Running To Win

Dave McAllister: Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Looking to Jesus, the founder and proctor of our faith. Paul's ministry in Jerusalem caused his enemies to have him arrested on false charges. He was sent to Caesarea, Rome's government center in the region. He languished for a long time before being allowed to answer these charges before King Agrippa. Stay with us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, we're learning about the legacy of a converted man.

Set the stage for us.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: The Apostle Paul, as you mentioned Dave, was falsely accused. And I can't help but think that today listening to this program, there are many people who are being slandered. Especially in these days as the internet seems to be available to everyone and people can write pretty well whatever they want. We have to live with the possibility of being misunderstood and misrepresented in the Christian faith. And yet, let us remember this. Ultimately, only what God says and if God is pleased, everything else really doesn't matter. That's one of the lessons that you will learn if you read the book entitled Failure, the Backdoor to Success.

Here's what you do, go to rtwoffer.com. What I do in that book is to help people see beyond their failures to the grace of God, to the mercy of God, and to remember that they are precious to the Almighty. For now, let us listen. If you are here today and you are in a dilemma, if you're in a predicament, you came to the right place. You may be experiencing a relational predicament, maybe a legal predicament. Especially if you're facing that. If you're facing opposition, you are here at the right place today as we open God's word.

This is a very short series of messages entitled The Legacy of a Converted Man. It's the legacy of the Apostle Paul. And today, I'm going to ask that you turn, if you would please, to the 26th chapter, to the 26th chapter of the book of Acts. I'm finding it difficult to find it in my own Bible, but I know that it's here somewhere. And if you're looking at the Bible that's in the pew, it's probably page 935. Many of you bring your cell phones to church because today we know that the Bible is on cell phone.

Everything has to do with cell phone. There is a story about a young man who was going to be on a blind date. Someone set this up for him and he thought that would be nice to meet a woman he'd never have met before. They could go out for dinner. But he said to a friend, what if I see her and she's just barely pretty? And I say to myself, you know, there's just no way I'm going to spend an evening with this girl. The guy said there's an app for that. He said what you do is you buy an app, you just touch the app and your phone will ring and then you pick it up and you say, Mom, Mom, is that you?

Is this an emergency? And then you can get out of it. So, he bought the app. He goes and he opens the door for this young woman and there standing before him is a very beautiful young woman. And suddenly her phone rings and she says, Oh Mom, Mom, is this you? Is this you? So, if you're watching and reading on your telephone, that's fine. But it's the 26th chapter of Acts. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to paint the picture. We're going to set it up for you. We're going to walk through the experience of the Apostle Paul and King Agrippa.

And then we'll see the application to our lives both as we go through the text and as we end so that we understand the gospel and God's intention for us in the midst of opposition. Here's the story. The Apostle Paul is in Jerusalem and he is accused falsely of beginning a riot. So, what happened is he was taken to Caesarea. 40 people in Jerusalem, they banded together and they said we will not eat and drink until the Apostle Paul is killed. So, he's taken 50 or 60 miles to Caesarea, which is the place where the Roman courts were.

There's a big complex of buildings there built by Herod the Great and this is where the Roman kings often ruled from. So, Paul is taken there and then he's brought before a man by the name of Felix. And Felix listens to Paul and trembles and wants money. So, he continues to ask Paul to come so that they can discuss. And Felix moves off the scene and a man by the name of Festus takes his place. Now, you'll notice back in chapter 24, chapter 24 verse 27, when two years had elapsed, Felix was succeeded by Festus.

And desiring to do the Jews a favor, Felix left Paul in prison. He is imprisoned for two years without a hearing and without a reason because the charges against him were false. And then what happens is Festus doesn't know what to do with Paul. To release him back to Jerusalem, he'll be killed there. To simply set him free would anger the Jews. And he didn't know what to do to send him to Rome. He clearly said I'd like to send him to Rome, but there are no charges. So, what do we do with this man by the name of the Apostle Paul?

King Agrippa comes to the rescue. King Agrippa was the grandson of Herod the Great who tried to kill and who did kill many of the babies in Bethlehem after Jesus was born. Agrippa was part of the Herod family. And these were basically evil rulers. And he's married to his wife whose name is Bernice. And she actually is his sister. So, you can see that what 's going on here is a bundle of sin of various kinds. And Paul is brought before him. You know, I need to paint the picture for you so that you see this.

In chapter 25 it says, So, on the next day Agrippa and Bernice came with great pomp and they entered the audience hall with the military tribunes and prominent men of the city. And then Paul is brought in. You know, I hope that God videotapes all of these things because if things get boring in heaven, we could always watch some videos. I'd like to see Luther at the Diet of Worms. My conscience is taken captive. Right over here, you know, is the emperor Charles the Fifth and all of these dignitaries. And there's Luther in effect believing that he was signing his own death warrant.

And And here's another one. I mean, here is King Agrippa, all of the associates, his wife. They come in. They're dressed in purple, which was of course the dress of kings. Everyone comes in dripping with bling. And they sit there and the Apostle Paul comes in. And history tells us that he was actually short. He was not very attractive. I won't go into details. And he is in chains. So, that's the scene. So, Paul has an opportunity to defend himself. And what does Paul do? We're going to move through this very quickly. First of all, he talks about his past conduct.

His past conduct. I'm in chapter 26 verse 4. My manner of life from my youth spent from the beginning among my own nation in Jerusalem is known by all the Jews. They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify that according to the strictest party of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee. And now I stand on trial because of my hope in the promises of God. And then he goes on in verse 9, I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

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 foreign cities. He makes two very important points. First of all, he says I lived as a Pharisee. I was the Pharisee of the Pharisees. I lived by all of the strict rules and I even went beyond those rules.

And then he said I have had a very violent past. I mistreated people. I killed them. I was on hand when they were arrested. I tried to get them to blaspheme, the Apostle Paul says. Now, let's just pause for a moment. Was Paul sincere in his mistaken vocation of killing Christians? Of course he was. Did he believe that he was doing God's will? Yes, of course he believed that he was doing God's will. You must understand that today there are people who kill others in the name of God and believe that they are doing God's will, no matter how innocent the people are.

All that you need to do is to look at the Middle East today and find that this is going on. And they are as convinced in their faith, absolutely certain that they are doing the will of God, the will of Allah. But they are sincerely mistaken. And what we must do is to understand here that the conversion experience of the Apostle Paul suddenly sheds light on all this. Now, I've mentioned this before, but this is critical. You and I believe that Christianity is true. They believe that another religion is true. And both of us are convinced.

But the great difference is this, that only Christianity and only Christianity grants you the assurance that when you stand before God, you will be accepted. No other religion has that. I don't care how committed they are to their religion. I don't care how deeply they believe it. At the end of time, if you talk to them, they will confess we do not know whether or not Allah is going to accept us. Christianity is different because of the promises of Jesus that will become evident and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We have a personal assurance.

And that's one of the differences. You know, about 10 days ago I was flying from Detroit to Chicago here. And I got out my iPad. Actually, it wasn't an iPad nor was it an iPhone. It was an iPod. I probably have to explain to the young people that iPods used to exist. God knows what the technology is now. And I was going to listen to something. Well, no sooner does the plane get off the ground. In fact, it wasn't off the ground. Sitting beside me was a very articulate man who told me that he was born and raised Episcopalian, but he had become a Buddhist.

You can't even imagine the delightful conversation that we had. I am serious. When you're in a situation like that, what you have to do is just ask questions. I asked him, for example, first question, do Buddhists pray? He said no because we don't believe anybody is in charge. We don't pray, but we do meditate. How do you tell the difference between good and evil? How do you silence your conscience? Well, I try to live in the now. But how What do you do if your conscience troubles you and you can't shut it down? It's like putting a basketball in the ocean.

You put it down over here and it pops up over there. And you can't get rid of your past. What do you do? So, I'm asking him all these questions and a whole lot of others. And then I finally said to him, What if Jesus is right? And he paused. And I helped him to understand who Jesus was by quoting one verse of scripture after another, the claims of Christ. I really do believe that this man will come to saving faith. He said that definitely he'd read the book of John. You know the 21-day challenge.

I keep them in my attaché case. I had one for him. When I shook hands with him at O'Hare to say goodbye, I said someday I'm going to be able to call you brother. I really do believe that he's going to come to saving faith in Christ. But here's the thing. What you have to do is sometimes you have to bypass a lot of intellectual arguments. And you have to go for the conscience. And by the way, he thanked me a number of times for taking an interest in him. So, the point is Paul says, my past conduct, I was a Pharisee.

But notice now he goes on to his conversion. This is what he says in verse 12. In this connection, I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and the commission of the priests. At Midale King, I saw on the way a light from heaven brighter than the sun that shone around me and those who journeyed with me. And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads. Notice this that when Paul was gloriously converted, first of all he saw light.

That is the gospel. He was walking in darkness. He was managing his darkness, which is what many people do. The people in false religions manage their darkness as best they can. He was doing all that. What light needed to shine on the Apostle Paul? First of all, he needed light regarding the law. The law that he was trying to keep could not save him. His works could not save him. It takes the light of the gospel to show somebody that. He had to have the correct light regarding himself. He wasn't nearly as righteous as he thought he was.

He was in the presence of God filled with sin. And he needed grace. And so that light had to come. He also was wrong regarding Jesus Christ. He thought that Jesus was dead. He didn't know that Jesus could still speak. So, this light came upon him. He said, I heard, I saw a light which is the essence of conversion. And he says, I heard a voice. And by the way, that voice spoke to him in Hebrew. And God can speak to you in any language of the world because God is a God who is able to speak the various languages.

Sometimes you have those who say, you know, there are some books from God. And I'm thinking of one in particular that can't be translated because God only spoke Arabic. No, God speaks in different languages. And that's why the Bible can be translated into every single language of the world because God has something to say to every tribe and every people and every nation. So, Paul needed light. He needed to hear a voice. And then God said to him, it is hard for you to kick against the goads. You remember that what a goad is is a stick with a sharp point.

So, if you're working with oxen and they are stubborn, what you do is you give them a poke with a goad. But there were also other kinds of goads. And that is this, they would put two or three on a plow or whatever behind the oxen so that especially if a young ox kicked, he would kick against the goads. And he would find himself in a great deal of pain. And in this way he learned it's a bad idea to kick against the goad. Maybe I'd better stop kicking. What God was saying is this, Paul, you may not And by the way, when you kick against God, only you get hurt.

It's the ox that gets hurt. What God was saying is, Paul, you must realize something. And that is that you were kicking against what you knew to be true. You know, I'm sure that the Apostle Paul when he laid down in bed and tried to sleep, the images of the Christians that he had killed came to mind. I'm thinking for example of Stephen where the Bible says that his face was like the face of an angel. Paul probably thought to himself, what's going on there? Why is it that I I see these Christians with a glow on their face?

They died differently. But he was stifling it. He was shutting it off. He was managing his darkness. He was justifying himself. Just like people today, you know, the human mind is able to justify whatever the human heart wants to do. So, the heart tells the mind, rationalize this, figure it out, live with it. But it is hard to kick against the goads. And some of you are finding it hard. It's hard to fight against God. You're doing it. You're managing it. But you find it hard to sleep because you know better down in your heart, your conscience.

So, the Apostle Paul says that's who I was. And then Paul Paul gives his commitment, his commission, his commitment to spread the gospel. He says in verse 19, therefore oh King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. I was thinking about that this week. Imagine if Paul had been disobedient. He ended up writing about 12 books of the New Testament, bringing the gospel to Ephesus and through Ephesus all of Asia Minor, all of modern Turkey heard the gospel, the Bible says. Imagine that if he had been disobedient to the heavenly vision, but he wasn't.

And what is the vision? For this we have to go back to the words of Jesus in verse 18 where it says, to whom I am sending you, namely to the Gentiles. Now, notice, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. Do you realize that when you preach the gospel, when you share with a friend, whether you go across the ocean or do it here in America, there is a battle between light and darkness, between Satan and God.

The essence of all false religion, including the misinterpretation of Judaism that Paul had where he thought that the law could convert him, not understanding that the law was to create conviction so that he'd go to Jesus. You realize that all false religion is basically demonic. And when we share the gospel, the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ has to come into people's lives so that they see the light and through the word hear a voice. And that's what conversion is really all about. My friend, this is Pastor Lutzer and I want to speak to your heart.

Are you converted? You know, often times in evangelical circles we have made conversion a decision. Somebody says, well, I made a decision. Or someone else says, I went forward in a meeting. I raised my hand. That is not conversion. Now, of course you may be converted doing that, but conversion is a deep work of God in the human heart. I'll never forget when I was a boy of about 14 deeply deeply convicted of my sin. And it was at that point that I recognized that I not only had to believe in Jesus, but to place all of my trust on him by faith.

I knew that I had a problem that I could not solve. We hear it Running to Win are deeply committed to sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ as the Apostle Paul was told from darkness to light. For a gift of any amount, we're making available for you a book I've written entitled Failure, the Backdoor to Success. It definitely clarifies the gospel. But what it also does is help us to understand all that we receive once we do receive Christ as Savior and once we are genuinely converted. For a gift of any amount, we're making it available for you.

What this book will do, I believe, is to encourage you. It'll help you to counsel others. I hope that you have the opportunity of reading it and then passing it along to other people so that they too will be helped. Despite the mistakes and the sins of the past, they have hope for the future. Here's what you do, go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com. Of course rtwoffer is all one word. rtwoffer.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1888 218 9337. And I want to thank the many of you who support this ministry because of people just like you we are sharing the gospel around the world.

Dave McAllister: You can write to us at Running to Win 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's road map for your race of life. Paul's passion for truth caused one king to doubt his sanity. Next time, more about Paul and Caesarea where he appeals his case to the emperor and is sent to Rome. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.