We Are Church - Weakness and Wonder- Acts 9 - May 4

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Good morning, family. It's so good to be with you today. Let me start by asking you a question.

You know, Jesus asked questions all the time because sometimes the right question

is what opens your heart.

So here it is. How do you measure progress?

Seriously, think about your life. How do you know if you're growing?

Most of us, we've got an app for that, right? Your phone can tell how many steps

you take today, how many calories you burned, how long you slept,

or even track your heart rate while you watch The Office.

Let's be honest. It feels good to measure growth, to say, I'm doing better than yesterday.

And some of you haven't missed a workout. You've got your streaks going.

You haven't missed a task, your Apple Watch goals, your Fitbit steps, whatever it is.

And listen, I'm not knocking that. I get it. I do the same thing.

If there's anything that I've learned as I've been climbing these last few years

is it's hard not to chase after that next grade, even if they're completely

subjective and more or less irrelevant as a way of truly measuring progress.

It's hard not to chase the next grade, the next goal, the next win.

We love the feeling of forward motion.

But what I want to ask you is this. How do you measure your spirituality?

How do you know if you're growing in Christ?

See, most of us, we think maturity means needing less of God.

Of course, we don't say it that way, but it's like we level up.

So we sin less, we serve more, we clean ourselves up and think that that's the

goal, that that's the metric.

But the danger is we start confusing performance with spiritual maturity.

We think less mess equals more maturity, that the more polished we look on the

outside, the more mature we must be on the inside.

The more we pray, the more quiet times we have, the more we Sabbath.

And yeah, sure, transformation is real. The Holy Spirit does change us.

But if we start measuring maturity by how well we're performing rather than

by how deeply we realize our need for grace, then we've completely missed it.

Martin Luther said something powerful. He wrote, if our works are burdened by

this perverse leviathan, that through them one is justified,

they are made necessary and freedom and faith are destroyed.

Doesn't that get you? Even our best efforts, if they're done to prove we're

righteous, can become damnable works because they blind us to Jesus.

And this is what I wanna talk about today. I wanna look at not just the conversion

event, but the story of a man who, by every religious standard, was winning.

Saul, this guy, had it all. Zeal, knowledge, obedience, the right upbringing.

If anyone looked like a spiritual giant, it was him.

But he couldn't see the one thing that mattered. And so he was blind.

Jesus actually said this to the Pharisees too. He said, with the measure you

use, it will be measured to you.

And back in Deuteronomy 25, God said, you must use accurate scales.

You must use full and honest measures.

So family, if we're gonna grow in Christ, we have to measure our lives with the right scale.

And Saul had everything, but he didn't have Jesus. So he was blind and didn't

even know it. And that's where it all begins.

Paul had the resume. I mean, seriously, he had it all. Education,

an expert in the law, mentored by Gamaliel, one of the most respected rabbis of his day.

The same Gamaliel who stood up in Acts 5 and basically said,

if this Jesus movement is from God, is really from God, you won't be able to stop it.

And Paul, Saul, he was probably right there in the room.

So in Philippians 3, Paul lists his credentials. It's not even subtle.

He's like, he's saying, you think you've got reasons to boast? I've got more.

Circumcised on the eighth day of the a people of Israel, tribe of Benjamin,

a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of

the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

That's his spiritual resume. And he doubles down in Galatians 1.

You know what I was like, how I violently persecuted the church.

I did my best to destroy it. I was ahead of everyone in my zeal for traditions.

While he was blind, he thought he was crushing it spiritually, morally, religiously.

These are the reasons that Saul used to think he was right with God.

And I get it. We all do this all the time. I have to write a bunch of cover

letters for work almost daily.

There's always a section where I answer the question, why us?

Why would the client pick our firm instead of the 28 others,

which might be cheaper or closer?

Don't we do that with God somewhat? Isn't that what Paul is doing here?

By his previous measure, here's what proves his right standing with God.

Here's what proves that we're saved.

We pray three times a day. Here's what proves that our resume.

And I've got to ask, what would your spiritual resume look like?

Do you always Sabbath? Do you pray three times a day? Do you fast twice a week?

What is your spiritual resume?

Because Jesus says something terrifying in Matthew 7.

He says, on that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in

your name, cast out demons, perform miracles? They're laying out their resume.

And Jesus says, I never knew you.

Guys, hear me. They were spiritual, but they were blind.

When Saul meets Jesus on the road to Damascus, when that light hits him and

he's knocked to the ground and he opens his eyes and he's blind,

it's not just about his eyes.

That blindness was a picture of his heart. God is saying, that's what you've

been this whole time, Saul, blind.

There are two types of blindness. One's obvious, the religious,

irreligious kind that says, I don't need God. I'm the God of my own life.

It's defiant. It says, I'll define good and evil for myself.

But the other one is more dangerous. It's religious blindness.

It says, I believe in God, but I've got this. I'm good enough.

It's like that old SNL sketch, Stuart Smalley. I'm good enough.

I'm smart enough and doggone it. People like me. It's ridiculous.

But honestly, that's how we tend to operate spiritually.

We've got God in the frame, but we're still the main character. And that was Saul.

He wasn't ignoring God. He was convinced he was fighting for him,

but the whole time he was blind.

So what does God do? He knocks him down. He blinds him. He shatters the illusion of control.

And in that moment, Saul didn't just lose his sight. He lost everything.

He lost his confidence, his identity, his spiritual resume, gone.

God stripped it all away so he could give him something infinitely better.

And Jesus grabs a hold of Saul when he opens his blind eyes to the beauty and

the glory of the risen Christ. Everything changes.

And I don't mean he just tweaks a few things. I mean, Saul dies and a whole new man is born.

The old weights and measures are thrown out.

He literally says in Philippians 3 that all of those accomplishments,

all of those religious trophies, they're garbage.

He calls them garbage.

He says, I count it all as loss compared to knowing Christ.

And in 2 Corinthians 11, he says something that if we're being honest,

we don't like, especially us men, because we don't like it when we're bad at something.

In high school, I avoided the game dance dance revolution because I was bad at it.

Paul says, if I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.

Weakness. That's what God did. He didn't just forgive Saul. He renamed him.

And see, he was born Saul of Tarsus. And that name carried weight.

Saul was a power name. The name of Israel's first king.

And that Saul, the king, was impressive, tall, strong, commanding.

The kind of guy people looked at and said, now that's a leader.

In fact, the Bible literally says in 1 Samuel 9 that there was not a man among

the people of Israel more handsome than he, and from his shoulders upward,

he was taller than any of the people.

That's the guy Israel wanted, because he looked the part.

The nations had kings, so Israel said, give us one too, and God let them have Saul.

He was the one that the people asked for, because that's what Saul means, asked for.

And honestly, Saul of Tarsus fits the name.

He was impressive. He was chosen by the Sanhedrin to take out the early church.

He was asked for to get this Jesus movement under control.

But on the road to Damascus, Jesus doesn't just stop him. He undoes him.

Saul goes from the one everyone asks for to a man who begins to go by his Roman name, Paul.

And do you know what that name means?

Paul means small. That's what God does.

He takes the mighty and he makes them small. He takes the ones who trust in

their power, and he shows them the glory of surrender.

And Saul was all about image. Paul was all about grace.

For the rest of his life, Paul calls himself the chief of sinners,

the least of the apostles, and even a slave of Christ Jesus.

He doesn't boast in his knowledge or pedigree or even his miracles. He boasts in the cross.

He spends the rest of his life referring to himself as small and God as big.

And I wonder when he was suffering, shipwrecked, stoned, whipped,

abandoned, I wonder if Paul ever looked back and thought, it's amazing.

It's amazing the love of God, how God could love me after all that I've done. It's so amazing.

And that's why he clung to grace with everything in him.

Because in God's kingdom, it's not the mighty who are used. It's the small, it's the weak.

It's the ones who know that they need mercy.

That's what grace does. It renames you. It rewrites your story.

It takes you from mighty to small so that God can be seen as mighty through you.

Your past doesn't disqualify you. It qualifies you for grace.

Nothing you've done can separate you from the love of God. Nothing.

The only thing that can keep you out is refusing to receive what Jesus already did for you.

I remember hearing years ago about a ministry, I think it was in Las Vegas, of all places.

It was created to reach out to people in the adult film industry.

And they didn't show up with shame and megaphones and condemnation.

They came with compassion and the gospel. And I'll never forget this interview

with one of the founders.

He said he had developed a relationship with one of the most famous names in

the world, in that world.

And someone asked him, do you think that guy is going to hell?

And this man graciously, honestly said, we've had that conversation.

And I've told him the truth. It's not ultimately about what you've done.

It's not your past that keeps you from God. The only thing that can keep you

out is rejecting the grace that's already been offered.

And that stuck with me because it's true for all of us. The gospel isn't about

how good you've been. It's about how you respond.

And Paul, the man who wrote 1 Corinthians 13, the most famous passage of love,

Paul, the one who wrote Romans 9, one of the deepest reflections on God's mercy, he was a murderer.

Paul didn't clean up his life and then get invited in. He got knocked down by

grace while he was still breathing threats and violence.

That's the scandal of grace. It's not that God forgives the bad people once they become good.

It's that he makes dead people alive, not because they deserve it, but because he is good.

He takes the stories that we'd rather hide and makes them the loudest declarations of redemption.

So if you ever thought, God can't use someone like me, You're exactly the kind

of person he loves to use.

Matt Chandler tells the story about a friend, someone with a painful past, to a church event.

Not the church he pastors, but some other event. And when you know it,

the pastor gets up and starts preaching on sexual purity.

As a part of his message, he held up a rose, fresh, beautiful, fragrant.

He passed it around the audience as he's speaking for the audience to smell

it, to hold it, to touch it.

And by the time it came back, the rose was mangled. It was wilted.

It was limp. The petals were falling off.

And the preacher held it up and said, now, who would want this?

And the message was that if you're broken, if you messed up,

then you're damaged to goods.

And Chandler says he was burning with anger and he wanted to just get up there,

take the rose and scream, Jesus wants the rose.

That's the gospel. Jesus wants the used up, the ashamed, the addicted,

the self-righteous, the wrecked, the wandering.

He wants the rose because that's all of us.

And if you don't think you're a wretch, then God's grace probably doesn't seem all that amazing to you.

But when you know what you've been forgiven of, when you know how far he reached

to pull you out, you don't just sing amazing grace as a hymn.

You weep over it, you live it. And that's what Jesus meant in Luke 7 when he

told the story of the two debtors, one who owed a little, the other who owed a fortune.

Both were forgiven. He asked, who will love more?

The answer is the one who knows how much they've been forgiven.

The one who has forgiven much will love much. He's not saying go and sin more.

He's not. What he's saying is wake up to how much you've already been forgiven,

how much God loves you, because that's when your love explodes.

That's when you finally see him clearly.

That's when you realize he doesn't just want to fix your past.

He wants to redeem it. He wants to use it to show the world how big his mercy is.

So let's come back to that question. How do you measure spirituality?

How do you know you're actually growing in your faith?

I remember talking with one of my best friends from childhood,

but years later, and we both had this idea growing up that as we mature, you just sin less.

You knock out the big ones early on, and then it's all about fine-tuning from there.

Like you're adjusting knobs on your spiritual dashboard.

Some people even believe in what's called sinless perfectionism,

that you can actually reach a point in this life where you just stop sinning.

I read a book once, I think it was a guy from Bethel Church,

who said he'd gone days, maybe even weeks without sinning.

And I just remember thinking, it must be nice. I didn't even make it through the morning.

But listen, that's not how God measures spiritual growth. It's not about how

spotless your performance is.

It's about how deep your dependence is. It's about how real your wonder is.

He doesn't look at how together you seem. He looks at how broken you are and

how much you rely on his grace.

God measures growth by weakness and wonder.

Not pride, not entitlement, not I've got this, but a trembling heart that says,

I can't believe he still loves me. It's amazing.

That's why Paul, the spiritual giant church planter, miracle worker,

called himself the foremost of sinners.

This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the foremost.

He says in another place, I am the least of apostles. I'm unworthy to even be called one.

You see what's happening? Paul's growth didn't make him feel better about himself.

It made him feel more in awe of Jesus.

He saw the depths of his need and it just made grace shine brighter.

And the longer you follow Jesus, it's not that you say, well,

I don't really need that much forgiveness anymore. It's the opposite.

You say, I'm still such a mess and he still hasn't given up on me.

That's how you know you're growing. When your weakness feels heavier,

but your wonder gets louder.

It's like climbing a mountain. The higher you go, the better the view,

but also the more aware you become of how far you still have left.

At the beginning of the year when Canaan and I, when our family went to New

Zealand, Canaan and I climbed this incredible mountain in New Zealand. It's called Roy's Peak.

We started super early before the sun came up. It was something like five and

a half miles one way, 4,000 feet of elevation gain.

The hardest part wasn't the beginning. I mean, physically it was the beginning,

but the hardest part was near the end.

We were only 15 minutes left, but we're exhausted, our legs were done,

and it felt like the top would never come.

That's when Canaan asked to turn back. But we didn't quit. You know why? Wonder.

We had come so far, and even though the top felt out of reach,

we knew the view would be worth it.

That's what spiritual growth is like. You're more tired than ever,

more aware of your weakness than ever, but you've seen enough of Jesus to say,

how could I turn back now?

You just want to see him more clearly. You want to love him more deeply.

And sometimes it feels like you're limping toward heaven, but it's the wonder that keeps you going.

Paul never got over grace, and neither should we.

If you want to know whether you're growing spiritually, don't look at how well you're performing.

Don't measure by how strong you appear or how many quiet times you've stacked

in this month, how long you've prayed.

There's only one question that really matters.

Are you still amazed by Jesus?

Are you still amazed by Jesus? Are you still stunned that he would love you,

that he would choose you, that he would bless you? Because that's a true test.

Not pride in how far you've come, not confidence in your record, but wonder.

A heart undone by grace, a soul that whispers daily, I still can't believe.

I still can't. It's so amazing.

It's like Robert Irwin, you know, Steve Irwin's son.

If you ever listen to him in an interview, it's amazing. It's just so amazing.

He hasn't given up on me. Isn't that amazing?

God never asked us to measure our growth by staring in the mirror.

That only leads in two places. It leads to pride when we think we're doing great,

or despair when we know we're not.

But the cross calls us to look somewhere else, to lift our eyes,

to fix our gaze on him, to look at Jesus, look at what he did,

look at the cross and that empty tomb.

Here's another thought from Martin Luther. He would counsel believers again

and again, look away from yourself and to look to Christ, because you'll never

find peace or joy or freedom by examining your spiritual track record.

But when you fix your eyes on Jesus, the one who came down when we couldn't

climb up, everything changes.

That's how Paul could say, I'm the worst of sinners and still overflow with joy.

He didn't wallow in shame, but he marveled at grace.

That's why God didn't remove the thorn in his flesh, because sometimes he lets

that weakness stay so that we can keep clinging to grace.

G.K. Chesterton once said that the world will never starve for want of wonders,

but only for want of wonder.

There's no shortage of God's glory, just our awareness of it.

So I'm asking you, have you lost your wonder?

Has grace become a concept instead of a shock?

Has the cross become a symbol instead of rescue? May it never be.

May we never lose our wonder.

May your life be marked by awe, by weakness and worship, by less of you and more of him.

May your lives be marked by a growing sense of awe, not at ourselves,

but at the Savior who loved us, rescued us, and still holds us.

May the grace that saved us continue to humble us, and may we grow ever more thankful for it.

Because real spirituality doesn't end in strength.

It ends in weakness and wonder and awe.

Music.