And So, We Came to Rome, Part 2

Today on Summit Life, much needed encouragement from J.D.

Greer. Do not buy into the lie that you need a perfect life to share the gospel. The testimony of a fellow traveler is the most powerful testimony of all. So wake up church, wake up, wake up and pray up and sing up and read up and pay up. Just don't give up, let up or shut up until everybody in your community has heard because that's what the Spirit of God is wanting to do. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. If you're new to the program today, we're so glad that you've joined us. We're in a teaching series from the book of Acts titled Scent, Exploring the Mission of the Early Church. And today Pastor J.D. reminds us that God often uses us in the middle of storms to make the biggest impact on the lives of those around us. If you missed any of the previous messages in this study in the book of Acts, you can listen online.

Or if you'd like to study the message transcripts, download them for free at jdgreer.com. Now turn in your Bible to Acts chapter 28. Here's Pastor J.D. We are going to see the Apostle Paul finally fulfill his dream of getting the gospel to Rome, which is some 2,997.4 miles from where the Spirit first ascended upon the church in that upper room in Jerusalem. And that's going to bring us to the end of the book of Acts, if you can call it an ending. As I'm going to show you, the book of Acts doesn't really end. And that's because you and I are still writing the book of Acts in a way. I mean, we're not adding to Scripture, of course, but we're still writing what's going on in Acts. In these last few chapters, Luke basically recounts for us Paul's harrowing journey into Rome. There are four things I believe the Holy Spirit wants us to see about our lives as we continue this journey that Paul and the apostles started.

Okay, I've got four of them. Open your Bibles to Acts 25. Write this first one down. Number one.

Number one, live provocatively. Let me catch you up on what's happened between chapter 20 and 25. When Paul left the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, which is what I preached through a couple weeks ago, if you recall, when he left there, he got to Jerusalem to observe the Passover just like he had planned. That's what he told the Ephesian elders that he was going to do. Well, when he gets there, some of the Jewish authorities recognize him and they go tell the Roman rulers that Paul has come there to start a revolt. So they send him to the regional governor, which is a guy named Felix. Felix questions Paul, realizes he's innocent, but doesn't know what to do. So he leaves Paul in prison for two years. Eventually, Felix, the governor, is succeeded as governor by a guy named Festus. So he calls Paul to stand in front of him.

Now, recall that Paul has been languishing in prison for two years wondering what is going on. So the first thing Paul says when he comes out to stand before Festus is, I appeal to Caesar. He thinks, hey, at least this way, I can guarantee that I'm going to get the gospel to Rome. Well, before Festus ships Paul off to Caesar, another governor in a neighboring region, Herod Agrippa, comes to visit Festus and says, hey, I hear that you've got Paul. And Festus says, yep. And Agrippa says, I've heard about this guy. I would like to hear, Agrippa says, this man myself. Then tomorrow, said Festus for the rest of us, you will hear him.

So Festus puts on this big fiesta for all the local authorities, feats of strength and the area of grievances and the whole bit. And the centerpiece of that fiesta is Paul defending himself. Agrippa wants to know why is it that all the Jews hate this guy?

Why is he in prison? Paul's manner of life provoked a question. Our lives should provoke a question.

So you ask, well, how do you do that? It is when you have joy in the midst of things not going well, that you show that you've got a foundation for joy that people in the world just do not have. Your life was supposed to provoke a question that I don't get why you do what you do. Is your life doing that? Live provocatively in a way that provokes the question.

Seize opportunities. At the end of Paul's message, we're in chapter 26 now, flip over a page to that. Paul goes on this role at the end of his message showing how all the Jewish prophets have talked about Jesus. And then he looks at King Agrippa and he says, King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? You see, King Agrippa was an ethnic Jew.

And he would have been about eight years old when Jesus died on the cross. So he likely, living in Jerusalem, remembers all this stuff going down. And Paul's like, do you believe the prophets?

I know. I know Agrippa that you believe. And Agrippa says to Paul, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. In a short time, you're going to try to persuade me to be a Christian? Paul, this is not about you trying to convert me.

This is about you trying to save your own life. Paul said, whether short or long, whether it took me a long time or a short time, I would to God that not only you, but also all those who are hearing me this day might become just like me, except of course, for these chains. Paul's life is on the line, but he thinks, hey, I've been given an audience to proclaim Jesus to the governors. Here's my question for you.

Is that how you see your life? Paul saw whatever situation, whether advantageous for him or not, as a platform that God had given him to proclaim Jesus, are you capitalizing on your platforms, which leads me to number three, embrace sovereignty, embrace sovereignty. We're going to flip over again to chapter 27 Herod and Festivus put Paul in a boat to sail into Caesar, but the boat gets swept up in a hurricane and blown out to sea where they basically get lost for a month.

I mean, seriously, this guy, Paul cannot catch a break, can he? Verse 21, since they've been without food now for a long time, Paul stood up among them and said, men, you should have listened to me and not have set sail from Crete and incurred this injury and loss. Paul had warned them at the beginning of this chapter through a special word from the Holy Spirit that they shouldn't do this. Verse 22, yet now I urge you to take heart for there will be no loss of life among you, only of the ship. For this very night there stood before me an angel of God to whom I belong and whom I worship. And he said, do not be afraid, Paul, you must stand before Caesar and behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you.

Isn't that great? Paul's like, hey, God's got to get me to Rome and he's just going to lump all you in with me and so you're going to get there safely too. So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told, but we must run around on some island with small detail.

All right, here's the deal. Paul did not let the storm make him doubt God's control. In fact, Paul saw in the storm God arranging an opportunity for him to share his hope in God. As a Christian, God does not always shield you from the storm.

He allows you to go through the same storms everyone else is going through because demonstrating the presence of God in the storm is more powerful to them than calling to them from outside of the storm. It is on the cancer bed that you can more persuasively say, my body is in pain, but my spirit is filled with hope because one day my God will wipe away every tear from my eyes and I know that the pain that I now experience in my body is not even worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed in me. It is from the graveside of a child or in the midst of your third year of not being able to be pregnant or after your fourth miscarriage that you can say bless the Lord oh my soul and forget not all his benefits who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases and redeems your life from the pit who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy and satisfies your soul with good. It is from the position of being treated wrongly or when you have been forgotten about when you have been fired for doing the right thing that you can proclaim to others in the same situation though my father and mother have forgotten me you oh Lord will take me in you will lift up my head high above all my enemies. It is easier to proclaim hope as a fellow traveler than it is to call people in from a place of a perch of safety who are in a storm. That's when God helps you preach your best sermons. Listen it is when you've been broken by sin that you can proclaim the sweetness of God's forgiveness and the healing power of his grace. Do not buy into the lie that you need a perfect life to share the gospel. The testimony of a fellow traveler is the most powerful testimony of all.

One of the reasons we show so many testimony videos around here is we know that sometimes it is somebody who is speaking from the midst of the storm that can be more effective than a guy standing up here on stage that some of you think well he's got nothing in common with me. I mean we had one I hear this story all the time in various forms. We had one where we always ask permission like hey will you share your story? Then this person said yes.

Here's why I want you to be able to share my story. This person was coming to Christ out of just a life of some really bad decisions a lot of sin. And they said this and I wasn't offended they said because it wasn't you on the stage it wasn't the guy on the stage that convinced me to become a Christian it was when there were a couple of people in this church who had the same sinful struggles I had that befriended me and made me befriended me and they shared their hope their redemption in Christ that's what changed my heart and showed me that the gospel could heal me. You need to proclaim Jesus in the midst of a storm of doubt. You know I found that when I go on college campuses and I'm talking to students who have questions they tend to listen to me more when I share with them my own doubts than when I sound like a Wikipedia answer man for Jesus. You need to be honest about your own questions and tell people yeah I got this question too and sometimes this doesn't make sense but here's my anchor you know listen you're like pastor but I just don't have any equation I don't ever doubt you're either lying or you just don't think that much about stuff. The greatest Christians in the world have asked questions you listen your testimony to Christ is more powerful if it comes from within the storm in brokenness in weakness in pain contrary to the prosperity gospel it is your place of weakness not your place of strength that provides the best platform for your testimony because God did not put you on earth and save you to demonstrate your awesomeness he put you on earth and saved you to demonstrate his graciousness so God puts you as a fellow traveler through storms to experience the same things everyone else experiences so he can put on display his hope in you and he controls even the angry winds and the waves and the husband who deserted you and the friend who betrayed you for his purposes so embrace that God has sovereignly placed you where you are to proclaim him which leads me to number four thank you number four live sent and this brings us to the last two verses of the entire book so flip over there chapter 28 live sent here's how luke ends the book verse 30 paul lived there rome two whole years at his own expense under house arrest he welcomed all who came to him proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance the end well that's awesome right paul's proclaiming jesus there with nobody stopping him awesome but wait a minute he's there on trial is he going to be released is his appeal to caesar work is niro having a good day we don't know at least based on the book of acts we don't know we do know by the way that paul wanted he intended to go from rome to spain that he tells us that in rome it's 1522 after you get to rome you want to go to spain so he could be the first black guy to preach christ there that's one of his dreams well does he make it does he does he get to spain we don't know for the book of acts because acts ends as i've often told you in a cliffhanger cliffhangers are all the rage now every show you watch on television ends in a cliffhanger it's how they keep you coming back and it's why my wife and i refuse to watch shows when they come out on channels and we don't why because i just cannot stand a cliffhanger so i wait till it's over i dvr the whole season and then i would just sit down on a saturday and i watch it from start to finish um and by the way cliffhangers are so much better today than they used to be i've told you when i was a kid um duke's a hazard always ended in a cliffhanger but you knew exactly what was going to happen bow and luke duke midair they're going to land safely it's just that's just how it works now you have no idea that's how luke ends this book in a cliffhanger you're not told what happens to paul and his dreams why because it's not about luke is trying to tell you something by ending the book this way it's not about paul or his dreams it's about the spirit and the gospel in fact we know from history that eventually paul would be released he would go to spain then he'd be re-arrested and beheaded by nero why not record all that in this book this is luke's way of saying to the nero's of the world you can kill and imprison paul but you can't stop the gospel because it was never about him anyway so cut off his head and the gospel goes on paul is dead but the spirit remains paul's going places that nobody's ever gone and trying stuff nobody's ever tried that's what we're trying and hey not all of it works sometimes you end up in in proverbial prison and we got to back up we got to try something else but we dust ourselves off and we keep going because it doesn't start with us and it doesn't end with us the torrential wind of the spirit we see fill the church in acts and blow paul 2997.4 miles across the planet is the same spirit that is at work in us and wants to blow through rdu so here at the very end of our series i want to give you leave you with four ways that i want to ask you specifically to live sent four ways i want you to live sent just jot these down letter a i want you to live sent and you're inviting i want you to take risks in your invitations i want you to invite neighbors to come to our church that you think would never come why well it'll do two things one it's going to grow your faith when you do that number two number two it's going to give the spirit of god to do some apostle paul moments where he knocks one of the fiercest persecutors off of a horse and he transforms and changes a person what would it look like for every follower of jesus in the summit church to say god could you use me to do something incredible because it's not about me and my abilities to persuade but god spirit of god i know you are seeking and saving those who are lost god who is it what neighbor what co-worker what friend is it that you want me to open my mouth and let you begin to pour through me to them i um i try not to tell too many stories about my kids because i always think that's annoying when people do that all the time um so not your kid your kids are awesome i love to hear stories about your kids but just in general um so i only do it when they do something awesome and uh this week i was out on my back porch and uh we're back deck and my uh nine-year-old she just turned nine comes out and says dad how you spell the word literally i was like uh one she has a one t or two i was like no more than two i think one i don't think there's a d in there but i don't know just go go ask your mom and um so later this is on the kitchen counter on this note there is a couple um there's a family um that are friends with our family that's um haven't yet crossed the line of faith and uh my daughter knows that she writes them i had to work up all my courage to write you this because i'm usually scared or shy in front of adults that i don't know too well i wanted to encourage you to keep thinking about how much god loves you and all that he did to take away your sins god loves us all and he gave his life for people who bullied him to death and literally to death there it is literally boom i pray for you a lot hoping you will decide to follow jesus god is working in you because he wants to adopt you as a part of his family and you can become his child i'm really praying for you love in christ alley now that's unprovoked and like i say i try not to share a lot of stories but when they make me fall under deep conviction i feel like i have to share them what does it look like for the summit church to have people that take the courage of a nine-year-old and just say god i know that you have me here and i just want to say to somebody jesus loves you and jesus has a plan for you and that's why we're friends i want you to live sent in your invitations i want you to live sent in your volunteering live sent you're volunteering this year i want some of you to start giving back to those areas of the church that have been giving to you people in this church have been a blessing to you and it's time for many of you to start being one back to them i saw one of the sweetest testimonies about this the other night a few nights ago i was at one of our high school um testimony services and i was a young man in our church graduating high school this year his name is preston um preston is a remarkable young man in multiple ways but um his dad passed away a couple of years ago his dad was very involved here in our church now um preston is getting ready to go off to college and somebody pointed me to a facebook post that he put up and when she talks about how after his dad died there were a couple of men in our church who really began to invest in him after his dad passed away and he said this at the end of that facebook post he said but as much as i love and appreciate those men they would have been a failure at their job if they were the ones that i remember and thought about most they pointed me to eternity they helped me realize that there's a mission before me in this next stage of life and i'm going to walk through that mission with the leadership of the king of kings and my prince of peace and i would add my eternal father jesus christ see that's what the church is is we are a father to the fatherless we are a family and that didn't come from you sitting every week listening to a guy give a sermon it comes when you volunteer and you get involved now if you've been here less than three months i'm not talking to you okay i'm talking to a lot of you that treat this church like you treat your favorite restaurant you're like well they got a new special i really like the series i'm gonna come here for a while and then i'll just kind of flit around over there you need to get off your rear end and you need to get involved in the ministry of the church you need to go from consumer to disciple okay the people that are clapping are the ones that are volunteering each week and are really burned out because they need you to help them okay so i want you to live sent in your volunteering i want you to live sent your generosity well listen we don't need your money i hope you understand that and god certainly does not need your money but to build campuses and rdu to reach new areas to train up new leaders and missionaries and pastors takes millions of dollars and i'm not worried because the money's already in the bank just god has temporarily held it in some of your banks for right now and all i want you to do is ask i just want you to ask what has god had trusted to me that he intends for me to use for his kingdom and i want you to start to live sin in your generosity i want you lastly to live sin in your faith live sin in your faith i want you to believe god with us for the future this is not my dream it's not my ambition it's not what god put me here because it's not about paul it's certainly not about me if it's not about paul it definitely wouldn't be about me so i want you to begin to dream with us about the future not just our church's future but the mission of god in the world i want you to pray for that person in your workplace or neighborhood that you think would never darken the doors of a church i want you to pray for them starting today every single day i want you to pray for unutilized church assets around the country and here in raleigh durham that you've seen them as well as i have they're just sitting there there are churches that are dying inside and i want you to pray that one or two things would happen that god would either revitalize that church or he would take that asset which is worth billions of dollars once you add them all up and he would put it in the hands of some of our church planters or church planters like ours around the country that will take them and leverage them and use them to extend the mission of god why not ask god to do that it's a way i want you to pray that god would dump millions of dollars onto the local church not just ours but other local churches i want you to pray that he would take all the trillions of dollars that are out there running around our country that he would put them in the hands of local churches and that god would give local churches the ability to be great stewards of those monies parents and other adults in our church i want you to pray boldly for our teenagers that god would raise up this next generation that that this next generation would get it and they wouldn't leave the church after high school and they wouldn't only not leave the church after high school but they would go on to call our nation back to christ and to see the great commission spread around the world i want you to believe god for the people in your life specifically acts doesn't end because it's still being written it ends in a cliffhanger because you and i are writing the next chapter paul got the gospel to rome will you get the gospel to your community we don't know because you're writing that chapter but the spirit of god that was carrying through paul's heart is available to you and he can write that chapter as effectively through you as he could through paul so wake up church wake up wake up and pray up and sing up and read up and pay up just don't give up let up or shut up until everybody in your community has heard because that's what the spirit of god is wanting to do believe god with us for the unreached people groups in our day there are 6,546 unreached people groups a group of 10,000 people or more that have no access to the gospel at all i want you to believe god with us that our generation our generation will see all these people groups have a church a thriving church established in all of them you say well i'm not really sure i think it's too big of a really did you know that in paul's day listen to this put your math brain on in paul's day there was one church for every 12 unreached people groups so one church in order to complete this would have to plant a church in 12 unreached people groups that doesn't even sound that undoable to me today listen there are 680 churches for every one unreached people group every church has to take one 680th of a people group just united states churches and we would see this thing finished why don't we ask god to do it because jesus said that when we do that he's going to come back and i would like that to be sooner rather than later as we come to the end of our lengthy study through the book of acts i hope the primary message of this teaching series has been clear being sent isn't just for professional christians we've seen over and over how the gospel goes into new areas first through regular people like you and me so the question to ask is what's next for you have you considered a short-term mission trip are you a missionary spreading the gospel in your world or are you part of the mission field still needing to fully understand the gospel this mission is so important to us at summit life that we give a percentage of every dollar donated to the ministry to the mission of planting new churches we'd love to have you partner with us today when you give to summit life you're helping us deliver these bible teaching messages meant to take you deeper into the gospel but remember you're also helping start and establish new churches all across the country as our way of saying thanks we'd like to send you a new resource created by the summit life team just for you it's titled sent the book of acts volume two now that we've come to the end of our teaching series on air you can go back and remind yourself of all the amazing lessons learned in this crucial book of the bible ask for sent the book of acts volume 2 when you donate at the suggested amount of 25 or more call 866-335-5220 that's 866-335-5220 or go online and request the book when you visit us at jdgrier.com i'm molly vidovich and that's a wrap on another powerful teaching series from pastor jd be sure to join us tomorrow when jd describes the radical life god wants for us as he kicks off our new series called mystery and clarity that's friday on summit life with jd greer today's program was produced and sponsored by jd greer ministries