Paul Before Agrippa, Part 3
Acts 26:19-32
Let me draw your attention to Acts 25, and this is going to be our concluding look at a lengthy section of Scripture, which we've entitled Are you Trying to Convert Me? We'll recall that this is occasion of the apostle Paul's encounter with a man by the name of Agrippa. Let me begin with just an introduction that may set our thoughts. Obviously we are all aware of the fact that a new year is upon us. A clean slate on which to write, fresh cement to leave our footprints in, days to live that no one has ever lived before. And I suppose there has to be something of the forgetting of those things that are behind and pressing toward the mark that is ahead that kind of mentality. Every new day is a day reborn and yet I think that we don't catch the impact of that as much as we do when we see a whole year facing us. This year you in your life will write history, not many people may read it, on the other hand a lot of people may read it, it just depends. And as the collective you, all of you write history so shall the history be written of Grace Church.
Churches have personalities. They are the corporate personality of all the parts. Whatever we are together this year is what Grace Church will be, nothing less, nothing more. As I was thinking about it what about John MacArthur, what will his life say for 1975? What would he like to write in the fresh cement that's so harden for all men to read in the future, all who are interested at least? What will Grace Church leave in the fresh cement of 1975, what will its impact be, and will the world care, and will it matter?
As I look back I could see some years that we wrote some things. I can remember back in 1969 when I think we wrote a lot of things about doctrine. We spent a whole year studying doctrine. I remember that Saturday after Saturday after Saturday I met with men and we studied doctrine. I remember that I preached through the book of Romans and laid the foundation, at least I believe that doctrine is the foundation upon which to build the building and we started there. And I can remember that it wasn't long after that that we began to talk a lot about the unity of the believers and fellowship and the ministry of spiritual gifts and there were years when that was our identity and history recorded that Grace Church was emphasizing those things. And then I think there were years when we began to emphasize training. We began to consider training people for certain things, making sure that our teachers were equipped, making sure that our elders and deacons were equipped. And then it seems as though last year we really got kind of involved in determining the direction of the church in terms of its structure and patterns and leadership from the New Testament, and we saw some marvelous things and we began to study that.
So what about 1975? What shall be written of us? What shall we write? The greatest thing that I think we could write, and I think we're ready for this is that 1975 for Grace Community Church was the year of evangelism. It was the year of winning people to Jesus Christ. We're there, you know, we're mature at this point, at least mature enough to know the gospel and to know the principles of the Christian life. And I think we have to recognize that with all that we know we are immensely responsible. Don't you believe that? We're responsible to God because let's face it we know here because of the quality of the teaching that you receive in all the various levels of this church you know far more than people in most churches know. And if the responsibility of evangelism in the world belongs to anybody it has to belong to us, even as it does to all Christians, but maybe in a greater measure because to whom much is given much is required. We have answers for people and we need to make them available.
I've heard it said frequently to me, "Well Grace Church all right, but it grows at the expense of all the other churches, because all Grace does is take away all the good people from the rest of the churches." That is true. Everybody, now wait a minute, I have to qualify that, everybody we've ever gotten from any place else is good people. We think you're all wonderful people. I mean we're not going to say we got all the bad people. And we've heard other churches who say that Grace just gets the bad people, we're glad they go, and that's been said a lot. But that isn't true. We love all of you. We praise God. You know that I know this that if a church grows as fast as our church has grown and we grow all by evangelism and all by new Christians we would have to have an influx of spiritual leadership just to take care of all those new Christians. So we're not against that.
Now we don't go around making problems and trying to pull people out of other places, but there are a lot of people in a lot of places they shouldn't be. There are people in apostate churches. Now we don't mind when God sends us leadership because we assume He has a reason for that. And we don't mind when people have a hunger for the word of God and they want to know the word of God and they come here to learn it. We think that's legitimate motivation. But let's be fair about it. There is a big difference between new members and new Christians isn't there? And with the addition of new members and people like many of you who know the word of God there ought to be a multiplying factor of new converts being won to Christ. And I don't think this is an issue of church emphasis, I think it's an issue of spirituality. You know what I think? I think a believer who walks in the Spirit is reproductive. I don't think it is something you need to promote from the pulpit. I don't think you need programs for evangelism. I just think you need the spillage of a Spirit-filled life.
So it isn't as if we need to put up big banners about winning people all the time because I'm not sure that's true motivation. I mean we don't want a bunch of people running out and doing a lot of things in the flesh so they can get a lot of fleshly recognition. What we really want is spiritual believers through the spillage of their spirituality is going to produce disciples.
Like the early church who had such love and such unity and such beautiful fellowship that the Lord had an easy time adding daily to the church such as should be saved. But I do think that in 1975 that we need to really be aware that all of the growth of Grace Church hasn't been new Christians and maybe it ought to be a lot more. Just thing that if every one of us only won five people to Jesus Christ in 1975 and began to disciple them what a fantastic impact we would have. I trust we're committed to that. I trust we're committed to sharing the gospel boldly. If I've learned anything at all in the study of the book of Acts, I've learned that you present Christ with boldness and fearlessness. I mean I just can't get around it because there it is all the time. You and I have both learned enough about the apostle Paul to know that the man was absolutely bold, wasn't he? And that he saw, as the directive in his life, to win somebody to Christ and mature them in the faith. A Christian who is not doing that is a contradiction.
A Christian is a reproducer by definition. He is someone who is to effect someone and so as we look at the book of Acts and particularly as we look at this passage I'm just reminded again here is the apostle Paul, he's under all kinds of pressure, he's a prisoner now, the Jews hate him so much they have him a prisoner, actually the Romans are holding him, but under the pressure of the Jews. He is having to give his testimony over and over again, but every time he gives his testimony, which he always declares his innocence, and even though he's innocent they won't let him go because of Jewish pressure, but every time he declares his testimony it winds up being a presentation of the resurrection of Jesus Christ of the gospel and invariably throws everything into chaos.
I mean the apostle Paul had such boldness he goes into a city like Athens that was full of idolatry, he went in there and it says when he saw the city wholly given over to idolatry his spirit was stirred within him and began to preach Christ in the marketplace and the synagogue and everywhere. Went up on the Areopagus in Chapter 17 and declared to them the unknown God. I mean he was bold.
In Corinth he did the same thing. He did the same thing in Philippi. He went into town presented Jesus Christ, a group of people got saved. He found an evil possessed girl and it didn't bother him that the two people who were making their fortune off this girl would be upset. He just cast the demons out of the girl, straightened her out, got thrown in jail, sang, had an earthquake, let the jailer to Christ, just absolutely consumed by the same goal all the time, to win people. He never got defensive.
Whenever it was time to give a defense it turned out to be an attack. He never defended his behavior; he only declared his behavior and then zeroed in on whoever he wanted to reach. They were trying to kill him in the courtyard, the Romans rescued him, hauled him up the stairs. He turned around at the top of the stairs and preached Jesus to the crowd. They hauled him into the Sanhedrin, he got in the Sanhedrin and talked about the resurrection and threw the Sanhedrin into such cast they would have ripped him to shreds if the Romans hadn't rescued him. Every time he was never on the defense, he was always on the attack.
I think the Christian has to view his life as an aggression against the world. We are not going around saying, "Yes I'm a Christian, but." The Christian is a soldier and the Christian is a soldier who has a sword and a sword is for attacking and the sword is the word, and the world is the objective, and we go at it. We may have to wail away through the demons to get there, but that's the point. It's a war and we're on the aggression.
People, you know you can say, "Well I'll just sit around until somebody comes along and happens to get accidentally saved by my witness." It just won't happen. Not like it would if you get aggressive and confront the system.
Well you see Paul here and he faces this man by the name of Agrippa. And we've seen much detail in Chapter 25 already, so we'll just kind of skip by some of that and for our time today we really come to Chapter 26 where Paul begins his testimony. Now you remember that Festus was kind of stuck since Paul couldn't get any justice at all in Caesarea he appealed to Rome. A Roman citizen had the right to do that if his case wasn't getting fair trial he could appeal to Caesar and he would be transferred to Rome and they would hear his case in a Roman court.
So Festus was going to have to send Paul to Rome. The only problem was he had no accusation to write because Paul hadn't done anything. So he was trying to figure one out. Well when Agrippa arrived Agrippa came along with Bernice because Agrippa wanted to just welcome Festus. He was the new Roman governor and they wanted to have good relationship. Agrippa was a vassal king, he was a nothing king, he was a puppet king, but nevertheless he did order the temple worship and appoint the priests so he had some position of leadership. Well he wanted to kind of have a little meeting with Festus and welcome him and start off on the right foot.
So when Agrippa arrived Festus figured maybe this guy will pick something out of Paul's testimony that will help me to have something to write. So they put on this big hearing. Well the big show was described there at the end of Chapter 25, a whole lot of pomp and all of that when they came together, and here was this little Paul in the middle and all these big wheels around him and people of great importance. And he is to defend himself. He is to speak to the issue of his imprisonment and the crimes that he is supposedly to have committed. But instead of it being a defensive, it is an attack and he attacks Agrippa.
I mean he zeros in on Agrippa and when he's all done and Agrippa says, "Are you trying to convert me?" And he says, "Right, and not only you but everybody else in this place." In other words Paul never backed off the issue. He never became a defensive Christian. He never became somebody who had to be spoken to before he really took his opportunities. He never was a sneaky person. I know there are people who would have said, "Paul, you know you could save yourself a lot of trouble if you had snuck around the back alleys and passed out tracts and then beat it out of town, and then you could have claimed the promise the word never returns void and you would have been all right." But that wasn't his way. His way was confrontation and boldness and fearlessness. So here he is defending himself before the Roman governor and the king and yet he doesn't become defensive at all. He attacks Agrippa and forces the issue.
Now last time we saw the commencement of Paul's testimony in verses 1 through 18. Let me just review that in content by reminding you that Agrippa said, "All right Paul. Speak. I want to hear what you have to say and we'll see if we can get some kind of accusation out of this whole mess." So Paul spoke. And what he did is this: without going into all the detail of the outline he did this: He said, "Agrippa and Bernice I was a Jew. I mean I was a zealous Jew and all the Jews know it. I was a super-zealous Jew. I was a Pharisee. I was so zealous that I went about doing all the things I could do contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And then," he says, "One day I was walking down the road to Damascus for the purpose of executing Christians and you know what happened a light brighter than the sun hit me," verse 13, "and everybody with me and we hit the ground," verse 14. "And I heard a voice saying to me, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.' And I said, 'Who are you Lord?' And he said, 'Jesus whom you persecute.' And you know what happened Agrippa? Jesus said to me, 'Get up, get on your feet for I have appointed you a minister and a witness and I want you to tell the things that you have seen. I have delivered you from the Jews and from the Gentiles to send you back to them and here's your message,'" verse 18. "To open their eyes, turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among them who are sanctified by faith that is in me." Now that's the commencement of his testimony.
He says, Agrippa, I'll tell you my story. I was literally transformed by Jesus. He is alive. I mean I wasn't out under a tree reading the Old Testament trying to discover the Messiah. I wasn't in a Bible study with a bunch of Christians who were reigning in on me, I wasn't seeking to do anything but persecute Jesus Christ and sovereignly out of heaven the living Christ who is not dead but alive from the dead zeroed in on me and spoke to me and blinded me and commissioned me to preach and told me what my message was. Little tough to argue with that.
Now he summarizes the transformation. What he wants Agrippa to know is he is not a rebel, he is not a traitor, he is not a studied antagonist of Judaism. He has been victimized by almighty God and a resurrected Messiah has transformed his life in an instant. Now that's sovereignty, sovereign act of God in conversion of the apostle Paul. I want you to notice something before we go any further in this. Notice in verse 18 you have a tremendous pattern for the approach of evangelism. One of the questions that somebody asks that we won't get time to answer tonight is where did the four spiritual laws come from? It's just a method of evangelism. Well there are a lot of different methods. Basically the right method of evangelism in its simple skeletal form could be taken right out of verse 18. First thing to do is conviction: open their eyes. The first thing you do when you lead somebody to Jesus Christ is show them what they really are, right? I mean you can't show a guy he needs to be changed unless he sees what he mess he is to start with. You got to strip him bare. You've got to strip away his securities. You got to take whatever he's hanging onto and pull it away. And so there must be opening their eyes. This is conviction, a recognition of sin and judgment.
The second thing, after conviction, is illumination and turn them from darkness to light. The second thing you do after conviction is show them truth. Now having been convicted of sin and error let me show you the truth. So you have conviction then illumination. Then you have conversion. When the response comes they are turned from the power of Satan to the power of God. There's the conversion, from Satan to God. Taken out of the kingdom of Satan, the kingdom of darkness and given to God.
So first there's conviction of sin, then there's the illumination by giving them instruction to what the gospel is all about, then there is conversion as they're transformed by the power of God from Satan to God, and with that comes sanctification that they may receive what, forgiveness of sins, they're made holy, the penalty is paid, the power of sin is broken, the life is purified positionally. And so you have sanctification. Then you have promise, the inheritance among them who are sanctified. You tell them what's in the future for them.
So the approach of evangelism is simply conviction, illumination, conversion, sanctification, and then promise for the future. And, of course, the key to all of it by what? Faith that is in Me. You're saved by faith, Ephesians 2:8-9. "For by grace you are saved through faith that not of yourselves, that is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast." Romans 10:9-10 says, "Thou shall confess with mouth Jesus as Lord, believe in thy heart God has raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the mouth confession is made unto salvation with the heart man believeth unto righteousness." So you see salvation is an act of faith. There's the gospel right there in verse 18.
He says, "Paul, you're to be my gospel presenter. You're to go out and tell men, proclaim." And so he tells Agrippa and everybody else what he was called to do and at the same time gives them the gospel. So we see Paul's testimony commencing. "Agrippa," he says, "I was just God did this to me. The living resurrected Christ did it."
Now notice his response. Here comes the culmination of his testimony beginning in verse 19. The culmination of Paul's testimony point 4 on the outline. Now notice in any act of the sovereignty of God there is also the necessity for human will to respond. God is not going around just dunning people with some kind of a sovereign hammer and you sort of blink and get up and say, "Oh that's what I am now." Whatever you say there must be an act of the will. And there is an act of the will here in the case of Paul. We see his commitment to this call of God in verse 19. "Whereupon O king Agrippa," I mean after I had heard from a living Messiah who wasn't dead, a Jesus of Nazareth that I know was crucified, and after He spoke to me living, 'I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.' I submitted my will. This is necessarily a part of commitment. This is necessarily a part of response. There must be an act of the will. There must be obedience. Salvation is a sovereign act of God. It also involved an act of human response. The call to the ministry is a sovereign act of God. It also demands a human response.
In Galatians 1:16 Paul says, "When the Lord called me into the ministry I conferred not with flesh and blood, but I immediately entered into what God had called me to do." I didn't seek any human wisdom. I responded instantly to God in obedience. But obedience is the response that God asks. Now this is part of the paradox of sovereignty and responsibility. God acts sovereignly to bring about His will, but He demands within the framework of that sovereignty a human response. So that when you give your testimony you stand up you don't say, "Well one day I was walking along and I was zapped out of heaven and I was saved and I didn't even do anything. All of a sudden I didn't even know what a Christian was and now I am one." It isn't that simple. There had to be an act of your will. When you give your testimony you say, "One day I committed myself to the Lord Jesus Christ. You did it consciously didn't you as an act of the will and yet the Bible said it was a sovereign act of God designed before the world began.
You know somebody asked me at this conference I spoke at, at Salem, Oregon this week and he said, "I have a real problem." He says, "I don't know whether my Christian life is to be lived by the Lord or by me." He said, "I've been reading Galatians 2:20 and I think I'm supposed to let Him live it through me." "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me."
"So the idea is that Christ just lives His life through me." I said, "Yes, but have you ever read I Corinthians 9, which says in verse 27, I beat my body to bring it into subjection." You see there is the sovereign life of Christ lived through you, but there is a submission of your will that fits into that sovereignty. You might say this: That God sovereignly moves on your will, but your will has to be activated. In a sense you can hold your will off. That's true but you pay a high price.
You think about Moses in Exodus 4. God said, "Moses, I'm telling you to speak for me." Moses says, "I am slow of speech and slow of tongue." I stutter. It would be bad enough to stutter in English, but to stutter in Hebrew would be horrible. He stutters. And the Lord was very very wroth with him and he said, "Who made man's mouth. Who made the deaf and who made the dumb and who made the blind? Have not I the Lord?" Now just because of your unbelief, Moses, you're going to tell everything to Aaron and Aaron shall be as a mouth to you and you shall be as God to Aaron. That is you'll give Aaron the revelation and Aaron will do the talking. Exodus 4:10-17 gives the whole thing. So he paid a high price all his life having to whisper everything in Aaron's ear.
Then there was Ezekiel. God says, "Ezekiel, go do this." "No." So God just picked him up and moved him. Yeah. It says in Ezekiel 3, God just picked him up and he says, "My Spirit was kindled within me." God just went um humph and put him where he wanted him, but he's fighting it all the way and it caused him a lot unnecessary grief. Now God may just overrule you. You may say, "I don't want to do that God, I will not submit my will to your calling," and God just may umph put you where he wants you anyway and you'll suffer for it. You'll pay a price. The worse thing can happen though is maybe God will say, "All right," and abandon it then you spend your whole life being what you shouldn't be. Right? I'm not talking about salvation. I'm talking about service calling.
You know I'm glad God did with me what He did because I was called to the ministry from way back. I mean I went through the routine as a little kid, you know the policeman, fireman, cowboy and all that, but by the time I got into high school I knew in my heart what I wanted to be in the flesh and that was a pro athlete. I knew that was, there was no question about it, or at least I wanted to get into athletics as a coach or something like that. But in the back of my mind I believed that I was called to the ministry but I didn't want it. I didn't want to be in the ministry, I wanted to be in some kind of athletics and I really fought it. I fought it hard and belligerently.
And then, as many of you know, the Lord had to deal with me very strongly. He had to deal with me in the way he dealt with Ezekiel. He just slammed me down on the highway and tore me up and almost killed me, almost took my life and then I said, "Lord listen, if it's that important to you listen I'm willing. I mean if you're going to make a big deal out of it whatever you say, right." You know I've got 64 square inches of my back full of scar tissue as a reminder of the fact that it's better to submit to the Lord when He calls you than it is to hassle Him.
Now you see in some cases God will force the issue to accomplish what He wants to accomplish and in other cases there are people, and I've have people say this to me time and time again in my life, once I was called to the ministry I rejected the call and now my life is in shambles. Even though God calls sovereignly there can be the place of the response of the will. Now God ultimately knows what will happen and God will accomplish His work. But Paul says, "I was obedient." I love it. When he said that he said what is the most important thing in the Christian life isn't it? It must be the submission of my will. What is obedience?
Let me give you some things about obedience. Give you some principles. These are so important. Number one: obedience is a mark of conversion. If you're saved obedience should mark you. I Peter 1:14 says, "You ought to walk as obedient children." Romans 6:16, says, "Don't you know that to whom you yield yourselves his servants you are whom you obey? If you've yielded yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ who should you obey? The Lord Jesus Christ. It's a mark of conversion. If you're my children you'll obey what I say.
Secondly, it is a recognition of authority. Obedience is a recognition of authority. When you obey you are saying you are in control and I am in submission. Watch this: when you do not obey God you are playing God. You have just usurped divine authority. Did you get that? If God says, "My desire for you is to do this," and you know this is clear in your heart and you say, "No, I'm going to do this," you have replaced God as the controlling authority in your life. That is stupid. And that is what goes on most times. In Acts 5:29 Peter says, "you judge whether we ought to obey God or man." You have that choice. God lays down principles and maybe God's spoken to your heart many times about a ministry, a teaching ministry, a serving ministry. I don't know what it is. And you said no. When you said that you have replaced God as the sovereign ruler of your life. Foolish. You see obedience is no only a mark of conversion, it is the recognition of authority.
Thirdly, obedience is a characteristic of faith. Obedience is a characteristic of faith. In Hebrews 11:8 it says, "And Abraham obeyed God." And the next verse says, "By faith." When you really believe God you'll obey Him because you know He's got your interest at heart, right? When you disobey you know what you're actually saying? You don't know what's best for me, God. I don't trust you. When you disobey God you're not trusting Him.
Abraham was willing to go to the promised land not knowing anything because he trusted God. All right God you tell me to go, I'll go because I believe you. Obedience to God is characteristic of trusting God. Every time you disobey God you're saying God you're not worthy of my trust. That's blaspheme isn't it? So you see obedience is a mark of conversion, a recognition of authority, and a characteristic of faith.
Fourth, obedience is proof of love. Don't tell God you love Him unless you obey. Jesus said, "If you love me you will keep My commandments. Whosoever keeps My commandments he it is that loves Me." You see obedience is a mark of conversion, a recognition of authority, a characteristic of faith, and a proof of love. You add all that together, folks, and obedience is a condition of power and effectiveness. A disobedient Christian is useless, useless.
Now you see then Paul says, "look Agrippa, and I really got all over the place on that verse, but he says, "Look Agrippa, I was not disobedient. I had to submit. I mean here is the living Messiah talking to me out of h