I want to ask you an important question. Don’t respond out
loud. I just want you to think about it. How do you want to be remembered
after you are gone? Do you want to be known as the funny guy or the
hard-worker? Do you want your grandkids and great-grandkids to remember
you as the grandmother who was generous or a good listener? Maybe they
will remember you as a good cook or as having a great mustache.
Hopefully, they remember granddad and not grandma as the one with the good
facial hair.
Like it or not, death comes to all of us and we are not guaranteed
another breath so if we think right now about our legacy, hopefully we will
focus on being the way that we want to be remembered. To tell you the
truth, any of us will be doing good if we are remembered much at all in as few
as 100 years and unless you are very extraordinary, they will sum up your life
in one sentence. How do you want that sentence to read?
This is a manuscript that my cousin produced after years of
studying our family history. Evidently, it’s a big deal to be able to
trace your family history to the Mayflower and he was able to do that.
There is something like 13 generations between me, my cousins and dear old Granddaddy
Brewster who sailed over on the Mayflower and each one is cited, documented,
proven and their whole lives summed up in no more than a paragraph. Some
are extraordinary and some are less than that with a few being quite the
scoundrels of the day. How would you like to have your legacy be the fact
that you were the one who cussed out the judge as he was sentencing you?
But some of them don’t say much of anything, just when they were
born and died and who they married and the names of their kids. That’s
all we know about a lot of these people. They lived 40-60-80 years and
then they died. But these people really lived. They had joy and
pain and laughter and tears, boredom and excitement just like you. Now
they are gone and all we have to remember them is one paragraph or maybe just
one sentence. How do you want yours to read?
We are continuing our look at the life of the Apostle Paul in Acts
chapter 20 where we see him leaving some friends for the last time. Paul
had spent about three years in Ephesus, starting a church there and seeing that
church grow and mature and he had made some dear friends but God had called him
to be an evangelist and a missionary and not a pastor so Paul is telling them
that he is moving on and they will never see him again.
In this passage, I believe as much as any other passage, Paul
reveals who he really is and how he wants to be remembered and is, in fact, how
we remember him and if you could only use one word to describe Paul, I think
that word would be “radical”. Paul was radical and this passage is
radical. Paul was different. He was changed by God’s grace and he
wanted everyone to be changed. He wanted everyone to be different.
He wanted everyone to have a life-changing relationship with the risen Savior,
Jesus, like he did and it did not matter what he had to do, where he had to go
or what he had to endure. He was going
to tell people about Jesus.
In this passage, we are going to see why Paul did what he
did, how he did what he did and then what is was exactly that he did.
So, let’s turn to Acts chapter 20, verses 22-24 and remember that he is
talking to his dear friends that he is about to leave. His boat is
waiting on him to sail off. He will never see them again as far as he
knows so he leaves them with these last words.
“And
now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will
happen to me there. 23 I only know that in every city the Holy
Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. 24 However,
I consider my life worth nothing to me; if only I may finish the race and
complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the
good news of God’s grace.”
Have you ever done anything that you knew there was a good chance
that it was going to hurt you somehow? Have you ever done anything
dangerous where you were pretty sure pain was about to be involved? Men,
how many of you remember telling your wife you loved her for the very first
time? The two of you have been dating for a while now and there you are
on the couch at her mother’s place or maybe the front seat of your car in front
of her house and you are sitting there talking. You are looking at her
with those googly eyes and you are just smitten. You can’t imagine life
without her and you want her to know it but you’re not sure if this is the
right time.
You want to tell her but every time you start to say those three
little words, your brain kicks in, right? “Don’t do it! Whatever you do, don’t say that. What if she
doesn’t say it back? What if you say you love her and she says she really
likes you too? Don’t say it!” But you can’t help it. You
have to say it or you will blow up. Do you remember feeling that way? You were compelled to say it. You
couldn’t help it. You knew it was dangerous but you did it anyway and
(hopefully) it paid off and you two lived happily ever after. Paul is
saying here that he, too, is compelled. He’s not stupid. He knows
it’s going to be dangerous if he goes back to Jerusalem. In fact, it is
going to be dangerous for him to preach the Gospel almost anywhere but he does
it anyway.
Jeremiah (20:9) said that he had a fire in his bones and he couldn’t keep
it in. That fire was the word of the Lord and he had to let it out or he
would burn up. In this passage, Paul says he is compelled by the
Spirit. That word “compelled” means to be dragged away as if in
chains. Have you ever been compelled by the Holy Spirit to do
anything? Has there ever been a time that something came to mind that you
needed to do and you knew that you wouldn’t be able to sleep if you didn’t do
it?
Years ago, I was at Schlitterbahn Water park with my family.
We were waiting in line to get something to eat and there was a group of men
there in front of us who were making it obvious to everyone that they were
homosexuals. They were loud and proud and making a scene as they stood in
line right in front of me and just as clearly as I could hear them, I heard the
Lord tell me, “Just say hello.”
I tried to drown that voice out. I tried thinking about
something else but nothing worked. “Just
say hello.” So, because I couldn’t
make the voice in my head go away…I walked off.
I walked away…and I have regretted it ever since. I don’t know why God wanted me to say
hello. It was probably just to see if I
would be obedient in some small way.
Maybe it was so that 20 years later I could stand here and tell you how
miserable it is to be compelled to do something and be disobedient.
But Paul was obedient even though he knew that he would face
prison and hardships of every kind. He
was compelled to do it. He couldn’t help
it. He couldn’t be disobedient to his
Savoir and Lord. He was compelled. That’s why
he did what he did. Now let’s see how he did what he did. Look at verse
24. I consider my life
worth nothing to me. Now that
sounds pretty radical, doesn’t it? In
fact, that sounds crazy. How can a
person consider their life worth nothing?
I’ll tell you how. Or, actually,
I will let Paul tell you from something he wrote in Galatians 2:20. Turn there.
Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in
me.” Paul said his life was worth nothing to him
because his life was Christ’s and whatever Christ wanted to happen in his life
was going to happen and why not? The
Bible says in several places that our life is a mist, a breath, a vapor or a
puff of smoke.
*match* Did you
see that smoke? Not enough to even set
off a smoke alarm. Do you remember what
it looked like? Was it black? Grey?
White? You don’t even remember
and it just happened. That is our life. At best, it is remembered with a paragraph or
maybe forgotten entirely. But when
Christ lives in us, we live for eternity.
Thinking of the fullness and duration of this
wonderful life, W. B. Hinson, a great preacher of a past generation, spoke from
his own experience just before he died. He said, "I remember a year ago
when a doctor told me, 'You have an illness from which you won't recover.' I
walked out to where I live 5 miles from Portland, Oregon, and I looked across
at that mountain that I love. I looked at the river in which I rejoice, and I
looked at the stately trees that are always God's own poetry to my soul. Then
in the evening I looked up into the great sky where God was lighting His lamps,
and I said, ' I may not see you many more times, but Mountain, I shall be alive
when you are gone; and River, I shall be alive when you cease running toward
the sea; and Stars, I shall be alive when you have fallen from your sockets in
the great down pulling of the material universe!' " (sermonillustrations.com)
Paul knew he
would live on in eternity and he had that mindset at all times and so he lived
his life as if it were already eternity; as if it was actually the life of
Christ. “I have been crucified
with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” That is how he did what he did. Now, lastly, let’s see exactly what it is
that he did. Look at the rest of verse 24. if
only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me…
Then see what the task was. What was it that God had told him to do? Was it to be an evangelist? Did God call him to be a missionary? Did he send him to the seminary for training? Was his task to write most of the New
Testament? No. He says his task – the one thing God had
called him to do – was the task of testifying to the
good news of God’s grace. There
is an infinite number of ways to tell people the Good News. There are any number of ways to witness to
somebody and to bring them to have a life-changing relationship with Jesus but
the very best way is just to tell them about God’s grace in your own life. What has it meant to you? When you have good news, don’t you want to
share it?
Somebody tell me right now in one
sentence what God’s grace means to you. I
know I’m a sinner and I know I have displeased God and there is nothing I can
do to be good enough to get into Heaven.
There is nothing I can do to deserve God’s forgiveness. I don’t deserve peace. I couldn’t find joy in the difficult times on
my own, no matter how hard I tried but I can have peace and joy in this life. I can have forgiveness of my sin and I can
spend eternity in Heaven as a child of the one true King and a co-heir with
Jesus to every good thing Heaven has because – and only because – of what Jesus
did.
Jesus was born of a virgin, lived a
sinless life and was crucified for all my sin and for all of yours. Then He rose again after three days and lives
today and I will see Him with my own eyes one day very soon. And if that’s not good news then I don’t know
what is. Come today and let me tell you
more about it!
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