Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts chapters 25 and 26, focusing on Paul's defense before King Agrippa and his appeal to Caesar. He emphasizes the importance of faithfulness in trials, as Paul remains steadfast despite being imprisoned for two years. The sermon highlights the necessity of sharing one's testimony and the transformative power of encountering Christ, urging listeners to fully commit to their faith rather than being "almost persuaded." Ultimately, Pastor Safrit challenges the congregation to live boldly for the gospel and to recognize their mission in sharing the light of Christ with others.
Welcome and Announcements
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Great job, young people. Great job seeing that and leading us today.
If you have a young person that wants to be dismissed to Children's Church, that's available for you. Also, as they're being dismissed,
if you have not picked up our church calendar for this next year, they're at all the entrances. You can get one of those. And I do still have a couple of the books that I had printed for the church that I recently published. They're at the back.
I think there's five or six left back there. If you want one, feel free to take one. If you've got a family member that wants one, feel free to take them until we run out. And we've got those back there for you.
That was my Christmas gift to the church. And so thank you for that. We are going to be in Acts today, Acts chapter 25 and 26. We're going to look at two chapters.
And this is a lot. It's a daunting task today to look at all this. So there's going to be a lot of cliff notes and abbreviations today. But I do want to cover both chapters today. This is the time where Paul is appealing to Caesar. And he's still in prison.
And so we're going to... I'm not going to read all the verses this morning. We are going to preach through the whole portion of it quickly as time allows. But I want to read... We're going to start reading in chapter 25, verses 10 through 12.
And then we'll skip down to chapter 26 for a little bit. Because there's a lot to read, we're going to have you remain seated today.
But I'm going to read the scripture here this morning. Acts 25, verses 10 through 12. The Bible says, We'll skip down to chapter 26, verses 9.
We're pretty much going to read the entire rest of the chapter of chapter 26. It says, In fact, I myself was convinced that it was necessary to do many things in opposition to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. This is Paul giving his testimony.
I actually did this in Jerusalem. I locked up many of the saints in prison since I had received authority from them from the chief priests. And when they were put to death, I was in agreement against them. In all the synagogues, I have punished them and made them blasphemy.
Since I was terribly enraged at them, I pursued them even to foreign cities. I traveled to Damascus under these circumstances with the authority and the commission from the chief priests.
Paul's Vision on the Road
King Agrippa, while on the road at midday, I saw the light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me while those who were traveling with me. We all fell on the ground, and I heard a voice speaking to me in Aramaic. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
It is hard for you to kick against the goats. I asked, who are you, Lord? The Lord replied, I am Jesus, the one who you are persecuting.
But get up and stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint to you as a servant and a witness that you have seen and will see of me.
I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles, and I am sending you to them, to open their eyes so that may they turn from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God.
They may receive forgiveness of sins and share among those who are sanctified by faith in me. So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.
Instead, I preached to those in Damascus first, and to those in Jerusalem, and to all the region of Judea, to the Gentiles that they should repent and turn to God, that they do the works worthy of repentance. We'll skip down to verse 24, and I'll read to the end of the chapter.
It says, And while he was saying these things, in his defense, Festus exclaimed in a loud voice, You are out of your mind. I think this is an amazing part, right? The king here says this to him. Paul, too much studying is driving you mad.
But Paul replied, I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus. On the contrary, I am speaking the words of truth and good judgment.
For the king knows about these matters, and I can speak boldly to him. For I am convinced that none of these things have escaped his notice, since this was not done in a corner.
King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you believe. And Agrippa said to Paul, Are you going to persuade me to be a Christian so easily? I wish that before God, replied Paul,
that whether easily or with difficulty, not only you, but all who listen to me today, might be as I am, except for these chains.
The king, the governor, Bernice, and those sitting around them got up. And when they had left, they talked with each other and said, This man is not doing anything to deserve death or imprisonment. Agrippa said to Festus, This man could have been released if he had not appealed to Caesar.
Father, we thank you for your reading of your word.
Prayer and Historical Context
We thank you for what you've given me to preach this morning. I pray that you would have your Holy Spirit in the service today. Give us wisdom and guidance. In your name we pray. Amen.
In 1944, there was a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, you may have heard of him. You may have never heard of him, but he was a Nazi prisoner in German isolation. He was arrested for opposing Hitler and helping Jews escape Germany.
He had every reason to stay quiet. He had every reason to simply cooperate. And he had every reason to simply soften on his convictions.
But if he would have done that, his life would have been spared and he would have changed who he was. Instead, from prison, Bonhoeffer, it was recorded that he kept preaching, he kept writing, and he kept pointing people to Jesus.
Guards later testified that even while in chains, he ministered calmly to the other prisoners,
praying for those who mocked him. Just weeks before the war ended, he was executed. One witness later said, I saw in him a man whose life was completely centered on God.
As I was reading through this story and reading through Bonhoeffer's life, it reminded me of last week as I tried to preach through our vision for the church and how our life should be centered on Jesus and everything we think, say, and do. This is the life of Bonhoeffer.
He was, everything he did was completely centered on Jesus. Bonhoeffer didn't stand before kings or governors in a palace.
He stood before them in prison. And the question that he said that we could ask ourselves today is, what are we really on trial for? As we go through our life, as we ask ourselves what is going on in our life, Bonhoeffer was not a criminal.
The world was being exposed by his faith by him being imprisoned.
This is what is going on in these two chapters of Acts chapter 25 and 26. Paul's life, he had done nothing wrong, as we saw there at the very end of what Green Agrippa has said is, this man could have been released unless, but yet he was wanting to appeal to Caesar.
And now we begin to see this prisoner who's in chains, surrounded by powerful men, been accused of doing hard and criminal things, yet he was completely unshaken. We have to ask ourselves, how are we presenting Christ this morning?
How are we standing before those that are around us, that are asking us questions, that are challenging our faith, and asking us, are we increasing our faith in Christ through our message that we're preaching,
or has our courage been wavered by the world around us, by the things that are around us that are coming upon us, by the pressures of life, by the pressures of things that are oftentimes weighing us down?
Living the Gospel Boldly
Are we living in the gospel, free to advance the gospel, and tell others about who he is in our witness? As we walk through the first chapter here, we'll be very quickly through chapter 25, but Paul stands before Festus. Paul here, he has been faithful after all this time.
Paul, as he looks here before Festus, the time has passed, there has been injustice, we know there's been about two years that he's been in prison wrongly, and yet, he never softened on his convictions.
As we looked in Sunday school this morning, in 2 Corinthians, it says that the critics of Paul were that he was harder in his letters than he was in person, and yet, he's standing here, firming his conviction,
not being changed, even after he had been in prison for two years. And he is faithful after all this time. And so, the first thing we're looking at is verses 1 through 5.
This is a long test of faithfulness. I'm here to tell us today, church, that oftentimes, God requires us to be faithful, and he doesn't require it to be a short amount of time. Faithfulness is something that has to go through time.
Paul had been in prison for over two years, there had been a change in government, and yet, the same accusations, and the same hatred was coming against him, and he had to ask himself,
am I going to be faithful to Christ, through this period of time, or am I going to give up, when the moments get tough?
You see, the moments turned into months, and those months turned into years, and now, life is just like he's almost been forgotten.
My mind went to Joseph, as he was serving the Lord, as he was trying to do what's right, and he gets in prison after he's the second in command, and he's in prison, he doesn't know what's going on,
and yet, he gets this vision, and he helps people, and now he's been in prison for like 12, 15 years, and he's staying faithful to the Lord, even when life doesn't seem fair. The question we have to ask ourselves is, are we continuing to stay faithful to the Lord?
And our journey, me and my wife's journey of ministry, and I got to share my testimony this last week, in Rockwell Christian School, they asked me to come and preach chapel, and several of the young people, the teenagers came up and said, hey, can you tell me your story?
Can you tell me your testimony? And so, I'm sharing with them how we were in Arkansas for college, and we went to Idaho, and the time of waiting from Idaho to North Carolina, when we came back, was about two years.
And I told the young people, I said, there's going to be time where you're going to wait on the Lord.
You're not going to know why you're waiting. You're not going to know how long you're waiting, but during that time of waiting, I was preaching on decisions, and how we make decisions. I said, continue to make the right decisions.
Continue to take that 15 seconds, when a decision comes into your mind, and make that right decision, that's going to honor and glorify God, and continue to flow in that faithfulness of who God is.
And oftentimes, in our time of waiting, in these tests of faithfulness, God is saying, I want you to be faithful. I want you to serve me. It may not come when you think it should come,
but God's plan is perfect, and His timing is perfect in His ways. So, in your waiting, how does that reveal your faith in the Lord? As you begin to wait on the Lord, and you begin to wait on who He is,
does your faith turn to trust, or does your faith turn to frustration?
See, oftentimes, this is what happens in our life, in our instantaneous world, where we can have ramen in like 30 seconds, you can have a grilled cheese in a matter of no time, with air fryers, you can instantaneously get what you want, in a matter of seconds and minutes in this world.
And God says, you can't just put your faith in a microwave,
you're going to have to trust in me. And that faith may be weeks and months and years, as the case is Paul is looking here, but how are we living our life of faithfulness? Paul not only has faithfulness, but number two, verses six through 12, Paul's defense here, he is appealing to Caesar.
You see, Paul stands firm. He had every right to lash out at the ones that were coming out of him.
He had every right to say, how dare you put me in prison? How dare you allow me to be persecuted?
And I'm sure there was beatings, as we looked at a couple of months back, when we were looking through this portion of it, there was times of maybe even starvation. And yet he is standing here firm. He doesn't lash out.
He doesn't compromise, but he chooses the principle of following the Lord over the convenience of whatever it may be. He stands here and he makes this statement, I stand at Caesar's judgment seat.
And oftentimes this is what is difficult for us, because he makes this statement, I'm standing here. And this is the portion of verses that we read. He's standing here and he says, I am not standing here because I'm afraid of death. I'm standing here because I'm afraid to dishonor Christ.
If death comes, death will come and I will serve the martyr's death for following the Lord.
And I love how A.W. Tozer says that. He says, not death, but sin should be our greatest fear.
Oftentimes the fear of death comes in our life and death is scary. Death is difficult to even think about. This past week, I went to the hospital of a dear lady friend of ours that was served in our women's ministry, our last church. And she's in her young seventies.
She's a young lady and she was completely curled up. Cancer had completely eaten her body away. And the next day she passed away. And I prayed with the family. And I said, her husband's name is Danny. I said, Danny, I don't know why this is happening to your wife. And it's scary.
Her sons were there. I said, I don't know why this is happening, but I do know that she followed the Lord and everything she's done.
And that should be our greatest reward when it comes to our life is that we have followed the Lord and we haven't been fearful of death, but been fearful that we would sin against the Holy God and that we would roam God in our way of our actions.
You see, courage is clarity about what truly matters. When we live our life, when we go through our life, we have to ask ourselves, am I standing firm on what matters the most? What fear has currently the loudest voice in your life?
Is it the fear of loss? Is it the fear of rejection? Is it the fear of sin? What is it that is the thing that is speaking the most in your life that is causing you to sometimes waver in your life? Number three, Festus here, the King here, seeks counsel in his life.
I think this is awesome because one of the most powerful men in Jerusalem at this time steps aside and says, I need to figure out what to do here.
And it challenges us to say there are times where we need to step aside and seek counsel and say, what is the right thing for me to do? And how am I living my life? And seeking this godly counsel and seeking the ideas of figuring out what is the right thing to do.
He, he's curious, but he's not yet convicted by what he is living his life. There is this spiritual desire that begins to come into Festus' life and he begins to look and he begins to examine, but yet he never surrenders. And I think this is important because oftentimes people will run the runway.
They'll circle the runway of spirituality for years and years and years, but never allow that plane to land and say, I'm going to fully devote my life to Christ. I'm going to fully trust in him. And this is Festus.
He says, there's some things going on here. I don't understand what's going on, but he's circling the runway. He's circling the gospel. He's hearing it. He's seeing it. His life is curious, but he's never allowing the plane to land.
And how often is in our life that we have the right verbiage? We have the right information, but we've never responded to who Christ is.
And we've never said, Christ, I want to follow you with my whole heart, my soul, my life, my strength, everything that's in me. I want to follow you no matter where that takes me.
And Festus in this moment seeks counsel and he's trying to gather information, but he never really responds to the gospel. Number four, Paul presented to Agrippa.
The last verse is in chapter 25. 23 through 27. The room here, Paul stands before Agrippa. There is power. There is prestige.
There is ceremony. Paul is standing here. The only one in chains is the only one that's free in this room. I want you to think about that. The people that are in this room are all against Paul. Paul is bound. He's been beaten. He's been tortured.
He's standing there after this two year period of, of waiting and faithfulness. And he is the only one that is free. Everyone else here is bound by sin.
Everyone else in here is bound by, by not knowing Christ and not having the freedom of the gospel in their life. You see, being in authority does not equal that you are the ones that is ultimately in truth or in control. We have to ask ourselves, where is our faith?
And is our faith on display today? And are we allowing our faith to be put on display? You see, oftentimes we, and we're going to look at it here in just a minute, we get to Caesar,
Agrippa. What happens is, is our faith, we try to live our faith in a corner. We try to live our faith in isolation and only in our house or only in church. But yet when we step into the workplace, our faith is like put on the back burner. And it's the last thing.
We don't want people to know we're a Christian. We don't want people to know we love Jesus. And then it's like, oh, wait, they see me loving Jesus. They see me praying.
I'm nervous about what they're going to say or how they're going to respond. Paul is the opposite of that. He says, my life is on display. I'm going to stand clearly in the faith of what Christ has given me. And I'm going to display Christ clearly and speak clearly in my last sermon.
As we look at Paul's last sermon,
Paul's Final Sermon Opportunity
Paul stands before Agrippa in chapter 26, and he realizes he has one sermon left.
He's realizing that the end of his life is coming to this moment. If you look ahead, you'll see there's only two more chapters. There's only two more weeks.
We're going to look at the book of Acts. Some of you are like, yes, hallelujah. We're going to be done with Acts. Some of you are like, wait, there's only two more left. There's only two more chapters left.
We're going to look at those over the next two weeks. And Paul looks at this and he says, my life's coming to an end. I recognize this.
I recognized that I appealed to Caesar and to Caesar. I'm going to go. Caesar's in Rome. Rome, that's going to be my persecution. That's where I'm going to die. Right? The spirit told him a couple of chapters ago that you were going to die in Rome.
And he knows that when he appeals to Caesar, he's going to go to Rome and this is going to be it. And he knows he's got one chance left. One sermon left to preach the gospel to these powerful people.
There's three people sitting here. There's Festus, there's Caesar, there's Agrippa, and there's one of his servants that are there as well. And he speaks plainly. I love Paul because he goes in this personal application. He says, I'm going to personally apply the gospel to your life.
And I'm going to do it with passion. And I'm going to do it with fervor. And I want to do it in a way that is going to bring the gospel to your life. So the first thing he does is he recognizes the people that he's with. And he gives a respectful address in this moment.
He knows that he is standing before some powerful people.
And I want to read this. It says here, it says, Agrippa said to Paul, you have my permission to speak for yourself. And verse one, and Paul stretched out his hand to begin his defense. And he said, I consider myself most fortunate that it is before you, Kring Agrippa.
I am not making my defense today against the accusation of the Jews, especially since you're knowledgeable about the Jewish customs.
He stands before him with respect and the utmost gratitude to be able to stand here. He doesn't do this out of flattery of, I'm going to try to win you over. He does this because he understands that the Jewish people in this room, their souls are at stake.
And he says, if I disrespect the King in this moment, everyone in this room is going to turn me off. And so I've got to show respect.
I'm before the most powerful man in the world at this time, other than Caesar. This is the second in command. It would be like you standing before the vice president of the United States, whether you like him or not. And if you treated him with disrespect,
everyone in the room would dismiss you and make you leave pretty much.
But if you come in and you say, Hey, we may not agree with everything that you agree with. We may not stand with everything you stand at, but I respect your office and I respect your position. They're going to allow you to speak and they're going to hear you.
And so we've got to understand this is where Paul is at. He doesn't agree with everything that Agrippa is doing.
He doesn't agree with everything that Agrippa stands for, but yet he addresses him with respect and he wins over the moment by boldly preaching the gospel and yet still being gracious.
I think this is important for us to know because the gospel is an abrasive situation. The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus is an abrasive situation where people don't like to hear this. The world has turned it off.
The world has softened the gospel, but yet we are all sinners and we have all done wrong and we have all fallen short of the glory of God. And yet God looks at us and he says, I'm going to send my son to die for you. And this brings us to an opposition.
This brings us to a point of knowing truth and knowing love.
And are we going to turn to it and say, I'm going to respect what's going on here. When we begin to speak about Christ, are we speaking both in truth and in love, right? There's a, an idea in this whole idea of, of truth and love.
And I don't have a whole time to unpack it, but the, the idea is a pendulum, the pendulum of truth and love, the gospel. And oftentimes we're really good at spending that. Oh my goodness.
We're really good at taking that pendulum and swinging it all over. My wife is dying laughing.
I don't make mistakes often, but they do happen. You document it. It's on camera. The pendulum here of the gospel can swing over to love and we can live in love. And I love love, right? I, I love showing love and affection.
You know, I'm a hugger. You know, I care about people. I'm going to be there. I'm going to do things. I'm going to sacrifice. Love is, is easy to live in.
But oftentimes we have people that live in the truth and they only live in truth. And everything's black and white and the pendulum swings all the way over here to truth.
And, and the gospel lives in both of these. The gospel says that Jesus came and he spoke the truth in love. He loved the people enough to tell them that they were sinners and to tell them that they needed a savior that was going to come and redeem them of their sins. Right?
The, the very first time that Jesus gives himself as the Messiah to someone other than his disciples is the woman at the well. The woman at the well comes to Jesus. And as she comes to him, he, she says that, he says, where's your husband? And she says, I don't have one. Right?
He, he loves her. He's asking her. And he says, well, actually not only do you not have one, but you've had five. And the one you're living with is not the one that you, is your husband. So now he's living in truth.
And so he is balancing this truth in love. And in this moment, she recognizes there's something great.
And he says, I'm the Messiah. I'm the one that's coming to redeem you of your sins. And he gives her love and he gives her truth and he balances it together to give her the gospel. Are we living in the truth? And are we living in love?
Are we showing people that we love them and we care about their eternal security?
And yet we love the truth and we're giving them the truth of the gospel to know the truth and not to share it with someone is to tell them you don't love them. If I go to my doctor tomorrow, I don't have a doctor's appointment tomorrow. Don't worry.
If I go to my doctor tomorrow and he does blood work and he examines everything and he says, you know what?
Your dad had cancer. Your grandpa had cancer. We're seeing all the signs of the same cancer your dad had and your grandpa had. And it's very likely that could happen. I don't know.
And he looked at me and he said, you know, we think there's a treatment for it, but we're really not going to tell you. I love you, James.
You're a great patient of mine and I love you, but I don't really care to tell you the truth of how to get rid of this cancer. Well, then he really doesn't love me.
If he came in and he just told me the truth and he said, this is what happened and he walked out, then he really doesn't love me. He's living in truth.
The way we know that he loves me and the way we know that he is respectful in his knowledge is he brings both of them together.
He tells me the truth. He tells me what's going to happen. And then he lays out the plan.
He says, I love you enough to tell you how we can get rid of this. It's going to be a long journey. It's going to be a tough journey, but we can figure this out together if you're willing to take it. Now, then I have the responsibility of that moment of saying,
how am I going to respond? Sorry. How am I going to respond when I hear the love and I hear the truth as this begins to go in my life? Am I going to respond appropriately and say, doctor, you know best for me. I know you love me.
I know you care about me. I know you know the truth and I'm going to respond to what you're giving me. Or am I going to walk out saying that guy is a full baloney.
He doesn't care about me. He doesn't know what's best for me. I'm going to do my own thing. This is the gospel, right? Jesus loves us. He cares about us. He tells us the truth. He brings it together. He gives us salvation and we have the opportunity to respond.
Are we going to respond in the response of what Christ has us to respond in through salvation of saying, God, I want to trust in you today. Paul then continues on in verses four through eight, to give his upbringing, what he believes in, why he believes this.
Why is this important? Why is our upbringing important? Our story matters.
Our story matters to people that are around us. Our story matters to God. God has woven our story throughout time for this purpose in this specific time in the year 2026 for a specific reason in a specific time.
And I don't want us to just think that it's your here by coincidence in this room today, the second Sunday of the year in the year 2026. No, God has brought you for this reason, for this purpose, and your upbringing and your belief matters.
You see, Paul tells his story and his plan that's rooted in God's promises all throughout time because he understands that Christianity just didn't appear out of nowhere.
Christianity is fulfillment of God's plan through the Old Testament. That is woven all the way through the Old Testament.
I was telling Roy this morning, It's still there today. And you can touch it. You can experience it. You can see the Old Testament come to life because you get to experience that moment while you're there. And Paul understood this.
He understood that his upbringing and his beliefs matter. And he's saying all this as he talks to the prophets, as he talks to everything in the Old Testament, he says that the gospel is not new.
The gospel is completed truth of the Old Testament. If we don't have a firm grasp of the Old Testament, we'll never understand the New Testament. We'll never understand what this means and why this means until we fully understand why Jesus came to die for our sins because man sinned in the garden.
Because we are fallen creatures because we are completely undone and we are completely without him and we need the gospel of Jesus Christ. Do you see your faith grounded in God's work? Or is it just a personal preference?
I wake up on Sunday because grandma told me to wake up on Sunday and go to church and it's a preference of mine or I have to be in God's people. I have to be in his word. I have to grow together.
I have to be around his people and I've got to be in God's place where God has asked us to be at.
Paul's upbringing and belief matter to this moment and our upbringing and belief matter as well. Number three, verses nine through 11. Paul now begins to examine his past and he does it without excuse. He does it without excuse. Paul had the opportunity to say, I did some bad things and let's move on.
But yet Paul in this moment in verses nine through 11 outlines the wickedness that he did and exposes himself before the judge that could have easily condemned him to death at that moment because he arrested people and killed people and was a murderer. He could have hidden those things.
He could have softened the truth a little bit. He could have said, I've done wrong just as everybody else in this room has done wrong. But yet he owned his sin.
He owned his past without an excuse. I think this is an example for us to say we must live in what we have done but not live there.
God has, the gospel erases our past and it brings us into a moment where we are redeemed from that. But also it reminds us that God is the God of second chances.
God is the God of third and fourth and 15 and 25 and as the young people of six, seven chances. That God has given us so many chances in our life to where we are redeemed through that and we get to live in the second chances.
We get to live in the moment where we can say, yeah, I've done wrong. Yeah, I've made mistakes.
But God forgave those mistakes and has redeemed those mistakes for his glory and for his good.
Every once in a while my kids will be around me and they'll be looking at my hands. And especially when they were younger, I've got a scar right here on my middle finger and a little one on my ring finger of my right hand.
And when I was a young kid, I would always grab onto my mom's minivan and pull myself up. And we were leaving for my grandma's house and I reached in and I grabbed it and I went to pull myself up. And my sister accidentally, it was not on purpose.
She wasn't malicious in this moment. She tortured me all the time.
If she's listening, my older sister always tortured me and would beat me up. But this time it was not out of that. It was an accident. She slammed the car door while my hand was in that middle barrier. I screamed.
She didn't know what was going on. She opened it up. My hand's bleeding. It's bleeding out of my arm. I run inside. I'm crying. My mom doesn't know what's going on. She sees my hand. She cleans it up. I lay down in the back seat and I fall asleep on the way home.
We were poor. We didn't get stitches. We just put some super glue on it. Put a bandaid on it.
You're going to be fine. That's why I've got a scar there. That scar tells the story of what happened in my life. It doesn't define me, but it tells the story of what happened.
And oftentimes the scars and the mistakes that we do in life, they talk about the healing, but they also can tell others about what God has done in our life.
And the wrongs that we've done, the past that we've done, they don't define who we are, but they redeem who we are in Christ. Oftentimes, if you're like me, you're ashamed of your past.
You're ashamed of what you've done and you never want to talk about it. You want to forget it.
Just as the Bible says, they're taken away as far as the east is from the west.
But God's grace comes in. And God's grace can redeem our past and redeem the things that we've done for his glory and for his goodness. Right?
No one would have picked Paul, a murderer or someone who was coming in and trying to exterminate the church, to be the one that was going to establish the Jerusalem church, the Gentile church. And yet he has the opportunity in his last sermon and he brings it up.
Look at what I've done. I've done some wrong things, but that's not determining who I am today. It's a reminder for us to not just look past our past, but look at our past and say, how is God working this in my story? Number four, verses 12 to 15,
Paul's conversion to Christ. Christ. He lays this groundwork, his past, who he is, what he was about, his history, who his upbringing was, to now in the pinnacle moment of this sermon, he says,
I had a direct encounter with Jesus. It was personal. It was transformational. And my life has never been the same since that moment. Can we say that?
Can we say from the moment we experienced Christ, my life has been completely changed. My life has been completely different because I am standing here because of what Christ has done. And he uses the statement.
He says that Jesus looked at him from heaven and said, Paul, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? He specifically calls out his wrongdoing.
When you meet Christ, you don't say the same. Your life is radically changed and radically different. And this is what happened to Paul. Paul experienced Jesus in this blinding light and his life was never the same from that point on.
When you encounter Jesus, did your life take a different direction? Did your life begin to go in a different way than the way you were going before?
Or did your vocabulary change? There are times in our life where we learn the Christian life. We learn the school life, right? Let's take Christianity out of it for a minute. You go to school and you begin to know what your teachers want you to say, right?
What are the three rules? Don't talk in class. Don't chew gum. Don't talk while the teacher's talking. All of the rules that your class has. You begin to learn the vocabulary of school to be an excellent student.
I fear oftentimes in our Christian church today, we have the vocabulary of what the Bible says, but we don't have a heart transformation that the Bible wants us to have.
And as Paul is preaching here, as Paul is giving this final sermon, he says, I don't want you just to have a vocabulary change, King Agrippa. You know these things.
You've seen these things. Would you turn to Christ? And then he continues on to say, there's been a commission in my life in verses 16 to 18. Paul said that once I was saved, once I changed and my life was changed, I was now sent. He says here, from darkness to light, from Satan to God, I am now on mission.
The salvation of Jesus always leads us to a mission.
It always leads us to do something for him, to go out and accomplish something for his work and something for his glory.
And Paul was saying here, I was commissioned by the church, and I was commissioned to go out and to do things for the gospel. God never saves us just to bring us into a church building and sit and never do anything.
God saves us so that we would get off of our rear end at times, and we would go out and we would do things for him.
He rescues us so that we can go out and we can rescue others from the darkness. And he tells us there is darkness all around us, and we are the light, and we need to go out and, as our mission statement says, penetrate the darkness with the light that the gospel has given.
Church, this morning, who has God placed in your life that you need to reach with the gospel? We all have circles of influence.
Concentric circles of concern is what they're called. The people that your life is already touching,
that you can look and you can say, this person I already interact with, let me go share the gospel with them. This person I'm going to see tomorrow,
I know I'm going to see them because I've got an appointment with them. Have I ever shared the gospel with them? This person I'm going to see next week because we're having a family gathering, and there's something going on, and we're going to see them, and I haven't seen them in a year.
There's someone I'm already connected to. Who can I share the gospel with? Maybe it's a neighbor. Maybe it's a co-worker.
Maybe it's someone at school who you're already in and around, and you can begin to share the gospel with them. This is what Paul's commission was.
I'm going to go into the world. I'm going to specifically go to the Gentiles because I can reach them, because I know them, because I know their culture. God has saved me for this purpose. We all have a purpose and a commission in our life. Number five, Paul's witness.
He was obedient, and he was consistent. Verses 19 through 23, he lays down, and he says, there was a heavenly vision that came. There was a heavenly vision. God called me to do this, and I had a choice. Am I going to follow Jesus, or am I going to do my own thing?
You see, understanding that if he followed Jesus, there was going to be a cost.
Oftentimes, in the world we live in, there's a cost-benefit analysis in everything we do. Right?
If I go and buy this new car, maybe it's a new Ford Bronco. Right, Jameson? We're going to buy this new vehicle.
What's the payment going to be? What's my insurance going to go up? What is this cost that's going to include for all this, and is it going to benefit me to do it? Everything we do is based on a cost-benefit analysis. We buy a house. We rent. All these things.
Oftentimes, this is what happens. The gospel comes and penetrates us, and we say, what's it going to cost me? Is it going to cost me my friend? Is it going to cost me my job? Is it going to cost me whatever it is, and is it going to benefit me to do that?
If it's not, I'm going to turn away from it.
See, Paul looked at this, and he said, I'm going to be obedient no matter the cost.
If it costs me my family, if it costs me my life, if it costs me everything, I'm going to be obedient, and I'm going to be consistent. I'm going to show that the obedience that I have is an evidence of genuine faith.
You see, immediately after the vision of salvation came to him, Jesus told him, go into Damascus where you were planning to arrest people, and go to this man who would have probably killed Paul,
killed Saul at this moment. And he said, you're going to have to go to the people that you were going to arrest and ask them to help you. There is going to be a cost to what we do, and our evidence of genuine faith is often the obedience that we have in Christ.
If obedience calls you comfort, calls you comfort, if obedient calls you your reputation, or if obedience would cost you your security, would you still follow Jesus?
We live in a free world. America is a free country, and I love it. I love America. I love the American flag. I love everything about America.
If you cut me, I'm going to bleed red, white, and blue because I love America. My dad was serving in the military. I'm sorry, my grandpa served in the military. I love America.
But if America wasn't free, would I still follow Christ? If I lived in China, where it would be legal to follow Christ, if I lived in Russia, or I lived in Ukraine, or I lived in a closed country, and it cost me to follow Jesus, would I still do it?
I would say yes, but that's the question we have to ask each and every one of us.
Paul's Appeal to Agrippa
Is following Christ a cost, and if it begins to be a cost, would you still follow him? And then we get to the last part of this chapter, verses 24 through 32, the last part that we read, Paul's appeal to Agrippa,
and probably some of the most sad verses that you'll see in Scripture where he was almost persuaded.
Festus begins to mock him and begins to say, how dare you say this? Do you not understand who you're in front of? Agrippa begins to hesitate, and Agrippa makes this statement, you almost persuaded me. Almost saved is still completely lost.
And I want us to understand that this morning. If you're almost into the water of the ocean and at the beach, and yet you never step into the water, you can't fully say that you got into the ocean, but you were almost there. And salvation, if we're almost persuaded about Jesus,
but yet we never take that step into faith, you're still completely lost.
I think Paul's response is one of the most powerful responses that we can have in Scripture. He looks at Agrippa and he says, I would to God that not only you, but all that hear me this day were almost, but were both almost and altogether such as I accept the chains.
He says, I don't want you just to be almost persuaded. I want you to be altogether persuaded.
I want you to be completely sold out and completely at the finish line just as I am. I don't want you to be in bondage.
I don't want you to have to go through the torture that I went through, but I want you to be completely persuaded to me.
One of the stories we looked at this morning in Sunday school was a man who was 61 years old who was running this massive marathon, 544 miles, I think it was.
And if he would have gotten 543 miles and said, you know what? I almost finished the race.
I almost made it to the finish line. I did a really good job. I ran a lot more than a lot of other people are ever going to run their life. And I'm just going to end at 543 miles.
He never finished his race. He would have never finished his race. And he could have never said that he finished the race because he never crossed the line. Whether it was first place or last place, he never crossed the line.
I would echo the words of Paul to say, I pray that we're not almost to the gospel.
I pray that we're all together to the gospel and we cross the finish line together and we fully surrender our life to Jesus.
We fully say that I'm going to abandon all of myself and follow Christ today as Paul follows Christ as I want to follow Christ and we want to live a life of surrender to Christ.
Conclusion and Call to Action
Not as Agrippa says here, to be almost persuaded. As Terry comes in place for us, I want to conclude with a couple of thoughts. Paul here in this courtroom walks out still in chains.
Paul is the only one in this courtroom that walks out in chains. And yet Festus walks out with the authority and Agrippa walks out with a troubled conscience that is so troubled.
You can hear it in this voice of how easily you think you could persuade me. And yet he says, I have almost been turned into a Christian. One man is bound, but yet he is free. Two men walk out of this courtroom completely free and yet their conscience is bound.
Nothing about Paul's situation changes. He's still a prisoner. He just preached his last sermon. He's going to leave this courtroom and he's going to get on a boat and he's going to sail towards Rome.
And yet everything has been revealed in his life. He fully submits his life to Christ. He is fully living in the gospel and the gospel has been clearly spoken. And Christ has been plainly presented for every person in that room to hear, just as I've done today.
The tragedy of the text is not that Paul remains in chains.
Oftentimes I would read this and I would, I would often read and say, God, why did you still allow Paul to be in chains? God, why did you still allow your servant who sacrificed so much? He's still in chains. He's still in bondage and he's heading to Rome.
And as I began to study this even more this week, the true tragedy that reveals to me is that Agrippa remained almost persuaded.
Paul was content by being in chains. He was content for his life to eventually go to Rome, to eventually die for Christ.
The tragedy here is that oftentimes we're like Agrippa where we're almost persuaded of Jesus.
Almost believing is still in belief. Almost listening to your mom and dad when they tell you to go take the garbage out or go clean your room, almost doing it never actually fulfills the quest that has been done. Almost surrendering to Jesus is still rebellion to Jesus. And almost saved is still lost.
Paul was wanting one thing. The one thing that he is saying here is that everyone that would hear him would be all together in Christ. I want to end by that same question here today that stands before us. Are you almost persuaded or are you all together his?
Do you bear the name of Jesus Christ? Do you bear the mark of his body on you? And are you completely all together his? Or are you still in that questioning moment?
Only you can answer that question and only you can respond this morning. Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. Lord, help us to be so completely sold out to you, so completely enamored with who you are that your life permeates everything we do.
Lord, help us this morning not to be almost persuaded, but help us to be completely, completely persuaded for who you are and what you've done for us. In your name we pray. Amen.
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