Brighter Than Noon | Acts 26:1-18

Welcome to Sermons from the Way Church KC, the community of Lizards and Saints in Kansas City, following the way of Jesus and pushing back and darkness together.

Okay, good morning everybody.

How are we doing?

Oh, the Bible's upside down.

I can't read upside down.

Well, I could try, but you guys might not have fun listening to me try and probably fail.

Um, so I am going to be reading out of Acts, you know, like we have been for the past, what, year and a half now?

Um I'm gonna be reading Acts 26 1 through 18.

So let me find it.

Maybe.

Sorry guys, I'm not prepared for this.

Okay, there we go.

All right, so if you guys will stand with me for the reading of the word.

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

Then Paul stretched out his hand and made his defense.

I consider myself fortunate that it is before you, King Agrippa, I am going to make my defense today against all the accusations of the Jews, especially because you are familiar with all the customs and controversies of the Jews.

Therefore I beg you to listen to me patiently.

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 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 goads.

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've 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 receive forgiveness of sins, 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

Amen, amen.

Well, thank you, Madeline, for reading the scripture this morning.

Um we haven't got the chance to meet yet.

My name is Zach.

I have the privilege of being the lead pastor, church planter here at the Way Church KC.

Um, and if this is your first time with us, we are a two and a half-year-old church plant, and we exist to follow the way of Jesus and push back darkness together.

So that's the mission that the Lord has had us on for um over two years now, and it's a fun journey.

It's fun to plant a church with your friends, with your family, with people that were friends and have become family, all that good stuff.

Um so we will be continuing in our Acts Sermon series.

We preach verse by verse through the Bible, and we are continuing in our series entitled Acts Living by the Spirit and Following the Way.

And to Madeline's point, we have been in Acts for about a year and a half now.

But I'll say this: I was at a for the church conference up at Midwestern Seminary last uh Monday and Tuesday, and I was listening to this little panel, and one of the panelists said that they are also in Acts, and they've been in Acts for about two years now, and they are just getting to the Jerusalem Council.

So that's like Acts 15.

So there's a way to crawl even slower through Acts, but it's um I think we're going at a healthy pace and all that good stuff.

Um, yeah, there's that.

Um if you've been with us for the past few weeks, um you know that we've been sitting in courtrooms.

Um Paul has been under arrest now for more than two years.

Um he stood before the Jewish council, before Governor Felix, and before Governor Festus.

And last week, where we ended, we ended on a blank page.

They had no charges to bring against Paul.

Um so Festus, he had a prisoner that he had to ship off to Caesar, and in his own words, he had nothing definite to write.

So he calls in an expert of sorts.

He calls in King Agrippa II.

And if you remember King Agrippa II, he is the last of the Herod family kings.

And uh he's asked to help him fill in this paperwork.

And so what Acts 26 is, Acts 26 is Paul filling that blank page with Jesus.

Here's what I want us to know before we dig in, before we read.

And what he's about to do is he's about to tell a king about the king.

One commentator puts it this way the shoulders of any other king are too slim.

The royal robes must be draped on Christ.

What we see today, this is also the third time that Luke tells us the story of Paul meeting Jesus.

We saw it in chapter 9 when it happens on the road to Damascus, when Saul encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and was radically changed.

We saw it again in chapter 22 when Paul told a mob on the temple steps about his encounter with Jesus.

And so you might wonder why do we need a third time?

Why do we need to hear Paul's testimony a third time?

Well, here's why.

Every time the story gets told, the camera zooms in on a different detail.

The author, Luke, he zooms in on a different detail for us.

And in this telling, Ananias, he drops out of the story completely.

What we see as Paul shares this testimony is that nobody stands between Paul and Jesus.

It's just the risen Lord, a blinding light, and the clearest statement anywhere in Acts of what Jesus sends his people to do.

In a sense, what we're gonna see today, what we're gonna read about in Acts 20 cents, in a sense, is our church's mission statement coming straight out of Jesus' mouth.

But before we dig into the text today, I want us to go back to a place that most of us probably remember, maybe some of us would rather forget it.

Who remembers the school cafeteria?

Yeah?

A handful of us.

Some people laugh, some people tremble in fear.

But think about it: like you come through the line with the tray, you got that little uh rectangular uh pizza, the little carton of chocolate or um like 2% milk, whatever it is.

You turn around, you go through the line, like I'm picturing my high school cafeteria, and you go through the little line, you get your your rectangle pizza, whatever like broccoli or slop they got for you, you go through the line, and then you're in the cafeteria, and it's like you have the whole room, where do I sit?

Every table already has its people.

You got like the athletes, the band kids, the troublemakers.

That was that was me.

I was the troublemaker table.

Um the the kids who've known each other since kindergarten, right?

And they've probably been sitting together at lunch since kindergarten.

And you're standing there and you're holding this tray, and you're trying hard to look like you're not scanning the room, and you're trying to figure out, hey, where do I sit?

Or maybe I'm gonna go sit outside of the cafeteria today.

And here's the thing we we never really like, we we never leave the cafeteria, we just trade the tray for other things, Crystal.

You you you walk into a new job, you walk into a new city, you walk into a party where you don't know anybody, you walk into a family holiday where you're the one that everyone whispers about.

Maybe it's even you walk into a new church.

And the question is the question in your gut is the same one you had at that high school cafeteria.

Is there a place for me here?

Is there a place for me here?

Now I want you to go with me and picture one more kid.

Not the kid that doesn't have anywhere to sit, but the kid who went around the cafeteria flipping everybody's trays and starting food fights.

I say that tongue in cheek, but maybe there's like literally that that troublemaker kid, the one that's just kind of a bully, shoving people, right, starting fights, making sure that the outcasts stayed outcasts.

Is there a seat for him?

And that story may seem a little silly, but the reason I ask it is because this morning in the text, we once again meet the guy.

We meet the bully, if you will.

We meet the guy that's flipping flipping people's lunch uh plates.

And that guy is Saul before he met the risen Christ on the road to Damascus.

What he did is he spent years emptying seats at the table of God's people.

And in today's text, Jesus tells him that there is a place with his name on it.

So here's our big idea this morning.

Here's our big idea.

Jesus does not just stop his enemies, he seats them and sends them.

Jesus does not just stop his enemies, he seats them and sends them.

Okay?

Let's pray and then we'll dig in.

Heavenly Father, we love you, we praise you, we thank you for gathering us here together today to worship you, to fellowship together, and to dig deep into your scriptures, into your living word.

God, I pray that today that you will impress upon us the truth of your scriptures, Lord, that where we have become self-reliant, where we have become full of self-will, that you would impress upon us the need for your will in our lives.

Lord, I praise you for the testimony of Paul, and I praise you for the testimonies of the men and women in this house today.

Lord, would you let us keep our rescue fresh?

Would you let us remember our road to Damascus as we look deeply at Paul's road to Damascus?

Lord, we love you.

We thank you, Jesus, for forgiving us of our sins.

It's in Jesus' mighty name we pray, and all God's people said, Amen.

Amen, amen.

So point number one this morning is hope in the God who raises the dead.

Hope in the God who raises the dead.

Acts chapter 26, verses one through eight.

Acts 26 · chapter mention

I'll read it over you.

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

Then Paul stretched out his hand and made his defense.

I consider myself fortunate that it is before you, King Agrippa.

I'm going to make my defense today against all the accusations of the Jews, especially because you are familiar with all the customs and controversies of the Jews.

Therefore I beg you to listen to me patiently.

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?

So Agrippa tells Paul that he has permission to speak for himself, and then Paul stretches out his hand and makes his defense.

And notice, if you will, who's really giving permission here.

Agrippa thinks that he is the one who is granting Paul the floor.

But back, remember, back in chapter 9, Jesus said that Paul would carry his name before Gentiles and kings.

So Agrippa doesn't know it, but he is just a door that's opening so Paul can walk through it and be obedient to the mission that the Lord Jesus has him on.

Paul starts his response.

He says, I consider myself fortunate.

So the word for fortunate, the word is macararios, the same word that Jesus uses in the Beatitudes when he says, Blessed are the poor in spirit.

So Paul is in chains, he is on trial for his life, and he says, I am blessed to be here.

He's saying, I am blessed to be here.

What a perspective to have while in chains, while defending yourself against the king.

And he's not saying this to flatter the king.

If you remember the lawyer Tertulus back in chapter 24, he's buttering up Felix about all the peace that he brought the land.

So Paul's not doing that though.

He's simply glad to finally be talking to someone who knows the material, who knows the context of this new religion.

Then he gets to the heart of it.

He says, 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 then he asks the question that hangs over the whole chapter.

This should provide the context of this section of text for us.

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

And I think the same question can be asked of us today.

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

Here's what Paul is saying.

He's not saying that he is on trial for a new religion.

He's saying that he is on trial for believing that the old one came true.

For centuries, Israel had been hoping.

They hoped that God would breathe on the valley of dry bones and make them alive.

That's Ezekiel chapter 37.

Ezekiel 37 · chapter mention

They had hoped that those who sleep in the dust would wake.

That is Daniel 12.

Their whole story, the whole Israelite story, is a resurrection story.

God gave a son to Abraham and Sarah when their bodies were as good as dead.

He brought a nation of slaves out of Egypt in the Exodus narrative.

He brought exiles home from Babylon again and again.

God brings life out of death.

And Paul says it happened.

God did it.

So the way of Jesus is not Israel's hope being replaced.

No, it is Israel's hope being kept.

So why would that be incredible in this context?

Why would it be incredible?

That's what they've been hoping for.

Or so they thought.

Undoubtedly it's not too hard.

So here's why this matters for us.

Well, I think that everyone in this room, myself included all of us, are living in some kind of hope.

We're living in some kind of hope.

For some of us, it's the next job, the next gig, the next semester at school, the next big break.

You're waiting on that next big break for everything to work out.

You're hoping for that.

For some, it's a relationship.

Your hope is in a relationship.

Maybe for some of you it's like your hope is, hey, I gotta get out of my parents' house.

Or, hey, my hope is to get out of this city.

Or maybe for some of you, it's hey, my hope is for some of my family to finally speak to me again.

Maybe your hope for a while is like, man, I just hope that some that I get my son back in my life.

And those are good things to hope for, right?

Those are good things to hope for.

But here's the question that Paul is forcing upon the room.

The question is: can your hope survive a grave?

Can your hope survive death?

Everything else that you hope in has an expiration date.

The contract ends, the relationship ends, your job in ministry ends, and one day the reality is that everyone in our earthly bodies, our life will end.

The only hope that doesn't end at the cemetery is the hope that God raises the dead.

So our hope is that yes, God indeed did raise Jesus Christ from death to life.

And our hope is also that one day Jesus Christ will return and make all things new and ultimately and finally bring all of us from death to life, all who are in Christ.

And so what Paul is saying is that it is a promise that God made long ago to the patriarchs, to the prophets, to the kings.

So he's saying God made this promise long ago, and God has already started to keep it.

Easter morning was just the first installment, right?

So hope in the God who raises the dead.

And if you're here this morning and you call yourself a skeptic, that is perfectly okay.

I get it.

I've been there, I've been skeptical, I've had questions.

What I'd ask, if that's you, what I'd ask is that you just hold Paul's question for the next 20 minutes or so.

Why is it thought incredible?

I talk about this a lot, but I have this friend, he was texting me this morning and said, Hey, I hope your Sunday service goes well.

This is the friend that he believes that Jesus lived, that he was a good moral man, but what he cannot get over is that Jesus died and rose from the grave.

So my question to that brother, and my question that I'd ask you to hold is why is it thought incredible?

Why is it thought incredible that Jesus rose from the grave?

Because the rest of the chapter, it is Paul explaining how he, of all people, a Pharisee of Pharisees, came to believe it.

Which brings us to point number two.

Stop kicking against the goads.

Stop kicking against the goads.

Verses 9 through 15, the word says, 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 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.

Paul could have skipped that part, right?

He could have skipped much of that part of his story.

But look at the first line.

He says that he was convinced.

He was convinced.

He was not a hypocrite.

He was sincere in his opposition to Jesus.

He was about it, right?

He was educated.

He was credentialed.

He was zealous.

He was a rising star in the Phariseeal world.

He was the kind of guy that everyone expected to go places with in terms of the religious elite.

And what he came to realize is that he was completely completely and violently incorrect.

He thought he was serving God, but what he was actually doing was fighting God, was opposing God.

And so that should make us careful, family, because what it shows us is that sincerity, sincerity isn't the same thing as being right.

You can be passionate and still be headed in the wrong direction.

Here's the thing conviction without Christ is just a faster road in the wrong direction.

Or to put it another way, conviction without Christ is just a faster road to hell.

Then verse 12, we see Paul say, in this connection, I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests.

So hang on to that word authority.

Authority.

Paul, he had the papers.

He had the permission from the most powerful religious men in the country.

He was on his way to drag more believers back in chains.

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.

Think about like the summer here in Kansas City, or maybe you're you're from the south and you also got some hot summers there.

Maybe it's like think about the desert in the summer.

Think about like noon, the noonday sun shining down in the heat of summer.

There's nothing brighter, right?

You ever try to like look at the sun?

All growing up, my mom would tell me not to do that.

Um and we still shouldn't do that, FYI.

Um but but think about it, like there's not it it's bright, right?

There's not a cloud in the sky.

You just have the sun beaming down in your face.

Now, what Paul's describing, picture this: a light that is so bright that makes that noonday sun look dim.

Like that's crazy.

I don't think we have like the concept or the wherewithal to imagine that.

Paul says that it knocked all of them off the ground.

And then he hears a voice.

Paul tells Agrippa that it spoke in the Hebrew language.

That's Paul's own heart language.

And the voice says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

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

So this is the only telling of his testimony that includes this line about the goads.

So a goad was it was like a long stick with a sharp point at the end, and a farmer would use it to steer an ox.

And a stubborn ox, it would kick back at it, and every kick drove the point deeper into its own leg.

So it was a common saying in the ancient world: fighting the goad only hurts you.

And Jesus says, Saul, that's you.

That's what you're doing.

Every time you fight me, the point of the goad only goes deeper into you.

What he's saying is, you're not hurting, Jesus is saying, you're not hurting me by fighting me, you're hurting yourself.

That's that's isn't that what we do today?

Right?

Jesus offers us hope and offers us life and says he is the way, the truth, and the life.

But we're like, actually, I can figure this out on my own.

Actually, my way.

I know, I know how to go.

But listen to the tone that Jesus uses with Paul.

Jesus, he's not saying, How dare you?

You've done so bad.

He doesn't say, hey, Paul, you're finished.

He says, it is hard for you.

Do you hear that compassion from the Lord Jesus to Paul in the midst of his brokenness and murderous place?

That's the voice of someone who had watched him bleed from fighting him and wants you to stop.

And I think some of us know exactly what the goads feel like, right?

It's that consequence that keeps showing up when you keep doing the same thing, expecting a different result.

It's the same kind of relationship blowing up the same way over and over and over again, and that goad just goes deeper and deeper into your leg.

It's the conviction that you keep shoving down at 2 a.m.

when you're doing something or you're at a place that you know you shouldn't be.

It's the friend who keeps asking you the questions that you keep dodging.

It's the morning after a bad decision.

And we, I think, tend to think of those things as God being against us.

But what if, may I propose to you, what if those things are actually God steering us?

What if the pain isn't the goad being cruel, but us kicking back against the will of God?

Then Paul he asks the only question that matters.

This is in his, again, he's recounting his testimony on the road to Damascus.

He says, Who are you, Lord?

And the answer, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

So stop and let that land.

Paul never laid a finger on Jesus, right?

But he was, Paul, as as when he was saw as a Pharisee, he was going after Jesus' people.

He was going after the moms and the dads and the fishermen and the widows who followed the way of Jesus.

And Jesus looks at him and says, That was me.

That was me.

Jesus, you see, is so tied to his people that every blow that landed on them landed on him.

Every cell door that Paul slammed, Jesus felt.

Every stoning that Paul condoned, Jesus felt.

I think what what we see in our cultural moment is like, yeah, I got a relationship with Jesus, but I hate the church.

And I would just say, like, that's not biblical.

That's not what the scriptures show us.

And I'm not like church hurt is real.

People have been wounded by the church.

But brothers and sisters, do not give up on the church because the church is the bride of Christ.

And so that should actually comfort us.

Because if you belong to Jesus, what that means is you are never suffering alone.

What happens to you happens to him.

So wherever you are, whatever you're walking through, stop kicking.

Stop kicking against the goad.

Whatever you're fighting, we can rest in the truth that the one holding the goad is on your side.

Goad's just kind of a funny word, isn't it?

Goad.

G-O-A-D.

Don't fight the goad.

Point number three, stand up and open eyes.

Stand up and open eyes.

This is our third and final point this morning.

Verses 16 through 18 of Acts chapter 26.

Acts 26 · chapter mention

Read this.

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.

Here's what I love about Paul's testimony.

Jesus, he doesn't leave Paul laying in the dirt.

He says, But rise and stand upon your feet.

He's been knocked off his feet because of the bright shining light that is the presence of Christ.

And Jesus says, Rise, stand upon your feet.

And a little Bible nerd stuff, those words are straight out of the Old Testament.

When God called the prophet Ezekiel, Ezekiel chapter 2, verse 1, Ezekiel fell on his face and God said, Son of man, stand on your feet and I will speak with you.

Ezekiel 2:1

Then God sent the prophet Ezekiel to Israel.

And so, in a sense, Jesus is doing the same thing with Paul.

So it's like, yes, this is Paul's conversion moment, but also it's his calling.

It's crazy.

The persecutor gets the same calling as these prophets of old.

For I've 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.

A servant and a witness.

And here's the thing about witnesses, especially in the Bible.

A witness doesn't make things up.

They're not a witness if they're making it up.

A witness says, Here is what I saw.

I saw this firsthand.

So Paul's job, his calling, if you will, is to tell the truth about the Jesus who met him on the road to Damascus.

Then we get to verse 17, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles to whom I'm sending you.

So Jesus doesn't promise Paul an easy life.

Jesus also doesn't promise us an easy life.

As we've read through Acts, as we've been in this text, we've watched Paul get stoned.

We've watched Paul get beaten.

We've watched Paul get jailed.

We've watched Paul get plotted against.

But time and time again, Jesus keeps rescuing him.

Not for the purpose of Paul being comfortable and living a good life, but so that he can keep going on the mission that Christ has him on.

And he is sent Paul, the man who went to Damascus with papers from the chief priests, now has papers from the risen king.

And then here's the mission, verse 18.

Let's slow down here because this is one of the greatest sins in the Bible.

Jesus sends Paul.

And he sends Paul 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.

So as we close today before we observe the Lord's Supper, there's five movements that we're going to look at in that one verse, and we'll be quick.

First, open their eyes.

Open their eyes.

People can't see.

Not because they're dumb, not because of anything in themselves, but because they're blind to God.

And so were we.

Makes me always, anytime I see this blind to sight, I think of the old song Amazing Grace.

I once was blind, but now I see.

That is the Christian life.

That is what's being described in this verse.

Isaiah says that this is what God's servant would come to do: to open the eyes that are blind.

That's Isaiah 42, verse 7.

Isaiah 42:7

Then we see this picture of from darkness to light.

This is the same chapter of Isaiah.

It says, I will turn the darkness before them into light.

Isaiah 42, verse 16.

Isaiah 42:16

Then we see this movement from the power of Satan to God.

So remember that word that was used earlier, authority.

Here it is again.

Paul rode to Damascus under the authority of the chief priests, back when he was killing and arresting Christians.

But now, what's happening?

Jesus is sending him to rescue people from the authority of Satan.

He'd been carrying the wrong authority.

Do you see it?

And notice what that tells us about people without Jesus.

They're not just misinformed, they're held, right?

The real enemy was never Rome or the other political party or the people across town.

The real enemy is a dark power.

The real enemy is Satan.

And people need to be rescued from the power that that enemy has.

Then we see this movement of forgiveness of sins.

Everything Paul did, the prison cells, the votes, the raging fury, forgiven.

Standing by as Stephen is stoned and dies and condoning it, being for the stoning of Stephen the first martyr, forgiven.

Everything that Paul back then Saul did, forgiven.

Not just like excuse, not just like, hey, it happened, but we'll we'll sweep it under the rug.

Forgiven.

Point blank, period.

And we see this movement of a place.

And a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.

And what that word in the Greek for a place means, it means like a share, a lot, an inheritance.

It's the language that's used of Israel entering the promised land when every family was given its own plot of ground.

It means that there is a spot here with your name on it.

That is a truth for us still today.

If you are in Christ, there is a place for you in God's kingdom, in God's family.

Now watch this last thing because it's easy to miss.

Back in verse 10, Paul says, I locked up many of the saints.

In verse 18, Jesus promises a place among those who are sanctified.

In Greek, those are the same root word.

So the man who locks the holy ones in prison is given a seat among them.

Like, how can that be?

The man who condones the killing of these followers of the way of Jesus, now being a part of the same family.

It's so counter to all of our way of thinking today, and it was back then as well.

The guy who kicked people out of the family gets a place at the family table.

Do you see this, guys?

Remember?

The kid flipping table, flipping, flipping trays at the lunchroom.

Jesus says, hey, all that's forgiven.

You have a seat at our table.

And if we can just be real, that is what this church, and I would argue all churches, are supposed to be about.

A community of misfits and saints following the way of Jesus and pushing back darkness together for the good of our city and the sake of God's kingdom.

It's our mission statement.

Follow the way of Jesus and push back darkness together.

We didn't like make it up in a marketing meeting, right?

Like, no, it is scriptural.

Our mission statement is rooted in the words of Christ.

John Bunyan, the Puritan preacher, who wrote The Pilgrim's Progress.

He wrote a whole book on this theme and called it light for them that sit in darkness.

Light for them who sit in darkness.

And in it, he points to this very verse and he says, and I kind of put this in modern English and not the old, like kind of old English.

He says, the inheritance belongs to those who are sanctified by faith in Jesus Christ.

Nothing else.

The inheritance does not belong to the impressive.

The inheritance does not belong to the person who knows their Bible the best.

No, the inheritance belongs to those who are sanctified by faith in Jesus Christ.

That's it.

So often we can overcomplicate it, right?

The inheritance does not belong to the ones with the cleanest past.

No, the inheritance belongs to the ones who trust in Jesus.

Ashton, you can come up and begin to close us as we step into absorbing the Lord's Supper.

Before that, though, what does this look like for us?

Like on the ground, tangibly, boots on the ground, what does this look like?

Well, whatever it is that you are, that you do, whether that's vocationally, whether that's like in terms of your hobbies, whatever it is, you're a witness.

As you mow lawns at the cemetery, I mean, no, no, no, the seminary, sorry, you are a witness.

As you mow lawns there, Dolly, you are a witness.

As you work for the photography company, you are a witness.

As you step into the first couple years of your retirement, you are witnesses.

Wherever it is, you are to be witnesses.

You don't gotta make every piece Christian.

Just tell the truth about what you've seen and live a life that is marked by what the Lord's done in your life.

And for those of you who are walking out of the darkness and into the light, like you've had some tough days, you got a past of addiction or a past of spending time in jail or prison, whatever it is, freedom is a rescue from a power.

It's not a self-improvement plan, it's not an A, B, C.

And I think that the day will come, maybe it's already here, when Jesus sends you back into those rooms to open somebody else's eyes.

Would you let your story be the light and the darkness?

And for all of us, wherever it is, wherever we're sitting, Jesus says, I am sending you.

That's why we close every sermon saying, You are sent.

Because that is an ongoing thing that the Lord Jesus does in our lives.

He sends us out into the world to make disciples of all nations, baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit.

Jesus is sending you.

Not just Paul.

He's sending you.

The mission of Isaiah's servant was handed to Jesus, and Jesus hands it to his people, to his church.

To his church in Rosedale, to your job, to your classroom, to your studio, to your group chat, to your family of origin.

Jesus sends you.

So get up off the floor, you are sent.

I want to close by showing us something about the timing of this story.

Paul says.

That the light hit him at midday, about noon.

Now go back to Luke's first book, The Gospel According to Luke, chapter 23.

Luke 23 · chapter mention

Jesus is hanging on a cross.

And Luke writes, It was now about the sixth hour.

That's noon.

And there was darkness over the whole land.

That's Luke 23, verse 44.

Luke 23:44

At the cross, it went dark at noon.

But on the Damascus Road, light broke out at noon.

So do you see that?

If Jesus stepped into the darkness at noon, so that a persecutor could be met by light at noon.

He, Jesus, took the power of darkness, of Satan, the darkness of our sin, the darkness of God's judgment, all of it onto himself.

He was thrown out, he was crucified outside of the city gate, so that outsiders like Saul and outsiders like you and like me could be given a place inside.

And three days later, this Jesus he rose from the grave.

And that's why Paul could stand in front of a king and say, Why is it thought incredible that God raises the dead?

He had met the very man who did it.

And it became a part of his testimony.

That's the whole chapter.

That's this whole section of this text.

Jesus doesn't just stop his enemies.

No, he seats them and he sends them.

So here's the invitation.

If you've been kicking against the goad, stop.

I don't know what the goad looks like in your life.

But I know the voice behind it.

I know the risen Christ.

It's not the voice of someone who wants to crush you.

I promise you that, brother.

It's someone who says your name twice in your own heart language.

He says, It is hard for you.

I am Jesus.

You can put down the fight this morning.

You can receive forgiveness of sins and place your name on it among his people.

And if you're already following King Jesus, my hope for you, my encouragement to you is that it's time to get up off the floor.

Hope in the God who raises the dead.

Stop kicking against the goads.

Stand up and go open eyes.

My encouragement to you is this week, write down three names.

Three names.

It's not a big ask, three names.

People you love who are still sitting in the dark and start praying Acts 26, 18 over them by name.

Jesus, open their eyes.

Jesus, open my brother's eyes.

Jesus, open my sister's eyes.

Jesus, open my neighbors' eyes.

Turn them from darkness to light.

We down for that this week.

Thanks for listening.

Join us Sundays at 10 30 a.m.

in the Rosedale neighborhood of Kansas City.

Or find us anytime at the wakeac.church.