Acts 26: Paul’s Testimony And The Power Of Suffering

We trace Paul’s testimony from persecutor to preacher and explore how remembering our past fuels empathy without compromise. Stephen’s courage, the spread of the gospel under pressure, and the redemptive purpose of suffering lead us to a clear charge: be ready to share your story with hope.

• Paul’s past used to connect with accusers
• The gospel is unchanging, testimony as a unique vehicle
• Empathy that points to truth, not permission
• Early church persecution and scattering
• Stephen’s Spirit-filled wisdom resisting pressure
• Why costly faith signals real belief
• Suffering as a catalyst for growth
• God’s sovereignty working through pain
• Readiness to speak when prompted
• Prayer and persistence for loved ones

Transcript

Why Personal Testimony Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Anyways, let me read it real fast. I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Verse 10. 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 the foreign cities. Last week we we talked about this, I guess, gospel defense, this gospel speech that Paul is once again giving. And he's doing it before King Agrippa and his cohorts. And we sort of picked up where we left off. But before we dive into the meat of the scripture, I just want to point out something obvious to all of us that will help set all of this up for us. If you are saved or born again or whatever nomenclature you want to use for that, at some point you weren't. Right? If you are saved now, at some point it means you weren't saved. And that looks different for everybody. My salvation experience is different than your salvation experience, what that looks like. Who you were before Christ, who you were before his grace and mercy, is different than who I was before his grace and before his mercy. Do we understand? Thumbs up, get it? Common sense stuff. And this partially ties uh back into a bit of what we talked about last week when when we talked about how the gospel message does not change, but but it can be communicated in unique ways. And sometimes the unique way is your unique life and experience with God. You have a unique story. Uh you you have uh unique struggles uh than maybe I do, and I have different struggles than than you do, and how God met you and how God delivered you, and where you were when God met you is different uh from me and from you, and it's a special story. It's a unique story. It's not just special and unique and incredible because it's maybe poetic or or heroic or something like that, but it's because it's practical, right? How God met you, your unique experience with God provides practical tools for the mission God gives you. First, the the intersection of your sinful life with God's grace, as unique as it might be, will absolutely have similarities with other people that you will come into contact with. It won't be exactly the same, but there'll be enough there for people to say, like, I understand, I like I'm going through that too. Right? They hear your story and they connect with it because they're going through something just like it or incredibly similar to it. And if God transformed you while you are in a situation like they are going through, then maybe that gives them the hope. Maybe it draws them to the reality that God can also help them and deliver them. Second, as we walk through this life, we're gonna brush elbows with all kinds of people. And I simply hope and pray that as we brush elbows with all kinds of people, that we remember who we were before salvation.

unknown 3:43

Right?

Empathy Without Enabling

Testifying To Connect Not Defeat

Jerusalem Roots And Early Church Flashback

Stephen’s Wisdom And Holy Spirit Power

Pressure, Persecution, And Refusal To Recant

The Rationality Of “Irrational” Faith

Suffering That Grows The Church

SPEAKER_00 3:44

You don't gotta glorify who you were before salvation, but you gotta remember who you were before salvation. Your unique story hopefully produces healthy empathy with others. Not an empathy that says, yeah, you're okay, keep doing what you're doing. I understand what you're going through, so you're fine. But a healthy empathy is one that points people to the gospel because you know and you've experienced it, and so you feel for them, but you also know the solution to your feelings, which is what they're feeling, was salvation. I know that was a roundabout way to say, you know, empathy is not just an excuse to let people do whatever they want to do. It points to something, it points to God. And so what we have in our verse that we read today is a glimpse of this process, these two things working out a little bit in Paul's life. And I hope that it inspires us to think about this stuff in our own life. But Paul in the scripture is taking a moment to testify. Raise your hand if you've heard that word before. Testify. Testify, right? We we, you know, in a court setting, somebody is on the stand and they are recounting certain aspects of an event. Paul is testifying to something earlier in his life for a very specific reason. Earlier in his life, he did not look very different, feel very different, or sound very different than the very people who were accusing him of all of these things and trying to basically walk him into prison and/or death. Right? So he's testifying in order to connect with the very people who want to harm him. Paul's been delivered. He's not who he was, but he remembers who he was. He remembers the mindset, he remembers the feelings and the emotions. I want to make sure I frame this correctly, but your past, your sinful life, should not be glorified. It's not something that you are proud of, it's not something that you brag about or that you longingly look back for at. But it is a place where you go to and it serves as a warning for you and for others. You do go back to that place sometimes and you recognize the wisdom God produced from that pain and from those problems that you now have for yourself and for others, and you do look back at that place for a source of empathy with the other people around you that you're dealing with. And if you're like Paul, you spend time reflecting on all of those things so that whenever you were given the chance, like he's given the chance, you can draw attention to God in your testimony about your life to others. Connect with them. Now, for me, my testimony is very simple. I got saved at a VBS whenever I was like five or six years old, and there was a kids' pastor who's my kids' pastor for a long, long time. Matter of fact, he he he I had the same guy in charge of basically all the kids in my church for like 16 years. Him and his wife and his family did it all. And uh just the Holy Spirit made me pay attention as a six-year-old one day. And I I remember this puppet show of all things. And at the end of the puppet show, there was this invitation hey, if you're interested in Jesus, if you're interested in in forgiveness for your sins and being one with God, come come up here and we'll we'll talk to you about it and we'll pray with you. And I did. I think it was me and two other random people in this group of like 50 kids. And I went up there and I just this random moment of clarity as a six-year-old that I still remember because the Holy Spirit was there. But that's my story of salvation. That's not my dad's story of salvation. My dad got saved later in life. He was 26 or 27 years old. So his story of salvation is like an avalanche pushing him over and over again closer and closer to where God needed him to be until one day it was unavoidable and he had to pay attention to what God was trying to do in his life, and he finally accepted God in his life. That was his story. I don't know your story. I don't know your story, and that's okay. But maybe it was a relationship there that God used. Maybe it was a song, maybe it was a work of art, uh a book, a series of events that God used to draw you into salvation, to draw you into himself. Right? Whatever it was, you should probably think about those things. You should probably know those things. You should probably know your story so that you can articulate it for people who might be experiencing something similar to yourself. Again, gospel message doesn't change, but how we communicate it does. Paul is using his very testimony to try to connect with the very people who are attacking him. You have a unique testimony, and you need to know how to share that at the opportune time when God presents those moments. But Paul is not angrily battling those attacking him, he's attempting to connect with them. Scripture tells us we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, which I think is a mistake that we often make. There are things going on in the spiritual realm that makes people who they are. And so the very people who hate us, the very few people that it becomes very easy to view them as the enemy, they're not really our enemy. They just need some help. They're under the influence, as it were, of something that is not God. And the goal is to connect with them, not chase them away. In these early or in these verses we just read, we get a little reminder, a little flashback to the very first parts of early church history that we find in the very beginning of Acts. For review, let me remind you what the timeline in Acts looks like, because it matters for Paul's testimony. For many chapters we have been in in the book of Acts over the past year and a half, we've been working through the book of Acts. Uh, for a while now, we've been in the Mediterranean world. We've left Jerusalem behind. This is the first time we're back in Jerusalem in multiple chapters, but you have to remember the very first part of the book of Acts is all in Jerusalem. Paul's in Jerusalem. The church starts in Jerusalem, and that's that's where everything starts. That's what Paul is talking about here. He's talking about this first kernel of history of church history. Jesus has risen, right? And he's given some final instructions to his followers, and they're in the upper room. The Holy Spirit shows up. Everything changes, and the church grows from the upper room experience. And there is this almost immediate growth alongside almost immediate troubles that we see in the book of Acts. And it all boils over. There's this flashpoint with this basically a food bank organizer and worker named Stephen, who is stoned to death. He's martyred, and Paul is there, by the way. And from that point forward, the church, many of the most influential uh Christians and disciples of Jesus, they're forced to flee Jerusalem. They're forced to get out of there. And we have several miracles that happen out of this spreading out process. This negative thing that is happening in the church turns into a positive thing. But that's where we see glimpses of God do great things in Stephen's life and Philip's life. And that's where we see Paul and his anger chase these Christians, right? He chases the Christians from place to place, and that's how he gets on the road to Damascus, where he has the salvation experience. But Paul's role, he was a young man at the time, by the way. He was there early on. And so, as Paul is talking about trying to make people uh blaspheme and trying to drag them to synagogues and trying to imprison them and trying to hurt them, what we're getting is this flashback to the beginning of Acts. He was there at all this stuff. He's there at Paul's uh at Stephen's death. One random note about all of this, which leads to something we're gonna stay on for a little bit, is that this this thing he says, I tried to make them blaspheme. Paul tries to make them blaspheme, meaning he wants them to get tripped up. He he wants to logically and reasonably using Old Testament, you using Jewish tradition, get them to say something against God. Try to get them to recant, try to get them to admit that they are mistaken in their assumptions about Jesus and this life. And this interesting thing happens, it doesn't actually work. He says he tries to do it. Doesn't say he does do it, he tries. Paul, this brilliant man, he's a brilliant man, tries to make Christians blaspheme and renounce their beliefs, and it doesn't really work. And he's not the only one trying to do this, do this, and yet apparently, even people like Stephen, right? Not uh Peter, James, John, but Stephen, this again, if you go back and look at what his job was, he was selected essentially to lead a food bank. He was not necessarily some pastor or preacher, and yet in Acts chapter 6 it tells us this. And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people. Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the freedmen, as it was called, and the Cyrenians and the Alexandrians, and those from Sicilia and Asia rose up and disputed with Stephen, but they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking, which had to be frustrating. You have people who have spent their entire life studying the Old Testament. They are legal experts, they're physicians, they're the smartest people in society. And here is this food bank worker, and maybe maybe he was more educated than what we know, but as far as I can tell, he's just a normal Christian, and because of the Holy Spirit inside of him, the smartest people around can't contend with him. How frustrating is that? Frustrating you that. And that leads to the next the next point, and just follow along with me for a little bit here as we try to dig into, I guess, the mindset of the Jewish people when it comes to Christians. They sort of kind of decide if we just bully them, it'll fix it. They use political and social pressure, threaten them with banishment, threaten them with imprisonment, threaten them with death, and eventually this Christian problem would go away. And so and so they go to Stephen, who's causing these problems, they drag him into this place, and they say, That's enough. It's enough trouble from you. You do you have something to say? Do you have an apology? Do you have do you have something to recant so that you don't get in more trouble? And Stephen basically says, No, no, I'm not gonna recant. To which they respond, like, what are you talking about? You you've got to recant. Something bad is gonna happen to you. And and Stephen basically says, Okay, fine, I'll say something, hear me out. You are wrong in your assumptions. You are still doing the very same things that you did that led to the death of Jesus. You're still doing the same things. And to which the counsel that he's making the speech to, the crowd he's making the speech to, some of them were there, some of them were responsible for the death of Jesus. They go insane and they kill them. They kill him. And probably in their mind they think, okay, that'll be it. Right? We killed this Jesus, now we killed this Christian. This can't be the norm for them, right? Death is not the norm for these Christians. Of course, we know historically it is the norm. It is the norm. So they they kill Stephen, probably with the expectation that this will finally put the nail in the coffin of this Christianity thing. And they look at all the other little Christians, all his other little Christian friends and little communities around Jerusalem, and they basically say, either stop this madness, return to normal, or you're gonna get out, you're you're gonna be forced out of here. We're gonna punish you, imprison you, kill you, and force you to leave everything you you you know. And what did they do? They they left. They left. What do you mean they left? You mean they left their families? They did. They left their families. They they you mean they left their homes that that that is their essentially their inheritance? Yes, you you mean they left their jobs, they left their wealth, they left their friends, that they left all of these things. Wouldn't it be easier just to recant? Of course it would, but they they left anyways. At which point we get a glimpse of why Paul, in his anger, had to chase these irrational Christians all over the place because they were not being rational. It's not rational to submit yourself to be killed. It's not rational to leave everything that you know and that you love and everything that you've built. It's not rational to leave your family and friends, and so it's irrational. And so Paul is chasing these irrational Christians all over the place, except for the most rational, rational explanation for people to let themselves be killed, for people to have their lives uprooted by choice, is that they must truly believe in what they're saying. It's not just a political movement, it's not just a brand new uh uh uh uh uh Jewish sect, it is something different. They must truly believe in what they're saying, and what they're saying is that this resurrection thing must have really happened. That people must have really seen this Jesus. They must actually believe that somebody was raised from the dead. Because if I'm rational, I'm not dying for a dead man. But they're choosing to die, they're choosing to flee. And that was the reality that this young man Paul was walking in early in the book of Acts. And he must have the memory of that frustration and that anger of his way of life being attacked. He must have that buried deep inside of him, he must remember it. And so he looks at those who are accusing him, looks at them and he says, I understand. I get it. I I am you, I've been you, I I I know who you are. You're not my enemy. You just need to be connected back to the truth, the blinding truth. Not much has changed today, by the way. The people that hate us, the people that want us to disappear, get smaller, find us annoying, who call us bigots, and and all of those things. It's real easy, real, real easy to look at them and respond with the same, to view them as enemies, but they're not our enemies. But they're not. Paul understood it. He didn't hate the Jews, he wanted them saved. We don't hate the atheists, we don't hate the Satanists, we don't hate the Hedonists, we want them saved. So we can't hate them like we hate an enemy. We gotta find ways to connect with them, we've got to find ways to let God use us to change their lives like our lives have been changed, which is quite the challenge, if I'm honest with you. To look at people who purposely want us to not exist and somehow find a way to try to connect with them. And that's where your testimony comes in. Because not all of us grew up in church, not all of us know that. There are people out there who were a Satanist who are now saved. There are people who did leave a live a hedonistic life like my father, and now they they get saved. There are people, there are people who were atheists and now they believe. And so their testimony is this uh perfect glimpse of the gospel in a way that might connect with the very people who don't want us to exist. Let me go back a little bit. I'm almost finished and say this martyrdom and suffering grew the church. Yes, in the book of Acts, we see that the church grew exponentially initially in Jerusalem, but there was always, it seemed like this, and this is just human nature, this desire to stay in the comfortable. Stay in the comfortable. It wasn't until things started getting tough, and many of the early Christians started having the worst moments of their life as they are imprisoned and being threatened with death and being forced away from their homes, that the gospel and the church starts exploding outside of just Jerusalem out of the pain and fear of persecution the church was growing. On a technical level, everything should have been falling apart. Everything should have been falling apart. Every little thing. What are you doing? Oh, he wants to get up here one day and he wants to lead a message. We need lots of good preachers. Smart ones. Smart ones. But practically speaking, if you look at this experience the early church in Acts is having, and uh just a little bit my my background, part of my master's program was leadership development and and basically just examining structures and organizations. I'm looking at the early church and I'm thinking this thing is falling apart.

unknown 21:22

Right?

Personal Stories Of Loss And Hope

Hope In The Midst Of Broken Days

Christ’s Suffering And Our Redemption

Pain With Purpose In God’s Hands

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Everybody's running scared. People are like they're being forced to leave the very place where Jesus walked. Right? Think about what Jesus means to us. And I just think for those who were probably saw Jesus walk and do miracles, as much as we can try to connect with that, we can't necessarily connect with that. And they're having to leave the physical memories of where Jesus was. They're having to leave where he died on the cross, they're having to leave where he was buried, wasn't, but wasn't buried anymore. And then on top of that, they're Jewish, the temple's always going to mean something, and they're having to leave the temple. So they're having to leave all of this stuff. And then on top of that, the the disciples, the 12 disciples, and the leaders of the church, most of them are having to leave. And so the leadership structure is decentralizing, it's all falling apart, and yet this gospel message is exploding because of this. The Holy Spirit's moving, the church is growing in this. Midst of all of this pain. Can I go ahead and tell you something from personal experience? It's impossible to walk through life without suffering. It's impossible. I'm not the most suffering person in the world, but I got some stuff I went through and it was not fun. I know people who went through more. My best friend. My best friend. And thank God it's different now. But my best friend, whenever he was younger, he bounced around from family member and foster care because his dad tried to take him and like the next day decided I didn't want I didn't want him. And his mom was addicted to meth. That was his existence. And yet he still serves God today. So, right, suffering hurts and it's painful, but everybody has suffering of some type. And here's what's also impossible. Not only is it impossible to avoid a life of suffering, it's also impossible to walk through life with suffering and not have it impact at least one of your days. You can be the toughest, most stoic, most solid-minded, rock solid person in existence. And unless something is mentally wrong with you, you're going to have days whenever you feel absolutely shattered and broken. No matter what. No matter what, no matter who you are, you're going to have days that this punch you down. They punch you down. And it can feel absolutely and utterly hopeless. Hopeless. Now sometimes that change. Let me bring some levity to the situation. And this is the reason why I can no longer be a youth pastor. Because whenever I was a teenager, what was a hopeless day was a girl not liking me back. And now, as an adult, that's about the stupidest thing I've ever heard of, okay? And so whenever I was a youth pastor and my little teenagers came to me and I loved them. And some of them came to me and they're like, Pastor Zach, she didn't like me back. She said no. And I towards the end of my time there, I was like, okay, get over it, kid. But the reality is that's suffering, okay? That's suffering for a kid. You only know what you know, and that's their only experience. And so it's real and it's visceral. But every single one of us in here, whether you went through something traumatic or whether you've just dealt with some teenage heartache, we've had those broken and hopeless days. But as a Christian, what does that mean? What does it mean as a Christian to go through suffering? Well, we serve a suffering savior. We serve a God who is crushed for our iniquities. We we serve a savior who on the cross shouted, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He understands hopelessness. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the place oppressing, he was pressed. He was pressed. He didn't want to go through what he was going to go through. He he gets it. And out of his suffering, what was produced? Out of his suffering. Come on, somebody tell me. Out of his suffering, what was produced? Salvation. The existence changing salvation, the forgiveness of our sins, the atonement, that the his blood covering us as a perfect lamb from suffering. From suffering. And I'm not here saying that your suffering will produce on the same level that his does, but I am here to tell you that he set the precedent that suffering is not wasted in the kingdom of God. And so, whatever suffering and pain and hope and disorder that you might be experiencing in your life or that you have experienced in your life, I'm here to tell you as a Christian, the way to respond is not to ignore the pain and suffering. You can ignore that. That's stupid. I used to try to think you can just ignore stuff and brush it under the rug. You can't. You're gonna fill it. But you're gonna fill it with some hope. You're gonna have some nights of tears, but know in the back of your head, joy comes in the morning, and something is gonna happen because of this. And this is coming from someone whenever I was eight years old. My first little crush died in a train accident, of all things, because some bus driver wasn't paying attention. So as eight years old, I get this news from my mom that my first little crush was gone. She wasn't here anymore. Of course, I lost my brother whenever he was just 19, 20 years old. I lost my dad a couple of years ago. He was only 64. And I get out, it's old. I'm not that old. Let me go ahead and tell you, just my testimony from that is that while those things hurt, and it's a very real hurt, the way I experience them, the way I walk through them because of the hope that Jesus gives us through suffering, is radically different than the way the world does it. And we get that wrong too often as Christians. We fall into the same doom and gloom that everybody else does. An election doesn't go our way and we feel like the world's falling apart. But I've got hope beyond an election and a political party and a political system. I don't get the job I wanted. Right? I'm struggling financially. And I fall into the same trap as everybody else. But as a Christian, we got to know that there's something that can be produced in that moment of discomfort that might be good for the kingdom of God. We just don't know. And at your lowest, look around. There's probably other people down there with you, and they might not have the same hope you have. Grab them and connect them with the same hope you have. And when God raises you up, he raises them up. Your suffering, it stinks. But your suffering has potential. You look at Paul's life and you look at his recounting, his testimony, and he's talking about the fact that he is causing strife and suffering for the early church. And just practically speaking, you look at what happens because of what Paul is doing, and the church explodes. And on the way to chasing down Christians who claim to serve the Savior, that Savior finds them on the road that he created, essentially, and draws them out. Can I tell you something? God's in control. God is in control. He's in control. He's not surprised by anything. He can use anything. He's always moving. He's always working. Never give up, never lose hope. God has plans and he loves us and wants to use us in his plans. And that's that's why partly why what we prayed about during our worship experience was on my mind. Because when I say don't lose hope, I'm also saying don't lose hope for the people that you hold dear who aren't connected to God the way they should be. Don't give up on them. Keep praying for them. Keep talking to them. Keep chasing after them. Keep going after them. Do not give up because God is in control and he is working and moving on their behalf. Now, right, they've got some free will, but I just truly believe God is doing everything he can to knock on the heart, to get our attention of everybody on earth so that they have the chance and opportunity to say yes. Paul is a walking testimony to the power of God. You are a walking testimony to the power of God. Paul has no qualms sharing his testimony and what it means with others. And so I got to end with two questions. Do we have any qualms sharing the gospel with others? How uncomfortable do we get? I am a pastor, of course. I'm a Christian, been a Christian a long time. And I am, of course, willing to admit that there have been times whenever I felt perhaps the Holy Spirit tucked my heart to go talk to somebody, and you know what I did? I said no. I ignored that feeling. I'd rather comfort than discomfort. But if my little convicted always about it a little bit by saying no, because I know my discomfort doesn't really mean anything, if it means somebody has a chance to hear the gospel. If we are called to defend ourselves, if we're called to account for ourselves, will we be able to point people to Christ? Paul has done a masterful job every time that he is called into a position of sharing the gospel. Are we? Are we? And that takes work, it takes discipline, it takes a little bit of discomfort, it takes paying attention, it takes reflection. Right? I I there are many, many years in my teenage years where there was plenty of attendance of church, but no attention in church. Are we actually paying attention? Is this more than just a habit? Is this more than just a hobby? Or is this something that we're paying attention to on a regular basis so that whenever the time comes, we're ready to share something about God, even if it's just our own story. And that's what I want for our church. At the very least, the capability to share the gospel, the unchanging gospel in our unique story with others who can connect with us because they see something in us that they recognize in themselves. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you are good and you are great. And I simply pray right now that your Holy Spirit would encourage us, would move us, would help us. God there's no point in wanting to do better without asking for your help. It's only in your help that we can get better. It's only in your help that we can truly understand our testimony. It's only with your help and your Holy Spirit that we can be who you need us to be. It's only with your help and the Holy Spirit's boldness that we can share that testimony when it matters, Lord. And so we simply need your help today. There are those in this room who are, they get it. They are ready, they are locked in. I simply pray for opportunity for them, Lord. And there's others in this room that maybe they're not quite ready yet. They've not they've been attending, but they've not been paying attention. And Lord, I pray that they would pay attention this morning and the Holy Spirit will work in their life. And like Stephen, they would be able to walk into situations and the enemy cannot contend with them. Lord, be glorified in this church. Lord, I pray that you connect us with the right people. That you let us grow the right way. And Lord, I pray that we would just serve you with all of our heart, soul, and mind. In Jesus' name we pray, and we all said together Amen.