lord not even have a a floor a dirt floor and Worship the Lord with everything they had and feel God's presence now I'm not discounting what you have I think it's fabulous and great but let us never think that God's presence is dependent on the stuff God's presence is dependent on our sincerity in our heart before him we can be in our car we can be in our home we can be in our job and praise the lord we can lift up our voice on the street and we can feel his presence we don't ever want to think or have people think that if the lights go out we can't do anything we can we can pray to God that it doesn't happen because we we'd be we'd be in a big big trouble I know there's probably emergency lights someplace I don't see them and the exits are marked so we'd probably be able to get out of here okay but not only did they sing and they praised the Lord there they had an earthquake let me tell you what an earthquake's like Mendoza is on the fault line you ever heard of the San Andreas Fault well that fault line runs right all the way down to South America if you follow the Pan-American Highway you'll see the fault line and the first time you're in an earthquake you don't know what's going on if you happen to be walking you feel dizzy if you happen to be sitting down my mom happened to be in Santiago Chile and there was an earthquake and the bed was shaking so much that she didn't know what was happening in the city of Mendoza we've had earthquake after earthquake after earthquake after earthquake after earthquake the city of mendosis over 500 years old and so every time there was an earthquake they just moved the city to another area and so there are ruins of the city in different places in fact there's one big Catholic church and people go to see the ruins what was left after an earthquake one of the first things you want to do if there's an earthquake is open the door because the doors jam up because they get out of out of Plum out of kilter and people get so desperate when there's an earthquake that they'll jump out of a second story window a third-story window to get out they'll sleep in their car because they don't want to go back inside and in case there's another quake so when people go go to bed at night they better make sure they've got some clothes nearby because they won't stop to think about putting anything out they'll just get out and we've been in quite a few and it's nothing nothing that you want when it's very very hot and very still it's very possible you'll have a quake and even the insects and animals know when there's a quake you can see you don't see any movement at all they know well the Bible says that as they were singing and praising the Lord there was an earthquake how I love when the Lord shakes things up and guess what this world of ours needs a quake but it's not not a quake on the San Andreas fault we need a quake a Pentecostal Apostolic Holy Ghost filled quake get people Shook Up get them woken up because I tell you in a quake you're not going to be sleeping you're going to be wide awake and want to get out well when the jailer when the gender feels the quake and all of the doors of the jail get open he knows he's doomed he knows there's no way he can control all of the prisoners there in the prison so he's ready to kill himself when he hears The Voice and Paul says we are here we're all here he asked for light and then he says what must I do to be saved and so Paul told him he needed to believe in the word and it was through that belief in obedience that salvation came to his house he washed their stripes he was baptized in water and the next thing we know they're eating and enjoying time at the table but all of that happened before he got to the table and they were sitting at the table now let me tell you about one of our preachers his name is brother Sergio Sergio bianchetti his past is not the most um a wonderful past he happens to live in a very very crime-ridden drug-filled City as a policeman some drug dealers had come to him and wanted him to be on the take so he said okay those drug dealers ended up being incarcerated in the police station so they said you get us out of here we'll get you some money so he prepared a way to get these guys out of the police station and get them out back on the street he put them in his car his patrol car got as far as the last gate of the police station and was surrounded by police somebody had tipped him off and he was just another crooked policeman that was in prison now nobody wanted to give him the time of the day because he was a crooked policeman his wife happened to go to an Apostolic Church and she understood that it was her Duty not just as a wife but she needed to go see her husband and tell her husband what he needed to do to get his life in order now people don't always want to listen but they're in the they're in the prison he didn't have a lot of place to get around I mean he was a very ready listener and so after visiting after visit he finally opened up his heart and give his heart to the Lord but he's in prison and he's in prison because he was a corrupt cop and there was no way he was going to get out God In His Infinite Mercy after being seven months in prison something completely totally unheard of give him his Liberty and he was out free baptized in Jesus name received the Holy Ghost and now this ex-corrupt cop is now wanting to preach he's in one of the most wicked cities in Argentina where drugs run like water and were the crooks from prison are handling all the stuff on the outside let me tell you I've been with this man and he loves God he preaches the word he goes to the places that nobody else will go to because he knows where he came from and who had got him out of the place he was in today him and his family have a church in that City they've been preaching and teaching and baptizing people in Jesus name and you'd look at them today and you would never know what was in his past but if it wasn't for God he would still be there but see a lot of times we look at the face of value and we think well it's always been like this he's always been a preacher they were always sitting at the table enjoying themselves you don't know what happened before they got to the table you don't know what happened before he became a servant of the most high he had to go as low as he had in order for God to work with him but now he's a servant of the most high but let me tell you the rest of the story I was sharing with some people today about brother Sergio's cancer and some people think that sicknesses are because of people's sins and we know that God is a just and a kind God and if he punished us according to all that we've done none of us would be alive today so we got to get things straight but brother Sergio for almost the last 10 years has been suffering with cancer this cancer forms on the side of his throat in the form of a tumor and the tumor grows and grows on the side of his throat and he's had three different surgeries they've taken out the tumor in three different occasions and the last time they took it out they cut his throat from side to side to open him up to take out he's had chemo he said all kinds of treatments and every time they finished the surgery we got it all we got it all we got it all well it's come back again the tumors come back again and you know the world but they say this oh if God was God he wouldn't let that happen but God knows better than all of us what he's doing at our last convention brother Sergio came in that tumor on his throat was the size of a golf ball sitting right on on the side of his his shirt collar and it was very uncomfortable sometimes he couldn't talk because it was pressing on his vocal cords and he told me he said I'm done with the hospital I'm not going anymore I'm not doing any more treatment I'm tired I'm not doing any more I'm tired well after the convention I got a call from his wife and she said you know my husband has a cold and he's been coughing and he's coughing so much and so hard that tumor has opened up and it's bleeding and we're afraid and so because he doesn't want to go to the doctor because he's afraid for them to put him in the hospital again they said well I'll tell you what we'll do we'll give you antibiotics orally but if they don't work you're going to have to come to the hospital so he took antibiotics orally for three days Friday Saturday and Sunday but he kept bleeding out of that tumor and it looked nasty on Monday because it didn't stop bleeding they took him to the hospital it's what he least wanted to do but they took him in and intravenously they started to give them to antibiotics on Tuesday I get a call from brother Sergio and he says you gotta hear what just happened he said I went to the bathroom and I felt something coming down my chest and he said I didn't realize what it was and as I see this stuff coming down my chest the doctor walks in it's a doctor doctor come look at this all of the fiber all of what was inside of that tumor was starting to bleed out on its own and the doctor he looked at it and he started pressing on it and all of it came out completely he said are you in any pain of any kind no no pain it feels great when he finished pushing on it there was nothing left on his neck he was under no anesthetic there was no surgeon performing any surgery on his neck it was Dr Jesus that he walked into that hospital room so all of that stuff that come out of that tumor obviously a doctor said we got to check this out we gotta check this out so they went and they did all the testing and said oh that's that's that's all cancer but they didn't know that it wasn't in his body anymore it was outside of his body God did the miraculous in a way that nobody ever thought and the great thing is he was at the hospital so there was no way saying he did it on his own they were there and they seen the proof themselves but before any of that ever happened to him he was the kind of guy you wouldn't want to be around you wouldn't even want to know him so before ever being who he is today he had a past that wasn't the best let me read to you what the book of Romans says in chapter number five I love this this portion of the scripture chapter 5 verses 6 through 10. it says for when we were yet without strength in due time Christ died for the ungodly scarcely for a righteous man will one die yet pre-adventure for a good man some would even Dare To Die but God commandeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us much more than being now justified by his blood we shall be saved from the Wrath through him for when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life at one time not just brother Sergio not just the Jailer but all of us there was a time in our past we didn't want anybody to know what was in our past because if people would have told us we wouldn't have been want to been around them but what they don't understand is there was an experience we heard the word of the Lord that word came into our heart we believed it we obeyed it and God changed us through the washing and through his blood he made possible that our past didn't mark our future our past was just something to keep us in context but our past no longer determined what our present or our future would be and that's the great thing about the Gospel of Jesus Christ Hallelujah it doesn't matter what your past has been like it doesn't matter where you were at it doesn't matter how low you were or what stuff you were mixed up in God's word is a universal word it doesn't matter if you're in the United States or if you're in South America the word of God is powerful and it still brings conviction and it still brings people to the recognition that they need God and there's nothing more important for every human being to understand we need God we can't save ourselves we can't pull ourselves up we need God [Applause] and thankfully that Jailer had an experience so when we find him sitting at the table with Paul and Silas and their eating and enjoying a good they were worried about what was happening then it was a good time and it was great and salvation came the message that we preach is not just something to pacify people's minds it's the word that will save people's Souls because without the preaching of the word people will die in their ignorance they need to hear the word and they need to understand that there is a loving and kind God that is so interested in their well-being he's not going to call up their past or rub it in their faces no he's going to let them be able to bury their past in the deepest of the Seas to come up an in newness of Life as a brand new creature to serve and honor and praise His name and just like brother Sergio there are many many yet today that need to know about Jesus Christ in Argentina in a country that's so superstitious and so entrenched in their tradition they have a hard time handling anything like this like the gospel message until they get to a point where they're so low they're willing to listen and willing to reach out and willing to hear but yet we have to keep telling them we have to keep reaching out to them because without Jesus they are lost bottom line they are lost so before ever coming to the table there was a past that we don't even know about but that God wiped clean through his wondrous blood God is so good he is so kind and so merciful he doesn't want that any should perish but that all would come to repentance and that's what it's about all these years in Argentina we've had the privilege of seeing many many people come to the knowledge of the truth but it's just a pinpoint of the literally millions of people in Argentina that need to know about Jesus Christ yes they have religion yes they have tradition but they don't know who Jesus is and that's why we need to be there but just like we need to be there you need to be in the place where God has placed you because there's people around you that you have no idea what's in their past but God wants to use you as a bridge to bring them to a place where their past is no longer an issue but where they can know Jesus Christ as their true and loving savior it's about doing what God wants us to do so many times we look at the people that go to a foreign land and we expect them to be very on fire and excited about reaching the lost but in this country United States of America that used to be considered a Christian country no longer Christian values are considered in point important in many areas today this country needs to be evangelized as much as our country does and I congratulate you and commend you for the daughter works that you're working with the Spanish community but that's just one area of Outreach that needs to be touched for the word of the Lord there are so many places so many peoples that need to know about Jesus but what are we going to do about it but we need to make it more personal what am I going to make what kind of difference am I going to make when was the last time that I saw someone that I brought to church come to the altar go down in Jesus name be baptized when was the last time I had the chance of teaching Sunday School and seen the kids in Sunday school worshiping the Lord and seeing them afterwards serving God we must serve today we must work today while it's daylight because there's a Time coming when we won't be able to anymore we learned that real quick during the pandemic during the pandemic in Argentina we were not just locked out we were locked in our province and not just their problem we were locked in our town we could not leave town our church buildings are small so the government regulated how many people could be in our churches in some Churches we could only have five six up to ten people in church for months on end we could not travel to visit any churches we could not travel to have um any kind of Crusades or anything like that we were locked in we didn't know what would happen next week in fact the town that we were in we didn't even know if fruits and vegetables were going to be able to come into town it got to be so bad they put I thought dictatorship was bad back in the 70s but this was worse yet we had policemen posted at the entrance of town I myself and my wife you were able to move according to your document number in Argentina you have an ID and your idea that's that would be like a passport but that idea has a number on it and if your ID ended at an odd number you were able to go into town Tuesdays Thursdays and Saturdays only for a few hours if they caught you on the street after six o'clock they arrested you even numbers were Monday Wednesday and Friday Sunday nobody could go out if you happen to go to a city two hours from us you had to wait they only waited on one person at a time in the store this is the middle of winter so you literally had to wait on the cold maybe for a half hour or up to an hour to be able to go into a store we didn't know what was going to happen and it got to the point where people were dropping like flies nobody knew what to think the first time we had a service let me tell you what the service was like people were so on fire we didn't even get to sing a song I mean they just exploded they were worshiping they didn't want to sit down they didn't want to be quiet their hands were raised they were just going on and on and on with Hallelujah this is great the next Sunday was a little bit less and then we went through a space of about another couple months where nobody could get together and guess what people started not being so interested in this church thing we're thinking what is going on yeah the enemy is so astute he wants to keep people away from the Lord's House he wants to keep us from coming together as faithful to share good things and we didn't know how things were going to end up in fact our conventions we had to cancel our conventions people couldn't come from outside the province they couldn't come any place and many many many many many many businesses closed down completely different difficult time and I know here in the United States depending on where you lived there were restrictions but nothing like that in order to leave the country we had to be vaccinated twice and in order to go from one Province to the next at the checkpoints that police checkpoints they didn't ask for my driver's license they didn't ask for the registration of my truck they didn't ask for a proof of insurance they asked for my vaccination card otherwise I couldn't go into the province the neighboring province difficult time and we know the Bible tells us there there are dangerous times there are perilous times that we're living in but that doesn't mean that people don't need to hear the word of the Lord I am so grateful that you have have set up from years of transmitting through the internet and and your programs on television I'm so thankful you had things in place where it just flowed for us it was kind of interesting sometimes uh being the days I could come into town was Tuesdays Thursdays and Saturdays and where we were at I had no internet so people would allow me to come into their house and transmit a message over the internet but some of the people's houses that I went to weren't church people and I didn't pay attention a whole lot to the background but my wife did I went into one house and on the back wall there was a bookcase with bottles of wine and a bunch of other stuff and my wife says we better move to another wall and then in another house there was rifles and animal heads and all that this is not the best wall to use for the background and not only that I was limited to how much time I could be on on the internet because then you go down and have nothing but it was an interesting time but today the Bible says this is the day that the Lord has made and what we need to do today is to take advantage of today none of us have tomorrow promised none of it know what's going to happen next year if the ixia will come around for us but what we do know that there are people that will never get to that table and sit down and share if someone's not there to share the word of the Lord with them there won't be another brother Sergio preaching if someone like his wife doesn't go and take him the message they're in prison we need to get the message out get the word of the Lord out and don't wait for an evangelist to come and push you and Prime you get real with the word and get real with your commitment to God and do what you need to do in Jesus name God bless you thank you