Paul (2)

16But arise, and stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose: to appoint you a servant and a witness both of the things which you have seen, and of the things which I will reveal to you; 17delivering you from the people, and from the Gentiles, to whom I send you, 18to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive remission of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’ 19“Therefore, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, 20but declared first to them of Damascus, at Jerusalem, and throughout all the country of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, doing works worthy of repentance. 21For this reason the Jews seized me in the temple, and tried to kill me. 22Having therefore obtained the help that is from God, I stand to this day testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would happen, 23how the Christ must suffer, and how, by the resurrection of the dead, he would be first to proclaim light both to these people and to the Gentiles.” 24As he thus made his defense, Festus said with a loud voice, “Paul, you are crazy! Your great learning is driving you insane!” 25But he said, “I am not crazy, most excellent Festus, but boldly declare words of truth and reasonableness. 26For the king knows of these things, to whom also I speak freely. For I am persuaded that none of these things is hidden from him, for this has not been done in a corner. 27King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe.” 28Agrippa said to Paul, “With a little persuasion are you trying to make me a Christian?” 29Paul said, “I pray to God, that whether with little or with much, not only you, but also all that hear me today, might become such as I am, except for these bonds.”

Paul believed that the law he had learned from the rabbis was the truth, and that belief drove him to give his all to persecuting Christians. But after he met Jesus, as though repenting of those years, he preached the gospel to his very last moment so that many souls would receive Jesus Christ. Every word he preached carried the love and authority of God, and so the prayers of souls once locked in darkness, begging God for forgiveness, rang out like songs of praise. Whenever Paul laid his hands on someone in the name of Christ, disease fled, and those who heard the word never stopped striving to be born again as children of faith. As one who preaches the word of God, when I see how remarkable and how humble Paul was, I feel shame before I feel envy. The apostle Paul was a man with a nature like ours. How he could turn around so completely after receiving Christ simply amazes me.

To understand why the apostle Paul never forgot the grace he had once received and was faithful to death, it helps to know how the Jews thought about the past and the future. We think of the past as over and done. Because it lies behind us, we think that however great the grace we received from God or from others, it is a thing gone by. And because the future lies ahead of us, we fear its uncertainty.

The Jews, however, think of the past as lying ahead and the future as lying behind. Throughout Scripture God tells his people never to forget the exodus. That is because if they do not forget the God who rescued them from suffering, and live out their lives by faith, they will be acknowledged and protected as God’s people, and what lies before them will be not an uncertain future but greater grace.

The present you are living in becomes the past almost at once, so the wonderful grace you have received from God is, in the end, the past that will determine your life. Only when the past is in front of us will we remember the time we received grace and not betray it; even suffering brought on by our own sin we can then take as a mirror, and show God a faith that is good. If we keep our life’s experiences always before us, giving thanks, giving ourselves to God, and striving not to betray him, the future cannot help but be bright, and even when we cannot see it, we need not be afraid. That is why Paul, looking at his old self and at the self now born again, could have a faith that nailed his own life to the cross the moment he met Christ.

After receiving Christ, the apostle Paul went to Arabia and stayed there three years in prayer before going to Jerusalem. During those three years he gave himself to prayer, laboring to be sanctified even in his hours alone, so that he might meet fully in the Holy Spirit the Christ he had met in a light and a voice. When we are alone, if we empty our hearts of worldly things and fill them with God’s grace, love, and word, we can grow far faster. Isolation is the means God uses most often to make a person grow in spirit. Those who have won spiritual victories always pared and polished themselves when they were alone, striving to live according to God’s will. Isolation is not a call to live cut off from society; it gives us the opportunity and the time to grow, because once the training of faith is over, we must return to the world as vessels given to the saving of souls.

Paul, who was thoroughly versed in the law, came to see in detail how the law relates to Christ, and once he was convinced that salvation comes not by works but by believing in Christ, he proclaimed the gospel boldly. Today false gospels have more sway than the truth. Even those in the church think of God as if they were serving an idol for the sake of worldly success. The truth teaches that we must repent of our sin, but the false gospel teaches that if you believe in God diligently and go to church, you will receive the blessings of the world. Only when the churches established in this land teach the word of Christ rightly can their people grow in the truth as they come to church.

God does not command his people to change the world. What God wants is for you, one person, to be born again. Just as many Gentiles received Christ because one man, Paul, repented, if you, one person, are changed, this nation, the church, and your family will be transformed.

2 Corinthians 12:7

7By reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations, that I should not be exalted excessively, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, that I should not be exalted excessively.

Paul testified that he had been taken up into the third heaven, but he did not give this testimony to boast of his own power. He had no choice but to speak of Paradise to those who persecuted him on the grounds that he was not qualified to be an apostle, because only then would they believe in the living God.

Paul was blessed to go to Paradise and to hear and see the secrets of heaven, and he received power to heal every illness of others, yet his own illness was not healed. Paul probably grew all the more certain because of this very justice of God, since through God’s impartial grace and his own weakness he came to know, quite naturally, that the power at work through him was God’s power. Had he been able to use at will, for his own sake, the power to raise up the lame and to survive a snakebite, he would not have relied on God alone.

Yet whenever Paul prayed to be healed, God answered that his grace was sufficient for him. Each time he received this answer, he would have realized again that without God’s absolute help he could not keep his faith. If you were the apostle Paul, wouldn’t you feel, ‘If only God would heal this illness, I could preach the gospel to so many more people with a healthy body’?

Paul must have known disappointment and discouragement at God’s repeated refusals, but through them he was probably led into a deeper spiritual world. Only then did he learn that the weaker he became, the more God’s power was made perfect, and the more he lacked, the more the power of Christ rested on him. How great the anguish of heart must have been that Paul endured before he grasped the will of Christ and learned to persevere!

When you are sick, poor, and weak, what do you pray to God? Even though you fall short, do you truly believe that Jesus Christ is the God of salvation, and are you boldly preaching the gospel to others?

The faith God wants is a ‘nevertheless’ faith. Though sick, though poor, though busy, though prosperous, though healthy, though our circumstances are hard, nevertheless full of faith in God: such are the saints who have grasped the truth.

If, on his conversion, Paul had immediately grown healthier and begun earning more money, people would have believed in Jesus because they saw his worldly success. But God does not open the gates of heaven by such worldly means. God wants people to enter heaven by faith, which is why he wants his people to grow into children who truly know and do the Father’s will. When his people pray, God gladly solves their problems. Faith, however, comes first, so if we pray while showing God a life lived by faith, we will receive greater grace.

Paul understood so well why God did not answer his prayer about his illness that he preached the gospel just as he was, weak and unimpressive. Paul, who had nothing; Paul, who had nothing at all to show the world, was walking the way of Christ with the gospel alone.

God will lead into heaven those who heard the gospel from this utterly unimpressive Paul and received Christ. Doesn’t your heart leap with joy when you see so wonderful a God? You and I walk with the God who saves those who hear the gospel from us and receive Christ. Are you still afraid of the future?

Jesus did not take up the power of this world to bring salvation, yet every word he spoke was the very life that makes us live. The truth does not change. As long as it remains true that God is absolute and that Christ atoned for sin, the gospel and the truth cannot change. And as long as the truth does not change, the promise that you who are saved will dwell in the glory of God will not change either.

Think of a woman who in a few days will enter the palace and become queen. No one in her place weeps over leaving behind a humble thatched hut. She would not fret over giving a dented bowl to a neighbor, or quarrel to keep the leftover rice. To give everything away freely, rejoicing at the thought of living in the palace with the king, is the heart of one who is about to become queen. The apostle Paul is living now with just such a heart.

Paul went up to the third heaven and saw and heard wonders that human eyes can never see. His spirit was, of course, separated from his body, and like the apostle John he met God and experienced the world of glory. Because Paul did not record it in detail, we cannot know what he saw and heard; but considering the Old Testament prophets who saw God and heard his word, he too would have heard and seen all that was to come. His own confession bears this out: because the revelations he received were so great, a thorn was given him in the flesh to keep him from pride.

I have pictured him seeing, among his many revelations, the 144,000 singing a new song. Paul would have seen the 144,000 saints who were saved beholding the glory of the Lamb and singing the new song God had given them. In their mouths, I imagine, was no lie, only a blameless holiness. They could stand with Christ on Mount Zion because they had kept their faith pure through every trial in the world and every temptation of Satan. Paul saw with his own eyes those who had believed in and followed Christ, the Lamb, offering beautiful praise to God.

As he listened to that beautiful praise, Paul likely longed to stand there himself and sing a new song to Christ, the Lamb. To stand in that place with the 144,000 saints, he must have resolved to live as one who had died with Jesus on the cross.

While preaching the gospel in Jerusalem, Paul was arrested and brought in chains before the council. Seated there were King Agrippa; Festus, who had taken up his post as governor; Bernice, King Agrippa’s wife; and people of high rank from Rome. Before the king, Paul told how he had lived and why people must believe in Jesus, preaching the gospel boldly and without the least sign of intimidation.

Suppose you were a prisoner in chains and were told to preach the gospel in a room lined with the president and all the nation’s rulers. If they said they would kill you unless what they heard made sense to them, could you still tell them to believe in Christ, repent, and be saved?

The boldness to preach with confidence comes only from the conviction that Christ is the Savior and that the truth we know is real. Having met the King of kings, Paul was not afraid of an earthly king, and those men of high rank looked to him like nothing more than pitiful, unsaved souls. Paul said boldly that Christ had told him to be an apostle to the Gentiles and that he had been commanded to preach the gospel to souls under the power of Satan.

We must be a bridge between God and the people of the world. The world, spiritually blind, does not know that it is shut up in darkness. The one who opens its eyes with the light of the gospel and helps it come to God is therefore none other than the saint.

Acts 26:29

29Paul said, “I pray to God, that whether with little or with much, not only you, but also all that hear me today, might become such as I am, except for these bonds.”

Brought in as a prisoner, the apostle Paul told the earthly king that he wished the king too might have faith in Christ, except for these chains. Can you see him, in the most wretched state, daring to tell an earthly king that he wishes the king would become like him? David was a king, yet he was not proud; Esther, from the queen’s throne, saved the Jewish people; and Daniel, as chief minister, fulfilled his calling ready to die. Job was a man of great wealth, which shows that being a child of God does not mean one must, like Paul, abandon parents, brothers, and possessions and suffer imprisonment. After meeting Christ, Paul willingly bore chains, stoning, and prison, and did not shrink from them so long as he could preach the gospel. And now, as if that were not enough, he stakes his life to preach the gospel before an earthly king. As I watch him, I applaud that bold and undoubting faith.

With earthly power in his hands, King Agrippa could have a powerless man like Paul put to death on the spot with a single word. Picture Paul in filthy, shabby clothes and in chains, telling the powerful that they must believe in Jesus, who died on a cross, to be saved; the mere thought of it is pitiful. The church that preaches the gospel and the world that hears it look just like Agrippa and Paul: the world sits on the king’s throne, and the church stands in Paul’s lowly place.

If you were the king, and a prisoner bound with ropes told you that you must believe in his God to live, would you believe? What do you think Paul would have had to say to a king who possessed all the power and glory of the world, to make him listen? This question matters greatly for every one of us who belongs to God.

To share the gospel, you must wrestle with this as Paul did. When the king heard Paul, he cried out that Paul was trying to persuade him to become a Christian in so short a time. But Paul had set his hope on heaven and was living as one who had died, so the king’s outburst did not frighten him, and even bound and mocked, he had no fear of death.

Friends, the word is meant to be proclaimed. It is not begging people to believe; it is telling them that if they do not hear this gospel I preach, they will suffer in hell forever. When a nation declares martial law, have you ever seen it beg people to obey? Have you seen it plead with them to please be careful, since anyone who breaks the law will die? Once martial law is declared, those who break the law are judged according to the law.

Paul now, in filthy clothes, sick and poor, is preaching the gospel to the king and the powerful. If children of the King of kings are so ashamed of owning less than the people before them that they do not preach the gospel, they are already unworthy to be called saints. Salvation cannot be bought with money, nor seized by force. You have received the very same blessing as Paul. As you watch him preach the gospel at the risk of his life, you must make your decision.

You know God’s secret. If you were there now with Paul, who is preaching the gospel alone, what would you do for him? The question put to you is whether you have the courage to declare in a loud voice, as Paul did, that one must believe in Christ to receive eternal life. Many churches today, afraid of suffering loss as Paul did, have hit upon the idea of preaching the gospel in a way that looks much like the people of the world.

Pastors and congregations stripped Paul of his shabby clothes, loosed his chains, dressed him in new clothes, and began covering church buildings with costly marble. Then they filled their sanctuaries with expensive instruments, gathered as many people of worldly power as they could, and began to package prosperity in this life as the thing God wants.

But if we changed our thinking, and created a place where people could come to church and worship sincerely, praised the holy Lord with all kinds of instruments as David did, and preached the true gospel, how good that would be! But that is not the reality. In buildings decorated so as not to be outdone by the world, pastors become kings and elders and the other officers become nobles; and a church that thinks it can now take on the world has thrown away the word and preaches nothing but the world’s blessings.

What is left for them to preach now? They have wiped away all the blood shed on the cross, stitched up the spear wound in his side until no trace remains, and replaced his soiled robe and crown of thorns with splendid robes and a jeweled crown; what Jesus will they preach now? Jesus said that only when our old self is crucified and the body of sin dies will we no longer serve as slaves of Satan. Yet they have gilded the cross to show it off to the world; what God can they preach now? A tomb lavishly whitewashed so that people will not tread on it gives off the stench of rot if you merely go near it, and in the same way the faith of the church and its people has become a tomb whitewashed only on the outside.

Worship ought to be reverent worship that God will accept, yet churches are holding showy services designed to draw people in. However lavishly a tomb is adorned, no one longs for it and prays to have one. However dearly you love your child, once they have died you cannot hold them in your arms; in the same way, even his own children God cannot embrace if they do not put off the old self.

Only when we first put off the body of sin at the cross can we preach as boldly as the apostle Paul, even before earthly kings. What is grievous, though, is that many pastors are preaching only the blessings of the world, with no Christ in them. They do not preach repentance, suffering, devotion, and faithfulness; instead they cry out that living well in this life is the blessing God gives. They preach every sermon fitted to the world’s standards, as if living by the morals and ethics society has set were the whole duty of the saints. Friends, for the saints, keeping morals and ethics is the lowest and most basic level. We must keep the laws of the land and preach the gospel on top of that; only then will nothing stand in the way of our witness.

Let us think of Stephen, who was stoned to death. Did he die because he lived immorally and craved the blessings of the world? Of course, there is no need to be poor or sick in this world on purpose. The point is that we must not compromise the truth for the sake of the world’s blessings.

Toward whom are the eyes of Christ turned now? In the very place where the heart and eyes of Christ rest, may you stand with Paul. Do not envy the abundance and pleasures of the people of the world; look to God alone, lean on him, and walk with him, and you will be able to dwell in the land of Canaan. When all this training is over, God will give you eternal rest, just as the apostle Paul entered the eternal Kingdom; and just as he restored Job in his suffering, he will restore you in spirit and in body.

May you stand boldly before the world as saints who have overcome sin, stand humbly before God as those who are alive, preach the gospel, and become people of the eternal Kingdom of Heaven.