Acts: Love, Truth, Generosity, and Vulnerability

Well, good morning.

Yeah, so we uh as a church body, we've experienced a good amount of grief, a good amount of loss in the last year.

Some of you, it happened in your immediate family, and you have faced an enormous amount of loss and grief.

And those around have been witnessing this and a part of it that also have had that a taste of that loss.

And so that's why I asked Pastor Matt to do these two Sunday evenings, one on the emotional journey of grief, and the second one on our questions that come up when we face suffering.

And those evenings in June are for you if you're in a place where you would like to come into that and process a bit.

We'd love for you to do that.

Uh, we have an explore redeemer chat right after service in the student chapel.

So if you've been around a little bit and you just have a couple questions, it's like a five, seven-minute chat I do with you guys.

Meet in the student chapel, just hustle straight over there.

You can leave your kids and kids' ministry.

Um, just chat with you and get to meet you real quick if you're new to the church, and so that's uh there for you right after service.

We are studying our way through the book of Acts.

This morning we'll be in Acts 20, and that's where our reading was from.

Paul has spent three years, three years ministering to this church in Ephesus.

And as he leaves, right before he leaves, he gathers together the leaders of this church and he gives them one last message, parting words, last message.

So it's his chance, right?

It's his chance to say what matters to him.

His last reminders to this group of people.

So I'll reread parts of this passage and we'll make some sense of it, uh, getting some guiding principles and reminders from Paul.

So Acts 20, 18 through 21.

And when they came to him, so the leaders come to him, and he said to them, You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time, from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews, how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

So a lot going on in these verses, we spend a lot of time in them.

But we are gonna pull out three guiding reminders that Paul gives.

Reminder number one is this truth and love.

This is what we're seeing Paul do with these people.

Truth and love.

Healthy relationships are characterized by truth and love.

Christy and I were friends before we dated, before we got married.

So I was in the dreaded friend zone.

I think my great one of my greatest accomplishments in life is actually just getting out of that friend zone.

I will always have that as a great achievement that I did.

I got out, right?

Because I'm 22 years old and I'm wondering, this girl that I've been friends with all the way through high school and through college, can't that's a lot of friend zone foundation, right?

I mean, can I get out?

Can I get out of the friend zone?

And I'm wondering in that process, I'm wondering, like, what is true about this girl?

Not what do I think, not what do people say about her.

That's all great.

But if I'm interested, like if I'm really interested, if I'm interested, like long-term, and I was like long-term interest, I wanted out of the friend zone and I needed to know the truth of her.

The truth about her heart, the truth about her person.

Now I could make up a fake Christie and project it onto Christie.

We're really good at doing that in dating, right?

That's easy to do.

Then you get married, you know, no, yeah, go through some counseling.

So I could do that, and I could even believe that.

I could.

That would be an option for me.

Even if it wasn't true, I could believe that I have the freedom, you have the freedom to believe all sorts of things that are not true.

You have that option in life.

But me believing something doesn't make that something true.

Something is true, not because I deem to believe it.

I can believe all sorts of lies, but it's not ultimately gonna lead to life and freedom.

And my point here is this if you're planning to get to know somebody, if you're planning to get to know somebody, you have to know the truth about them, not just what you project onto them.

And so we have to ask this question what's true about God?

And in God's kindness, we can always look to Jesus.

And in the scriptures, God gives us what's true about Him.

We get to discover this.

It's a revelation of God to us.

And we study the word not to be loved by God.

We study the word to discover how God actually loves us and who He is.

What's helpful, what's harmful, what's good, what's evil.

Now back to verse 19.

Serving the Lord with all humility, with humility and with tears and with trials.

That's what Paul was doing amongst these people.

He's preaching truth, he's loving these people.

Truth and love.

Last week I was in class in St.

Louis.

I'm earning my doctorate right now, so I was with 10 other pastors, and we're together for this week.

We spend all day together in class and we're discussing and talking, and the professors bring up issues and scenarios, and we're talking out, we're listening, we're doing presentations, we're sharing.

And then every evening we had like a different group gathering.

We went to a Cardinals game.

Here's a picture.

This is the group of pastors I was with.

There, I got the blue hat on.

See me smiling there in my sunglasses.

I'm at a baseball game, which, if you know me, that's a miracle.

Then I'm at a baseball game because that's not my favorite place in the world.

But we're having a great time together.

It's just that it's slow.

Can I say it?

Can I say that publicly to America?

I don't know if I can.

I probably shouldn't have said it.

And that game was slow, also, even with the, they're like, isn't the pitching clock great?

And I'm like, yeah, if we can get it down to about 10 seconds, let's get that thing going.

So that's a group of pastors I'm with all week.

So we're together all day.

I mean, it's a lot.

Like it's a lot, as an introvert, it's a lot of words.

I'm my word count's done at about 11:30 a.m.

And then I'm just trying to get through the rest of the day, curled up at night, trying to recover.

Surprised I can talk right now, actually.

No, I think about one afternoon, the professor takes us to Forest Parks, huge park in St.

Louis.

It's kind of like the central park of St.

Louis.

Huge, beautiful, lots of land.

And he just says, hey, take 45 minutes and just go wander around.

Just go get lost a little bit.

He said, just notice, notice things.

Notice things that are beautiful, things that are peaceful to you.

Just 45 minutes.

Just go and do that.

And then after 45 minutes, take 15 minutes and journal and answer this question.

As a leader, how do I want to be remembered?

I've never really thought about that.

I mean, I've thought a lot about our church, but I've never really thought about like that.

So I sit down, 45 minutes, I'm wandering around, getting lost.

Sit down.

I write five words out pretty quickly, too.

It's kind of a good little exercise.

You could do this for like being a parent or a friend or whatever your job is.

And I wrote out the five words that came to me pretty quickly was gracious, faithful, caring, healthy, contemplative.

Not that I am all those things, right?

Like that's not what the question was.

Like it's just that that's the journey that I want to be in.

Then we come back together as a group, sitting around these picnic tables, come back together as a group.

We share them.

Somebody makes a joke and we laugh and we laugh.

Somebody got into a little predicament while they got lost, you know, they couldn't find their way back.

So we're laughing, we're making fun of that guy.

Like we're laughing and everything.

And then the professor says, like, hey, now let's talk about like how do you, how do you cause problems with what you want to be?

Like, how do I limit how am I limiting the very thing that I'm trying to do?

And that's where we start talking and get some tears.

Right?

So like the same group of people, I mean, within within five to eight minutes, laughing to crying.

This is what healthy communities do.

We can share an immense joy together, and we also can process sadness.

And maybe you have a friendship like this, because you can go to lunch and you're laughing, and then you're crying, and then you're laughing.

I officiated a wedding two weeks ago.

It was outside, beautiful wedding, it was a beautiful day, beautiful wedding.

This quote was read, Tim Keller quote.

Love without truth is sentimentality.

It supports and affirms us, but keeps us in denial about our flaws.

Truth without love is harshness.

It gives us information, but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.

God's saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical unconditional commitment to us.

The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent.

The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God's mercy and grace.

It's not a fearful repentance.

The truth is not fearful in that way.

It's a calling into the belovedness that God has for us.

See, as we grow more alive to God's love for us, we're more secure in our belovedness, as we're more secure in our belovedness, we can actually experience in healthy relationships both joy and sadness.

Verse 32.

Acts 20, verse 32.

Acts 20:32

And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.

Just these few verses, I'm like, we could have just broken this down, one sermon per verse, per verse.

33, I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel.

Wow.

You yourselves know that these hands minister to my necessities to those who were with me.

In all things I've shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak.

And remember the words of the Lord Jesus.

How he himself said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.

So, reminder number two, remember, this is him right at the end with his leaders.

I need to give you the best things, the best things.

Truth and love.

Reminder number two, generosity.

As we come alive to God as our heart's treasure, we come alive to the joy of giving.

Not obligation, the joy of giving.

That's what Paul says, more blessed to give than receive.

Like you discover that.

This is the story of Luke 18.

A ruler comes to Jesus, asks, What must I do to inherit eternal life?

What makes me right with God?

Jesus replies, Why do you call me good?

So Jesus starts this little philosophical conversation.

Jesus' way of saying, like, hey, do you understand I'm not just a teacher?

Like, I'm more than that.

And then Jesus says, Well, you know all the commandments.

And the guy says, Yeah, yeah, I've I've kept them.

Okay.

Then Jesus says this, Luke 18, verse 22.

Luke 18:22

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, One thing you still lack, sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

Come follow me.

But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich.

Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.

For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

Those who heard it said, who can be saved?

But he said, What is impossible with man is possible with God.

So this phrase, we've heard it before, right?

Easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle.

It's an idiom.

It's the same thing as saying, like we would say today, when pigs fly, a rich person can enter the kingdom of God.

That's how we would say it in our language.

The point's this we need God's grace.

Like our performance, our wealth, none of that, none of that is going to get a relationship with us, with God.

We actually need God to come toward us, his grace toward us.

So this man has it all together.

This guy, but he's still wondering, right?

I mean, he has, he's could he said he's he's rich.

This guy's all together.

He's wealthy, he's doing pretty good with the commandments, and yet he's still wondering, what must I do?

See, that's what a performance life will always leave you with.

You're still asking, what must I do?

And for that, Jesus goes straight to his heart.

He goes straight to the one thing that this guy actually relies upon for saving.

And Jesus says, give, give it away.

That's what you need to give away.

You need to let go of that.

Now, this isn't a call for all of us to let go of everything we own.

This is not a universal call.

This is a call for our hearts to not be owned by anything.

That's what this is about.

To be so lavished by the treasures of grace for forgiveness of sin, your righteousness, the very core of your identity that nothing can own you.

Can you imagine that kind of freedom?

That kind of wealth of identity.

Isn't that amazing?

It's interesting that this man actually gets sad because he couldn't let go.

See, to let go of an idol can feel incredibly dislocating.

It can feel impossible because we're relying upon it so much.

It can feel like your very foundation is gone, but it's not true.

You'll be okay.

You'll actually discover a secure identity rather than one that keeps making you ask, what must I do?

A few implications.

We've discussed these before when it comes to stewardship.

This is the same thing I tell myself over and over again.

This is just kind of stewardship one, two, three.

Same thing I tell my kids over and over again.

When it comes to stewardship, and this is much more elaborate online, you go to our stewardship article and you can read tons of Bible verses and all this.

But just real quick, number one, give joyfully in generosity, without greed, toward the church and the needy.

So we give, we save, and we spend.

That's how you steward, that's how you steward the resources you have.

You have a little bit or a little bit more or a lot.

You give, you save, and you spend.

Number two, save responsibly without fear for future needs.

So we're gonna save, but not with the fear, but we're gonna save for the future.

Number three, we're gonna spend appropriately without addiction for today.

So spend for today, but without addiction.

And Paul says, Paul says, there's a secret.

This is his reminder to them.

There's a secret.

I want you to know the secret.

You're not gonna believe it at first.

But Jesus said it.

It's more blessed to give than to receive.

There's a freedom there for us.

Verse 36.

And when he had said these things, he knelt down.

Right?

I mean, get this.

He's been with these people three years.

These are his people three years.

He's about to leave them.

He knelt down, he prayed with them all.

And there was much weeping on the part of all.

They embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken that they would not see his face again.

And they accompanied him to the ship.

Reminder number three is what Paul in this community is showing us in their example: vulnerability.

Devoted community is characterized by vulnerability.

I mean, these people are weeping and kissing and embracing him, but they were gonna miss him.

Being in a church means we meet together, we sing, we pray, we learn, we encourage each other.

This is about knowing something about the core of somebody else and also letting yourself be known.

And that takes vulnerability.

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, he told a parable of porcupine's dilemma.

Here's the summary of it.

A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in winter, but as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse.

However, the cold drove them together again.

And just the same thing happened.

At last, after many turns of huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off by remaining at a little distance from one another.

Now, here's a picture of Arthur, which I found fascinating because he kind of looked like a porcupine.

Yeah?

Saw that this morning.

I was like, he just really embodied the parable.

We know the dilemma.

Right?

We know the porcupine's dilemma.

We want friendships.

We want great friendships.

And then you were hurt.

Or you did, or you did the hurting.

And maybe you're here and like you're just friends with everyone.

Like you can make you can make friends with a wall, right?

Like, or maybe you're more introverted.

Maybe you're more introverted and it's just like casual with many, but you're gonna have a really, really small handful that you can really be open with.

That's fine.

Like we have different personalities, that's fine.

The point is vulnerability with God and with others.

That's how we see how deeply we are loved by God.

That's how we experience it in the body.

Just think about Paul here.

Think about how he would have felt after three years with these people, and these people weep over him and hug him and embrace him.

He would have felt unimaginably loved.

But it didn't come without some intentionality, some vulnerability, and some risk.

So, how do we become people like that?

C.S.

Lewis writes, to love at all is to be vulnerable.

Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.

If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal.

Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements, lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change.

It will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

To love is to be vulnerable.

Acts 20 teaches us in repentance that giving up into God's grace, we find a lavish forgiveness, full righteousness, justification for who we are with him.

That lavish approval and acceptance, the wealth of that identity, that equips us, the Holy Spirit uses that, equips us into these reminders that Paul is talking about.

Truth, tears, humility, generosity, vulnerability.

In other words, we could say it this way when you're too needy, you can't risk.

And so you're limited.

But if you know you're broken more than you originally thought, but more loved by God and Jesus you ever dared to dream, and that is so lavish as to the core of who you are, you have a security, you have a foundation.

So you can risk.

You will get hurt, but you can risk.

You can be vulnerable.

Somewhere about five years after Acts 20.

It's about five years after this moment.

Paul writes back to the Ephesians church.

That's that letter we get in the book of Ephesians.

So as we close, I want to read over you how he first addresses them.

But I want to do this as we pray.

So let's bow our heads.

And perhaps you're here and just as a posture of humility and a posture of receiving, you just open your hands there in the open their hands right in front of you if you're comfortable with it.

You don't have to.

That could be weird to you.

That's fine.

Heavenly Father, would you quiet our busy hearts with your love?

Would you root us in into how lavish and secure the forgiveness and righteousness of Christ for us is that we are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

May we hear the words of Paul in Ephesians 1.

Long, long ago, God decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ.

What pleasure he took in planning this.

He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift giving by the hand of his beloved son, because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the cross, were a free people.

Free of penalties and punishments, chalked up by all of our misdeeds, and not just barely free either, abundantly free, he thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making.

He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet Earth.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this lavish gift, the sufficiency of Christ for us.

May it change us, heal us, transform us, into being the kinds of people that can live for you in humility, joy, tears, generosity, love, and vulnerability.

I pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.