Acts: To Be a Christian (Acts 25:23-26:1, 4-29)

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Second lesson is taken from the Book of Acts, chapters 25 and 26.

Acts 25 · chapter mention

So on the next day, King Agrippa and Bernice came with great pomp, and they entered the audience hall with the military tribunes and the prominent men of the city.

Then, at the command of Governor Festus, Paul was brought in.

And Festus said, King Agrippa and all who are present with us, you see this man about whom the whole Jewish people petitioned me, both in Jerusalem and here, shouting that he ought not to live any longer.

But I found that he had done nothing deserving death.

And as he himself appealed to the emperor, I decided to go ahead and send him.

But I have nothing definite to write to my lord about him.

Therefore, I have brought him before you all, and especially before you, King Agrippa, so that after we have examined him, I may have something to write.

For it seems to me unreasonable in sending a prisoner not to indicate the charges against him.

So Agrippa said to Paul, You have permission to speak for yourself.

Then Paul stretched out his hand and made his defense.

My manner of life from my youth, spent from the beginning among my own nation and in Jerusalem, is known by all the Jews.

They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that according to the strictest party of our religion, I have lived as a Pharisee.

And now I stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our fathers, to which our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship night and day.

And for this hope I am accused by Jews, O king.

Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?

I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth, and I did so in Jerusalem.

I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them, and I punished them often in all the synagogues, and tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities.

In this connection I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests.

At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, that shone around me and those who journeyed with me.

And when we had fallen, when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

It is hard for you to kick against the goats.

And I said, Who are you, Lord?

And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.

Therefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem, and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.

For this reason the Jews seized me in the temple and tried to kill me.

To this day I have had the help that comes from God, and so I stand here, testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass, that the Christ must suffer, and that by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles.

And as he was saying these things in his defense, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, you are out of your mind.

Your great learning is driving you out of your mind.

But Paul said, I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking true and rational words.

For the king knows about these things, and to him I speak boldly, for I am persuaded that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this has not been done in a corner.

King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets?

I know that you believe.

And Agrippa said to Paul, In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?

And Paul said, Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you, but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am, except for these chains.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

So Agrippa said to Paul, In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?

And Paul said, Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you, but all who hear me this day might become such as I am, except for these chains.

So let's pray.

All sufficient merit shining like the sun, a fortune we inherit by no work we have done, our righteousness we forfeit at our Savior's cross, where all sufficient merit did what we could not.

Lord, would you give us a clearer, truer, beautiful, more beautiful glimpse of the gospel of grace today and every day.

And may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be always pleasing in your sight, our Lord, our rock, and our redeemer.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So I want to start by reading a favorite uh passage by one of my favorite uh writers and heroes of the faith.

I've probably read this before, but can't keep track of what I've read and haven't read to y'all, but it's worth repeating if I have.

This is C.S.

Lewis.

He writes, Imagine yourself as a living house.

God comes in to rebuild that house.

At first, perhaps you can understand what he's doing.

He's getting the drains right and stopping the leaks on the roof and so on.

You know that these jobs needed doing, and so you're not surprised.

But presently, he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense.

What on earth is he up to?

The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of.

Throwing out a wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards.

You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage, but he is building a palace.

He intends to come and live in it himself.

I think about that passage from time to time.

Because I think it resonates with my experience of the Christian life so far.

Maybe it resonates with you as well.

Maybe you know what it's like to feel the abominable pain of transformation.

You wonder what God is up to.

What is he doing here?

And yet his plan is far greater, far more wild, far more beautiful than we ever would have first considered for ourselves.

This is the power of the gospel.

It's the power of transformation, renewing us from the inside out and renewing whole churches from the inside out.

This is the power of transformation.

It's the power of the gospel that's been commissioned to go forward in the book of Acts.

Here we've been journeying through the book of Acts, and we're getting dangerously close to the end of Acts, to our journey from Luke and Acts over this year.

All the way back in Acts chapter 1, the risen Lord Jesus gave his disciples a commission.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

We remember what that commission is?

You will be my witnesses.

You'll be my witnesses here locally in Jerusalem, in the greater Judean area, and you'll be my witnesses in Samaria and to the ends of the world.

You'll cross cultural boundaries with the gospel in hand.

And the gospel has made its way all the way to this fella who will become, uh who will be known as Paul.

We hear him referred to as Saul in our reading as he recounts some of his personal history for us.

Paul was once the great persecutor of this Christian faith, wasn't he?

And yet, through a powerful personal encounter with Jesus, his life has been radically transformed.

His house has been completely renewed from the inside out in a way that he never would have thought possible, all because of who Jesus is.

And so we've come to Acts 25 and 26 after Paul's ministry and many missionary journeys where he's proclaiming the gospel abroad.

Now Paul finds himself being tossed about by one Roman bureaucrat to the next, everyone sort of passing the buck.

Boy, politics has sure changed, hasn't it?

Paul has been accused of being a disturber of the peace, and now he's being passed off from one official to another on his way.

Ultimately, he hopes to see the Roman Emperor himself.

He's appealed his case to Caesar.

So here he is, he's before kind of this local governor, local king Agrippa, and invited to share his case, make his case for why he's accused and why he ought to stand innocent.

But Paul is m interested far more, well, he's interested far less in making a case for his innocence, so much as he sees this as an opportunity to bear witness to the gospel.

He wants to bear witness to the power of transformation that we find in Jesus.

This is his goal, to share the gospel with as many as possible, perhaps even the emperor himself.

And here's what we should catch from the passage in front of us this morning.

We should catch the essence of what it means to be a Christian in Paul's words and in Paul's witness.

To be a Christian is to be transformed by the gospel of Jesus.

Not just to be a nice little cottage, but to be transformed into a mansion by grace.

To be transformed by the gospel.

The gospel is God's fulfilled promises.

The fact that he's dealt with sin, he's forgiven the sinner, he's reconciled the world to himself and will one day renew the whole world as it's meant to be, all in and through Jesus.

His cross and his resurrection.

That's the good news that Paul is proclaiming.

And Paul elsewhere will write of the gospel that he is not ashamed of this gospel.

Why?

Because it's the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

If it's the power for our salvation, it's the power for our transformation.

And here's what we want to catch about the gospel today: the gospel that transforms, the gospel that saves.

The gospel has content.

The gospel warrants conversion, and the gospel entails conviction.

The gospel has content, the gospel warrants conversion, and the gospel entails conviction.

And friends, we keep coming back to the central gospel witness because we need to keep coming back to it.

If we are going to endeavor to be a gospel-centered church, if we're going to be endeavored to be gospel-centered Christians, we need to keep coming back to this gospel because it alone is the power for our salvation and transformation.

So here we go.

Let's listen to Paul's defense and catch what it means to be a Christian transformed by the gospel.

First off, the gospel has content.

Paul is before, like I say, a bunch of Roman bureaucrats here in chapter 25, and now in chapter 26, he's been invited to share his defense.

He begins by making reference to the promise that God made to the fathers.

He's referring to promises made in the Old Testament and the hope that results from clinging to God's promises.

This is what defined Paul's Judaism, what defines the Jewish people is the promises that God has given to this people.

And what kind of promises are we talking about here?

Let me just sketch out a couple here.

All the way back at the beginning of the Bible, we see a promise made to Abraham, the father of the faith, so to speak.

God says to Abraham, This is my covenant, my binding promise with you.

You're going to be the father of many nations.

You won't be called Abram anymore.

Your name will be Abraham.

Why?

Because you'll be the father of many nations.

I will make you very fruitful.

I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.

And then almost like a like like variations on a theme, later on in the Old Testament, we'll see that promise of a king fulfilled in David and King David and his royal line.

The Lord says to David in 2 Samuel 7, Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me.

Your throne will be established forever.

And yet what we see resulting from this kingdom is a people who go astray and wander and go after their own false gods.

And so God is still committed to this program of renewal and restoration.

So he promises through the prophet Jeremiah that the days are coming when I will make a new covenant, a new promise with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant I made before.

This is the covenant that I'll make.

I will put my heart within my people, and I will write it on their hearts.

They shall be my people.

See, these and more are the promises that Paul has in mind.

It is the definitive relationship that his people share with God.

Do we catch that?

It's God's promises that Paul stands upon.

He stands with the content, the promises of Scripture, and he's pleading his case for them.

But here's where the content of the Gospel is so crucial.

Whereas Paul once thought that the content of the Scriptures pointed away from Jesus, now Paul sees that the very content of the Old Testament promises point us towards Jesus.

Verse 8, Paul asks this question: why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?

You can think it's incredible that God raises the dead as if God, well, I don't think Paul is saying as if God has no power to raise the dead.

Of course God has all power.

Why is it incredible in Paul's estimation?

It's incredible because of what's happened in Christ.

Why should we not think that God is actually fulfilling the promises that he made to our forefathers through the risen Lord Jesus?

Why do we think that's incredible?

That he would actually follow through in a way that he promised to follow through.

That's why Paul will write elsewhere, all the promises of God find their yes in Christ.

If God has promised it, it points us to Jesus.

That's what Paul is saying before this tribunal.

By the way, this structures our whole worship service as a community, doesn't it?

You might wonder why we have four scripture readings when generally we only preach on one passage of scripture.

It's because we want to see this whole arc of scripture.

We want to see the Old Testament point us towards Christ.

We want to see our New Testament reading make sense of who Christ is.

We want to see Christ revealed in the gospel readings themselves, and we want to proclaim our prayers and praises through the words of the Psalms.

We want to see the whole arc of Scripture represented in all of God's promises fulfilled in Christ.

The gospel has content in Paul's words.

The promises of God find their fulfillment in Christ.

Paul wants to communicate the content of the gospel effectively to this tribunal.

And the thing about communicating the gospel is we recognize that communication is always adaptive.

We've seen Paul witnessing to various different groups and you know folks who think differently, et cetera, and he witnesses to the gospel differently using different examples or different approaches to different folks.

He's communicating adaptively to different uh his different audiences.

But the content of the gospel that he pro that he proclaims always comes back to the same promises.

It's always the same content being adapted and communicated on a local level.

See there?

A different thing would be to adapt the content to the audience itself, wouldn't it?

Communicating adaptively means we take the content and we communicate it in accordance with the needs and values, etc., of the audience.

But what Paul refuses to do is accommodate the content of the gospel to the audience.

The promises of God stays the same, the content of Old Testament scripture fulfilled in Christ, and the story of Jesus stays the same even while it's communicated adaptively.

See, even within by this point, this would be about 80, 49, 50, he's standing before this tribunal.

No, pardon me, 59, 60, I think.

Um about ten years previous to this, he's written a letter to the church in Galatia.

Galatia has wandered into some wonky ideas about the gospel.

Galatian Christians are generally of the mind that the gospel has a lot more to do with what we need to do for God than what God has done for us in Christ.

And so Paul leads off his letter to the Galatians in no uncertain terms.

He says, I am astonished, Galatians, that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

Not that there's another one, but that there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

This is about 15 years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

That Paul is already warning that it's so easy to change the content of the gospel.

Maybe with a motivation to adapt the communication of the gospel, but either way, the content's been changed.

And if that's true within 15 years, friends, we always need to be mindful that no church community is immune from changing the content of the gospel.

So how do we guard against that?

We always come back to his word.

We always come back to Scripture.

We always bank on these promises communicated to us and fulfilled in Christ.

We are quick to go to God's word.

We are quick to go to the Lord Jesus, whether that's personally, in our own daily reading and meditation and study, which each and every one of us should be reading and meditating on God's Word daily to familiarize ourselves with the content of the gospel for ourselves.

Or together, corporately, as a church body or in small groups, we all of us need the word in front of us and call our minds, call our attention to the content of the gospel given to us, lest we mistake the gospel for something that it's not.

Paul, for Paul, the content of the gospel is the promises and hope of God fulfilled in Christ, and so too it's the same for us.

That's the gospel that we proclaim.

The gospel has content.

This being the case, Paul is once convinced that what Christians proclaimed, this good news that Jesus is risen, was something that was contrary to God's promises once offered.

And so therefore Jesus must be opposed at all costs.

And so, verses 9 to 11, he tells, uh, he relays his own personal history of being the great persecutor of the church.

He thought he was doing God a great service by persecuting those who are proclaiming the good news of Jesus.

But Paul has a radical encounter with Jesus that completely transforms his mind from the inside out.

This is what I want us to see.

Not only is the gospel of content, the gospel warrants conversion.

This is a, granted, a bit of a churchy word.

Maybe it's a triggering word for some of us, conversion.

But here's what I want to say.

I want to say conversion is uh something we deal with on a daily basis.

We are pelted with messages of conversion every day, perhaps throughout the day.

If you turn on the television and you see a commercial, you're seeing a conversion narrative.

Even if it's a tube of toothpaste, here's why the tube of toothpaste you're using is inadequate and it's not getting you the life you want.

But if you switch to our tube of toothpaste, that's gonna deliver on the promises.

That's gonna get you ahead in life, that's gonna get you the promotion, right?

So what are you left to do?

You're left to decide that's the conversion I'm gonna make.

We are pelted with these messages all day long.

We are all interested in conversion.

And granted, that's a pretty trivial example of conversion, but we know that there are more important conversions and less important conversions.

So what is that most important conversion that defines all other conversions after it?

For Paul, it's the gospel.

The gospel is what matters most.

He encounters Jesus in a moment of conversion here.

Paul is talking about how he's on his way to Damascus to persecute yet more Christians, and he's literally knocked off his feet by the risen Lord Jesus.

He hears Jesus say to him in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

So identified is Jesus with his people, that he says, not that you're persecuting the church, but you're persecuting me.

Jesus says, It's hard for you to kick against the goads.

And Paul says, Who are you, Lord?

And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.

Paul has a powerful personal encounter with Jesus in a way that he never expected.

Surely, not only not only does this have to be the last thing Paul expected to happen, must be the thing he least wanted to happen.

He's been persecuting this Jesus for his career up to this point.

And yet this is a powerful encounter with the personal living Lord Jesus.

And whether or not Paul realizes it, it's beginning to change his leaky cottage already.

He receives this commission from Jesus.

He's encountered Jesus.

Now he's commissioned by Jesus.

Jesus says, I have appeared to you, Paul, for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness that the Gentiles may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.

In other words, Paul, I'm sending you out to share this good news that you're encountering right now, so that yet more can come to know eternal life in me and be made holy and reconciled with God.

Paul, your commission is the commission I've given to my apostles already.

You will be my witness.

That's the Christian commission here.

And so what can Paul do?

Having encountered the risen Lord Jesus, having commissioned by him, Paul says, Therefore I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, which is a great understatement for Paul.

Paul is transformed by the gospel.

He has been converted by the fact that Jesus is alive and calls Paul to himself.

The gospel warrants conversion.

If Jesus is who he says he is, if Jesus is the personal fulfillment of all God's promises, if Jesus is alive and is coming again, this changes everything, doesn't it?

Restructures our whole life, becomes the center, the beating heart of our Christian faith.

Now maybe some of us hear this and we sort of think to ourselves, boy, I maybe I know someone who had a powerful encounter of Jesus in a similar way to Paul, but I feel like I never really had that encounter.

I feel like I've just come to know Jesus gradually.

Is that, am I missing something here?

Is my salvation questionable here?

Here's all I want to say.

I want to say the Lord always works in the wisest ways.

Some of us know what it is to have a powerful encounter with Jesus that leaves us forever changed.

Many of us, I think, I would include myself in this category, know what it is to incrementally get to know Jesus and consider the difference that he makes in our life and the difference that the gospel makes.

One is not right, one is not wrong, but we are both converting our lives to the claim of Christ.

One of the great spiritual masters among our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters in the last century was named Thomas Merton, and he himself has a credible story of conversion.

But when he considers his own conversion, when he considers the nature of conversion, he doesn't want to highlight the kind of once-and-done nature of conversion.

He wants to highlight the fact that conversion is an ongoing process for the Christian.

Here's what Merton writes: We are not converted only once in our lives, but many times.

And this endless series of conversions and inner revolutions leads to our transformation.

What's Merton saying here?

Conversion is not that thing that happened once and now you live it out.

Conversion is something that happens on a daily basis.

When we recognize I'm so inclined to my own self-will and away from God or away from the gospel, when we recognize that and we repent and we turn back to God, when we ask for forgiveness, when we're assured of his promises, then we have once again converted.

So when does conversion happen?

I hope it happens every day.

Again, we see that reflected in our service, isn't it?

We confess our sins not just once and say, well, we did that for this year, or we did that for the life of our congregation.

We confess our sins together as a body every Sunday.

Why?

Because we need that ongoing conversion that only God's grace can accomplish in our life.

We need to encounter Jesus in his word and then turn to confess and rest assured through his gifts of grace.

And this practice as a church body becomes our personal practice as Christians as we repent and as we put our trust in Jesus each and every day as we come to him in prayer.

We encounter him, we take up our commission, and we are transformed by grace.

The gospel warrants this kind of conversion.

Here's the final thing I want us to see.

Here's where we're going to land.

As Paul is making his defense, he wants us to know that the gospel has content, that the gospel warrants conversion, and finally, the gospel entails conviction.

First, Christians are convicted to know and live by the truth.

Here's what Agrippa says.

I love this.

Verse 24, Paul, you're out of your flipping mind.

What in the world are you talking about here?

And what does Paul have to say?

Verse 25, I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus.

I am speaking true and rational words.

Christians are convicted to know and live by the truth.

These are true and rational words.

In other words, uh King Agrippa, it's not that I just feel deep down this is true.

It just gives me the warm fuzzies.

I mean, maybe our faith does give us warm feelings from time to time, and that's a wonderful thing.

But Paul is saying my belief is not founded upon something subjective.

My faith is founded upon the truth of this claim, that Jesus is actually alive, that Jesus has actually fulfilled God's promises.

I quoted Lewis earlier, maybe you'll let me quote him again.

Christianity, he says, is a statement which, if false, is of no importance.

And if true, of infinite importance.

The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

This is Paul's point in front of Agrippa.

This is Paul's case to Agrippa.

This is true or it isn't.

Paul's conviction is to know and live by the truth, so too a Christian conviction is to lead others to Christ.

Agrippa asks Paul, in a short time, would you persuade me, me, Paul, as prominent and influential and powerful as I am, would you convince me to be a Christian?

And Paul says, whether short or long, I would to God that not only you, but all who hear me this day might become such as I am, except for these chains.

See, it's Paul's conviction that Agrippa and everyone who's a part of this tribunal can only stand to benefit to know Christ for themselves.

It is only to their benefit to come to know the gospel.

That's his conviction, to lead others to Christ.

This is why Paul is going through this bureaucratic trial process so he can bear witness to this transforming gospel.

Paul's conviction is to live by the truth and to lead others to Christ.

But Paul's conviction is not without humility.

And this is what I want us to see.

I want to see that Christian conviction is always married to humility.

What do I mean by that?

Here's what Paul isn't saying.

Paul isn't saying, I think you should become as I am, because I'm right.

And I think I want you to see that I'm right.

And I think we all, I want us all to agree that I'm right.

That's not what Paul's saying here.

In fact, Paul's own history relates the fact of how painful experience it is for Paul to have gotten it wrong.

And here is Paul humbly reciting his history before Agrippa, and he is saying, I would live, I would that you would become a Christian, not because I want to be proven right.

He's saying, Become as I am, because the good news of Jesus is true, and it's a pure gift of grace, all sufficient merit.

That's the gift of grace.

That's why Paul writes elsewhere, By grace, you Christians have been saved through faith.

This is not your own doing.

It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast, no works, no earning it, no meriting it for yourself, therefore no boasting, no room for holier than thou attitudes, no room for posturing ourselves as if we're better than our non-Christian neighbor.

Why?

Because we are first and foremost beggars who've received this gift of grace, and we long for others to come to receive that gift for themselves.

There's no bragging before Agrippa here.

There's only a desire for him to come to know Christ as Paul through grace has come to know Christ.

Friends, when we communicate this conviction, conviction with humility, pastors and Christian leaders and communicators, we don't always get this right.

We don't always communicate conviction with humility.

Sometimes it sounds like conviction without humility, like we're just on the mountaintop talking down.

Sometimes it sounds like humility without conviction, as if we've got no solid place to stand on in terms of who we believe Jesus is and what he's accomplished.

We don't always get this right through the words we use or the words we fail to use.

But to be a gospel-centered Christian, to be a gospel-centered church, is always to strive for that conviction of the gospel, its truth and its transformation, married together with the humility of recognizing that this is pure gift.

This is nothing we have accomplished.

We strive to be a gospel-centered church, new song.

Not an Anglican-centered church, by the way.

The Anglican thing is nice, but it's good only so far as it is a vehicle, a conduit for the gospel.

That is the inheritance of the church.

So we stand confident of the good news of Jesus and we desire our neighbors to know Christ for themselves, not because we're right, not because we're holier, but because we have received this gift and we desire to share this gift with others.

The gospel entails conviction.

The good news of Jesus is true and worth the sharing, but never without humility.

Friends, to be a Christian is to be transformed by this gospel of Jesus.

That's what Paul wants us to see.

And for us here at New Song, we need to know the gospel's content.

We need to know the conversion the gospel works in our heart.

And we need to have the conviction with humility to carry that gospel forward.

We are called to be his witnesses.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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