Whose Side Are You On?: Acts 21:17-26

Good morning.

It's good to be here.

It's been a while.

For those I haven't met, I worked at Alexandria Perez for 20 years, and then we left uh four years ago to plant One Voice Fellowship just four miles west of here with APC as our mother church.

And our purpose in starting a new church was to try to reach the neighborhood of Bailey's Crossroads, where in that community, 80% of elementary school children don't speak English when they go home each day.

And so and the largest mosque in Northern Virginia is four blocks from our church.

So to try to reach a neighborhood like that with people of many nations, we translate the sermon in 18 languages every week.

We pray and sing in different languages.

And we do that because most of our congregation is from somewhere else.

This is a picture of our most recent group of new church members, members from Pakistan and Korea, Colombia, Zimbabwe, and Saudi Arabia.

The young man from Saudi Arabia, we were preparing him for his membership interview, and we were going through question number two, which asks, do you trust in Christ alone for your salvation?

And he said, No.

And I said, wait a minute, we've been working on this for two years.

What do you mean, no?

And he said, but I trust in the Father and the Holy Spirit, too.

And we said, okay, that's good.

This question is asking for your salvation.

Are you trusting in Christ alone?

And it's just an example of how we have found that when you're working cross-culturally and across languages, everything takes longer.

Everything takes more time.

So you can be praying for us about some new curriculum we're working on.

We're working on new curriculum for our discipleship, for how we do membership classes, for leadership development.

That's an example of the things you can pray about.

Downstairs on the counter next to the kitchen.

There's a list of ways you can be praying for us.

There's actually an article that the Gospel Coalition wrote about APC and One Voice Fellowship.

It's all about how this church planted that church.

And there's a list of verses that we've put together, every verse we can find in the Bible that mentions God's heart for all nations, all tribes, all languages.

You can also be praying for our upcoming church retreat.

The theme is going to be first in my heart.

This is a picture from last year's retreat.

We had about a hundred people from 16 countries who gathered together.

And I just want to say before we go to God's Word, how grateful we are to have APC as our mother church.

We really cannot do this without partnership with churches like yours.

We still raise 70% of our church budget.

We need cars.

If you have an old car that you don't want to put more money into, we will put money into it and give it to a family who probably it'll be their first car in the United States.

And we would love to bless them with your car.

So you can pick up my business card on the uh counter downstairs or talk to me after.

So at our church this year, we are studying the book of Acts, and it is a great book for a new church to study.

And if you've read the book of Acts, you know that Paul was initially a fierce enemy of Christians.

But after he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paul became a follower of Jesus.

He became a powerful preacher of the gospel message.

And after his conversion, Paul goes immediately back to Jerusalem.

And the believers in Jerusalem were understandably afraid of Paul.

They didn't believe that Paul had really changed sides.

They didn't believe Paul had really become a Christian.

And so there was a question: whose side are you really on?

That was a question that Paul heard throughout his life.

I'm originally from Chicago.

And so in Chicago, people ask if you're a Cubs or a White Sox fan.

In this area, somebody might ask you if you root for the Orioles or the Nationals.

And where are my army buddies?

Me and all the army guys, right?

Army guys and gals, you're gonna hear us say, go, Army.

Thank you.

So everywhere that Paul went, people wanted to know.

Are you for the Jews or the Gentiles?

Are you for Greeks or for Romans?

Are you for circumcision, Paul, or are you against it?

It's sometimes it seems like you love the law of Moses, and sometimes it seems like you hate it.

Some people thought Paul preached too much law.

Some people said he preached too much grace.

Throughout the book of Acts, we see that Paul is frequently misunderstood and attacked.

There's even a documentary you can find online right now that came out.

The title of the documentary is Nobody Liked Paul.

But there was something, there was something about Paul that made him unstoppable as a gospel messenger.

Would you like to know what that was?

Okay.

We're going to look at the time when Paul went back to Jerusalem.

And it's been 20 years since he went there as a new Christian.

And let's see how the Church of Jerusalem is going to receive Paul when he comes to Jerusalem.

Let's read from Acts 21, starting in verse 17.

When we arrived at Jerusalem, the brothers and sisters received us warmly.

The next day, Paul and the rest of us went to see James, and all the elders were present.

Paul greeted them and reported in detail what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.

And when they heard this, they praised God.

Then they said to Paul, You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law.

They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs.

What shall we do?

They will certainly hear that you have come.

So do what we tell you.

There are four men with us who have made a vow.

Take these men, join in their purification rites, and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads shaved, and then everyone will know that there's no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law.

And as for the Gentile believers, we've written to them our decision that they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, from sexual immorality.

And the next day Paul took the men and purified himself along with them.

And then he went to the temple to give notice of the date when the days of purification would end, and the offering would be made for each of them.

Let's pray.

Father in heaven, I don't have any wisdom or truth to offer your body of believers.

We pray in his name.

Amen.

So when Paul and his friends first arrive, Luke tells us that the brothers and sisters received us warmly.

So it gets off to a good start.

And then after resting overnight, the group goes to see James and the elders.

Now, James is the half-brother of Jesus.

He's the head pastor of the church in Jerusalem.

And so James gathers all the elders of the church so Paul can report in detail what God has done among the Gentiles.

And Paul had lots of details to share.

He has traveled all around the Mediterranean.

And there were miracles, conversions, demons were cast out.

And God faithfully protected Paul.

Because Paul needed protection.

He found opposition almost everywhere he went.

In Ephesus, there were pagan silversmiths who wanted him dead.

In Philippi, there were Roman slave owners who had him beaten and imprisoned.

In Athens, he was mocked by the intellectuals, but in Lystra, he was worshipped until they tried to stone him to death.

And then in Corinth, he had jealous Jews who took him to court.

And now he's back in Jerusalem, and there are Jewish Christians, Jewish background Christians, who are accusing him of betraying their people and insulting their customs.

And that's the problem the elders bring up in verse 21 after Paul gives his ministry update.

And these elders, they have a tough job.

This is a picture of our first board of elders that we formed a year ago.

And none of these guys at our church have ever been elders before.

So we're figuring out together how to lead our church.

Try to imagine the elder board of that church in Jerusalem.

Right?

They're leading the first church that ever existed.

And they're doing this in the capital city of Judaism.

And these elders have to protect their church from threats from Rome because Christians refuse to say Caesar is Lord.

The elders have to defend the church from anti-Christian attacks from the Jewish majority.

But then the elders also have to protect the church from internal threats.

There's threats of people who are wrestling with questions of legalism and food sacrifice to idols, discipleship issues.

And Paul walks into a meeting with this group of elders who are dealing with all of these issues.

And I wonder if Paul might have felt kind of like a soldier coming back from a successful combat deployment.

Right?

You come back from a successful deployment and you expect everyone to thank you for your service, to celebrate your success, and instead the soldier is attacked and ridiculed and called a baby killer.

Because it seems like Paul cannot win, no matter what he does or where he goes.

In city after city, he goes to the synagogue and the Jews reject the news about Jesus the Messiah.

So then he goes and preaches to the Gentiles instead.

And then the Jewish Christians have concerns about these Gentiles joining their church.

They're like, hold on, there's Sabbath-breaking pork-eating Gentiles coming into our church.

And so some of these Jewish background believers start telling lies about Paul, that he's against the laws of Moses.

They accuse him of abandoning his Jewish heritage and joining the wrong side.

So a question for you.

Has anyone ever attacked you unfairly?

Has anyone ever criticized you for something that wasn't true?

How does that feel?

To be attacked unfairly?

Have you ever been asked, whose side are you really on?

It reminds me of Joshua 5.

Let me read, starting in verse 13.

When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked.

And behold, a man was standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand, and Joshua went to him and said, Are you for us or for our adversaries?

And he said, No, but I am commander of the army of the Lord, and now I have come.

And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshipped, and said to him, What does my Lord say to his servant?

And the commander of the Lord's army said to Joshua, Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.

And Joshua did so.

Now we know this is Jesus who Joshua met, because he tells Joshua to take off his sandals, that he's on holy ground.

And an angel would never say that.

This guy says the same thing that God told Moses at the burning bush.

But Joshua doesn't know that he's talking to a pre-incarnate Jesus.

All Joshua knows is he's got an army of Israelites that he's preparing to attack Jericho.

And there's this big dude with a sword.

And Joshua wants to know, are you with us or are you with them?

When we're in conflict with other people, don't we often ask the question, whose side are you on?

Think about political division, just as one example.

Are we ever tempted to say, I'm so glad that God is on our team and that he's against their team?

Friends, when we do that, we have everything upside down.

The question we should be asking is not, God, are you on my side?

Instead, God is asking us a question as he is saying, are you on my side?

God's the one who asked the question.

Like Joshua, Paul had a face-to-face meeting with Jesus.

And he came over to God's side.

When Jesus knocked Paul to the ground, he said, Paul, Saul, he said, you're on the wrong side.

Stop persecuting my people.

Start preaching my message.

The reason, friends, that Paul was an unstoppable Christian leader is because he was a good follower.

Being a good follower made Paul an unstoppable leader.

He never forgot who was the commander of the army of the Lord.

Paul kept his focus on the true leader of the church even as he went in and out of different cities and different contexts.

And that's the reason, because Jesus was always the focus of Paul's life.

That's the reason Paul could make decisions that seem contradictory to us.

Right?

So verse 24, James said to Paul, take these men, join in their purification rites, pay their expenses so they can have their heads shaved.

Then everyone will know there's no truth in these reports about you, but that you live in obedience to the law.

And Paul agrees, which should seem strange to us.

Because Paul's the guy who insists over and over that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Paul knows the law cannot save anyone.

And then here he is cooperating with a request to do something in obedience to the law.

How could Paul do that?

Paul was a gospel-focused pastor.

Paul understood that these religious rituals did not have any power, but that they weren't wrong.

The danger in these rituals is if people were depending on them for their salvation.

So Paul's mission focus never changed.

His focus was always to make the gospel known to everyone he could, and then teach them to live out of that gospel.

Listen to what he wrote in 1 Corinthians 9.

Though I am free and belong to no one, I've made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.

To the Jews, I became like a Jew to win the Jews.

To those under the law, I became like one under the law, though I myself am not under the law, so as to win those under the law.

To the weak I became weak to win the weak.

I have become all things to all people, so that by all possible means I might save some.

And I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

So do you see in those words why Paul was willing to cooperate with these Jewish customs, to do something like one under the law.

He did it to win those who were under the law.

So when Paul cooperated with these things, he wasn't trying to be popular, he wasn't trying to be politically correct.

He was willing to set aside his preferences and his comforts, his culture, his customs.

Paul was willing to set aside his life.

Why?

So that by all possible means I might save some.

I will do all these things for the sake of the gospel.

Paul was willing to speak to Jews using the language of Jewish law.

Because those laws were inspired by God in the first place.

They were intended to point people to the gospel message of salvation in Christ alone.

Paul knew that the gospel's exclusive claims were offensive to many people.

But Paul avoided offending people on cultural matters.

He knew that if he offended them on something less important, they would shut their ears to the more important message of the gospel.

Our church tries to apply this principle every year at English Camp.

We partner with our ESL nonprofit called For the Nations, DC.

Last month we had over a hundred adult English students just a couple blocks from here at First Baptist.

100 adult English students and their children, 80% of them Muslim, most of them from Afghanistan.

And to make our students feel comfortable, we asked, you can see all the volunteers there in the picture, we ask our volunteers not to wear shorts, not to wear tank tops, even though it was really hot that week.

But we don't want to create unnecessary discomfort among our Muslim guests.

And every day we have lunch where we can build friendships, and some Pakistani sisters from our church, they prepare a halal meal for lunch every day.

Now we're not endorsing halal food laws or Islamic clothing laws.

As Christians, we have freedom to wear what we want and to eat what we want.

But here's the key.

We're not going to use our freedom in a way that offends our guests.

Instead, we use our freedom to build bridges, to make our guests comfortable, and to earn the right to be heard.

And every day at English Camp we have a Bible lesson in simple English, and we get to tell our friends about Jesus.

The one who died to free us all from the burden of the law.

And our Muslim guests happily participate in these Bible lessons because we've built a gospel bridge through cultural flexibility.

You can read Romans 14, where Paul explains all about the importance of this flexibility in relationships.

But it's interesting because in other places you read Paul and he says we should be inflexible when it comes to the gospel.

For example, in Acts 16, Paul has Timothy circumcised because there it was not a gospel issue.

But then in Galatians 2, he refuses to have Titus circumcised because people were making it a gospel issue.

In foggy situations, Paul focused clearly on the gospel mission he received from his commander.

Paul always knew whose side he was on.

I want to tell you about a man named Jonathan Daniels.

Jonathan was an American seminary student.

In 1965, Jonathan heard that Martin Luther King Jr.

was asking for help with civil rights work in Selma, Alabama.

1960s, Alabama, as you may know, was a state deeply divided between white and black people.

There were separate schools and restaurants and bathrooms, seats on buses.

Breaking down that dividing wall of hostility was dangerous work.

But Jonathan wanted to go because as a seminary student, he had found in the Word of God that in Christ there is no Greek or Jew, slave or free.

And so on August 14, 1965, Jonathan and a large group of people were arrested at a protest about segregation.

The protesters were moved to the city jail in a garbage truck.

And they were put in a jail that had no air conditioning.

And this is August in Alabama, which is hot.

There were no showers allowed.

There were not enough toilets for everyone in this crowded jail cell.

And Jonathan led his fellow prisoners in singing hymns and praying together, much like Paul and Silas did when they were in jail in Philippi.

After six days, the group of black and white protesters were released, and they walked to this nearby store, this store, to buy cold drinks.

Now the store owner was a white segregationist, and he blocked the entrance to his store with a face full of anger and a loaded shotgun.

And the man aimed that shotgun right at 16-year-old Ruby Sales.

And just before he pulled the trigger, Jonathan jumped in front of Ruby.

And he was killed instantly.

And if you go to the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., you can see Jonathan's face carved in stone.

Before 26-year-old Jonathan Daniels laid down his life for Ruby, he wrote this.

It is to him whose name is above all names that the races and nations shout, We are indelibly and unspeakably one.

Friends, that store owner thought that Jonathan had betrayed his race and joined the other side.

Jonathan wasn't choosing black instead of white.

He was choosing right instead of wrong.

He was choosing love instead of hate.

He was choosing God instead of man.

Like the Apostle Paul, Jonathan was willing to risk physical violence to accomplish God's spiritual objectives.

Jonathan was a hero because he stepped in front of a young girl and absorbed into his body the lead slugs that were intended for her.

Young man was a hero.

Today we gather to worship a different young man.

Today we worship a young man who stepped in front of you.

He absorbed into his body the death that was intended for you.

Jesus sought you when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God.

He to rescue you from danger interposed his precious blood.

Jonathan died to save an innocent girl.

But friends, the love of our Savior is so divine, he was willing to die for the guilty.

You've probably never killed anyone physically, like that man with a shotgun.

But let me ask you, who do you despise, reject, or hate?

Maybe only in your heart.

Maybe you never say it.

In our self-righteousness, we tear people down, we speak lies about other people, or we just silently distance ourselves from them.

And we think we're justified in doing it because we're confident that in God's eyes we're on the right side.

Friends, Jesus came over to our side to take on our sin and our shame.

And he was willing to do that so that through faith in his resurrection, he could carry us over to his side.

And the reason we come to worship every week is because our hearts get disoriented.

Our spiritual vision gets cloudy.

Christian worship reorients our hearts and gives us a fresh vision of who Jesus is.

You know who he is?

He is commander of the army of the Lord.

He is our king.

It would be completely appropriate if we all left our shoes outside before we walked in this room and we came barefoot on our knees to worship him.

He deserves that level of honor and obedience.

But it's not really the physical posture of our bodies he's concerned about.

True worship, true obedience should compel us to ask the same question that Joshua asked.

What does my Lord say to his servant?

Have you asked that question about your life?

Have you thought about your priorities?

Because they reveal what side we are on.

Be honest with yourself.

Like, are most of your decisions based on what will make you happy?

What will make you feel safe or wealthy or popular or entertained?

Jesus is inviting us to ask different questions.

To say, Lord, how can you use me and my life and my resources?

How do you want to use my time?

Because everything I have is from you, and everything I have is for you.

Show me how to use it for your glory.

That's what I see in the life of the Apostle Paul.

This man was unstoppable because the mission wasn't his.

The power was not his.

But Paul kept his eyes fixed on Jesus.

And so must we.

So can we pray to him together now?

Father in heaven, Jesus is the only perfect human who ever lived.

Paul was not a perfect man, but he is a great picture of what it looks like when you convert someone's heart from rebellion to submission, from arrogant pride to humble reliance on you as Savior.

And so, Jesus, would you help us have a fresh understanding today that you are our Savior and you are also our commander and our king?

You were willing to take on the sin and shame associated with our side so that you could bring us to your side, that we might have a righteousness that is not our own.

Help us live out of that righteousness for your glory alone.

Amen.