SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Sermons from the Way Church KC, a community of listening saints in Kansas City, following the way of Jesus and pushing back darkness together.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning, church.
SPEAKER_00: All right, if you are able to stand for the reading of the word, we are in Acts today.
SPEAKER_00: Acts 22, starting at verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: Up to this word they listened to them to him.
SPEAKER_00: Then they raised their voices and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live.
SPEAKER_00: And as they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, the tribune ordered him to be brought into the barricades or barracks, saying that he should be examined by flogging, to find out why they were shouting against him like this.
SPEAKER_00: But when they had him stretched out for the whips, Paul said to the to the centurion who was standing by, Is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a Roman citizen and uncondemned?
SPEAKER_00: When the centurion heard this, he went to the tribune and said to him, What are you about to do?
SPEAKER_00: For this man is a Roman citizen.
SPEAKER_00: So the tribune came and said to him, Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Yes.
SPEAKER_00: The tribune answered, I bought this citizenship for a large sum.
SPEAKER_00: Paul said, But I am a citizen by birth.
SPEAKER_00: So those who were about to examine him withdrew from him immediately.
SPEAKER_00: And the tribune also was afraid, for he realized that Paul was a Roman citizen and that he had bound him.
SPEAKER_00: But on the next day, desiring to know the real reason why he was being accused by the Jews, he unbound him and condemned and commanded the chief priest and all the council to meet, and he brought Paul down and set him before them.
SPEAKER_00: And looking intently at the council, Paul said, Brothers, I have lived my life before God in all good conscience up to this day.
SPEAKER_00: And the high priest Aeneas commanded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Then Paul said, God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall.
SPEAKER_00: Are you sitting to judge me according to the law?
SPEAKER_00: And yet, contrary to the law, you order me to be struck?
SPEAKER_00: Those who stood by said, Would you revile God's high priest?
SPEAKER_00: And Paul said, I did not know, brothers, that he was the high priest, for it is written, You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.
SPEAKER_00: Now when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Brothers, I am a Pharisee, son of Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.
SPEAKER_00: And when he had said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and they assembled, and the assembly was divided.
SPEAKER_00: For the Sadducees said that there is no resurrection, nor angel nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledged them all.
SPEAKER_00: Then a great clamor arose, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees' party stood up and contended sharply.
SPEAKER_00: What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?
SPEAKER_00: And when the dissension became violent, the tribune, afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him away from among them by force and bring him into the barracks.
SPEAKER_00: The following night the Lord stood by him and said, Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of God.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Alright, so let's jump right into the text.
SPEAKER_02: Like I said, we got a lot of ground to cover.
SPEAKER_02: We are going to be sending someone out on a mission trip at the end of service, and we also have a baptism to celebrate.
SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna get right to the text today.
SPEAKER_02: Sound good?
SPEAKER_02: Alright.
SPEAKER_02: So, who here has ever walked through something difficult?
SPEAKER_02: Most of us here, all of us here.
SPEAKER_02: Um I think for all of us here today who have walked through something difficult, which I would venture to say is all of us, we we've heard something similar to these phrases.
SPEAKER_02: Stay strong.
SPEAKER_02: You've got this.
SPEAKER_02: Just keep going.
SPEAKER_02: Just pick yourself up by the bootstraps and just keep going.
SPEAKER_02: You know that those those words that are meant to be encouraging, but it's like in the moment you're full of fear and anxiety and not knowing what comes.
SPEAKER_02: And the thing is, usually it comes from people who love you, right?
SPEAKER_02: Um and maybe they say it in the doorway, on their way out of your house, or at the end of a phone call that they're, you know, trying to encourage you.
SPEAKER_02: Um maybe it's in the group chat, like, hey Jeremy, just keep going, it's all gonna work out, and then they throw a little hard emoji on it, you know?
SPEAKER_02: Um or maybe it's somebody grabs your shoulder on their way past, right here in the sanctuary, and they say, Hey, just be strong.
SPEAKER_02: And they they mean every word of it, right?
SPEAKER_02: But here's the thing.
SPEAKER_02: Oftentimes, these words, these platitudes, if you will, they simply don't work.
SPEAKER_02: And I think we we could say, and it wouldn't be a stretch, we could say that not one time in the history of the world has a frightened person heard be strong and thought, you know what, like that's a good idea.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna I'm gonna be strong now.
SPEAKER_02: No, like that's not usually how it works.
SPEAKER_02: Because courage, I do not believe, is a thing that you can just hand yourself.
SPEAKER_02: I don't believe that it's a decision that you like consciously make.
SPEAKER_02: If it were, in all likelihood, you would have made it already.
SPEAKER_02: You've had made it the first time that you sat down and someone told yourself and you told yourself to get it together.
SPEAKER_02: And that's what we see in today's text.
SPEAKER_02: So this morning, we're gonna watch a man get told to take courage in the worst 24 hours of his life while in custody, after two separate crowds had tried to hill to kill him, and it works.
SPEAKER_02: It actually works.
SPEAKER_02: He's told to take courage and it works, and today what we're gonna see is why it worked.
SPEAKER_02: Why that was different than that family member or a loved one or friend's words that don't seemingly work.
SPEAKER_02: So the question that this sermon today is asking is why?
SPEAKER_02: Why did he get that be strong?
SPEAKER_02: Why did he get that be strong and it worked?
SPEAKER_02: So as we dig into the text, last week I told you how this story ends.
SPEAKER_02: Remember, at the end of the sermon last week, I said that the crowd cuts Paul off at the word Gentiles.
SPEAKER_02: That was the last word of the text that we looked at yesterday.
SPEAKER_02: And then it's Roman soldiers, it's a flogging, and he only escapes by pulling out his citizenship.
SPEAKER_02: And he enters another trial the next day.
SPEAKER_02: And so what I gave you as we close was the overarching plot of today's text.
SPEAKER_02: And what we're gonna do this morning is we're gonna take a trip inside of it.
SPEAKER_02: Because the things that happen in the gaps of the story are the whole point.
SPEAKER_02: Here's where we are.
SPEAKER_02: Paul, he has come back to Jerusalem, he has been recognized in the temple, he's been dragged out, he's been beaten, and he's been rescued by Roman soldiers who chained him, mostly to get the mob off of him.
SPEAKER_02: And then on the steps of the Antonia fortress, the barracks tower, built right onto the corner of the temple complex with stairways designed exactly for this kind of riot that's going on.
SPEAKER_02: He asked for the floor, he asked to have his say, and he got it.
SPEAKER_02: And what he did last week, remember, is he gave them his testimony.
SPEAKER_02: He's talking about what the risen Christ has done in his life, how the risen Christ had taken him from Paul, the killer of Saul, the killer of the Christians, to Paul, the missionary to the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_02: That is what he shared with them.
SPEAKER_02: And it's remarkable because they listened.
SPEAKER_02: They actually listened.
SPEAKER_02: That's the remarkable part.
SPEAKER_02: They listened to all of it until the one word that we ended last week's sermon with in Acts 22, verse 21, the word Gentiles.
SPEAKER_02: And then we get to today's text in Acts 22, verse 22, and everything this morning starts there.
SPEAKER_02: And what follows is Paul in front of two different courts in two days, one a mob, one the Supreme Court of his own people, and then we see a third scene at night with nobody else in the room.
SPEAKER_02: And Luke, he's gonna spend four chapters on these trials, which tells you that Luke thinks something is happening in the courtrooms that matters more than whether or not Paul wins.
SPEAKER_02: So here's our big idea this morning.
SPEAKER_02: Our big idea is this that courage is something the risen Christ hands you when he stands in the room and tells you he isn't finished with you yet.
SPEAKER_02: Courage is something that the risen Christ hands you when he stands in the room and tells you he isn't finished with you yet.
SPEAKER_02: So, with that, there's three movements that we're gonna look at today.
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna first see two passports and one loyalty.
SPEAKER_02: Secondly, we're gonna name, we're just gonna see Paul name the real thing on trial.
SPEAKER_02: And third, we're gonna meet and see the one who stands in the room.
SPEAKER_02: And that will make sense by the end of this morning.
SPEAKER_02: I'll pray and then let's dig into the text.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, we love you.
SPEAKER_02: We praise you, we thank you for bringing us here today.
SPEAKER_02: We thank you for all that you're doing in this place, in this house.
SPEAKER_02: And so I ask that you continue to move, Lord.
SPEAKER_02: I ask that we would feel encouraged from the baptism today, that we would be uh spurred deeper on into relationship with you and to go out and live since as a result of sending out one of our own.
SPEAKER_02: And Lord, I ask that your word would wash over us, that you would uh cut deep into our hearts as we dig deep into your word.
SPEAKER_02: We love you, Lord.
SPEAKER_02: We praise you.
SPEAKER_02: It's in the mighty name of Jesus, I pray.
SPEAKER_02: And all God's people said, Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: So point one this morning is two passports, one loyalty.
SPEAKER_02: Two passports, one loyalty.
SPEAKER_02: Acts chapter twenty-two, verse twenty-two, the word of God says, Up to this word they listened to to him.
SPEAKER_02: Then they raised their voices and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live.
SPEAKER_02: And as they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, the tribune ordered him to be brought into the barracks, saying that he should be examined by flogging, to find out why they were shouting against him like this.
SPEAKER_02: But when they had stretched him out for the whips, Paul said to the centurion, who was standing by, Is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a Roman citizen and uncondemned?
SPEAKER_02: When the centurion heard this, he went to the tribune and said to him, What are you about to do?
SPEAKER_02: For this man is a Roman citizen.
SPEAKER_02: So the tribune came and said to him, Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?
SPEAKER_02: And he said, Yes.
SPEAKER_02: The tribune answered, I bought this citizenship for a large sum.
SPEAKER_02: Paul said, But I am a citizen by birth.
SPEAKER_02: So those who were about to examine him withdrew from him immediately.
SPEAKER_02: And the tribune also was afraid, for he realized that Paul was a Roman citizen and that he had bound him.
SPEAKER_02: So first what we see off the rip is how the crowd reacts to Paul saying the word Gentiles.
SPEAKER_02: And they're mad, mad, right?
SPEAKER_02: They're not just like, hey, a little frustrated, and all like they're mad.
SPEAKER_02: They are angry, they're fuming.
SPEAKER_02: I said, away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should be not allowed to live.
SPEAKER_02: That's a pretty wild thing to say, right?
SPEAKER_02: Then we look at verse 23 and we see just how angry they are.
SPEAKER_02: Luke gives us the crowd in three details here, and every one of them is seemingly a body that's out of control.
SPEAKER_02: He says that they are shouting, that they are throwing off their cloaks, and that they are flinging dirt into the air.
SPEAKER_02: And that is a room that is so enraged that it stopped being able to hear.
SPEAKER_02: You know, you know that point when you are so angry that you can't even hear any sense that's being talked to you?
SPEAKER_02: Like that's what's going on.
SPEAKER_02: And the commander over all this, he looks at all of it and he comes to a conclusion.
SPEAKER_02: And it's the wrong one.
SPEAKER_02: He can't understand a word of what Paul preached last, what we looked at last week previously in the text, when he shared his testimony.
SPEAKER_02: The speech was in Aramaic.
SPEAKER_02: And so all that the commander sees is a riot with a man at the center of it.
SPEAKER_02: So he does what the system does.
SPEAKER_02: He takes him inside and he gets ready to beat a confession out of him.
SPEAKER_02: And I want you to see verse 25 exactly as it happened, and exactly as it's written.
SPEAKER_02: They've already stretched Paul out.
SPEAKER_02: The straps are on, and so this isn't a hypothetical about to get flocked.
SPEAKER_02: No, like he is about to get beaten.
SPEAKER_02: And Paul, tied to a post, he turns his head to the officer, standing next to him, and he asks a question.
SPEAKER_02: Not, please, not, hey, stop, you can't do this to me.
SPEAKER_02: A question.
SPEAKER_02: Is it lawful?
SPEAKER_02: A chain of Roman laws going back centuries, reaffirmed under Augustus, made it illegal to scourge or torture a Roman citizen who hadn't been convicted of anything.
SPEAKER_02: Paul had not yet been convicted of anything.
SPEAKER_02: And you know what tells us that Paul is right?
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's verse 29.
SPEAKER_02: The commander was afraid.
SPEAKER_02: That's our evidence that Paul was correct.
SPEAKER_02: The man in charge of 600 soldiers is suddenly scared of the prisoner that's tied to the post.
SPEAKER_02: Because the prisoner has a status that the commander had just violated.
SPEAKER_02: Now watch verse 28, what happens here, because this is the detail that the author Luke wants you to sit with.
SPEAKER_02: The tribune says essentially, do you have any idea what this cost me, what this Roman citizenship cost me?
SPEAKER_02: So he says, I bought this citizenship for a large sum.
SPEAKER_02: So this commander, he purchased his way in.
SPEAKER_02: And Paul, he says four words that reorder the entire room.
SPEAKER_02: I'm a citizen by birth.
SPEAKER_02: He's a citizen by birth.
SPEAKER_02: He was born a citizen of Rome.
SPEAKER_02: So the commander, he he outranks Paul in that room, but Paul outranks the commander in legal documentation.
SPEAKER_02: And so the difference between them is not effort or money, it's birth.
SPEAKER_02: And so here's what I don't want us to miss.
SPEAKER_02: Two chapters ago, Paul was in the temple paying for other men's sacrifices.
SPEAKER_02: He was laying down his freedom, absorbing the cost that he didn't owe to keep peace with people who suspected him.
SPEAKER_02: And now he's standing on his rights, on the fact that he's a Roman citizen, and he's refusing to be touched.
SPEAKER_02: So we might ask, is that inconsistent of Paul?
SPEAKER_02: And I would just say no, it's not.
SPEAKER_02: Because the question was not what am I owed?
SPEAKER_02: The question was always, what serves the gospel and protects the church right now?
SPEAKER_02: That's the heart posture that Paul had.
SPEAKER_02: So so let's look at this plainly.
SPEAKER_02: I want you to hear this because I think some of us may have have been taught otherwise at some point in time.
SPEAKER_02: It's not unspiritual to use the protections that you actually have.
SPEAKER_02: Faith is not synonymous with passivity.
SPEAKER_02: Paul, he surrenders the outcome to God and he still makes every single argument.
SPEAKER_02: He files every single appeal, and he produces every single document.
SPEAKER_02: So trusting God has never once meant refusing to speak up when something is wrong.
SPEAKER_02: Paul is always willing and down to speak up when something is wrong.
SPEAKER_02: Paul is a Jew.
SPEAKER_02: Paul is a Roman.
SPEAKER_02: But the key part of this is that's not Paul's primary citizenship.
SPEAKER_02: Paul belongs to Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: That's what he believes in his heart of heart, and that's why he can say, Hey, I'm giving up my freedom in one sentence and I'm utilizing it in the next.
SPEAKER_02: Because Paul knows who he belongs to, and that's Jesus Christ, and it's because he knows he belongs to Jesus Christ that his mission, his heart, is to spread the gospel, and the Lord's gonna take him to Rome, and that's pretty wild.
SPEAKER_02: So we see Paul, he has three identities Jew, Roman, Christ follower.
SPEAKER_02: Only one of those three is ultimate.
SPEAKER_02: Only one of those three will last forever.
SPEAKER_02: Um, Charles Spurgeon, he puts it this way.
SPEAKER_02: Spurgeon puts it this way in a little devotional that he wrote.
SPEAKER_02: He said, When tempted to sin, reply, I cannot do this great wickedness, for I am Christ's.
SPEAKER_02: What he's saying is your identity as a Christ follower, saying, I am Christ's, is what our holiness flows out of.
SPEAKER_02: That is our argument for holiness.
SPEAKER_02: Simply, we are Christ's.
SPEAKER_02: We belong to him.
SPEAKER_02: So Spurgeon, he reached for Paul's exact sentence to make this point.
SPEAKER_02: I am a Roman, protected Paul's back on one afternoon, thousands of years ago.
SPEAKER_02: But Rome, as it was in the time of the Bible, is gone.
SPEAKER_02: There's only one identity that outlived the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_02: The identity of I am Christ's.
SPEAKER_02: That is the identity that we still live into today.
SPEAKER_02: And we didn't buy it either.
SPEAKER_02: No, we were purchased.
SPEAKER_02: Christ purchased us.
SPEAKER_02: You were born into it.
SPEAKER_02: Not the first time you were born, right?
SPEAKER_02: But the second time when you were reborn into Christ.
SPEAKER_02: What we next see as we continue on in the text is point number two name the real thing on trial.
SPEAKER_02: Name the real thing on trial.
SPEAKER_02: Acts twenty two, verse thirty through twenty-three ten reads, But on the next day, desiring to know the real reason why he was being accused by the Jews, he unbound him, and commanded the chief priests and all the council to meet him.
SPEAKER_02: And he brought Paul down and set him before them.
SPEAKER_02: And looking intently at the council, Paul said, Brothers, I have lived my life before God in all good conscience up to this day.
SPEAKER_02: And the high priest Ananias commanded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth.
SPEAKER_02: Then Paul said to him, God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall.
SPEAKER_02: Are you sitting to judge me according to the law, and yet contrary to the law you order me to be struck?
SPEAKER_02: Those who stood by said, Would you revile God's high priest?
SPEAKER_02: And Paul said, I did not know, brothers, that he was the high priest.
SPEAKER_02: For it is written, You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.
SPEAKER_02: Now when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees, it is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.
SPEAKER_02: And when he had said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided.
SPEAKER_02: For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel nor spirit.
SPEAKER_02: But the Pharisees acknowledged them all.
SPEAKER_02: Then a great clamor arose, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees' party stood up and contended sharply.
SPEAKER_02: We find nothing wrong in this man.
SPEAKER_02: What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?
SPEAKER_02: And when the dissension became Violence, the tribune, afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him away from among them by force and bring him into the barracks.
SPEAKER_02: So, one quick note so that none of us get lost here.
SPEAKER_02: This is a different Ananias that we're talking about.
SPEAKER_02: This isn't the Ananias that we've met previously in Acts, the devout, respected believer who walked into a room with Saul and said, Brother Saul, this is a different Ananias, so that's important to note.
SPEAKER_02: That Ananias was a good man.
SPEAKER_02: It was a beautiful moment.
SPEAKER_02: This is not him.
SPEAKER_02: This Ananias is the high priest of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_02: And the first thing he does is order Paul punched in the mouth.
SPEAKER_02: So opposite men, if you will.
SPEAKER_02: One welcomes an enemy as Christ compelled him to, the other assaults a brother.
SPEAKER_02: So Paul, though, he opens with one sentence here.
SPEAKER_02: I've lived my life before God, in all good conscience, up to this day.
SPEAKER_02: And then whap, they hit him for it.
SPEAKER_02: Now, a clear conscience, it's not the same thing as being innocent.
SPEAKER_02: Paul is not saying, hey, I've never done anything wrong.
SPEAKER_02: Paul knew better than anybody in the building that he had some stuff in his past.
SPEAKER_02: He had spent years hunting Christians with a conscience that never once bothered him.
SPEAKER_02: And so what he's claiming here is not sinlessness.
SPEAKER_02: He's claiming that he hasn't been playing a double game, he's not living a double life, and that's exactly what he then accuses the high priest of.
SPEAKER_02: He says, You whitewashed wall.
SPEAKER_02: And so that's a picture straight out of Ezekiel, a flimsy, badly built wall that somebody painted over so it looks solid.
SPEAKER_02: Back in 2020, when we were, Chelsea and I were uh moving up here buying a house, um, our our realtor he referred to a house we looked at as putting lipstick on a pig.
SPEAKER_02: So that's maybe a modern example of what Paul's saying.
SPEAKER_02: It's like, hey, this is gonna fall down, or this isn't actually looking good, but there's some paint on the outside to make it a little better.
SPEAKER_02: So that's what he's saying.
SPEAKER_02: It won't hold up.
SPEAKER_02: Paul, he then names the hypocrisy with surgical precision.
SPEAKER_02: He says, You're sitting there to judge me by the law, and you just broke the law in order to do it.
SPEAKER_02: And so maybe you're sitting here thinking, like, hey, wait, wait, wait.
SPEAKER_02: Is Paul allowed to do that?
SPEAKER_02: Jesus was silent at his trial, right?
SPEAKER_02: Jesus said to turn the other cheek.
SPEAKER_02: But taught Paul, he turns around and boom, fires back with some words.
SPEAKER_02: So two things for us here.
SPEAKER_02: First, Jesus is the only perfect one.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Paul is not the standard.
SPEAKER_02: Paul's not the standard, Jesus is.
SPEAKER_02: But secondly, Luke gives us no hints in the text at all that Paul sinned here.
SPEAKER_02: Notice what Paul does not do, he doesn't hit back, he hands the judgment to God.
SPEAKER_02: And he quotes the very law that these men are breaking.
SPEAKER_02: And that's the same posture that we should have.
SPEAKER_02: The judgment is up to God.
SPEAKER_02: God is the judge.
SPEAKER_02: We are not.
SPEAKER_02: We leave that to God.
SPEAKER_02: And in fact, Jesus, he actually called all religious leaders whitewashed tombs.
SPEAKER_02: So there is such a thing as a righteous, sharp word in the face of corruption, dressed up as holiness.
SPEAKER_02: So not every rebuke is a loss of temper.
SPEAKER_02: Then we get to verse 6, and this is a move that turns the whole book.
SPEAKER_02: Paul, he identifies that the room in front of him is made up of two parties, the Sadducees and the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_02: The Sadducees are the wealthy, temple connected ones, and they don't believe in the resurrection in angels or in spirits.
SPEAKER_02: And then the Pharisees, they are popular and they believe all three.
SPEAKER_02: And Paul says that this trial, the trial that he is undergoing, is about the resurrection of the dead.
SPEAKER_02: Now we we could read that as a clever tactic to split the jury, if you will.
SPEAKER_02: Split the jury and survive the day.
SPEAKER_02: But listen, he never stopped saying it.
SPEAKER_02: That's like Paul's whole message throughout the book of Acts, throughout the letters that he writes to the churches.
SPEAKER_02: Standing in front of Governor Felix, he says it twice in the same speech.
SPEAKER_02: And that is what I'm on trial for.
SPEAKER_02: Before King Agrippa.
SPEAKER_02: Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?
SPEAKER_02: And at the very end of the book of Acts, in chains in Rome, little spoiler alert, Paul says, It is because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain.
SPEAKER_02: So here's my favorite proof of this being Paul's message that he's proclaiming.
SPEAKER_02: Two chapters from now, the Roman governor Festus has to brief King Agrippa on the case.
SPEAKER_02: And he has no idea what any of it means, right?
SPEAKER_02: He sums up the entire thing in one kind of offhand sentence.
SPEAKER_02: He says that it's a dispute about a certain Jesus who was dead, but whom Paul asserts to be alive.
SPEAKER_02: So even the pagan Roman bureaucrat, even his one-line version of Christianity, is the resurrection.
SPEAKER_02: Paul, he made it impossible to describe the case any other way.
SPEAKER_02: And the same is true for us today, family.
SPEAKER_02: There's nothing new under the sun.
SPEAKER_02: The entirety of our Christian faith rises and falls on the resurrection.
SPEAKER_02: I've shared about this before, but I have a dear friend, a guy that I've walked through in some life that's been completely lost in addiction, who's now no longer walking in that, but he still does not yet believe in Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And what he's told me, the reason that this brother does not yet follow Jesus is because he just cannot believe in the resurrection.
SPEAKER_02: Everything within the Christian faith hinges on the resurrection of Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: The objection that people give you or give us is not usually the actual objection that they have.
SPEAKER_02: You know, maybe as you're talking about your Christian faith to somebody, it comes out as politics.
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe it's, oh, well, I'm just not following Jesus because of the hypocrisy in the church.
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe it's something that somebody's uncle, their crazy uncle, said back in 1997.
SPEAKER_02: I was five years old at the time.
SPEAKER_02: I guess I'm crazy uncles.
SPEAKER_02: All of that may be worth a real conversation, right?
SPEAKER_02: But underneath it is the one claim that nobody knows where to file.
SPEAKER_02: A man was dead, and he got up and he walked out of the grave.
SPEAKER_02: That is the single most important claim of Christianity.
SPEAKER_02: You see, everything within the Christian faith hinges upon this detail.
SPEAKER_02: If Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead, then we can just go ahead and pack up.
SPEAKER_02: We ain't got to do a baptism today.
SPEAKER_02: We can just pack up and head home.
SPEAKER_02: But if Christ did rise from the grave, and I believe that he did, then that changes everything.
SPEAKER_02: Because, hear this: what it means is that he died for you.
SPEAKER_02: If Jesus rose from the grave, and he did, that means he died for you.
SPEAKER_02: He died so that your sins could be forgiven.
SPEAKER_02: And I believe that with every fiber of my being.
SPEAKER_02: And that I think is is what the Apostle Paul is telling us.
SPEAKER_02: That's the thing that splits rooms in half.
SPEAKER_02: Not because it's offensive, it is, though, but because it is decisive.
SPEAKER_02: It is a statement, it is a something that you must make a decision about.
SPEAKER_02: Either Christ is everything or he's nothing.
SPEAKER_02: And if he's everything, we better start acting like it.
SPEAKER_02: So Paul, he understood that.
SPEAKER_02: My question for you this morning, brothers and sisters, is do you?
SPEAKER_02: Last point, just one verse that we're looking at is point three.
SPEAKER_02: The one who stands in the room.
SPEAKER_02: The one who stands in the room, Acts 23, verse 11, the last verse we'll look at today.
SPEAKER_02: The following night the Lord stood by him and said, Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.
SPEAKER_02: One verse.
SPEAKER_02: Everything has been leading here.
SPEAKER_02: Let's set the scene.
SPEAKER_02: Paul, he is in custody.
SPEAKER_02: In the past two days, two separate crowds have tried to kill him, and the second one was the highest court of his own people.
SPEAKER_02: The institution that was supposed to be the guardian of everything that he'd given his life to.
SPEAKER_02: So he came to Jerusalem to serve these very people.
SPEAKER_02: He's been beaten, he's been tied up, he's been punched in the mouth and nearly torn apart.
SPEAKER_02: And now the building is quiet.
SPEAKER_02: And he is by himself with all of it.
SPEAKER_02: Some of you know what that's like.
SPEAKER_02: Like you're, it's the time, it's been a crazy day, and now you're alone with your own thoughts and your own prayers, and it's just you and the spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: It's eerie silent.
SPEAKER_02: And maybe it's unbearable for you, maybe it's not.
SPEAKER_02: I think Paul was probably very in tune with the spirit, so it wasn't unbearable for him.
SPEAKER_02: He was, my guess is he was probably in a great amount of peace in this moment.
SPEAKER_02: But there's a little detail here that I think assures us of that.
SPEAKER_02: And I think if we're not careful, we'll skip right over it.
SPEAKER_02: Like maybe if you were reading Acts 23 in your quiet time, you just gloss right over this.
SPEAKER_02: And it's this little phrase The Lord stood by him.
SPEAKER_02: The Lord stood by him.
SPEAKER_02: Now, let's notice very carefully what the Lord Jesus does not do here.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't open the door.
SPEAKER_02: He does not clear Paul's name.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't send an earthquake so that Paul can get out of this prison.
SPEAKER_02: He's done that before, right?
SPEAKER_02: But that's not what he does in this moment.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't strike the high priest down or fix the court or scatter the mob.
SPEAKER_02: He does none of that.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't say, he doesn't even say, no one will harm you.
SPEAKER_02: He said that once before, and his promise was true in that moment.
SPEAKER_02: Years earlier in Corinth, he said that to Paul on a hard night.
SPEAKER_02: But he does not say it here.
SPEAKER_02: He does not promise safety to Paul.
SPEAKER_02: Because the reality is safety isn't coming.
SPEAKER_02: From this night, it's the last verse of Acts.
SPEAKER_02: Paul, he'll never walk free again.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus doesn't get him out.
SPEAKER_02: But what Jesus does is Jesus stands in the room.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus stands in the room.
SPEAKER_02: You've been there when somebody you love is in a hospital bed.
SPEAKER_02: There's a moment where everyone runs out of things to say.
SPEAKER_02: The doctors have told you what they know.
SPEAKER_02: The family has said those encouraging things.
SPEAKER_02: Be strong.
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be okay.
SPEAKER_02: And what's left in that room is you and your prayers.
SPEAKER_02: Nobody often remembers what gets said when you're sitting in that chair.
SPEAKER_02: But everyone who rememb remembers who was there in that moment, right?
SPEAKER_02: Because presence is the one thing that doesn't require the situation to improve first.
SPEAKER_02: Is that fair?
SPEAKER_02: It's a ministry of presence that we're talking about.
SPEAKER_02: And if you are in Christ as the Apostle Paul was, then you can rest in knowing that you have the presence of the risen Christ with you.
SPEAKER_02: He stands in the room with you, if you will.
SPEAKER_02: And then to the Apostle Paul, he speaks.
SPEAKER_02: It's one word in Greek.
SPEAKER_02: We need two to say it.
SPEAKER_02: He says, take courage.
SPEAKER_02: Take courage.
SPEAKER_02: The word actually shows up seven times in the whole New Testament, and almost every single time, it's on the lips of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus says it to a paralyzed man who is still at that moment paralyzed.
SPEAKER_02: He says it to the disciples in a boat, in a storm that's still blowing.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus said it the night before he went to the cross, he said, Take heart, I have overcome the world.
SPEAKER_02: That take heart is the same word, Greek word used for take courage here that he says to Paul.
SPEAKER_02: And so here's what that tells us.
SPEAKER_02: Nobody in the Bible ever says it to themselves, it always comes from the outside, and it primarily comes through Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: So what should that show us?
SPEAKER_02: Like the the well, let's look at the reason that's attacked, attached to it.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus says, take courage for.
SPEAKER_02: So the courage isn't grounded in things getting better.
SPEAKER_02: It's grounded in this.
SPEAKER_02: You've testified about me here, and you must testify about me in Rome.
SPEAKER_02: So the word must, it's God's settled purpose.
SPEAKER_02: Paul is to go to Rome and testify.
SPEAKER_02: The same things he's been proclaiming.
SPEAKER_02: That is the promise.
SPEAKER_02: Paul, you were not finished.
SPEAKER_02: That's what Jesus is saying.
SPEAKER_02: And then there's a chapter after this one, and he's saying, like, hey, I already know how the story ends.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm sending you to the capital of the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_02: So this, what this is, is a promise from the one standing in the room, who is Jesus, about a future that doesn't depend on Paul, but that solely depends on Christ.
SPEAKER_02: So Sam, you can come up and begin to close us.
SPEAKER_02: Let's bring it home, and then we'll end with a few celebrations.
SPEAKER_02: Some of you came in here this morning having prayed for months that God would change a situation.
SPEAKER_02: And He just hasn't yet.
SPEAKER_02: Anybody been there?
SPEAKER_02: I know I have.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's the difficult circumstance just won't change.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's that the marriage hasn't turned around.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe the phone call you've been waiting on hasn't come.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe the diagnosis that the doctor has given is still the diagnosis.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe the job didn't work out.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe the interview didn't go well.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe the court date's still on the calendar and it's coming up.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's what I've been hit so hard with this week, if I can just be honest, is um just the fragility of life, right?
SPEAKER_02: And watching family members have to walk with somebody who they just lost.
SPEAKER_02: I have a friend in Wichita who passed away in a horrific, tragic car accident last week.
SPEAKER_02: And he knew Christ, so we know where he is, but it's like this girl who I went to high school with, who I graduated with, how is she to continue walking with Jesus when her brother just passed away?
SPEAKER_02: You know, and the the rest of the family, the mom, the dad, like life is fragile.
SPEAKER_02: Things often don't go.
SPEAKER_02: You think they didn't want things to go that way, right?
SPEAKER_02: They wanted more years with their brother.
SPEAKER_02: They were praying the opposite of what happened.
SPEAKER_02: And my guess is for them, and I think for us at different times, somewhere along the way, you can start to wonder whether God is even paying attention.
SPEAKER_02: Because if he were, surely something would have changed, something would have moved by now.
SPEAKER_02: Well, I think that this passage is for that.
SPEAKER_02: This passage is honest with us.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes he doesn't move it, sometimes he doesn't change the circumstances.
SPEAKER_02: Paul, he asked for a lot of things in his life.
SPEAKER_02: But a way out of this circumstance never came.
SPEAKER_02: But look at what he got.
SPEAKER_02: What Paul got was the risen Christ standing in the room at night saying, Take courage, I'm not finished with you.
SPEAKER_02: And that was enough to get a man from the barracks in Jerusalem all the way to Rome with the gospel on his lips.
SPEAKER_02: That's the truth for us today.
SPEAKER_02: Take courage.
SPEAKER_02: For the Lord Jesus is not done with you.
SPEAKER_02: So if you you are a follower of the way of Jesus this morning and you're exhausted, stop trying to manufacture the courage.
SPEAKER_02: You're not going to get it that way.
SPEAKER_02: Nobody ever has.
SPEAKER_02: Ask him for the courage.
SPEAKER_02: Ask him to stand in the room with you.
SPEAKER_02: And then go do the next hard, ordinary, faithful thing because he didn't finish with you either.
SPEAKER_02: And if you're not sure where you stand with Christ today, if that's you, maybe you came here this morning and you've been carrying a verdict on yourself for a long time.
SPEAKER_02: You've read the evidence against yourself, and you agree with it, hear this.
SPEAKER_02: Every court in this passage got it wrong.
SPEAKER_02: The mob got it wrong, the high priest got it wrong, the council tore itself apart and never reached a verdict at all.
SPEAKER_02: The only verdict that counts on your life was handed down by a man who came back from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: And that man is Christ.
SPEAKER_02: And that man died and rose again for you.
SPEAKER_02: And that man, Jesus, he looked at people exactly like you and like me.
SPEAKER_02: People with real things in their past.
SPEAKER_02: And he said, That person is mine.
SPEAKER_02: Come home.
SPEAKER_02: You don't got to clean yourself up first.
SPEAKER_02: You come.
SPEAKER_02: And that's how every one of us got here.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening.
SPEAKER_01: Join us Sundays at 10 30 a.m.
SPEAKER_01: in the Rosedale neighborhood of Kansas City.
SPEAKER_01: Or find us anytime at the wakeac.church.