The Church Confronts the World (Part 1 of 2)

Music playing Let's take our Bibles and turn to Acts chapter 24. Acts chapter 24 and verses 22–27, the final verses of the chapter.

Let me read them a brief prayer, and then we'll go at them. Then Felix, who was well acquainted with the way, adjourned the proceedings. When Lysias the commander comes, he said, I will decide your case. He ordered the centurion to keep Paul under guard but to give him some freedom and permit his friends to take care of his needs.

Several days later, Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was a Jewess. He sent for Paul and listened to him as he spoke about faith in Christ Jesus. As Paul discoursed on righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid and said, That's enough for now. You may leave.

When I find it convenient, I will send for you. At the same time, he was hoping that Paul would offer him a bribe, so he sent for him frequently and talked with him. When two years had passed, Felix was succeeded by Porsches Festus. But because Felix wanted to grant a favor to the Jews, he left Paul in prison. Amen. In this familiar brief section at the end of Acts 24, Luke records for as an incident which is not unfamiliar in the New Testament insofar as it describes the fact that it is very possible for a man or for a woman to be moved as a result of the proclamation of God's Word and yet to remain unchanged. And if we were going to preach evangelistically from these verses, I think that that would be the emphasis that I would want to bring—the great danger on being stirred but unchanged. But I wonder if you would agree that what we also have in these concluding verses of Acts 24 is not simply an illustration of evangelism that never quite took in the lives of these individuals, but we also have an example of the church confronting the world. We have a picture in Paul's ministry of God intervening at a moment in time in the lives of individuals who were outside of his kingdom and outside of his purposes.

An example for us, then, of how the church can—and I want to suggest this morning, and somewhat forcibly, how the church should—be prepared to confront the world. Now, the context is clear. The situation is such that Paul is now being held under a form of house arrest. That's what verse 23 says. The reason he's there is because he is on the trumped-up charge of being a troublemaker and a ringleader of the Nazarene sect. You read that in verse 5. The governor, Felix, whose name means happy—Mr.

Happy, we might call him—isn't particularly happy at all, and likes to spend his time in some really filthy procedures and is not immune to trying to produce bribery and corruption at every point. And as becomes apparent from reading these verses, he was just as happy to see if he could squeeze some cash out of the apostle Paul as out of anyone else. Nevertheless, he determines that the proceedings which had gone so far should be adjourned because, he says, they want to wait for Lysias, who apparently is a key witness. And while they wait for the arrival of this individual, during this intervening period, this encounter which Luke records for us here takes place—namely, that Paul is in this kind of house arrest situation, and on this particular occasion, and on subsequent occasions, we're told, Felix and Drusilla decide to send for Paul and listen to him.

Now, we're not told what motivated them, and we want to avoid idle speculation. Presumably, husbands and wives, at that point, are not dissimilar to husbands and wives today. They sit down, and the husband will say, What do you want to do this evening, Drusilla?

And she says, I don't know, why do I always have to choose? And then it goes into one of those major discussions where the guy wishes he never even asked the question in the first place. But on that occasion, presumably they said, Well, there's nothing much else going on. Why don't we bring Paul up? After all, I believe that he's got some things to say. He certainly has a dramatic impact in everything that he does and everywhere he goes.

We've got him down here in the basement or over in the house. Why don't we just bring him in and let's let him do his thing, and we'll see what he has to give us? We don't know what motivated them, but it is sufficient for us to realize that here are two individuals who in all likelihood would never ever have attended one of Paul's public meetings. It's highly unlikely that we would have looked out upon the crowd and noted that this aristocratic couple apparently were in the group. And yet, in the providence of God, here they are confronted with the message. Picture the scene. The mighty apostle appears in the posture of apparent weakness. With that, he would have had no real concern. After all, he was the one who said in writing to the Corinthians that we have this treasure in earthen jars, that we are old clay pots, and from the outside he must have fit the bill just about perfectly.

And in he comes. After all, he's the one under duress, he's the one in captivity, and in apparent power and strength sit his hosts. They are the ones who have, apparently, his life in their hands. Felix has told them previously that he will decide the case when Lysias arrives. He doesn't fully realize what he's dealing with. He thinks he's in charge. The world usually does.

The church looks weak and impoverished, as it often does. But here a door of opportunity swings open—open for the apostle to preach and open for Felix and Drusilla to hear. There is, as one of the guys in Julius Caesar says, is it Brutus to Cassius or Cassius to Brutus? There is a tide in the affairs of man which, taken at the flood, leads on. And here is one of those great moments in the tide, one of the watersheds event in the unfolding of God's purposes. And so he arrives. What should his strategy be? Ask yourself, What would I have done? I was in house arrest. I get called up to meet the governor and his wife. I'm not sure just all that's involved, but as you're making your way from where you live to where you're about to speak, what would your strategy be?

What would you do? Presumably, he might have said to himself, What I'll try and do, especially at the beginning here, is just make friends with this couple. And maybe if I can make friends with them and cultivate a relationship, I'll be able to win them over.

And if I win them over, then maybe at some future date I'll be able to proclaim the gospel to them. That would have been a fair strategy. Perhaps he could have said, Well, what I'll do is I will seek to negotiate my release, because after all, he might have reasoned, I am far more useful outside of here than in here. And so presumably God is opening a door of opportunity for me here to be able to speak in a reasonable fashion to these folks, and I'll be able to get out and get back on with the ministry.

That would have been possible. It would have been valid to one degree or another. Now, we needn't be in any doubt about this, because while we are not expressly told, a clear reading of the text makes it perfectly obvious that the apostle Paul was single-minded in his approach. Let me suggest to you that we can learn about three things from his approach. We can learn about his motivation, we can learn about his methodology, and we can learn about his message. First of all, his motivation. The way that we determine motivation in one another is actually by seeing what happens.

We can be wrong, but in this case I don't think we are. If the apostle Paul had been consumed with self-interest or with fear, or if he'd been keen simply to cultivate friendship at a high level in the society of his day, then there is no way in the world that he would have launched into the discourse which we now find for us in these concluding verses. Nobody in their right mind who wanted to make friends with this couple or secure their release or make sure that life went on comfortably would ever launch into the sermon we're about to see. Something else drove Paul in this situation.

Something inside of him moved him in a way that he couldn't let it go. To the Corinthians, he says, Woe is me if I preach not the gospel. And in the second book of Corinthians, and in chapter 5, he explains what largely is that which drives him deep inside. 2 Corinthians 5, you know the verses, well, you should turn to them just to check they're still there. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 11. Paul says, Since then we know what it is to fear the LORD, we try to persuade men. If we had sat with Paul and said, What makes you tick, Paul?

he would have been able to respond, Well, one of the driving, motivating factors in my life is the fear of the LORD. Not simply the beginning of wisdom, definitely that, but because I know the fear of the LORD, he says, we persuade men. He goes on in verse 14 of that same section to say that he is driven, he is compelled by the love of Christ. The reason being, he says, that since we're convinced that one died for all and therefore all died, he says, we want to proclaim this wonderful news. He also says in verse 16 of 2 Corinthians 5 that he no longer regards anyone from a worldly point of view.

And then in verse 20, he says, we are ambassadors for Jesus Christ. Okay, fine. That's what you wrote. Now let's see if that's what you do.

Let's see if there is a gap between what you're saying and how you're living. We turn back over here, and we ask ourselves, How is he doing? According to what he says in 2 Corinthians 5, knowing the fear of the LORD, we persuade men, the love of Christ compels us, we don't regard people from a worldly point of view, and we are ambassadors.

We'll come back to that. His motivation was driven by something other than external circumstances. It wasn't a reaction to the market commodity of his world. It was something inside of Paul which made Paul do what he did. He was not simply reacting to the potentiality of the situation.

Now, what of his methodology? Well, look what we're told here by Luke. It says that he spoke or he discoursed. Essentially, he did what he'd been put together to do. That is, he preached. You men know that there are all kinds of words in the New Testament for preach, to proclaim, to dialogue, to discourse, to reason, and everything else.

And what we find him doing in this situation is doing what he knew he was supposed to do. 1 Corinthians 1.17, he says, Christ didn't send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, not with words of human wisdom lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. He then goes on through that to point out that the world doesn't know this.

The world is foolish and thinks it's bright. The gospel is the power of God to salvation. And then he says in 1 Corinthians 2, When I came to you, brothers, I didn't come with eloquence or superior wisdom, as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God or the testimony of God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you, except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom but on God's power. Okay, Paul, you said that's your methodology.

Now let's see if you use your methodology in front of governors and kings and influential people, especially when you find yourself in the most impoverished of circumstances. You see, Paul knew what we need to remind ourselves of—namely, that no man among us can bear witness to Christ while at the same time bearing testimony to ourselves. That is why Michelangelo had a cardboard thing around his head with a candle in it. And as he painted these amazing paintings, he had a candle which shone in front of him to make sure that his shadow did not so cloud the mighty work in which he was involved.

And Paul understood that. And he would not allow himself to so intrude on this event, because he was a man under compulsion. He was a man involved in persuasion.

He was a man who was convinced from the inside out that he had an authoritative message from God, and he must get it out. James Denny, the Scottish writer who's shaky on some things and good on others, he says, no man can give the impression that he himself is clever and that Christ is mighty to save. And that's why some of our preaching is so ineffective.

Because we're so keen to let people know how bright we really are. And so they're impressed with us, and they never encounter Christ. Paul says, I didn't use those tricks of the trade. I didn't come to you. It wasn't because he was a dummy.

We know that. It wasn't because he hadn't gone to school. It was because he refused to use methodologies which would allow people to say, It's the method that did it. He would proclaim an unpalatable message in an unfashionable way in a fashionable environment, because of his motivation and because he had been called to bear the name of Christ before the Gentiles. That's what God the Lord had told Ananias in the encounter in Acts 9.

Now, are you still with me? His motivation, his methodology, what about his message? Look at what we're told. He shared with them faith in Christ Jesus. Now, when we consider the constituent elements of his message, we realize that this wasn't some kind of vapid little sugar-coated sermonette to make Felix's ears tingle. This wasn't a message to make Drusilla feel good about herself.

In fact, it wasn't even close to it. So let's look at his three-point message. Point number one, he starts into it, righteousness. Righteousness. Presumably, he then proclaimed the holiness of God and how, therefore, men and women appear before him as sinful. In his earlier statement in his own defense, in verse 14, he had made clear about the fact that he was in accord with the law and with the prophets. He doubtless then addresses the absolute standard of God's law and is able to show how, in his own pre-converted experience, he himself was a lawbreaker. He presumably quoted the Old Testament Scriptures. It is conjecture on our part to say from whence he may have quoted, but I'd like to think he used Psalm 1. That he looked Felix and Drusilla in the eye, and as he proclaimed righteousness to him, he said, Do you remember, or I would like to tell you what David said, … blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of mockers, but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. Maybe he went to Psalm 11 and proclaimed, The LORD is righteous, he loves righteous deeds, the upright shall behold his face. But we know that he proclaimed righteousness.

We know that because it says it in the Bible. Secondly, we're in no doubt about his second point. He then dealt with the issue of self-control. The word is an express reference to the control of passion, fleshly lust, and evil desire. Like a city whose walls are broken down, perhaps, he said from Solomon, is a man who lacks self-control. He must have told them that the world's view of freedom is really a cage, that what is held out as happiness is ultimately the embracing of sorrow. And then, thirdly, he went on to address the issue of judgment. Judgment.

There's a coming judgment. Now, don't let's forget what I said as a thesis at the beginning. What I'm suggesting in here in these verses is that we have in this a paradigm—not the paradigm, not the exclusive model, but a model—as to how the church is to confront the world. Therefore, if you like, a model as to how we are to preach. Not the model—a model.

And I might add, a very necessary model in the current climate. So he spoke of judgment. Maybe he went back to Psalm 1, verse 5.

The wicked will not stand in the judgment, Felix, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. This was not, Come to Jesus Christ. This was not, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.

This was didactic. This was to the heart and the will through the mind. We cannot ask people to come to Christ till first we tell them who Christ is and why they need to come to him. And that's what he was doing, you see. We can have these clever little messages about faith in Jesus Christ, and nothing happens, because we are not penetrating the armor of a secular world.

They're asking questions that we're not even answering. See? So when he addresses them, very clear, my first point is righteousness, my second point is self-control, and my third point is a coming judgment. What a sermon! What a jolly sermon, eh?

Huh? Now, if we had him for a moment, I'd say to him, I'd say, Paul, when did you ever learn to preach like that? I mean, who modeled this to you? I was thinking this myself, actually.

This is how I came up with this line of reasoning. Do you know what I think he would have said? I think he would have said, Well, I had it burned into my soul in the desert, but the first time I ever remembered being encountered by this was on the day I played the role of the cloakroom attendant. When I said, Men, drop your jackets here.

You want to be able to get a full backswing when you unleash those brakes. It was on that day, Paul would have said, that for the first time with clarity I heard a man speak powerfully of righteousness, the unfolding purpose of God in all of history. I saw a man who in himself displayed manifestly the evidences of a self-control which was frankly beyond human understanding. And I heard him, before they beat him to bits, say, You stiff-necked generation, you're just like your forefathers. That's where I learned to preach like that, he says, Stephen. Well, I said to him, Hey, Paul, you sure you really want that model? They didn't really like it, did they, Paul?

I mean, I didn't go over big. He didn't get invited back. You're not going to. In fact, Luke records for us—and listen to this—when Stephen finished his message, quote—you find this in Acts 8? Seven. Thanks. No, it's eight in my Bible. No, just a joke. I love these versions, you know.

This is what it says, They covered their ears, and yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city, and began to stone him. Now, I don't know about you, but I've had some bad Sundays. But I haven't come close to this. With this fresh in our minds, here is the question I want to pose. If this is a justifiable paradigm and model, since it is apostolic practice and precept, the question, is this the approach of the church? The answer to that, if we're honest, is this. By and large, what we are doing is so far removed from this model as to be downright shameful. What is the church's approach in confronting the world in our day?

A compelling question that demands an honest answer. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. Alistair will continue this teaching tomorrow. A significant part of what we're about here at Truth for Life is strengthening local churches and encouraging pastors through clear, relevant teaching of God's Word. In fact, teaching the Bible is our mission. We know that through God's Word, unbelievers are converted and believers grow up in their faith. If seeing other people become more committed followers of Jesus is something you're passionate about, we'd love to have you join us in this mission.

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I'm Bob Lapine. The Apostle Paul set a high standard with his bold approach in proclaiming the Gospel. So how can we who are a part of today's church measure up? Be sure to listen tomorrow as Alistair concludes today's message and our series The Pastor's Study. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.