Worth Dying For: Seize the Moment

Close your eyes. Repeat this prayer after me. Everyone say Dear Jesus,

speak to my heart, change my life in Jesus name. Amen. We

want to remind you that at the end of June we have our yearly VBS.

It's about several days long. It's all for kids all the way through

sixth grade, and this year, due to outside donations, it is a

hundred percent free for all of your kids and any of your kids as friends,

and we are gearing up for three hundred kids to participate in VBS.

We already have over half of that already registered. Like Pastor Kayley asked if

I would stand up today and say, if you haven't registered your kid or

any of their friends for VBS, you can do that via the app.

We'd love to have them be a part of it. The team is really

excited and excited to have this place jammed with kids. Look at it this

way, totally free babysitting for a week. There it is Grab your Bibles.

Turn to Acts twenty three. Is Morgan mentioned We are continuing our series

through the Book of Acts. We are on volume three of the Acts series

Worth Dying For. We are journeying with Paul to Rome. Paul eventually ends

up in Rome, and we know historically what happens to Paul in Rome.

Paul is sentenced to death by Emperor Nero and ends up beheaded in Rome.

This is that journey to Rome. Right now, Paul is in Jerusalem.

He went to Jerusalem because he wanted to celebrate the festival of Pentecost. Today

is also not just Memorial Day weekend, but it's also Pentecost Sunday. Pentecost

has two significant meanings to it. First, for the Jews, to a

Jewish person, they have been celebrating Pentecost for thousands of years. In fact,

it is arguably their most important festival. That's why Paul went to Jerusalem

to celebrate Pentecost. Pentecost is that celebrates that moment where Moses is on top

of Mount Sinai. He's meeting with God and God gives him the Torah,

the first five books of the Old Testament, and they celebrate Pentecost every single

year to remember this moment. But we also know that there's another reason that

we as the Church celebrate Pentecost, and we're gonna get to that in a

moment. Acts Chapter twenty three, Verse twelve, Paul is in a Roman

prison cell in Jerusalem. He got put in this prison cell because there was

such an uprising among the Jews in Jerusalem that the Roman soldiers were afraid the

Jews were gonna kill Paul. So their only way to protect Paul was to

stick him in a prison cell. And while Paul is in this prison cell,

he has an encounter with Jesus. Jesus shows up in his prison cell.

It's that great reminder to you and I that no matter what we're going

through, Jesus isn't far away. It doesn't matter what you're facing today,

how difficult your circumstances, maybe, how trying or troubling it is. He's

near in that prison cell. Jesus stood near Paul and told him take courage.

Just as you've testified about me in Jerusalem, you're going to testify about

me in Rome. And we pick up verse twelve says the next morning,

some Jews formed a conspiracy and bound themselves with an oath not to eat or

drink until they had killed Paul. This is how bad it was getting in

Jerusalem. There's a group of forty men that took an oath together, and

they said, hey, We're not gonna eat, drink, or sleep until

Paul is dead. That tells you how rough who was getting in Jerusalem today.

I want to focus on the next two years of Paul's life. We're

gonna do it really quickly. But you cannot understand the next two years of

Paul's life until you understand Paul's mission. Like Paul's life, mission was because

of something that he was vinced. He was convinced that he existed to tell

people about God's grace, that this was the driving force of his life,

that all he wanted to do is to tell people about God's grace. He

couldn't stop it, he couldn't help it. He had to tell people.

Do you relate to this? Now? I remember what it was like to

not know Jesus. Now, I remember what it was like to lay in

bed at night and wonder what this was all about. And then I remember

that moment I surrendered my life to Jesus in high school. And if you're

like me, and you actually have a clear moment as an as a teenager

or an adult where you made a conscious decision to serve Jesus, you remember

this. You remember what it was like before Jesus, you know where you're

carrying the weight of all your sin. You're wondering what this life is all

about. And then Jesus forgives you, and he loves you, and he

sets you free. I describe it this way, that without Jesus you have

this pressure and this weight of all of life on your shoulders, and then

he forgives you, and it's like the weight of your sin is gone.

And Church. I'm telling you, you don't know what it's like until you

experience it. If you were here this morning, you're here a Memorial Day

weekend, and you don't know Jesus. I don't know why you're here.

Maybe a friend invited you, maybe your girlfriend invited you. Who knows,

but you're here. You might not even realize the weight of the world that

you have on your shoulders. But when you invite Jesus to be your personal

lord and savior and he forgives you and shows you the same grace that he

showed Paul. I mean, if you're Paul, you're thinking I am the

least deserving person of grace if you only knew the things that I approved of

and that I did in my past life. But Jesus said, it doesn't

matter what you've done. It only matters what I've done, and I've forgiven

you Paul, And so all he wants to do is tell people about disgrace

because he's walking around free. The Bible says that he who the Son sets

free is free indeed, and you don't understand that and tell you experience it.

And when you experience it, you just want everyone else to experience it

too. And that's where Paul is at. He's got, like I call

it, a case of the I can't help it. He has to tell

people about Jesus because Jesus set him free, and he's thinking, does anyone

else know this? That I honestly remember after I committed my life to Christ,

it was like this veil was lifted off my eyes, this weight was

lifted off my shoulders, and everybody would look at I would wonder, do

you know this? Are you aware of this? Like it's so amazing and

the weight is gone, and you just want to tell everyone about it.

And that is the driving force of Paul's life, that he knows that he

exists to tell people about God's grace, the same forgiveness and mercy that he

experienced, he wanted everyone in every setting to experience it too, and it

led him to a prison cell in Jerusalem where forty men have now vowed we're

not gonna eat, drink, or sleep until we kill you. Well,

Paul finds out about it from his nephew. His nephew tells him about it,

and Paul says, will you do me a favor, Tell the Roman

soldiers that these guys want to kill me. So his nephew goes to the

Roman soldiers tells them about this conspiracy against Paul, and they think, we

got to get Paul out of Jerusalem. We got to start the process of

getting him to Rome. Let's take him to cesarea. Here's how serious it

was. So remember this is just forty men that have vowed to kill Paul,

and Paul is currently guarded by Roman soldiers. Roman soldiers are trained killers.

You could think of like one Roman soldier for about ten normal men.

But this is how serious the threat was in Jerusalem Verse twenty three. Then

he called two of his centurions and he ordered them get ready a detachment of

two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen, and two hundred spearmen to go to Cesarea

at nine tonight. So the threat against Paul in Jerusalem is so intense that

a bunch of trained killers need two hundred soldiers, an additional seventy men on

horseback, and two hundred men carrying spear, and they leave at night to

travel from Jerusalem to Cesarea really quickly. Here's a map gives you an idea

of where this is going for the sake of time, quick explanation. Paul

started way up at the top. He was heading down to get to if

I can see it, it's all blurry right here Jerusalem. So he ends

up in Jerusalem right here. And now we go over to the map that

I can read. He is here. He's eventually gonna end up in Rome.

Rome is off this map. It's way up there. But they are

gonna in a contingent of armed guards taking him. They'll probably end up first

in Joppa, and then they will go up to the star, which is

Cesarea. I want to explain to you really quickly about Cesarea. It's kind

of a unique city. Do you ever join us on an Israel trip,

We will visit. Cesarea goes by several names, Cesarea by the Sea,

Cessarea, Maritima cesarea was built by Herod the Great. Now I'm gonna give

you a quick history lesson. I was told after the first service that my

message was gross, so be ready. This is PG. Thirteen. Okay,

what I'm just gonna be honest. So there's different herods. So we

really cover about three herods in the Book of Acts. But the first is

Herod the Great. Herod the Great. If you travel to Israel, most

of the sites that are excavated were built by Herod the Great. He was

an incredible dreamer, incredible visionary and built just these amazing palaces all over the

nation of Israel. And Herod the Great was the king of Israel. But

he was a bad dude, so he was paranoid. He had heard a

rumor that there was a messiah, a Jewish Messiah, coming, and so

he was afraid. So he ordered every boy under the age of two in

the region of Bethlehem to be murdered. This is not a good guy.

So Herod the Great is also the Herod that rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem.

If you visit Israel in go to Jerusalem, you will see kind of the

platform of that temple that he built but he built Cessaria Maritima to honor Caesar

Augustus, because when Julius Caesar was murdered, his right hand man, mark

Antony was starting a revolt and had garnered Cleopatra, kind of his girlfriend,

in a revolt against Rome. And Rome was now led by Caesar Augustus,

who, in a weird twisted way, was like Julius Caesar's step son nephew.

It's kind of a weird twisted thing. But Caesar Augustus ends up ruling

and mark Antony is warring against them, and Herod the Great sided with mark

Antony. Well, if you know any of your Roman history, mark Antony

and Cleopatra lose. So Harod, not wanting to be killed himself, tries

to then show allegiance to Caesar Augustus. In one of the ways that he

does this is by building this beautiful city in the nation of Israel that's based

around Roman architecture and at Sssoria Maritima, and he builds it very similar to

all other Roman cities. He builds a big, huge theater. In fact,

this theater has been excavated. They estimate that it sets about ten thousand

people. Historians and archaeologists, whenever they dig up Roman ruins, they try

to find in the theater because the theater tells them a lot about the city.

It tells him specifically how many people lived in the city. Because the

Romans would oppress the people, but to help the people not notice they're being

oppressed, the Romans wanted to entertain them, so they would build these big

theaters and people would come and they'd be entertained, not realizing that they're being

suppressed by intense taxation and all of these other things. But you could tell

the size of the city based upon the size of the theater. So the

city was usually ten times the seating in the theater. So if you go

to Israel today, you'll visit cessarea and you'll see this theater that Herod had

built. Herod also built a hippodrome. I have a picture of one of

our groups. We are sitting in the seating of the hippodrome. This is

where they would do chariot races. Sometimes there would be gladiator games. They

estimate that the hippodrome alone in Cssia by the Sea, seated over fifteen thousand

people. Herod also built himself a three tiered palace. He actually built palaces

all over Israel. But here is where Herod's Palace was. This is Sean

and I standing in what's left of the swimming pool at Herod's Palace. You

can see kind of pieces of the ruins and things, but this is thousand

of years later. There's the ruins still exist. So this tells you how

incredible this Cesserea was. But Paul ends up in Cesserea, in prison there

for two years. And during this time he's in prison for two years,

he stands before four of the leaders in all of Israel. Now I'm going

to explain this because you've probably read this a bunch of times and you hear

these names and you're hearing their titles and it doesn't make any sense. So

think in terms of our government. So we have a president who oversees the

United States, but our states have governors, and within our states, we

have cities that have mayors, and basically each one of these levels oversees local

government. It gets bigger and kind of pays taxes up the chane. You've

followed me, so you're gonna be introduced to some of the governors of Judea

and Samaria. The first one is Felix, the next one is Festus.

They both occupied the same role. Felix was there first, then Festus.

They are like governor Insley. Okay, they oversee that region, but above

them is like the president. It's Herod. So Herod is the guy over

the top. And then over the top of Herod is Caesar, who's like

King of the world. So you got King of the world, King of

Israel, governor of the region. And Caesar appoints the people below him.

Because they collect taxes from the people, they keep some for themselves, of

course, and then they pass it up. So Felix and Festus would pass

up taxes to Herod. Herod would pass up taxes to Caesar, and as

long as the money kept flowing, people kept their positions of leadership and authority.

But these are the rulers of this region. Paul is in prison.

His goal, his ambition is conviction, is to tell people about the love

of Jesus, tell people about the grace of Jesus. Many of us would

think, once I'm out of prison, I'm gonna do it. Once I

finished school, I'm gonna do it. Once I have enough money saved,

I'm gonna go ahead and step out in this goal that I have. But

Paul is saying, if this is where Jesus has me, all I'm gonna

do is spend it in prison. I'm gonna tell everybody I can about Jesus.

And so Paul shares his story with anyone who had listened. Honestly,

if you had the opportunity to share your story of how Jesus changed your life

with incredibly influential people, would you seize that opportunity? If God gave you,

in the next week, the opportunity to share your story where the audience

was captive. They wanted to hear your story with the leaders of society,

people that were the most influential, would you seize the opportunity. Would you

do it if to do it it meant you had to spend two years in

prison. I have a video from the actual prison cell that tells the story.

Heredis standing in cesarea in Acts chapter twenty three. It was here whereafter

Paul was arrested, he was brought to this place and I'm gonna walk you

over here, and this is actually the location of the prison cell where Paul

spent three years of his life after being in this cell for about five days.

The high priest Ananias brought before Felix the accusation against Paul. So he

shared that Paul was in Jerusalem and was stirring up trouble and was in fact

trying to raise up a group of people, he said, to desecrate the

temple. And then Felix said, Paul, is this true? And Paul

proceeded to basically testify about Jesus, talk about how Jesus changed his life,

and then it got to this critical point where he said, Felix, the

issue is my belief that Jesus is alive. And Felix was there with his

wife Drusilla, and they had this discussion where they realized that this is a

Jewish religious issue, this isn't a legal issue whatsoever. And Paul continued to

talk and it got to a point where when Paul started talking about sin and

compromise that Felix actually got really nervous and changed the subject and said, I

need to think about this for a little bit, and then he left.

What's interesting is periodically he would send people back to Paul to talk to him,

hoping that Paul would pay him off because he knew Paul hadn't done anything

wrong. There's no reason that he should be imprisoned. But he was trying

to appease these these Jewish priests, but he was hoping to get a payoff

and it never happened. So Paul stayed here for two years from that point.

So finally, after two years, it was time for Felix to retire

and he passed on leadership to a guy by the name of Festus. But

beforehand he met with Festus and he said, there's this guy that's been in

prison for a couple of years, Paul, that the Jews are upset with

I can find nothing wrong with what he has done, but they're really upset

and I don't know what to do. So the first thing Festus does is

he meets with Paul and Paul begins to share the story. He begins to

share the story that I've done nothing illegal. The only thing I've done is

claimed that Jesus rose from the grave, and that upset all the Jewish leaders,

and Festus was thinking, I gotta figure away around this. I don't

want to execute Paul. He hasn't done anything wrong, but at this point

I can't set him free because I'm gonna upset all the Jewish high priests.

So he appeals to Paul and he says, can I just send you back

to Jerusalem? Well, Paul's too smart for that, because Paul knew if

they sent me back to Jerusalem, the Jews are gonna have me killed.

So he instead says, I'm a Roman citizen, and as the right of

a Roman citizen, I appeal to Rome. I want to go see Caesar,

and Festus says, you appealed to Caesar to Caesar, I'm gonna take

you. Finally, an Acts, chapter twenty five, verse thirteen, Festus

is now the governor of Judea and Samaria. Herod Agrippa the Second is ruling

over Israel, and it tells Us a few days later this verse thirteen,

King Agrippa and Bernice arrived at Cesarea to pay their respects to Festus, and

as they're meeting with Festus, Festus tells him about this guy, Paul,

this is the gross part. You're ready. I gotta explain these different herods.

So this makes a little bit of sense. So we already talked about

Herod the Great, Herod the Great again, the one that ordered the children

killed in Bethlehem under the age of two. He's the one that Bill Cesarea

Maritima. Herod the Great as he got older, became incredibly paranoid that people

were gonna take over his throne, and he killed his wives, he killed

his sons. I mean, he pretty much killed anyone that he thought was

a possible threat to his leadership. Well, he eventually gets kidney failure,

really badly chronic that's what he ends up dying of. Before he died,

he had these intestinal issues. In fact, he gang green of his genitals

and they began to swell and rot and became maggot infested and his body began

to itch. Oliver, isn't this just disgusting? This is true. This

is how he died, so historically accurate. He smelled so bad that he

had to be removed from people. They couldn't handle being around him because of

how badly he smelled. And eventually he died of kidney failure, but because

he kept killing any possible successor, eventually he's succeeded by his grandson, Harod

Agrippa the first. We've already talked about him in our Acts series. So

Herod Agrippa the first is the one who had James the Great arrested and beheaded.

He's also the one that we read about in Acts eleven and twelve where

he had Peter arrested. Because the Jews were so thrilled by James dying,

he thought, well, what if I kill the leader of the Christians,

Peter, They're gonna be thrilled. So his intent was to kill Peter,

but I preached a sermon on this miraculous deliverance from this prison cell of Peter.

Eventually, herod Agrippa goes to Cessoria Maritima, because again Cesserea was this

incredible palace and this incredible city that they were very proud of. So he

goes to Cesserea and he sits on his throne, which was in his throne

room where kind of near where Sean and I were standing. The Bible says

that he was wearing a purple robe, and he gave a speech to the

leaders of all of these different regions, and the people from these regions were

trying to gain favor from him. They didn't really mean this, but they

were trying to butter him up. You know how sometimes you say like nice

things to people because he want to gain favor with them. So what they

started doing is they started worshiping Herod as if he was a god, and

Herod the grip of the first really arrogant, cocky guy, thought you're right,

I am pretty great, and he started receiving the worship while in Acts

twelve we find out how God felt about him doing that, And I actually

preached a sermon on this in our Acts series called Slapped by an Angel.

Go back, listen to that one. Well, God sends an angel that

literally slaps Herod Agrippa the first and he starts being overcome with incredible abdominal pain.

He gets an appendicitis and his appendix bursts. Well this is before they

knew what this was. So his ruptured appendix just begins to rot in his

stomach and eventually gets infested with worms. Isn't this gnarly? And he dies?

So he is then succeeded by the Herod that shows up here. This

is Herod Agrippa the Second, and we're told that Herod Agrippa and Bernice,

his lover, show up to meet with Paul. So you might be wondering,

is this Herod better than the other ones. No, this one is

just is creepy because Bernice, his lover, is also his sister, his

three times married sister, twice widowed under suspicious circumstances and recently divorced, now

in a relationship with her brother Harod. They meet with Paul. We up

to speed. Okay, we're told a little bit about what happens verse.

Let's see chapter twenty twenty five, Verse twenty three. Agrippa and Bernice.

This is them meeting with Paul. They came with great pomp and entered the

audience room, listen to everyone that was there, high ranking military officers,

prominent men of the city. At the command of Festus, Paul was brought

in and Festus said, King Agrippa and all who were present, see this

man. And in that moment, Paul looks at all of the most influential

men and women in all of Israel, and he tells them the story.

So I was the worst sinner. I was Christian Enemy number one. I

was having Christians arrested. I was approving of their death. They were afraid

of me, and I was on my way to Damascus to have them killed.

And I encountered the risen Jesus, and instead of punish me instead of

kill me. He forgave me. He showed me love and mercy and grace,

and I committed my life to him. And I'm standing before you right

now to tell you I have never been the same. The weight of the

sin that was on my shoulders. Jesus took it away. It's all gone.

If he can forgive me. Can you picture him saying this to Herod?

If he can forgive me, he can forgive you, incest person.

We know that he tried to tell Herod about Jesus because of Herod's sponse verse

chapter six, verse twenty eight. Agrippa looks at Paul and he says,

do you really think that you can in such a short time persuade me to

be a Christian? I love the fact that oftentimes what we do is we

think I have all these goals and I've got these callings, gout these things

that I want to do in life, but I can't do them until I

check off these education boxes. I can't do them and tell my finances are

in order. I can't do them and tell I'm married, or I can't

do them and tell this. And Paul's like a I exist to tell people

about the love and mercy and grace of Jesus. And I'm not gonna wait

until I'm in Rome. If I spend the rest of my life in this

prison cell, I'm gonna tell every single person that will listen about Jesus.

And so he talked about the love and mercy and grace of Jesus to the

leaders in all of Israel, and the Grippa looks at him and says,

do you really think you're going to convince me right now to be a Christian?

And I just I love Paul's response. Paul's like, short time or

long time, I pray to God that not only you, but all who

are listening to me today may become what I am. Basically, what is

he saying. He's saying, I want you to experience what I've experienced,

the freedom that I have in my life from a relationship with Jesus. I

want you to experience it too. I want you to experience what real love

is. I want you to experience what real grace is. If it doesn't

happen now, I hope it happens sometime. Why Paul, like he just

has the eye, can't help it. Eventually, Paul ends up in Rome,

and we're gonna get to that. I want to close by telling you

a story. This really boils down to do you understand your story? You

know that you have a story, like you have a story of Jesus changing

your life. You have a story of when He set you free, when

he delivered you, when he restored your marriage, when he healed your body.

You have a story. You should want everyone to know it. You

should want other people take experience the same type of healing and forgiveness, grace

and mercy and love that you've experienced. So this is Pentecost. The Jews

celebrate Pentecost. It's where God gave them the Torah. Well, as a

Christian, we celebrate Pentecost because we know that when the one hundred and twenty

believers after Jesus ascended into heaven. We're gathering to celebrate Jewish Pentecost. On

the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit fell, and the day that the

Holy Spirit fell, it ignited these men and women and it really became the

Church. So we consider Pentecost the birthday of the Church. The entire theme

of our Acts series has been the Gospel is unstoppable when it's shared by people

that are filled with the Holy Spirit. And that is about today. Today

is the birthday of when that happened. Oh do I have a story.

Here's what Pentecost shows us. It shows us that miracles are for today.

Just as Jesus heal people, heals people today, just as people are filled

with the Holy Spirit, then they're filled with the Holy Spirit today. Miracles

are for today. When the Holy Spirit fell, the supernatural begin to take

place, and miracles begin to take place, acts as miracle after miracle after

miracle. And that's saying, miracle working God happens today. Tuesday night,

hanging out with my son at the Mariners game, I get a phone called

around the seventh inning from one of my closest friends, Bob Ricky's also one

of our board members. He said, Brandon, I can't go into detail,

and he's crying as he's telling me this, he said, but I

need you to pray. Said, Larry had a massive heart attack and he

had no heartbeat, he had no brain activity and was not breathing for thirty

minutes before they were able to get a pulse back. So Larry and Rhoda

have been a part of our church and the Ricky's for about twelve years.

Larry was a minister for years and years and years. Larry is Bob's in

law, and just many of you know who Larry is. Larry was dead

for thirty minutes without any oxygen or brain activity. If you are a medical

professional and you're here, what I'm telling you is dire, like this is

bad. If they're able to resuscitate him, the likelihood of him having brain

damage is ninety nine point. Kept asking if I could go to the hospital,

and Rhoda and Bob kept saying no, we just want our family to

be here. The prognosis wasn't getting better. And I think it was Friday

morning I got another call from Bob. Most of my communication had just been

via text message with the family during this time, because they just really wanted

to be alone, and I just want an opportunity to pray for Larry and

possibly say goodbye to Larry beforehand, and because Larry's meant a lot to me.

And Bob calls me again on Friday morning and he said, Brandon,

I need to give you an update. And I was like, what,

He goes, it is a miracle. I go, well, what happened?

And he said, Sarah and Tabby, they're the two daughters. Said

they were heading with Rhoda to the hospital planning Larry's funeral, and when they

got there, the nurse said, I just went in to check on him,

and the strangest thing happened. His eyes opened. He kept following me

around the room with his eyes. You know, he's got a feeding tube

so he can't talk. And she noticed that he was watching her, and

she says, Larry, can you hear me? And his eyes kind of

flutter and she says, if you can hear me, move your hand,

So he moves his hand there if you understand what I'm saying, move your

feet, So he starts wiggling his toes. So Bob says Brandon. The

nurse and the doctors, everyone is saying that this is nothing short of something

that they've never seen before. Miracle. Well you and I know, because

we remember that on Pentecost that God does miracles, that he still does miracles

today. So my favorite part was Rhoda texted me yesterday trying to schedule time

for me to go visit Larry in the hospital, and I got permission to

share this story from Rhoda's so I'm sharing it today and she is like Pastor

Brandon, I'm just I've been serving Jeeves in my whole life. I've never

seen anything like this is this is the most amazing miracle. He's gonna come

home in the next two weeks. What is Pentecost about. It's about the

man, the gospel. It is unstoppable, and you have a story and

you've got to tell people about this Jesus that can heal them, that can

set them free, that can deliver them, that can do like the unexplainable

and the most unexp