Sunday Sermon
sunday morning 29th Nov 2009
Acts 21v37-22v29
The situation as we have seen is that Paul has gone to Jerusalem and the Jews have attacked him and tried to kill him. Then the Romans came to the rescue taking Paul out of the crowd and into their custody. Then Paul gets a chance to speak to the crowd:
A) Basically Paul notes that he was once just like them, he hated the Way and was engaged in open persecution of it.
B) But then he met the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus and ever since that meeting has been called to be a missionary to the Gentiles.
C) The story was going along fine until Paul spoke of his call to go to the Gentiles.
Then the Jews want his death again and the Romans almost flog him before they realised he was a Roman Citizen.
So what can we learn from all of this for today?
Our greatest problem as a church today is our lack of numbers! We are dying out!
We can complain about lack of church attendance and blame all sorts of things.....
· But we must look at ourselves first and see why there is this problem.
The reason for the problem today is: lack of evangelistic zeal.
Yet we have the great commission, the command to make disciples has not been revoked.
If there was ever a time to stand up and state the obvious it is now: we need to evangelise!!
But where do we begin? How do we evangelise?
· Paul is our great example, he was a man who was full of evangelistic zeal.
What we are seeing in this passage is a man who is full of Zeal for the Lord.
He has gone to Jerusalem, knowing full well that persecution and possible death awaited him! But he goes and witnesses fearlessly for Jesus.
It is this fearless witnessing for the Lord that I want to look at.
How do we become zealous, fearless witnesses for the Lord like Paul was?
1) Vision of the Lord v6-16
The first thing that the passage highlights for us as a requirement for zeal is a vision of Jesus. Saul’s conversion stories are stories of how he saw the Lord.
There is the bright light, the voice, the revelation : “I am Jesus of Nazareth”; the baptism and the commissioning.
Paul was a man who was blessed by visions of the Lord.
To be zealous for the Lord we need to have proper vision of the Lord!
How do we get that?
By going over again and again the great teaching about Jesus in scripture.
By coming to scripture like students who have paid the highest fees possible to get a degree.
By looking for Him and wanting him.
Why do we go to scripture? – to find Jesus there. Seek for him, search for him.
Look simply at the names in this passage
“Jesus of Nazareth” v8 “the Righteous One” v14 “the Lord” v18 etc.
Why seek and search for Him?
Because the vision we have of Jesus will effect everything else we do, for better or for worse.
Working on our vision of Jesus is our priority!
Without an inspiring vision of Him we will never be zealous for Him.
2) Confession v1-5
With that vision of Christ the next thing we need is confession.
One of the remarkable things about Paul was his open confession.
a) he confesses his origins: v3
Often people want to run from the past, Paul acknowledges who he is and where he is from.
Our upbringing, our homes our families, even our schooling is all part of Gods plan for us.
We need to be honest about who we are!
b) he confesses his sins: v4-5,20
Paul was no ordinary sinner! He persecuted believers and he never tried to hid it.
Again we need to be honest about or sins. We are all sinners we have all sinned.
Why this great need to be honest, accepting of the past, confessing sin?
a) Because if we cannot accept ourselves and who we are then we will never fully appreciate Gods acceptance of us! Or his acceptance of others!!
b) because we are called to be witnesses for the Lord.
Part of that witness involves letting people know who we are. So we cannot lie or deny!
c) because God uses our warts and all to attract others to Him.
Why does the world have the idea that the Christian is the “goody-two-shoes”?
People are put off because they think they have to be perfect to be Christians!
This does not mean we invent stories of our great sinful pasts, no we are just honest!
How do we live this type of Confession?
A. Confession to one another is a great biblical practice we have forgotten.
We are told to confess our sins to one another and to forgive one another because that exemplifies God’s forgiveness and acceptance of us.
B. By bringing it all to God in prayer and adoration.
There we realise God loves us still, He is the Great Forgiving God!!
This confession leading to openness and further love of God will give us great zeal.
3) if these two things are in place then we will evangelise:
Zeal for the Lord leads to Love for the lost v17-21
A true vision of Jesus, followed by a life of honest confession, will lead to a love for the lost.
As we see Him we will see his love for the lost, we will see his glory and need to tell the lost about Him.
Paul again is our example:
Paul was called to witness to the Gentiles v21.
It was this thought that that grieved the crowd most!
They wanted to kill Paul because he was happily telling the lost world about their God!!
But the crowd did not really know God, whenever they saw God or the work of God they cried out “rid the earth of him”v22!!
Paul knew God and so he evangelised!
App:
Don’t try to evangelise, rather get to know Jesus. Then you will evangelise.
Our greatest need as a church is to evangelise, we will only evangelise if we get inspired by our vision of the Lord who accepts us as we are, who is altogether lovely, who is glorious and worthy of all our praise and worship.
The converse of all this is that if we are not evangelising, if our churches are disappearing as we speak, then the problem is we really do not know the Lord as we should.
This should sober us into repentance and seeking the Lord again.
