Being Passionate for Christ - Life of Paul Part 63

Good to see you guys here. I hope you'll take a Bible if you brought it, and I hope you'll open it with me to Acts chapter 19.

We're going to be continuing in our study of the life of the great man of God, the apostle Paul. Now, you know, this has been quite a summer. Some unusual things have happened.

Mars has passed a mere 35 million miles from Earth. We had a hit summer movie about a horse. We have a member of the Kennedy clan who's running for governor as a Republican. But you know, all of those things are commonplace and predictable compared to what's been happening this summer in Chicago. Last week, the Cubs and the White Sox were both in first place in September. Well, the last time this happened was 1906. The Cubs haven't won a World Series since 1908. As a matter of fact, they haven't even been in a World Series since 1945. The White Sox have only won one World Series in their history.

It was 1917. And how has all of this affected Chicago? Well, the two teams are going to draw over 5 million fans this year in the city. The Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, a die-hard Cubs fan, has instructed his staff, the paper said, to keep his schedule free because he's going to all the home games at Wrigley Field in the month of September. And the paper said actually at a recent game with the Cubs they lost with a very controversial call by the ump.

The governor of Illinois yelled so long and so hard with the rest of the crowd at the ump that he lost his voice and couldn't speak at his news conference the next day. Now, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, on the other hand, is a die-hard White Sox fan. He got this from his mother, who into her 90s went to every game at Comiskey Park. As a matter of fact, when she died last year, they buried her in her White Sox hat. And he's going to all the White Sox games. It's really wild what's going on in Chicago. And there's one more interesting thing. If you were to show up these days at Wrigley Field for a Cubs game, you're very likely to see a billy goat in the stands.

And let me tell you why. It's because of what they call in Chicago the curse of the billy goat. You see, back in 1945, that is the last time the Cubs were in the World Series, a guy named William Stianus bought a ticket, two tickets, to the Game 4 of the World Series at Wrigley Field. One ticket was for him and one ticket was for his billy goat, his pet billy goat, that he liked to bring to sporting events with him. Well, when he showed up at the game, they wouldn't let the billy goat in. And so, if this had been, of course, in Washington, the goat would have gotten a lawyer.

But it wasn't in Washington. It was in Chicago. And so instead, Mr. Stianus pronounced a curse on the Cubs called the curse of the billy goat. And his curse was they would lose the 1945 World Series, which they did, and that they would never get to another World Series, which they haven't. Now, just before Mr. Stianus died, the Cubs management went to him and begged him to lift the curse of the billy goat. It's true. And he wouldn't do it. So recently, what the Cubs management has been doing is they've been buying a ticket and bringing a billy goat to every home game in hopes that somehow this will reverse the curse of the billy goat. This is true. It was in the paper.

But it hasn't worked. Now, when I was reading all of this in the paper, I thought to myself, you know, there's only one word to describe the baseball fans in Chicago, and that's the word passionate. Passionate, the dictionary says, means to have strong feelings about something, to be fervent, to be ardent, to be zealous. And today, the reason I bring all that up, you might be wondering why, is because we want to talk about a guy today, a guy in the Bible named the Apostle Paul, who was just as passionate and more passionate, but not about baseball. He was passionate about Jesus Christ. And we want to look at his passion, and then we want to ask ourselves why did he feel this way and see if maybe some of that passion won't rub off on us as followers of Christ here in the 21st century. So let's look.

A little bit of background. Remember, the Apostle Paul has spent three years on his second missionary journey in the country of Greece. Let's show you a map. He visited the cities of Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Corinth. And then at the end of this period, he decided to sail home, as you can see, to Antioch in Syria for a little bit of R&R. Now, he didn't stay at Antioch very long because he was so passionate about sharing Christ, and so he departed and started on his third missionary journey, Acts 19, verse 1. Paul took the road to the interior, that is, of Asia Minor, and he arrived at Ephesus.

Let's show you a map again. Notice the Apostle Paul left Antioch over here, and he went to the cities of Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, Antioch, Perga, all of the cities he had been to on his first missionary journey. He went there strengthening the believers and strengthening the churches that he established, all the while working his way over to the city of Ephesus. Now, we should remind ourselves that Paul has wanted to do serious ministry in Ephesus for years. If you remember, four years before Acts chapter 19, way back in Acts 16, at the beginning of his second missionary journey, Paul tried to go to Ephesus and God told him no.

You also, I hope, remember that on the way home at the end of his second missionary journey, just a few months before Acts 19, Paul stopped in Ephesus and preached a couple of sermons, and when the people there asked him to stay, he said, I can't, Acts 18, 21, but I will come back if it is God's will. Well, it obviously was God's will, and now Paul is back in Ephesus, but all this begs the question, what was so important about the city of Ephesus that the Apostle Paul was so anxious to get there and do ministry? Well, Ephesus, friends, at this time was the second most influential city in the Roman Empire, right behind Rome herself.

Let's show you a map. Ephesus was the capital, as you see with the big red star, of the entire Roman province of Asia, everything you see in green on your map. Asia was the most populous and the most affluent of all the Roman provinces, and as the capital of Asia, Ephesus became the political and the governmental center for all of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Moreover, all the trade that moved between the Eastern and the Western half of the Roman Empire moved through the city of Ephesus. Ephesus became a huge city. Best estimates are that at the time of the Apostle Paul, Ephesus had 250,000 people living in this city, and let's show you some slides, archaeological slides of the digs you'll see there, and while we're rolling through those, let me just remind you that what you're seeing here is less than 30% of the city. The rest, the other 70%, is still underground.

These pictures only represent 30% of this city. Now what made Ephesus even more influential was the temple of the goddess Diana that was here, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and people would travel from all over the Roman Empire making pilgrimages to come to this temple. So in addition to the quarter million people who lived in Ephesus, there were always tens of thousands of pilgrims moving through this city, coming to this temple. Friends, you remember last week I told you that Washington, D.C., is so strategic a city in our world that if we impact this city for Christ, the reverberations of that will be felt around the globe?

You remember that? Well, what Washington, D.C. is in the 21st century, Ephesus was in the 1st century, and that's why Paul wanted to get to this city. Verse 8 of this chapter, Paul entered the synagogue in Ephesus, and he spoke boldly there for three months. Verse 9, but when some of the Jewish people became obstinate and began to speak evil of the faith, Paul left and began teaching the Word of God daily in the school of Tyrannus. Now I told you last week, we don't know anything about this guy, Tyrannus. We don't know whether he was the teacher at this school or the guy that owned the building.

We don't know whether he rented it to Paul or whether he just let Paul use it. What we do know is that every day believers and seekers alike would come to this building to sit at the feet of the apostle Paul as he taught them the Word of God. This was like Ephesus Bible College, if you will, going on here. And it went on for two years, the Bible says in verse 10, from the spring of 54 A.D. until the spring of 56 A.D. Now, you know, when I study for messages, as I do every week, I always come across interesting factoids that I don't have time to bring into the message just because we just don't have enough minutes in the message.

But I ran across an interesting factoid in studying for this message that I think is really worth mentioning. And that is, I found out that in the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament, some of them contain a footnote here to Acts 19, 9. And here's how the footnote reads, that Paul began teaching in the school of Tyrannus every day, here's the footnote, from the fifth hour, that is 11 A.M., until the tenth hour, that is 4 P.M. Now, this footnote appears so early in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament that it's hard for us to imagine that it's anything except true, that it represents what Paul really did. And if that's the case, this tells us an enormous amount about the Apostle Paul and the passion he had for Christ.

Let me explain to you how. We know from archaeology and historical writings that here in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, where Ephesus was, that business began at the first hour, which was 6 A.M., and went until 11 A.M., the fifth hour, and then at the fifth hour, 11 A.M., everybody went and took a siesta. They went home, they had lunch, they relaxed, they laid around, they did whatever, and that business again picked up again in the early evening.

Now, there was a good reason for this. The reason is that in the middle of the day, Ephesus becomes unbelievably hot. I've been there six times on various tours, and no matter which tour we're on, it seems like the itinerary always puts us in Ephesus in the afternoon.

And friends, it is hotter than blazes there in the afternoon, I mean paralyzingly hot in the afternoon. And this is why the city basically shut down between 11 A.M. and 4 P.M., because it was just too hot to do anything. Now, while the rest of the city of Ephesus was home resting, what was the Apostle Paul doing? Well, according to this footnote in the Bible, those were the very hours that the Apostle Paul was preaching and teaching his heart out here at the school of Tyrannus. Why was he doing it then?

Well, probably because that's when he could get it. It was probably occupied in the morning and occupied in the evening, but nobody wanted to be there in the heat of the day, so Paul got a great deal on the place in the heat of the day. But remember, he was in there preaching with no air conditioning, no electric fans, nothing to move the air around at all. It must have been hot enough in there to kill a camel. I can't imagine how hot it was in that building.

You know, I can relate a little bit to this. In the years before we were able to move in over at Ball's Hill Road before 1992, and we finished the new addition over there, for six years we met at Langley High School from 1986 to 1992. And we met in the auditorium over there, and it was air conditioned. Everything was all right. We'd set up in the morning.

We'd take down in the evening. But one summer, the Fairfax County School Board decided they were going to refurbish the auditorium at Langley High School, and so they said we had to move out and into the gym, which was not air conditioned. In fact, the only thing the gym had were those big old exhaust fans just to blow B.O. out of the gym.

You know what I'm saying? That was it. And so for the months of July and August, we met in the gym with no air conditioning, and even preaching without a suit coat on, I would come home and my tie would be sweated wet all the way down to my waist, and then when my ties would dry, I'd get big white salt stains across my tie.

This is true. I ruined every tie I had that summer, and I only did that four hours a day, one day a week for two months. Friends, the Apostle Paul in worse heat did it five hours a day every single day for two years. He ministered in that kind of heat.

But there's even more. Don't forget that while he was doing this, he was also working for a living to earn the money to support him and his team. Acts chapter 20, verse 34, Paul writes of the Ephesians, he said to them, You yourselves know how when I was with you, these hands of mine supplied not only my own needs, but the needs of all my companions as well. So let's take a glance at the Apostle Paul's daily schedule. Here was his schedule. From 6 a.m. to 11 a.m., Paul made tents and sold tents in the marketplace. From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Paul preached his heart out in the sweat box of Tyrannus, if you understand what I mean.

Then after 4 p.m., according to Acts 20, verse 20, Paul went house to house, praying with people, talking with people, encouraging people, doing personal evangelism, and then we know, because he was a businessman, he had to go back and open up his shop for the evening shoppers when they would come at night. You say, my gosh, how long did he do this? He did this every day for two years. You say, well, Lon, when did this guy ever sleep? When did this guy ever eat? I mean, when did he relax? When did he play golf? Well, I don't think he did much of that stuff.

But I'll tell you what he did do. What Paul did do is he rocked the province of Asia for Jesus Christ. Verse 10 continues and says, at the end of those two years he was there, all the Jews and Gentiles who lived in the province of Asia had heard the word of the Lord. And when we look on the human level to find out how this happened, how that kind of impact could have taken place, we can trace it directly to one source, and that is the Apostle Paul's passion for Jesus Christ, the passion that drove him to live at a pace and keep up a schedule like this, the passion that infected and inspired everybody he taught at the School of Tyrannus to go out and fan across the province of Asia and live the same way.

The Apostle Paul's passion for Jesus Christ, friends, the Chicago passion for baseball look puny by comparison. Now, that's as far as we want to go in our passage because it's time to ask a question. You haven't done this for a while. So let's make this worthy of its resurrection here at McLean Bible Church, shall we? You ready, everybody?

One, two, three. So what? Ah, felt good, didn't it? Yeah. You say, Lon, so what?

Say, okay, that's great. You know, I respect the guy for working his heart out. What difference does any of that make to me? Oh, friends, I think it makes a huge difference because Paul said, the things that you have seen and heard and experienced in me copy these things. I believe, friends, that God wants every one of us as a follower of Jesus Christ to have the same kind of passion for Christ that Paul had. We cannot accomplish the same thing. That's not the issue.

But the issue is we ought to have the same passion. And you say, well, Lon, what makes you say that? Well, what makes me say that is what Jesus himself said to the church of Laodicea.

By the way, one of the churches actually started by one of Paul's disciples right there at the school at Tyrannus. And here's what he wrote and said, Revelation 3. He said, I know your deeds, but he said, I know that you are neither hot nor cold.

Because you are lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth. Remember, let me remind you what Jesus is saying here. Jesus is saying, hey, you know, if you were spiritually cold, if you were just a seeker, I could live with that. And Jesus said, if you are a believer and you're hot and passionate and fervent for me, well, that's even better. But Jesus said to claim to be a follower of Christ and then to have no more passion for me than you'd have for a root canal, that's just not acceptable. Kind of like Starbucks coffee.

It's okay cold, it's great hot and lukewarm, it's disgusting. And that's kind of the way God feels about people. The long and the short of it, friends, is that if we claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, God wants us hot. God wants us passionate for Jesus Christ. So here's the question that all this begs. What explains the passion, the drive, the fervency that we see in the Apostle Paul here at Ephesus?

You say, well, Lon, I got an idea. Maybe he was passionate like this because he knew the message of Christ that he was preaching was right. He knew that it was the true and the only way to God. Well, certainly the Apostle Paul knew that. I mean, Romans 1 says Jesus Christ was authenticated with power to be the son of God by his resurrection from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus is the sine qua non, the non-negotiable that proves to us, as Peter says, that we have not followed cleverly devised fables. And may I say that if you're here and you've never trusted Christ in a real and personal way, that you have no need to be concerned that this is a counterfeit because, friends, the resurrection proves it can't be. No other religious leader ever claimed to be resurrected or was resurrected, but God resurrected Jesus from the dead as proof positive to you and me that this is the true and living way to God.

And remember what I love to say. Follow a dead savior and you'll end up just like him. Follow a living savior like the Lord Jesus and you'll end up like him.

Something to think about. Well, Paul knew this, but I don't think this explains his passion. You say, well, maybe his passion is explained by the fact that he knew the message of Jesus that he was preaching would radically change people's lives down here, take people out of the pits and really make their life worth living.

Well, he knew that too. 2 Corinthians 5.17, if anyone's in Christ, they become a new creature. Old things pass away, all things become new. You know, the apostle Paul had experienced this in his own life. Riding along the road to Damascus gets knocked off his horse by the Lord Jesus. His whole life changed. He had seen that same transformation come into thousands of people's lives during his missionary journeys. Paul knew this was true, but, folks, I don't think this explains why he was so passionate.

He said, well, if it wasn't these things, then what was it? Well, I think when we look at the zeal, the passion and the dedication that the apostle Paul displayed in Ephesus, and by the way, the same zeal that he displayed everywhere else he went his whole life, the only explanation that makes any sense is this, that the apostle Paul was fervently in love with Jesus Christ. He was fervently in love with Jesus Christ. If we miss this, we'll never understand the passion for Christ that Paul displays, that drove this man. For Paul, it was about more than just the message of Jesus Christ. Paul was passionately in love, not with the message of Jesus Christ. Paul was passionately in love with Jesus himself. Now, you know, this has been true when we look down the annals of history at every other great servant of God, passionate servant of God.

What drove them was not a love for their ministry or a love for the church, but a love for Jesus. I think of George Whitefield. You've heard me talk about him before. George Whitefield came to America in 1740 and spent the next 30 years riding up and down the colonies on horseback. He had a little collapsible pulpit with him. He'd preach in the open air, and George Whitefield in those 30 years rode over a quarter of a million miles on a horse. He led tens and tens of thousands of people here in the colonies to Christ.

He was responsible on the human level for leading the greatest revival that has ever struck this country called the Great Awakening. He rode through rain and snow and sleet and thunder and lightning and hail and cold and heat. And, you know, he rode his friend John Wesley in England, and here's what he said, and I quote, he said, My frequent vomitings have left me. And though I ride whole nights and have frequently been exposed to great thunders, violent lightnings and heavy rains, yet I am rather better than usual, end of quote.

Can you imagine this guy? I mean, it's pitch dark. He's riding on a horse. It's raining. It's thundering. It's lightning.

He's losing lunch on the side of the horse, and he just keeps going a quarter of a million miles he rode like this. You say, Why? Why would anybody do that? Why would anybody do that? I don't even come to church in the rain.

Why would anybody do that? Well, let him tell you why. He wrote in another letter, Oh, that I could do more for him. Jesus Christ. Wesley wasn't doing this for the ministry. Forgive me, Whitfield wasn't doing this for the ministry and Whitfield wasn't even doing it for the people. He was doing it for Jesus. I'm sure there were days he got on that horse and said, Lord, the only reason I'm doing this is for you. That's why I'm doing this. He goes on to say, Oh, that I was a flame of pure and holy fire and had a thousand lives to spend in the dear Redeemer service.

And I intend going on till I drop, which is exactly what he did. You know, I think of Mother Teresa. She said in an interview, even though we do social work, you must understand that we are not social workers. We do what we do for one reason only. We love Jesus and we do it for him. They see friends as followers of Christ. We need to remember Jesus never called us to be in love with the Bible. He never called us to be in love with the church. He never called us to be in love with the ministry. He called us to be in love with him. He said, Matthew 22, the greatest commandment of all is that we love the Lord, our God, not the Bible, not the church. We love the Lord, our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength. He wrote to the Church of Ephesus, Revelation Chapter two, a number of years after Paul was there. And he said, I know your deeds and your hard work and your perseverance, but I have this against you.

You say, what could he have against them? They were working hard. They were persevering.

They were doing religious activity. I said, I still got something against you. You have lost your first love. That's me. So repent. Jesus said, make a U-turn and do the things you did at first when you first became a believer. You know, when I first became a believer, I look back and I realize now, you know, I was willing to go anywhere.

God asked me to go, willing to do anything Jesus asked me to do, willing to say anything he asked me to say, willing to stand up for him anywhere he wanted me to stand up for him. And the reason was simple. I was in love with Jesus.

Just that simple. And then over the years, in my early Christian experience, you know, slow erosion began to set into my life. And little by little, other things crept in and took over first place in my life.

Now, these weren't necessarily bad things. They were a girlfriend or a wife or children or a job or a ministry. You know, I didn't go apostate. I didn't deny the faith. I kept reading my Bible and praying and going to church and being in a small group and saying grace before meals.

You know, I did all that. But that inner passion for Jesus that I once had that I had at the beginning of my Christian experience wasn't there anymore. And, you know, I became like a beautifully painted Easter egg.

You know, I was gorgeous on the outside and I was just sucked dry and empty on the inside. And God had to get my attention and talk to me about that. And I won't take the time now to tell you exactly all the ways that he did that. But the message he sent to me until I finally got it was clear. And that is, you know what? He said, Lon, I want you to understand something. I appreciate all your hard work, son, and I appreciate all your service and I appreciate you leading McLean Bible Church. And I appreciate you preaching, but you know what?

I still got this against you. None of those things are my primary concern, Lon. My primary concern is that you love me and that I'm first in your life, that you're passionately in love with me. And so, Lon, I got a message for you, son. Repent. Do a U-turn and go back and do things like they were at the beginning when I was your first love. Now, it took me a while, but I finally heard that message and I did it. And friends, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ and you're here today and there's been some slippage in your life in terms of the level of your passionate love for Christ, then God has a message for you.

And it's real simple. Repent. Make a U-turn and go back and do the things that you did at first.

Go back and re-enthrone him as number one in your life. Now, Lon, how do you do something like that? Well, I don't know how you do it, but I'll tell you how I did it. The Bible says, he who has been forgiven much loves much. And I'll tell you what helped me. Every time I found myself slipping, I just say, sit down and go back and remember where I was when Jesus found me. I just go back and remember what I was when Jesus grabbed me. And friends, it wasn't much, believe me. I didn't have much of a future.

My life was a disaster. Jesus picked me up and took me from an absolute, just an absolute rescue mission situation and brought me to where I am today. You know, the longer my memory gets on that stuff, the stronger my love for Jesus gets. And that's what I do.

Maybe that would help you. Some of you, when Jesus found you, you weren't a very pretty picture either. And we just have a tendency to take for granted God's love for us and God's forgiveness for us.

Don't do that. Remember where he found you. Remember what you were. Remember where you were going and what Jesus has done in your life.

He who's been forgiven much loves much. You know, when people visit McLean Bible Church, I'm always interested at the impressions that they take away. And you say, well, Lon, yeah, I'm curious. You know, if somebody asked you, what would be the one impression that you'd like somebody to walk away with if they visit McLean Bible Church?

They come in here, they sit through a service, they leave. And if somebody said, well, what was your impression, what would you really like them to say? Well, friends, let me tell you, I wouldn't really, I don't care if they walk out of here and say, wow, you know, I was really impressed with the technical stuff there. I was really impressed with the way they shoot that stuff up on the screen. I was really impressed with how everything seems to work. And I was really impressed with all the programming they've got and all the outreach they've got. I was really impressed with their facility. You know, that guy up there up front wasn't too bad, that was good.

I don't care about any of that. You know what I want people to walk out of here and say? The highest accolade they could ever give us as a church family is for people to walk out of here and say, you know what impressed me the most? Those people there are passionately in love with Jesus Christ. They love Jesus Christ. Now, that's the highest accolade a church could ever be given. That's the highest accolade you could ever be given as a follower of Christ.

That woman, that man, loves passionately Jesus Christ. Well, friends, that's my vision for you and for us as a church family because the blessing of God does not rest on how hard work. If it did, God wouldn't have said what he said to the church at Ephesus. It doesn't rest on our religious zeal and activity. If it did, God wouldn't have said what he said to the church at Ephesus. The blessing of God rests on how passionately we're in love with Christ. And that's why the Bible says, 2 Chronicles 16, 9, For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, looking for those people whose hearts are totally God's.

There's the issue that God might show himself mighty on their behalf. Hey, want God to show himself mighty on your behalf? Don't offer him religious work. Don't offer him religious zeal and activity.

Don't offer him your heart. Give him your heart 100% to the best of your ability and you'll have the blessing of God on your life. Let's pray together. With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, I'd like to give you just a moment, if you need it, to do some business with God. If there's been some slippage in your life on this issue, then why don't you take a moment right now and you tell God that you need to repent and you need to fix that. Lord Jesus, we appreciate you reminding us today that the bottom line issue for you is who's our first love.

You want it to be you. You want us to be hot and passionate in our love for Jesus. And Father, thanks for reminding us that all that we see Paul doing in Whitefield and Mother Teresa and so many of these people, that it didn't flow out of a commitment to the work, it flowed out of a commitment to you. And I pray, Heavenly Father, that you would work in many of our hearts here who need the work and that you would remind us of the things that we did at first when we were really in love with you. And Lord, if we become like Easter eggs, then my prayer is that we would repent and re-enthrone you in our life. Lord Jesus, thanks that you loved us so much you put us first in your heart. Help us to do the same. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.