Acts (Part 2) | Finish the Work - Acts 20 | October 19

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So, maybe, yeah, all right. Well, thank you, Brianna, for that.

We should have communicated since we live in the same house,

but I am—so this morning, And

Jenny asked me to, instead of reading the scripture, we're going to story.

Some of us are familiar with that. We've done it. Some of our family groups

of taking like a longer passage of scripture and storing it and kind of giving

the high points so that you're kind of internalizing scripture.

So I guess story a little bit. So I'm going to kind of build off of what Brianna did a little bit.

So I'm going to have to wear my glasses, y'all. Sorry.

All right. So Acts 20. So remember in Acts 19, Paul, we see where in Acts 19,

the Holy Spirit tells Paul that he is supposed to go to Jerusalem.

And so he has that, even if he hasn't told anybody yet, he has that in his heart.

And so Paul had been in Ephesians for a couple of years, and we remember that

he ended up teaching at the Hall of Tyrannus for like two years,

and the word spread all over Asia.

And then there was a riot, and Paul had to leave. So, Paul leaves,

and his intention is to go to Jerusalem, and so the way he was planning on doing

that is he went to Macedonia,

which is, if you're looking at a picture of the Mediterranean Sea,

let's see, so Jerusalem's over here, if you're looking at it,

Jerusalem's over here, and then he's traveling up this way, Ephesus is over

here, and then he travels all around to Macedonia.

Just to kind of give you a visual of kind of he's making this circle around the Mediterranean Sea.

And so he goes through Macedonia and he's hitting all the churches.

Because as you're going from town to town, you're hitting these,

you know, you're visiting the people that you know.

And then he makes his way on to Greece and he stays there for three months.

And just like happened in Ephesus, there were Jews that were kind of coming out.

Because a lot of times, you know, when we know that when Paul went to a town,

he went and visited the Jews first and then went to the Gentiles.

And so the Jews were kind of after him. So he's like, okay, I was going to go to Jerusalem this way.

And so we find out in Acts 20 that he was going to go on a boat from Greece

to Syria and head back towards Jerusalem.

But the Lord said, or Holy Spirit evidently told him, no, you're not going to

do that. Go back through Macedonia.

And he had some disciples that were, or some believers that were traveling with

him. And so he said, go ahead and go to Troas and I'm going to meet you there.

So Paul went by land and the disciples or the believers with him went to Troas.

And so then when they met there, it was actually Passover week.

And so the night that Brianna was talking about where the guy fell out the window

was actually the Lord's Supper.

They were doing a Passover meal, which lasted for a really long time.

So in my mind, I don't know this, but in my mind, and Zach may mention this,

but Paul was pretty excited.

Like, there's a sense of urgency about what he's saying, and his intention is go back to Jerusalem.

And so they're recounting, you know, they're at the Passover meal,

and they're recounting the Passover, and then now you have this new revelation

that Jesus is the Passover lamb.

So I could see Paul going on a little bit to where this guy fell out the window.

So he fell out the window, and then like Brianna said, he went down,

and he just hugged him. He like laid on top of him and hugged him,

and he's like, oh, he's okay.

So then they go back up, and then they just keep going, and he goes all night long until dawn.

So then after that, they keep going. So they go, let's see, they're back to

heading towards Jerusalem, and.

And so he decided they stopped at Miletus. I don't know how you pronounce that,

but Miletus, which was a town that was right at half.

And he called the Ephesian leaders to come. He called the elders of the church to come to him.

And so he had some last words because he knew the Holy Spirit had told him,

I'm going to Jerusalem, and there's going to be chains and pain involved.

And so he didn't know, but he had an idea, especially because the Jews had been

fallen, that he would never see them again.

So yeah, a couple of things that he wanted to tell them. So this is kind of

his final address, his final charge to them.

And these were the people that he had stayed with for a long time.

So he spent a good amount of time with them and loved them.

So he tells them these things. He says, I've stayed with you.

I spoke the truth to the Jews and the Gentiles. I did it publicly. I did it privately.

I've done everything that I could do to give you the truth.

But I'm compelled by the Spirit to go to Jerusalem. And then just like the story

that Brianna was saying, they were like, what?

Jerusalem? Why are you going there? And he said, this is what the Holy Spirit's told me to do.

And so he has a couple instructions. He said, my life is no value,

and this is the path I've got to do.

I've got to go to Jerusalem like the Holy Spirit's told me.

And so he tells these elders, these overseers of the church,

he says, be on guard, because savage wolves are going to come.

They're going to come, and they're going to come up even from the people that,

you know, even from the people within the church. So be on guard.

And then he says that he basically just gives them to God.

He says, I have to release you. I give you to God. I trust that God's going

to build you up and he's going to give you an inheritance.

And then he ends with, which is kind of funny, I think this is kind of a funny

ending, but he's like, well, I worked really hard. I supported myself and we

all didn't like make ourselves a burden on anybody.

So remember, work hard so that you can help other people. And remember that

Jesus's word said, it's blessed to give.

It's better. It's more blessed to be, to give than to receive.

And then they have a special time just in prayer and hanging out with each other

before they sent him off to Jerusalem. So who knows what was going to happen. Acts 20.

Thank you, Julie. So I had the pleasure of traveling to somewhere in the Ozarks.

I don't even know where the Ozarks are, except to say that.

Is that like Arkansas? Where's the Ozarks? Yeah.

So I had the pleasure of traveling somewhere in the Ozarks when I was in seminary.

And I was able to interview this guy who was, I think at the time he was 99

years old, his wife and he were in a care facility, a nursing home,

and they were retired missionaries.

In fact, the strange thing about this nursing home that we visited was there

was quite a large contingent of retired missionaries in their 80s and 90s who were at this home.

I don't know. It must have attracted or been set up in such a way to care for missionaries.

But he was 99 years old, I believe. And he,

He and his wife, as newlyweds, they left the United States, I believe, on June 10th, 1940,

which, if anybody is more adept at history than I am, you'd know that as the

day that Mussolini declared war on Great Britain and, you know,

basically the world, France and Great Britain and World War II.

And so they left on that day. And what they would do is they would kind of ship

hop from one ship to the next.

And at one point they would get onto a French frigate transporting goods or

they would be on a passenger boat.

But they kind of had to do this because the German U-boats were indiscriminate on who they attacked.

And so they were kind of just hopping on whatever boat would allow them passage

as they made their way across the Atlantic Ocean.

And then they finally made it to Africa.

They got off of their whatever ship they found themselves

on at that moment and they made the last part

of the journey two hours by dugout canoe up the congo

river and so this was their missionary journey

as newlyweds they left not knowing at this time not knowing what would happen

to them but also not knowing what would happen in the world and would they ever

come back and if they did come back what what would happen would it be different

because there were no cell phones, there was no internet,

so it's not like they could get updates about what was happening in the world

and in the war and back home.

So they left everything they knew as these young 20-something-year-olds who had just got married.

They gave up everything in their life to fulfill God's plan for their lives.

It wasn't as popular of a thing, or not popular, but in the 19th century and

then sort of the early 20th century,

missionaries who especially traveled to Africa and Asia, many of them would

do this thing where they would pack their belongings in a coffin.

Not because it was a symbol of what they were going towards,

but because practicality.

It's expensive to buy coffins and to bury people. So they brought it with them,

not knowing what would happen.

And they would write these farewell letters to the ones that they loved.

And they sort of been called, dubbed these one-way or one-way missionaries.

And they knew that they were unlikely to return home.

And they knew that whether they lived a long time or a short time,

It was unlikely that they would see those that they loved again.

So they were prepared not only to leave everything that they knew,

everyone they knew, that they were prepared even to die for their purpose in God.

And there was one such missionary, a Scottish missionary named Mary Slessor.

She wrote to her mother this as she parted. It's hard to part,

but he is with us. God is with us.

And we are safe in his hands, whether by life or by death.

Heaven is now nearer to me than Britain, and no one will worry about me if I go.

Jesus is my king in my life. I'm ready to follow him no matter where he leads.

If I had one life, let me live it for God. And if I had a thousand,

I would give them all for him.

So these missionaries, these one-made missionaries would pack their belongings in coffins.

They would write their well letters, and they would head off to whatever God has called them to.

And these missionaries meant every word that they said. Mary meant this.

She knew she might never return home. She knew her life, like Paul,

was already surrendered.

We get this sense in the busyness of life and all that we have going on and

all of our schedules and agendas,

we rarely pause to consider what our days and our weeks and our years,

what are we being shaped into? What is our life becoming?

What is it all working towards, right?

We get caught up in all of these responsibilities and distractions and we miss

kind of the overall scope, the overall direction of our lives and where it's headed.

And we regularly ask, what is it really about? What does it all mean?

And when all is said and done, am I living faithfully or am I just reacting

to circumstances and situations and the things that come up?

Paul, on the other hand, we see this in this chapter, Acts 20,

we see that he never seems to be distracted by what life has brought him.

He's not distracted by regret, even facing chains and suffering.

He is fixed kind of entirely on this faithfulness to God that we see in him.

And he proclaims fervently in this chapter, I did not hesitate. I did not hold back.

He doesn't seem to look back and wish he had done things a different way or

to wish that he had done them better.

But he presses on, he presses forward. And in fact, not too many years later,

nearing the imminent end of his life, Paul will write back to Ephesus,

back where he is, and he'll write to his friend Timothy, who's there,

one final goodbye letter.

In 1 Timothy chapter four, he says, I fought the good fight,

I have finished the race and I have remained faithful.

So when all is said and done, when the story of your life has been written.

Will it reflect fully surrendered, fully faithful, fully committed to the call that God has given you?

If we were to write our own farewell letters and head off into the unknown and

the unexpected, what would we put in those letters? What would we write?

What would we hope to accomplish? What would we say to those loved ones who we've left behind?

What would be our list of things that we can look back on and say,

I have remained fully faithful, fully committed, fully surrendered, as Paul says.

And this chapter is strange because Paul is speaking to believers,

And it is one of the most, it is the longest discourse that Paul has,

the longest talk that he has with believers.

Typically, he's speaking to crowds of people who don't know Jesus and he's talking

to them to persuade them and convince them.

And here he is pouring out his heart.

It's intimate, it's pastoral, it's his parting words. He doesn't expect to see them again.

And so they embrace each other with tears that is leaving.

And in this letter, Paul makes several powerful points about his life and about

what it's about, and therefore about our lives and what they should be about.

I just want to pause on these five statements of what Paul's life was for us this morning.

And I don't, maybe I'll read some of the verses, but let's start with verses 18 to 22.

He says, You yourselves know how I lived among you this whole time from the

first day that I set foot in Asia,

serving the Lord with all humility and with tears, with trials,

and that happened to me through plots of the Jews, how I did not shrink from

declaring to you anything that was profitable and teaching you in the public from house to house,

testifying both to Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and a faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit,

not knowing what will happen to me there.

So Paul goes and sets out for Jerusalem.

God has already confirmed that it would lead to chains and suffering,

but he sets out not seeking his own comfort and control, but he follows the

spirit, even fully aware of where that path is leading and the suffering it's leading towards.

It's interesting that Paul in other places in his letters will write such words

as, follow my example as I follow the example of Christ, because at this particular

farewell, he's not really writing and sharing a picture of an enviable life.

He's sharing a very unenviable life with those he's leaving behind.

And it's full of difficulty and full of tears.

He says many times about himself, not just here, but other places that I am

low and defeated, which in the gospels is a compliment.

But if we look at that phrase and those words anywhere else in writings of the

time, it's always an insult.

And yet these believers, Paul specifically writes these words about himself,

as one of the highest compliments to be attained, that he is low and he is defeated.

Because Paul has a fully surrendered life.

And a fully surrendered life says, wherever you lead, Lord, I will go.

Even when the details are uncertain, even when it doesn't benefit me,

even though it may cost me.

Anywhere you go, any way you call, I'm going to go. This is a life that is fully

surrendered. And this is the kind of life that Paul leaves behind and speaks

about that he has lived a fully surrendered life.

And it's interesting because we tend to think of Paul as this great success

story who planted lots of churches.

But if we really dig into what happens as he speaks and as he shares the gospel

with those, he never really has a huge response.

Peter's the one who preaches and 3,000 are saved or 2,000 are saved.

Peter is the mouth, right? He speaks, people respond in big numbers.

Usually the worst thing that happens when Paul has a good sermon is he gets

stoned and dragged outside the city.

And then the best thing that happens is just a couple of dudes respond and are

like, Hey, let's go talk about it.

And I want to hear more, but he still had success in a sense,

in some sense, but, but Paul, Paul didn't have this glamorous ministry that we, we paint him to have.

He suffered a lot and he sacrificed a lot.

And we as Christians, We often say things like, I love Jesus,

but I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to go here.

I'm not going to live there. I'm not going to give up this because our wills

and our desires are so often not fully surrendered.

We falsely believe in our time that we have more time.

We have this false sense of security in the fact that we have enough time to

do what we want or set out, or we have enough time to get back to it.

But Martin Luther said this, that there are two days in my calendar.

He said, there's this day and there's that day.

He said that God will give you the strength for today. There's this day.

And then on that day, he'll show up and say, well done.

So don't worry about tomorrow. There's only two days, this day and that day.

In Lamentations chapter three, there's another way that the Bible puts it.

And it says this wonderful thing. It says that this I recall,

this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope, that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

His mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.

That God's mercies for us are new every single morning.

That every morning he will provide exactly what we need for that day.

That we don't need to hold on to old mercies from yesterday,

that we can move forward and step forward knowing that God will provide exactly

what we need for the day that presents itself.

So we don't need to worry about tomorrow. There's this day and then there's that day.

So the question is, what does the Spirit want me to do?

And what's it going to take? What does the Spirit want me to do today?

What does the Spirit want us to do in this day?

Not tomorrow, not a month from now, but what does God want for us now?

And what am I going to do about it? What's it going to take to do it?

Moving on in verses 24 to 27, he says, But my life is worth nothing to me unless

I use it for finishing the work assigned to me by the Lord Jesus,

the work of telling others the good news about the wonderful grace of God.

And now I know that none of you to whom I have preached the kingdom will ever see me again.

I declare today that I have been faithful.

If anyone suffers eternal death, it's not my fault, for I did not shrink from

declaring all that God wants you to know." God gave Paul a task.

He gave him a mission to accomplish.

Paul speaks the truth even when it's unpopular, even when it's costly,

even when it directly leads to his suffering.

His measure of success in ministry and in life is obedience.

There's sort of a passage that he's referring to a little bit in Ezekiel.

As a very well and knowledgeable Jew, he would have known this passage.

And so it's not necessarily arrogance that he's saying. And it's not that he

has disregard for anyone who didn't respond to the gospel.

We established that a couple weeks ago that he has great compassion and love

for all of the Jews, even those who reacted violently towards him.

There's this passage in Ezekiel that is talking about how a watchman who would

sit on the wall and watch for invaders, right?

It's using that image of a watchman

who's looking out for invaders to tell the city, to warn the city.

And it's using that analogy to talk about people who in their wickedness, God calls them out.

And a faithful watchman is one who tells that person and in their love for them

and their compassion for them, they speak out to dissuade them from their wicked

ways, to pull them back to God.

In James, it talks about how blessed it is to return one brother who's gone astray, right?

So a watchman's job is to do that.

And if you warn the person and they still continue, then their blood is not

on you. But if you, knowing their sin and knowing their wickedness,

fail to warn them about the coming doom, then their blood is upon your head.

And so Paul's kind of referring to this when he speaks these words that I am

innocent of any of their blood. It's not my fault if they don't respond because

I have not shrunk back in my speaking to them.

That Paul, I have been faithful, as Paul says. I've done everything that God has asked me to do.

And he's not, again, being boastful about it, but he's measuring his success appropriately.

And the thing about success is we often think about it.

We think about life and things in that way. I want something to succeed, not fail.

And then we have our definitions for what success may look like in that particular situation.

But we're all aiming for success in a lot of ways. And Paul's definition of

success and faithfulness, I should say, Paul's definition of faithfulness has

little to do with what we might call success.

Because success and failure are not words...

For a servant, and Paul calls himself a servant over and again.

In 1 Corinthians 4, he says, This then is how you ought to regard us,

the servants of Christ, and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed.

Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.

So success and failure, those are words and concerns for the master.

But for a servant, for a steward, what we need to be concerned with is faithfulness.

And that's what Paul's life is about, that he is fully faithful.

That he lives a life that is fully faithful to God. In his view,

he's just one beggar sharing with another beggar how to get bread.

That's kind of his view on life. One beggar sharing with another,

telling other beggars where they can find food.

And it's not, where do I wanna go?

And it's not, what do I wanna do? And God's will will eventually catch up with that.

It's God, what do you want me to do?

Am I willing to sacrifice that?

And we, in this regard, we tend to believe kind of two things falsely.

We believe that in some ways that God has not called us to anything at all.

That's one way that we can falsely fall into this misbelief.

The other is kind of the exact opposite, right?

We believe truthfully and rightfully that God has given us a mission,

but then we think that he's called us to everything.

And so no matter what we do, we're never doing enough because God has called

us to everyone and to everything.

But God has called us to things, and our call is to be faithful in those things,

and not try to do other people's callings and fulfill other people's purposes,

but to fulfill our purpose, His purpose for our life.

But also to know that he has called you and you have purpose.

And that purpose is the same thing that we share with Paul in a sense to,

to share Jesus with the people around us, to be full fully faithful to entrust,

be entrusted and fully faithful to share the message of Christ in words and actions and encourage.

And as I said, the response is not up to us. What they do with that information is not up to us.

We are heralds. In the same way we are servants, we are heralds.

And a herald doesn't create the message. A herald just shares the message.

And a herald isn't responsible for the response. A herald shares the message,

has the faithfulness to deliver the message.

I was thinking about this maybe two weeks ago of just like, who are all the people that I know?

Just writing down the list of all the people that I know. One,

so I can be praying for them.

And two, wouldn't it be great if I could at least share the gospel with some

of those people, maybe all of them. But who are all the people that I know?

And would that make me more intentional about my conversations with them and

my relationships with them?

Would it be more intentional, even in the sense that I would be more aware of

opportunities to love them,

and not just have a casual conversation that lasts for as long as we can establish

what the weather is, even though we've probably all been outside of that point, and move on?

Can I have a more intentional relationship where I love people well?

When I pray for them, where can I share the gospel with them?

So Paul lives a life that's fully faithful. Paul lives a life that is fully shared.

Verse 28 to 31 says, So guard yourself and God's people.

Feed and shepherd God's flock, his church purchased with his own blood,

over which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as leaders.

I know that false teachers like vicious wolves will come in among you.

And he talks about how some of their own men will rise and distort the truth. He says, watch out.

He says, remember the three years I was with you, my constant watch and care

over you night and day and my many tears for you.

This farewell letter that Paul is writing with his words to the Ephesians,

to these leaders in the church is one that is soaked in emotions, it is intimate.

They kneel and they weep and they pray together because his life,

Paul's life was a life that was lived, poured out for others.

His time, his energy, his own future, his immediate suffering,

and all of it, his focus is on them.

It's not on what awaits him in the future, but it's on them.

Because for Paul, people are what mattered most.

In 1 Thessalonians 2 is one of my all-time favorite verses that Paul ever wrote.

He says, so being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with

you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves, because you had become

very dear to us because we had loved you so much. We shared not just the gospel.

That would be good enough, but we loved you so much. We shared our very lives as well.

And when we think about people on their deathbeds, they're rarely thinking about

objects and things that they weren't able to purchase in their life.

They're rarely thinking even about the bucket list items of places to go.

Typically, they're thinking about the people they love and the things that they

got to do with them in their life.

It's because people are what matter. And we have to have this willingness to

root ourselves in community, to root ourselves in this family,

even when it's difficult.

And even when, as it says, as Jesus talks about, when the winds come and the

rains fall and the storms beat against this house, this body,

this family, we must be so firmly rooted.

And Paul's life is not one that has ever lived in isolation.

He's always with people.

Because he lived a life that was fully shared, fully present with others.

We would walk alongside them, pray with them, love them, loved him deeply.

The work of God is always done among people. Paul knew that,

and so he lived a life that was fully shared.

And I do want to skip down some verses because what we see closely related to

that is he also lived a life that was fully generous.

And if we look at towards the end of this passage, he says, I've never coveted

anyone's silver or gold or fine clothes.

You know that these hands of mine have worked to supply my own needs and even

the needs of those who are with me.

And I have been a constant example of how you can help those in need by working hard.

And she would remember the words of the Lord Jesus it's more blessed to give

than to receive, which Julie already shared with us.

Paul says, I gave more than I took. I live my life in such a way that I gave more than I took.

The night before Jesus died, when they had this great supper,

the last supper, Jesus washed his disciples' feet.

They didn't know it was his last night. He knew. He knew what was coming.

And he chose to spend his last moments with his beloved disciples,

serving them and washing their feet.

Paul got this example from Jesus.

I gave more than I took. When we think about,

prisoners in our time who are given the death penalty and they are offered their last meal.

And these last meals that these people request are ridiculous.

It is insane. But that's what we think about on our last nights and our last

meals, what we can get, what we can take, our own comfort.

But Paul and Jesus, knowing what's ahead of them are always most concerned with others.

They give more than they take. And that's the example for us to be fully generous.

In your relationships, in your life, do you give more than you take?

Do we give more than we take? Whose comfort and whose happiness do we prioritize first?

We have this culture of self-care, which it's important to be healthy,

but it also tells us to look out for ourselves more than others in a lot of

ways. is taken to that stream so often.

So whose comfort and happiness are we preoccupied? There is no destination,

no chapter in the life of a Christian.

Nothing that you as a Christian are hoping to arrive at in your life where it will all be about you.

That's just not the life that we have chosen as believers.

There's no such thing as retirement to an extent as Christians because the mission

and purpose of God doesn't end for us in our 50s or 60s or whenever.

I don't know. I'm probably never going to retire.

I keep begging Ron not to retire, so...

Raquel, just be aware of that. He's already told me, I said,

at least give me three years notice.

I got to adjust. I'm like my son in a lot of ways. I need time to prepare before someone leaves me.

But our lives are not about us. And lots of us, lots of times,

what we do is we fill our lives with things, our priorities.

It tended to revolve around what relieves stress, what brings us comfort,

what makes us life most convenient for us.

We tend to build our lives around these things, but there's one purpose that

we are all called to as believers.

And this is what we've signed up for. If you're not aware that our lives would

be fully surrendered and fully lived for God and his purposes and lives of others.

And I've said this before in other ways, but the gospel came to you because

it was headed to somewhere else, to someone else.

That's what our lives and our purposes are for.

And this, I have this verse in 2 Corinthians that I'm going to make fit,

but it doesn't necessarily really fit, but I really like it. So I want to share it.

And it's 2 Corinthians 2 Corinthians 9.

It says, Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also

supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.

It says, you will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous in every way.

That we will be enriched in every way to give it away.

And that every occasion and through us, generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.

That stuff comes to us so that we can pass it along to other people. We're just stewards.

We're just servants and stewards of what God has given us and what God already owns.

And as such, this is the most important detail. There is one relationship in

your life where you will always take more than you can give.

And that is our relationship with God.

It is the one relationship where you will always take more than you could ever

possibly hope to repay him.

And that is a beautiful thing and a beautiful truth to realize.

Finally, Acts 20, verse 32, going back,

Acts 20:32

it says, "'Now I entrust you to God and the message of his grace that is able

to build you up and to give you an inheritance with all those he has set apart

for himself.'" Paul entrusts the Ephesians to God.

He doesn't concern himself with what will happen after his passing because he

knows that God will take care of them.

And he knows that because he knows how the story ends.

He knows what awaits him. He knows what awaits them.

That's why he can write such things as to me, to live as Christ and to die as

gain, because there is a great and glorious inheritance awaiting him on the

other side of the suffering.

And so he lives a life that is fully confident in the resurrection.

Paul lives a life that's fully confident in the resurrection.

A life that is served for God's purposes only finds its ultimate meaning in

death and resurrection.

It is a life that has lived for something greater than itself.

It is a death that we are looking forward to, to die that makes sense in the resurrection.

And I've just been mulling this over the last week, how the resurrection gives meaning to every loss,

every suffering, everything that we experience, that we can keep going and be

unmovable because whatever we experience in death and in life and in ministry

is swallowed up in resurrection.

A fully surrendered life finds hope, not in results, not in success or failure.

In the risen Christ who redeems every sacrifice, every moment of suffering.

It is redeemed in Christ in the resurrection. And this is the question that

I've been meditating on for myself.

Are, for me it would be am I, but I'm going to pose it to you.

Are you living a life that only makes sense at the resurrection?

Are we living a life that other people were going to look at and go,

yeah, that doesn't make any sense.

But when all is said and done and we get to be with God, it just makes perfect sense.

We're not going to care. So we always talk about this, how in heaven it's like,

oh, I get to meet somebody and talk to them.

And I get to see all the connections and crazy things that God did with this

little moment of faithfulness. And I thought I was just this big failure.

We kind of meditate on those things. They're like, I'm looking forward to heaven

for this reason, I don't think we're going to care when we get to heaven about

any of those things. But there's a beautiful truth there.

And that truth is living our lives in such a way on this earth that sure,

for a lot of people, it's not going to make sense.

But in view of eternity, in view of the resurrection, it makes complete sense.

And I think about that and just some of the things that dear loved ones will

say to Jenny or I about, oh, you shouldn't do this.

You need to rest. You need to learn to say no. It's like, yeah,

okay, there's some truth to that.

But I want to live my life in such a way that it just doesn't make sense to you.

Hopefully it makes sense to y'all.

Doesn't make sense to the rest of the world. I want to live my life that way.

And I hope you'll continue to meditate on that. I know that I will be thinking

about that question a lot. And that's where I want to end.

So this is Paul's farewell, in a sense. He doesn't think he's going to come

back. And we don't really know if he does.

History kind of suggests that Paul goes to Jerusalem, he gets arrested,

he ends up in Rome, he does another missionary journey that's not recorded an

axe, and then eventually finds his way back to Rome and then is killed.

So that's kind of like the general way that we understand what happened in history.

But for all intents and purposes for Paul, this is his coffin and his farewell

letter to those he loved and to those he ministered with. He's already...

Counted the cost. He already knows what's awaiting him.

He's prepared everything and he's pouring out now to those he loves this final

letter of encouragement.

And he doesn't dwell, like I said at the beginning, he doesn't dwell on what

he could have done better.

We never see Paul saying, you know what, I should have done this better when

I was with you. He's not dwelling on what he can't change.

He is fully surrendered and confident that God can take even those things that

maybe he thought he could have done better and still use them for his glory.

He's fully faithful, fully committed, fully surrendered to the work that Jesus

has already finished on the cross, the sharing that with those that he cares about.

So will we trust God enough like Paul to finish faithfully, no matter what the cost?

Paul's life challenges us to ask if following Jesus costs us everything that

we know and everything that we love, everything that we could possibly hope for, would we still go?

Would we still trust? Would we still obey? Would we still write our letters

and pack our coffins and head out?

What I want to challenge you all this week, and if you could,

oh yeah, that's the slide I need.

Can you split these among the sides? Take a card, write down these five statements

of Paul's life that we talked about.

Fully surrendered, fully faithful, fully shared, fully generous,

fully confident in the resurrection.

Write down these questions that we can ask ourselves and reflect on each night.

We can reflect on these questions.

Have I lived faithfully today? Did I trust God's will above my own today?

Did I follow his leading even when it was hard?

Am I living a life that's fully surrendered?

Did I speak and live out God's truth courageously and obediently?

Am I living fully faithful.

Again, this is not that Eric's got the smart idea. He's taking pictures. Terry's got it,

college students do this all the time. I don't know if you guys have been around

them. If you have a slide, a college student is taking a picture of it.

That's just what Ryan can attest.

He's way ahead of us, y'all. I don't know how long this slide's been up.

Hold on. Well, that's good.

I'll send a degree with me. Did I speak and live out God's truth courageously and obediently?

Not to every single person, but to the people that God presented me to be faithful with that day?

Did I live fully shared? Did I pour life into others, investing time,

encouragement, or teaching?

Did I live fully generous? Did I give more than I took, my resources, my love, my attention?

Did I live today with hope and perspective rooted in Christ,

trusting Him to redeem every effort?

So write these five questions down, and I know some of y'all are writing,

so hopefully this doesn't ruin what you're already doing, on half of the card.

And then add five to the other half, five more specific ones for you in your

life and the purpose that God has called you to, that we can reflect on these.

And all that we can ask is not, did I succeed or did I fail,

but have I been faithful?

Am I living a life that only makes sense to people in the resurrection?

Am I being faithful? Am I.