We are studying our way through the book of Acts.
By the end of Acts 23, Paul is in prison.
He's in Caesarea by the sea.
Here's a picture of that town today, Caesarea by the sea.
This is where Paul was imprisoned at.
They said he was leading a riot.
He wasn't leading a riot.
He was disruptive, though.
He was disruptive because he was preaching that Jesus was the fulfillment of the law.
That the entire system that the Jewish leaders were maintaining and keeping up and control of and benefiting from, Jesus fulfills this system.
So Paul is eventually passed from the Roman leaders, I got him Festus and Felix, and he's passed over to this local leader, King Agrippa.
He's passed to King Agrippa because Agrippa was more familiar with the Jewish customs.
So all this took years to play out.
I mean, Paul's sitting in prison waiting years for this to play out, for his story to unfold.
Eventually, during this time, Paul thinks, there's no way.
There is no way I'm going to get a fair trial here.
And so he makes an appeal as a Roman citizen to Rome.
You think in the text, as you read that, that's kind of a passing note, but it actually comes back up in Paul's unfolding story.
Now in Acts 26, this is where Agrippa shows up.
So Acts 26, 1 through 3.
So Agrippa said to Paul, you have permission to speak for yourself.
It's Paul's chance to defend himself.
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.
And Paul goes from there and he begins to kind of tell his life story.
I'm the best, I was the best and most devout Jew.
I oppose Jesus, I oppose followers, I punished the followers.
Hey, I was doing that.
And then Paul says, then something happened.
Verse 12.
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, and shone around me and those who journeyed with me.
And when we had 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 these 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 place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.
So what we see here is while Paul is not pursuing Christ, Christ is pursuing Paul.
This is the same point we made from back in earlier in Acts when this event actually happened.
Gospel conversion comes through God's pursuit of our lost and weary hearts.
That's how we're converted to be Christians.
Last weekend we were at my mom's lake house, my grandparents bought a cabin up on Lake Alatuna 49 years ago.
So almost 50 years.
Even before my life was started was this cabin.
My mom now lives there.
So I grew up there, my kids are going up, going up there.
And I love putting them on a tube behind a boat and getting all my middle-aged angst out by just swirling and swinging.
This is a picture.
This picture next time last year just is a good shot of what I this is what I like to do to my children on Saturday.
The loving care, the loving care of a father in action.
I think they're having, they're screaming.
I think they're having fun though.
And they sit there, right?
They sit there, they hold on, but their safety, their safety is in the life jacket that's been given and put on them.
Their ability to move and have this fun is from being in the tube that they rest in.
And any power doesn't come from them, it comes from the boat pulling them.
And this very loving father who's doing this to them.
But this is the gospel point.
Without the gift and without the power outside of them, they're just sitting in the water.
And that's the point of the gospel.
It's what Paul's trying to say.
He's trying to say, yeah, the law is good, but it is inept.
It does not have the power to carry out that which it demands of us.
So we live in a receiving posture as Christians.
We receive a power from outside of us.
This is why the reformers stated, we are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.
And that's good news, that we are converted and we are sustained, not the power of our great commitment, but our hold of God is inside of God's hold of us.
God pursues us, God finds us, and God holds us, which means that your pursuit of him, which is real and is really important, your pursuit of him, your disciplines, your practice, that's always rooted in his pursuit of you.
Verse 19.
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 they should 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.
Point number two.
Our faith walk is a grateful response to God's gift of welcome and acceptance.
That's what repentance is.
Repentance is a turning from our self-reliance, is a falling back into God's kindness and provision to us.
Our lives become, our lives become a response, a grateful response.
Verse 22.
And so I stand here testifying both to small and to 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.
See, this is an expanding spirituality that Paul is preaching to all people.
And Paul's telling this story of Jesus, God's love for us, and our need, not for us to be perfect unto God, but that God gives us a perfection in Jesus to us.
That's why we continually say our sin is put upon him who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God, because it is our sin put upon Christ, is righteousness given to us.
That's why we live in the receiving posture.
Finally, Paul looks at Festus, this imperial leader, and then he looks over at Agrippa, the local king, and he says this in verse 25.
But Paul said, I am not of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking true and rational words.
For the king knows about these things.
Remember the king's right there.
But 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 here's port number three.
The gospel secures and empowers our hearts to live from love, not fear.
See, Agrippa's actually kind of surprised here in this moment that what Paul is doing.
It's quite a moment, really.
I mean, Paul's here defending his life, you would think, trying to get out of prison.
But it doesn't seem that his primary goal is to get off the hook.
Why would he be so bold?
Why is he, why is he in this moment where he should argue his way out of prison, he's directly confronting Agrippa, like, hey, you you know about the resurrection?
You can't deny this.
What is it to you?
So there's another goal here for Paul, and Agrippa sees it.
That's why Agrippa is so surprised.
Why would you think you're going to try to persuade me to convert this quickly in this moment?
What Paul is saying is, hey, it was just 20, 25 years ago that Christ resurrected.
This wasn't done secret, this was out in public.
You know this.
What Paul is saying, he's saying, you know I'm not crazy.
This happened.
You can't laugh this off.
Now you may not follow, but you got to deal with it.
You're going to have to deal with whether you accept it and follow or you walk away.
But it wasn't done in secret.
And Agrippa just can't believe this.
This poor, powerless preacher would take the moment when he should be fighting for his life to get out of prison and he's speaking truth and love.
Who does that?
Tim Keller said this about this moment, about Paul at this moment.
The gospel helped him, Paul.
The gospel helped him understand for the first time why he was so eaten up on the inside.
The gospel explained him and then resolved him.
Alright, time out for the quote.
That's why every single week we say we are more broken than we originally thought.
That explains us.
That explains why we can't quite get our act together.
We're not quite who we should be or who we want to be.
But we're more loved by God and Jesus than we dare to dream.
So we are explained in the gospel and we are resolved.
Back to the quote.
It explained why he was such a mess and what was wrong with him.
And then it resolved the basic plot line of his life.
See, Paul is incredibly secure and empowered by this gospel that explains him and resolves him.
It explains his inability, it explains his sin, it resolves all of that, and it resolves his guilt and his shame.
It makes him beloved, not because of what he does, but because of the power and the gift given to him.
This is incredibly powerful.
So Paul doesn't look for an easy way out.
He's not living out of fear.
He's actually living out of love for Agrippa.
He addresses Agrippa, not for his own well-being, but for Agrippa's well-being.
This got me asking this week.
It's one of these questions that you're like, I don't know if I really want to ask this question.
But it got me asking.
What might my relationships be like if I lived less from fear and defense and more from love?
Like, where do I live out of fear and defense?
Where do I lack compassion because of that?
You know, search my heart, oh God.
Help me to live more rooted in your love that I might be able to be less a judgmental person and more a compassionate person.
That I might be able to speak truth and love to power, even when it's uncomfortable or it hurts me.
So Agrippa responds to all this and basically says, if this is where the story takes a turn, is he says, you know, I would have let you go.
Paul, I would have let you been in prison for years.
He said, I would have, I would have let you go, but you appealed to Rome.
Remember back, remember that?
You said I said to you, it's kind of passing in the text.
You say, that's not that big of a deal.
But Luke put it in there to make us see the storyline unfold.
Paul's story is unfolding over time.
And Agrippa says, I would have let you go.
But you appealed to Rome, so now you're still in prison, and you're going to be shipped off to Rome.
Seems like quite a detour.
Seems like a classic backfire.
But as always, something more is happening.
Point number four.
God is with me for me, and God's story for my life is unfolding over time.
Remember what the Heidelberg Catechism says about providence?
I read this a while back.
The providence of God is the almighty, everywhere-present power of God, whereby, this is a theological document, so you have words like, whereby, as it were, by his hand, he still upholds heaven and earth with all creatures, and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.
Now that's not the absence of pain.
We know that.
It's the presence of God with us in pain.
It's a promise.
All things come not by chance, but by the fatherly hand.
Going back to Paul, think about this moment.
Years in prison, you would have gotten out except you appealed to Rome.
I'd be beating myself up over that.
Wouldn't you be like, are you kidding me?
Why do I always overact?
See, like, why do I have to always do it?
Can I just, you know?
But something else happened as well.
Back in Acts 23, years before, listen to this, Acts 23.11, the following night the Lord stood behind him, stood by him, by Paul, and said, Take courage.
For as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.
Isn't that interesting?
Years before being in front of Agrippa, before this had unfolded, before being shipped off to Rome, Paul was given a word.
This changes everything.
If you have a word from the Lord.
Now maybe something in your life is or will be difficult.
Just a hunch.
It'll be painful.
But your story is still being written.
And we have a word.
And you have a word.
It may not be as exact as Acts 23.11.
That's pretty exact.
I'm gonna make a also another hunch, but probably not that exact.
But you have a promise.
And the promise is not that your life will be pain-free.
The promise is that God is with you in the pain.
And for you.
And He is working out kingdom purposes in your life.
Thirty-five years ago, in 1988, 36% of Yellowstone National Park burned.
800,000 acres burned.
Everything.
Everything was ash.
It's a huge amount of land.
A third of the park.
Everything just feels like despair, right?
I mean, you look at that image, you're like, I know that feeling.
Like I don't have to be there.
Like I've seen my life feel like that.
I mean, in that moment, it can just be like, of course, we say, woe is me.
Like, God, where are you?
What are you doing?
Come, Lord Jesus.
I mean, of course, these are our cries.
This is what we cry in that moment.
You've been there.
I've been there.
I grew up in a broken home.
I was unreconciled to my earthly father for years.
So I have in my storyline fields of ash.
And it often takes decades to be able to say something like, look what the Lord has done.
That might not come in three days.
That might not come in a year.
That could take decades to say, look what the Lord has done.
But I can't testify that those acres of ash, I can say, look what the Lord has done.
Now there's other stories, other storylines of my own, and those of participated in it.
I know of yours.
I just put them in the list of questions that I'm going to have for God.
Because I'm not quite at the point where I can say, look what the Lord has done.
See, we're a people where we receive restoration here on earth, but we're also a people who know that full restoration comes in heaven, where all the sad things become untrue.
And this is a way to say this providence that we see unfolding in Paul's life so clearly in this narrative.
For Paul, it wouldn't have felt like this.
He didn't get to read two or three chapters and all of a sudden know it all, right?
He's experiencing this as being in prison for years and being shipped off.
I mean a horrible, horrible tragedy.
And yet, his story is unfolding.
God's sovereignty does not always give us certainty.
I used to think it would.
I used to want God's sovereignty to be the equation by which I didn't have to kind of worry about a whole bunch of stuff anymore.
It doesn't do that.
It actually can create a whole bunch of mystery.
But it always gives us personal loving God who's with us.
It gives us a heavenly father who knows you and is with you.
So you may not have the certainty, but you will have the present Father.
Now you know I'm a national park nerd, so here's the park in 1987.
It's a satellite image.
I'm sure this is what you're doing yesterday, looking at satellite images of national parks.
This is a satellite image of uh Yellowstone National Park.
This is Lake Yellowstone, the big lake there in the middle, in 1987, a year before that burn.
Now, here is in 1988, right after the burn.
That is in the red, that's all that burned, all the forests that burned.
And then this image here is five years ago, 30 years after the burn.
Healed and healing.
Now, when all you're looking at is burn and ash, how did I get here?
How are we here?
Why is it still like that?
That's hard.
But your story's not over.
We are healed and we are healing.
And God is restoring.
And all of that ash will turn again to beauty.
Here's an image here.
This is standing at Artist Point looking at Yellowstone Falls.
And if you ever get to stand there, you'll be about 10,000 other Americans there standing looking.
That's what the images never show you.
Like right behind whoever took this picture, I took it off the internet.
Like just behind them are 10,000 other people all looking at the same beautiful waterfall.
But you do have the question.
The question that will have to come to you as you are at Artist Point is who is the artist?
Is it this handful of people that are gonna be beside you and they're painting these lovely little pictures?
Are they the artist?
Or is the creator of that which we gaze upon, the creator of that which we receive?
The artist.
Who is telling your story?
And if it's not you, but if you are receiving within the story God's unfolding in your life, you're free.
You won't always be certain, but you will be free.
That God is for you and with you.
As the catechism says, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.
Let's pray together.
Abba Father, it is today that we need an Abba Father.
Many of us have had wonderful fathers, reflections of your fatherly care for us.
Some of us have had fathers that they could have been better.
And some of us have fathers who they were not good at all.
And help us to know you as a heavenly father.
It's a mystery why you do not alleviate pain.
And yet in your sovereignty we know you're with us.
And when we cannot place faith in a story that we see securely, help us to have faith and trust in your care for us, your character as a heavenly father who cares for his children.
Would you give a give us a greater confidence that you know us and you love us?
And that you are at work in our lives.
We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.