 |
|
Message for May 30, 2010
Posted on 14-06-10 |
|
|
MCC: 05.30.10
Text: Acts 21.1-16
Series: Moving Forward
copyright, Timothy M. Brokaw. Permission granted for non-commercial purposes
Moving Forward—With a Single Minded Focus
Intro) A) Late one night, a man walks into a dentist's office. The man says: "Excuse me, can you help me? I keep thinking I'm a moth!" The Dentist replies: "You don't need a dentist. You need a psychiatrist." “Yes,” the man says, “I know.” The dentist asks: "So why did you come in here?" "Well...your light was on..." (Mikey’s Funnies, September 28, 2009). Have you ever been as focused as a moth is towards a light?
B) We’re beginning a series of messages this morning based on the final chapters of the book of Acts, chapters 21-28. The general theme of Acts 21-28 is Paul’s desire to move forward in his ministry to Jerusalem. Paul wants to take an offering that he has collected to the church in Jerusalem. While there, he is arrested. Eventually, Paul moves forward to Rome where he is imprisoned. We know from Paul’s letter to Rome that his being imprisoned in Rome was OK with Paul because he wanted to go to Rome anyway.
C) Paul was moving forward as he spread the good news of Jesus. The church was moving forward as she was doing the work of the Kingdom. Over these next several weeks, we’re going to look at how we can do just that here at Midlands Christian Church. As a a church, and as individuals, we’re going to see how can all be Moving Forward, the title that I’ve given to this series of messages.
D) I have to warn you that this isn’t going to be particularly easy sledding. The last eight chapters of Acts are filled with similar stories and long speeches. One of the members of our Worship Team said to me, “I read chapters 21 through 28 of Acts, and I don’t know where you going to go with it.” I said, “I don’t know where I’m going with it either.” But last summer, we preached through the middle chapters of Acts. When we began that series, I didn’t know where I was going with it. But I was amazed at how each week, we discovered insights that were very practical and spoke to where we were as a church. I anticipate a similar experience this summer.
E) We’ll see in these opening verses that Paul is like a moth drawn to the light. He is moving forward with a single-minded focus. And if we want to move forward as a church and as individuals, we need to have that same kind of single-minded focus. And we can do that, if we take the same three actions that Paul takes in the first sixteen verses of Acts 21. First,
I) We Maintain Our Focus Despite Difficulties.
A) When we pick up the story, Paul has just given an emotional farewell speech to the elders of the church in Ephesus, a church that Paul knew very well and loved very much. In verse one of chapter 21, Paul and his companions (including, most likely, Luke, the author of Acts) board a ship for the trip to Jerusalem. Luke gives us a first-hand itinerary of the trip in verses one through three. In verse three, Paul lands in Tyre, on the coast of Palestine.
B) That brings us to verses 4-6: 4Finding the disciples there, we stayed with them seven days. Through the Spirit they urged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem. 5But when our time was up, we left and continued on our way. All the disciples and their wives and children accompanied us out of the city, and there on the beach we knelt to pray. 6After saying good-by to each other, we went aboard the ship, and they returned home.
1) At first glance, and at second and third glances, this story is a little bit perplexing. 2) Luke tells us that the disciples living in Tyre urge Paul not to go on to Jerusalem through the Spirit. They appear not to be speaking on their own; they are speaking Through the Spirit. And what does Paul do? Paul goes on his own merry way. He does what he wants to do which is to go on to Jerusalem. So, the question raised by us and most scholars is this: “Is Paul disobeying the Spirit of God?” “Is he going against God’s will?”
C) Keep those questions in mind as we continue to read. Paul and his companions move down the coast to Caesarea, the political capital of Palestine. They hang out there with Philip whom we met in chapter eight of Acts and Philip’s four daughters who all prophesy (which would have made for an interesting household, I would think). Then, in verses 10-14, an experience very similar to what happened in Tyre happens: 10After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. 11Coming over to us, he took Paul's belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, "The Holy Spirit says, 'In this way the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.' " 12When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. 13Then Paul answered, "Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus." 14When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, "The Lord's will be done."
1) Once again, there is a prediction that Paul will suffer. This time, a prophet Agabus, whom we met in chapter eleven, comes and gives a very vivid image of what will happen to Paul when he arrives in Jerusalem.
2) Once again, the people of Paul’s community urge him not to go. Verse 12 says, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem . And, once again, Paul does not heed their advice.
D) What in the world is Paul thinking? Is he a Lone Ranger who consistently refuses to listen to those around him? Well, the answer to that question is “No.”
1) Paul is not a Lone Ranger. We’ll emphasize that in a minute.
2) Secondly, last summer when we spent time in Acts 16, we found out that Paul listened to the Holy Spirit and also consulted with other believers as he made decisions. Clearly this is the way that we should usually make decisions. We should seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance and see the advice of others. Even the Bible gives such advice. Proverbs 15.22 says, Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.
E) So why didn’t Paul listen to the advice of his friends? I think that it was like this and there are smarter people than me who agree. You see, Paul knew exactly what he was getting into. As early as Acts 9.16, the Lord says to Ananias, the person who baptized Paul, I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. In the previous chapter (20), in verses 22-24, Paul had told the elders of the church in Ephesus: 22"And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. 23I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. 24However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace. In verse 13 of the present chapter, Paul says: I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.
F) Here is what Paul understood. Just because something is God’s will doesn’t mean that it will be easy. We think that if something is God’s will then that means that everything will be smooth sailing. Not long ago, I went through an experience in which all of the doors opened a particular way and I was sure that was God’s will. But I’m not so sure now. It didn’t go the way that I wanted it to go even though all of the doors opened and it seemed like smooth sailing. On the other hand, just because it didn’t go the way that I wanted it to go doesn’t mean that it wasn’t God’s will.
G) Paul understood that God’s will sometimes includes suffering. Paul’s friends understood through the Spirit that Paul would suffer in Jerusalem and they didn’t want to see Paul go. Lloyd Ogilvie writes, “Often loved ones and friends get the same guidance as we do but it is channeled to us through the grid of…their concern for our safety” (Acts. The Communicators Commentary Volume 5. (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1983), 295).
H) If we want to have a single-minded focus as a church and as individuals, we have to maintain that focus on the Kingdom’s work even if it gets tough. We need to maintain our focus despite difficulties. In order to do that, it’s important that we take the second action which is
II) We Are Strengthened in our focus by Community.
A) This seems to be a little contradictory to Paul’s experience. After all, the Christians in both Tyre and Caesarea had tried to keep Paul from going to Jerusalem. They had tried to sidetrack Paul from his single-minded focus of going to Jerusalem.
B) In my senior year of High School, I began thinking that the best place for me to go to college was a small, Christian college in the beautiful mountains of East Tennessee named Milligan College. But at one point during my senior year of High School, my mother began saying things like, “Couldn’t you go to college here in Indianapolis instead of 400 miles away from home?” I was pretty convinced that Milligan was a good place for me to go to college. But I also understood that my mother loved me and would have liked for me to have stayed closer to home. Plus, going to college in Indianapolis would have been a lot cheaper than Milligan which I think also entered into her thinking.
C) Even though the members of the church in Tyre and Caesarea tried to convince Paul not to go to Jerusalem, Paul clearly drew strength from his encounters with them and the care and concern that they expressed. Every place that Paul went, he was surrounded by and strengthened by a community who cared for him. John Stott, the noted British preacher, wrote that “What fortified Paul in his journey was the Christian fellowship which he and his travel companions experienced in every port” (John Stott, The Message of Acts: The Spirit, The World, and the Church (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1990), 333). Far from being a Lone Ranger, Paul cherished the fellowship of other believers. He gained strength from it.
D) In this chapter alone, we have several examples of how Paul was strengthened in his focus by Community.
1) In verse one, Luke writes that Paul and his companions had to “tear themselves away from the Christians in Ephesus,” so strong were their bonds.
2) In verses 4 and 5, Paul stays with the Christians in Tyre for seven days. It’s possible that Paul had never met these folks. Yet, at the end of the week, Luke records in verse 5, But when our time was up, we left and continued on our way. All the disciples and their wives and children accompanied us out of the city, and there on the beach we knelt to pray.
3) Then, after considerable time in Caesarea, Paul was so touched by the response of the church to his impending imprisonment that he told them in verse 13 to stop breaking his heart.
E) Paul understood that he needed to be strengthened by community in order to maintain his single-minded focus and fulfill is kingdom work. I think that one of the greatest detriments to Christianity in America is our sense of individualism. We all think that we can make it in this life on our own. We don’t need anyone or anything else. And nothing could be further from the truth. We need each other. We need to be strengthened by each other.
F) In his book, The Blue Parakeet (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008) , Scot McKnight summarizes the story of the Bible as “creation, fall, and then covenant community—page after page of community—as the context in which our wonderful redemption takes place.” He continues, “We in the Western world are obsessed with our individual relationship with God…But reading the Bible…opens up a need so deep we sometimes aren’t aware we need it: oneness with others….” “God’s idea of redemption,” McKnight summarizes, “is community-shaped. Oneness cannot be achieved just between God and self; rather, oneness involves God, self, and others, and the world around us” (73).
G) As a community of faith, it is extraordinarily important for us to understand this truth. It’s not enough to show up for one hour on Sunday. We need to be connected to each other. We need to draw strength from each other. We need to spend time together. This is the way that God has wired us and wired his kingdom.
H) Terri and I have moved into a larger house, with a large yard, and a swimming pool. And we hope to use this house not just as a place for our own household to run away and hide but as a place where we can gather together as a community of faith. I was hoping that the house would be ready by Memorial Day to begin having gatherings. Right now, it’s looking like Labor Day—Labor Day, 2011. But we’ll get there. And we’ll be strengthened in our focus by community.
Trans) We maintain our focus despite difficulties and we are strengthened in our focus by community. Third, if we’re to have a single-minded focus,
III) We Follow the Example of Jesus.
A) Look, again, at what Paul says in verse 13: Then Paul answered, "Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus."
B) Paul was so single-minded in his focus that he was willing to die for Jesus. Why is that? Was Paul a maniac? Had he lost touch with reality? No. Paul was gripped by the reality that Jesus had died for him. He recognized that Jesus had died for him and he was willing to die for Jesus.
C) When we read the book of Acts, especially when we pick up it in the middle of the story as we are today, it’s easy to forget that Acts is actually the second volume of a two volume work written by Luke. The first volume is the book that we know as “the gospel (good news) of Luke,” the third book of the New Testament. There is a key turning point in Luke’s gospel. In chapter 9, verse 51, Luke tells us, As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. More literally, Luke writes that “Jesus set his face to Jerusalem.” The verb there can be translated as “ to make stable, place firmly, set fast, fix, 2) to strengthen, make firm, 3) to render constant, confirm, one's mind” (http://www.greekbible.com).
D) Jesus was determined to go to Jerusalem, even though he knew that he would die there. Eugene Peterson paraphrases Luke, he gathered up his courage and steeled himself for the journey to Jerusalem. Think about it this way. Jesus was as focused on the cross as a moth is to the light. Jesus understood that his purpose was to go to the cross.
E) The reason that Paul is willing to go to Jerusalem to die is because Paul is willing to follow Jesus’ example. One scholar suggests that Paul’s life and his journey to Jerusalem follows the pattern of Jesus’ life in at least six ways (Richard N. Longenecker, "Acts," The Expositor’s Bible Commentary Volume 9 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1981). We won’t look at the six ways except to say this. Each one of us who claims to be a follower of Jesus should have that as a goal—to follow the pattern of Jesus’ life, to establish following Jesus as the focus of our lives.
F) Later in his life, Paul could write to his friends in Philippi, Greece, I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings..Did you hear that part about “sharing in his sufferings”? That is maintaining focus despite difficulties, even if it means suffering like Jesus. Then, Paul continues: 12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. That, my friends, is a person with a single-minded focus of following Jesus. One thing I do. I follow Jesus.
Conc) A) How about you? How focused on following Jesus are you?
B) I have a light bulb here. I want you to take this imagery with you this week. Every time you see a light bulb this week, ask yourself? “Am I moving forward with a single-minded focus like a moth would focus on this light? Am I maintaining my focus despite difficulties? Am I being strengthened in my focus by community? And, am I following the example of Jesus who set his face to go to the cross to die for me?
|
| |
|
|
Back to Resource Index
|
|
|
|
