Exploring My Strange Bible - Protecting the Witness: New Testament Themes Part 3

Episode Date: September 4, 2017

This episode explores what the word “witness” means in the New Testament. The way this word is used in the apostles' writing is a bit different than how modern Christians have come to use it. We'll explore what it means for a group of people to bear witness to Jesus together. We'll also explore Paul's farewell speech in Acts Chapter 20 and discover how important it is to protect the witness of a church community so that it's representation of Jesus is faithful and not distorted.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. Okay, in this episode, we're going to be diving into the third of a six-part series. These were a bunch of teachings that I gave as a part of a larger project.

When I was a pastor at Door of Hope Church, we challenged the whole church one fall to read through the whole New Testament in 90 days. And it was awesome. Hundreds of people did it with us. And it was awesome. Hundreds of people did it with us. We gathered at 6 a.m. five mornings a week to actually just read it aloud together and then to learn about it a little bit more. And then on those Sundays for those three months, explored key passages and ideas from the previous week's readings. And so this teaching represents the book of Acts. And it was a message I gave both on the meaning of witness, what the New Testament means, what the apostles meant when they used the word witness, which is a little bit different than how modern Western Christianity has come to use that word and concept. And then also tracing the idea of witness to a group of people. In the New Testament, witness is something that a group of Jesus' followers do together and how they live together as a group of people committed to each other and

to Jesus. And then second, this message explores themes in Paul's farewell speech in Acts chapter 20 to once the group of community witness is assembled, how you go about protecting that kind of community. So this teaching is called Protecting the Church, and there you go. It's trying to summarize the whole book of Acts and the key themes within it. I learned a ton preparing for this teaching, and I hope that you can learn a ton too. So let's go for it. The book of Acts, man, I've so enjoyed reading and teaching and the 6am studies and just immersing myself in the book of Acts for the last couple of weeks. This is the foundation story for who we are as a community of followers of Jesus.

And this foundation story is about the explosion of the first Jesus movement, not the 1970s Jesus movement, but the 30s and 40s of the first century Jesus movement. The explosion of what was a small kind of Jewish messianic movement, which at Jesus's crucifixion, like dwindled to, you know, like just a little over a hundred people or so from the thousands of crowds that were around him to a small band. And it begins as a Jewish messianic movement in Jerusalem. And the book of Acts shows how this thing explodes, explodes past the ethnic boundary lines of Judaism, the geographical boundary lines of Jerusalem, out and out and out. And the book ends with communities of Jesus being planted all over

the Greek and the Roman world and the Mediterranean and people who had never even heard of the God of Israel before becoming followers of this Jesus of Nazareth. And the gospel making its way as far as Rome, you know, so far away. And so the book of Acts is about this expansive reach of the movement of Jesus's people. And one of the primary words and ideas that's going to be used over and over and over and over and over again to describe who these Jesus followers are and what they think they're doing and what they're about and what their purpose is. It's a very core concept in the book of Acts. And it's a concept that I find that many of us maybe think we're familiar with or we may not be familiar with at all, which is why we are landing here in Acts chapter 1. Because we, sitting here on the other

side of the planet 2,000 years later, we are a continuation, an expression of the same movement of people that began in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. So let's dive into the first sentences, and we'll just kind of let the themes emerge here. Verse 1. In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and to teach. Let's just pause for a moment here. So this is almost certainly the author, Luke, and he's describing his first book. What book is that? What's the first book? So the author, Luke, and he's describing his first book. What book is that? What's the first book?

So the Gospel of Luke. Yes, so Luke and Acts are meant to be read as a two-part work. So they both are addressed to this guy named Theophilus, and there's lots of different views on who Theophilus is. I think the most compelling one was he was a new Christian. His name says something about his background and so on. Most likely he's Luke's financial sponsor who allowed him a break to study and research and write books like Luke and Acts. I need to find someone like that, right?

So anyhow, so he's addressing this book to Theophilus and a church community that he was writing to. And so he says, I've already told you the story about Jesus, what he began to do and to teach. Here is going to be the continuation. Here we go. Until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen, he presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God.

At the end of each of the four Gospels in the New Testament, there are an empty tomb story, and then there are appearances of the resurrected Jesus to all kinds of different numbers of his followers. And we have evidence about not just those stories, but other hints and mentions in the New Testament of hundreds of people at once who saw the resurrected, alive from the dead Jesus sitting there, talking, they're having meals, they're hearing him, for a period of over a month. Jesus is with, it's not like a bunch of people in a little secret room, you know, and it's like this is hundreds of people over a period of a month, all were experiencing and seeing

and talking with the risen Jesus. This core experience of the risen Jesus was obviously a key, key element in the kickstart. This is, this actually happened. It's actually, it's actually true. It's not a figment of their imagination. And so what's going to happen next? Verse four, while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, You have heard from me.

John baptized with water. You all are going to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, not many days from now. So the Holy Spirit is about the personal presence of Jesus, and all of his followers are going to be immersed, that's what baptized means, immersed in the personal presence of Jesus. And all of his followers are going to be immersed, that's what baptized means, immersed in the personal presence of Jesus in not very long, not many days from now. So when they came together, they asked him,

they said, Lord, is now the time you're gonna restore the kingdom to Israel? And he said, it's not for you to know the times or seasons that the father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my what? My witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. There's so many amazing things going on here.

I'll just point out a few. First of all, verse 8. If you want to know what the book of Acts is all about, just learn verse 8. Verse 8 has the whole package right there. It has the Holy Spirit, which is Jesus' personal presence come to be among his people. And so in this sense, it's actually convenient that in the collection of the New Testament, Luke got separated from Acts because you have the Gospel of John in the middle now. And in the Gospel of John, Jesus says, I'm going away after the resurrection from the dead. I'm going to not be physically present with you anymore. And we would think, why is that a good idea? Like, Jesus, stay here. You know what I mean? Like, won't people believe you if they see you alive from the dead? And so on. And that may be the case, but it's also

the case of this. The risen Jesus is still just in his physical body and so on here hanging out with us. There's going to be a really long line of people who want to see him, right? Because he can only be in one place at one time. So you're going to have to wait in line for three years before you and I get to talk to him, you know what I'm saying? That doesn't make any sense. So he says, no, it's actually better that I go away and return in the presence of the Spirit. And so actually in the Spirit, Jesus can be present in the Spirit, his personal presence, with all of his followers all of the time. It's a portable Jesus, right? So instead of Jesus being in one place at one time, he can be everywhere all of the time with his followers. And in the Gospel of John, Jesus says that's

actually a better setup. The movement of my grace that took place through the cross and the resurrection is going to spread more quickly and more rapidly if we do it this way. If my followers become the bearers of my presence. Now notice what he also says here in verse 8. The disciples, the followers of Jesus, the Holy Spirit's going to come and they're going to receive what? Look at verse 8. Power. Power. When there are unique moments in our lives, when God's presence becomes real to us, and those are very powerful experiences in the history of the church, when the presence of Jesus, as like Josh said last week, becomes an exaggerated way or an intense kind of way. We've called these things revivals in the past. A new movement of Jesus' presence and his followers become extra aware and attentive to what he's up to in the world and so on. So moments of power. But look closely.

Look at verse 8. Jesus is going to come be present with everybody all the time, everywhere in the spirit. They're going to receive power. But for what purpose? What's the purpose of the Spirit coming to be present in these powerful ways? What does he say? What's the purpose of the Spirit coming? To be my witnesses so that you will be my witnesses. The power and the presence of Jesus is always working towards his people becoming witnesses to him. And here's the key word, you guys. This is it. Witness.

Witness. Whatever vision you have about what it means to come to church or be a part of a church, whatever idea you have about what it means to be a Christian or a follower of Jesus or whatever, you need to fit this word into your vocabulary in some way. Because in the book of Acts, the idea of witness is the primary way that Luke is going to describe the reason that these communities of Jesus exist. Communities of witness. And if I am a follower of Jesus, then one of my primary roles is to be a witness. This is a key word that Luke uses to describe people in the church,

also the book of Acts. Now, you know, I'm kind of a Bible geek this way, so I like to teach you words and so on. Let me teach you the Greek word for this. You actually already have a category for it. You've heard a related word to it. It's the Greek word. Do you see it up there on the left? Martyreo. Martyreo. Why don't you say it with me? Martireo. Can you see? There's an English word that we know in there. Do you see it? Yeah, martyr. And when you think of martyr, what do you think of? Somebody who's dead. You know, somebody who's died. And typically it's someone who's died on behalf of something, on behalf of a cause or behalf of people or something. So the meaning of the word martyr in our language derives from the Christian usage

of this word right here. Because as the early Jesus communities began to spread and more and more people became followers of Jesus, it became a persecuted religious movement and Christians were persecuted or even killed for their faith in Jesus. And so the Christian meaning of to do this act, to testify or to bear witness, came to have this meaning, to be one who martyrios, to be a martyr, one who bears witness even unto death. Now, we're going to camp out on this for a few minutes here because this is a very important concept. And again, just to show you, this is a primary way of thinking about the church and the purpose of the church in the book of Acts. Let me just show you a slide here. This is all the time Luke describes the church or Christians as martyreo in the

gospel. This is just in the book of Acts. How many times is that? That's a lot. That's a lot. All right. So this is a huge biblical theme. Whatever you think it means to be a follower of Jesus and whatever you think it means to be a follower of Jesus and whatever you think it means to be a part of a community of Jesus, of a church, it has to involve this in some way. We're just leaving out an entire book of the Bible and what it's trying to tell us. What does this mean to be a martyreo, to do this and so on? It means to be a witness or to testify. Now in English, that's a religious word, maybe, but where, in what kind of realm of day-to-day life do we use witness and testify here in our culture? This is a courtroom,

this is a courtroom word, right? So you're down at the corner right here, 20th and Hawthorne. You know, it's kind of a busy corner, five streets coming in and some of the lights. Have you ever waited for the light coming from Elliott Street? Holy cow. It's like at least five or six minutes you're just sitting there, which doesn't seem like that long when you hear it, but when you're waiting in the light for five minutes. Anyway, so maybe some people are tempted, you know, to turn right or to turn left and so on.

It's kind of a crazy intersection. And let's say you observe an accident at the corner there. Your name and number gets taken down because you're a witness, right? You observe the accident. And so then there's a dispute about whose fault it is. Who's going to get a call from somebody's lawyer? You are. And you're going to get called into a courtroom. And here's the basic setup. You have a group of people here who did not observe the accident. That's the judge and the jury. And then you have the fact, the reality of the accident and who has the privilege of being the go-between between all of that?

So you do, you're a bare witness. To be a witness is to be a signpost, someone who in that moment exists purely to connect these people who didn't observe it to the reality of the thing that you did observe. And so when you're standing in that role as a witness before the judge and the jury, like they don't want to know what you had for breakfast. They don't care what your favorite color is or like what movies you like to watch. They don't

care about that. What's important in that moment is do I point to something beyond myself for the benefit of these folks right here? That's the core concept. It comes to have a layer of meaning and a usage in the Christian history that's beyond just that of the courtroom. And so there's two ideas at work here. One is that there's a reality to which you're pointing, but it's not just like that you happen to know it as a matter of fact. It's that you experienced it. I was actually at the corner and I saw it,

and that enables me to become a martyr, one who bears witness. And that may seem kind of like abstract to you or something like that, law court. What does it mean to be a martyr, one who bears witness to this Jesus? And maybe this example will help a little more, and then we'll dive into Acts chapter 20. So we'll do the question here. How many of you have personally eaten a porcino taqueria before? Show of hands, because this is important to know who's in. All right. All right. So let's reverse it just so we can see this more starkly. How many of you have not eaten a porcino taqueria before? Poor souls. Poor souls. Okay. All right. This is good. This is perfect. And I knew this would be the case.

At this moment, there are two kinds of people in the world. Those who have eaten at Porcaino and those who have not. Those of you who have eaten at Porcaino, you're in a privileged role at this moment. You saw the people raise your hands around you who have not eaten at Porcaino Taqueria before. And so you have experienced firsthand, you have facts in your head, but also an experience in your past that enables you to be one who martyrios, a martyr, a witness. And here's the thing. If you have eaten at Porcino, is it hard? Does someone have to twist your arm to be a witness on behalf of Porcino? No, it's the most incredible tacos in the world, I think. Of course, it's just natural because it's inherent in the thing that you're pointing to that is awesome and that people need to and ought to know about this thing.

Let's break it down just a little bit more and think about what's happening for those of you who are now witnesses on behalf of Porqué No. So what qualifies you as a faithful martyr? What does it mean to be a faithful martyr? Well, first of all, you need to have, there's a reality. You have some facts in your head about the reality of this thing called Por Que No. So you need to know that there are how many locations? Two locations, Upper Hawthorne, Mississippi.

You need to know the hours of those locations, which are 11 to 9.30 weeknights, 11 to 10 on weekends. are. 11 to 9.30 weeknights. 11 to 10 on weekends. I live nine blocks away, so it's hard on my pocketbook. It's good. So you need to know the hours. You need to know their menu offerings. You need to know that if you're not the biggest taco fan, you need to have the tacos anyway, because they're so incredible. But you may also settle for the Brian's Bowl, the shredded pork on top, which is exquisite in my opinion. So you need to know facts. You need to have facts in your head. But here's the thing. You could go to the website and get all of that information without ever having visited, correct? So is the simply knowing about the facts and the reality of pork and does that

qualify you to be a faithful witness on that? Does the facts alone qualify you in having those in your head answer? No, no. You can be a witness, but I would argue you won't be a compelling faithful witness until you actually go there, until you actually taste the goodness of the Brian's bowl, right? Until you actually taste and experience and you say, these are the most superior tacos I've ever had. So it's a silly example, but you get the point. There is a real thing. It matters that there's a reality that you're pointing to. You're not just pointing to the, yeah, I was at this one place and I had really good tacos. What was it called again? I don't quite remember. No, it's actually really important that this place exists, right? And that they actually

make the tacos that you're trying to point others to. But if you're just trying to point others to, but you've never actually had the experience of eating there, you can't give a fully faithful witness because the whole part is about experiencing the overpowering flavor of those tacos, right? Experience and reality. Both are required to be a faithful martyr. And strangely, being a witness to Porcainot is similar to being a faithful witness to this Jesus, who says that his personal presence is with us for the very purpose of making us martyrs. So even just think about what's happening here in the book of Acts. They've been hanging out with the risen Jesus. In verse 3, he presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs for over a month, appearing to hundreds of people. And all of these realities, these facts point to that

Jesus of Nazareth is not a figment of our imagination. A real figure on the scene of first century Jewish, Greek, Roman history is real, is real. Christianity is not first and foremost based on a religious experience. It's crucial to get the cart behind the horse instead of in front of the horse here. Christianity, the announcement of the good news about Jesus is not advice. It's not a philosophy of life.

It's not about an experience that you have. It's about there actually something took place in history, whether you like it or not, about this man named Jesus of Nazareth. And he claimed certain things and he healed those who were broken, who came to him. He challenged those who were full of religious pride and arrogance. And he had just a laser-like focus knowing that as he announced the kingdom of God, that he would be rejected. He's the human who comes to be the kind of human that none of us could ever be. And in doing so, the world rejects him. And so in the form of a

Roman executioner's rack, he absorbs into himself the pain, obviously the physical pain, but the consequences of human sin and rebellion and our choices times 7 billion human beings, right? And all those additional who have ever lived to corrupt and to undermine the goodness of God's world. We call it sins and corruption. And he bears this in himself on the cross. He carries it. He bears it. on the cross. He carries it. He bears it. And he allows all of the collective weight of human sin and moral compromise to kill him and do its worst. It takes him to the grave. But because his passion for broken, sinful people who are even his enemies, his passion and his love for them is so great,

he conquers the power of our sin and death by rising from the dead. So that, through the presence of his spirit, portable Jesus everywhere, he can be present to forgive and to show grace and to heal the broken hearts and minds and the sinful, inward-turning junk inside of us, to actually heal it. This is the fact of Jesus. Now you can know those facts and that's great. There's actually quite a lot of people know those facts, right? And you might be

talking to people around you who maybe aren't Christians or whatever, and they could actually probably tell you a lot of that in some form or another. But that doesn't mean that they've experienced the power and the reality of it. And so it's very important that my religious experience as a follower of Jesus is built not on whether or not I'm having a good day or feel the warm fuzzies from Jesus, because guaranteed you're not going to feel the warm fuzzies from Jesus, especially in Portland where it's cold and rainy for so much of the time, right? You're never warm. So it's built on this fact.

However, does simply knowing those facts about Jesus make you a faithful witness to the risen Jesus? Just like knowing where Porcino is located doesn't make you a faithful witness to what you need to actually have gone there and eaten there. And so what this means is that this power of God's grace extended to us in Jesus has to be matched by a personal experience of the presence of Jesus, of the truth of his grace towards me, and that I'm reminding myself of it every day, and I'm allowing that good news about Jesus that's not based on my experience, but is based on the facts of history.

But then the risen Jesus becomes present to me through the reading of the scriptures, through prayer, through the presence and being open to his personal presence in the spirit, through community, and so on. And it begins to overhaul my life. Because if those truths are real about Jesus, then they have vast implications for every single one of us. Because it means that left to our own devices, we're just headed down a dead-end street. But it's precisely at the end of the dead-end street that Jesus meets us and gives us a chance to humble ourselves and grab onto him and find true life. And I'm telling you, man, if you've had that experience, if you in some way are allowing the gospel to reshape your idea of the universe and your own identity

and who you are and what you're all about. You can't help but change to be a faithful witness to the risen Jesus. Am I making any sense here? You see what I'm saying? So being a witness is crucially important because throughout the history of the church, it's often the case, you know, just extremes and so on, you get facts separated from experience. And so you get people who know a lot about Jesus, but the last time they actually experienced the power of his grace in the darkest corners of their minds and hearts was like decades ago, you know? And it's like, what? How does that make? Trust me, you're not going to be the greatest witness on behalf of poor Kano if the last time you had their tacos was two years ago. You know what I'm saying? It wears off. And you're going

to have eaten some other tacos that you maybe thought were good. You know what I mean? But no, it's about this new, constantly renewed experience of this reality of Jesus and allowing it to reshape and overhaul me. This joined of reality and experience. This is what it means, a faithful martyr to Jesus. So here's what we're going to do. Go to Acts chapter 20 with me. We're going to look at the speech of one of the most powerful witnesses in the book of Acts. The speech of Paul, Paul the apostle. Acts chapter 20. We're going to start in verse 17. Here's what I want us to do. We're going to read this speech and I'll give the context here in just a second. But here's what I want us to do. Just think about just your own life. And you may be a

follower of Jesus. You know, you may be a self-acknowledged Christian. You might be somewhere on the edge or close, or you might be far. I don't know. Maybe someone dragged you here. I'm sorry. You know, there's always somebody like that here. So I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But I'm actually kind of not sorry because I want you to hear about Jesus. So wherever, we're all over the map here. But I just want you to ask yourself the question, is this even a category I have in my mind? That being a Christian is not like just about like going to a church or doing like a religious thing or something. No, it's actually there's somebody real named Jesus who did these things and he said that he is personally present among us at a portable Jesus, all places at all times. And that in the

gathering of his people, particularly when we come around the bread and the cup and worship and prayer and in the scriptures, he's speaking, he's trying to get our attention. And do I have any category for that this Jesus is calling me, he wants to do something to me, and that he wants to send me to become a martyr on his behalf to those around me? Does it just, does that, do you even have a category for that? And if you don't, then you need to. Because according to the book of Acts, this is what it means to be a follower of this Jesus, to be a martyr. And so let's look, we're going to look at the example of Paul, and I'm just going to kind of bring out themes of how Paul was a witness,

what he thought it meant for him to be a witness. And I'm just going to kind of throw these at us to ask ourselves, am I being a witness in this same way? Look at chapter 20, verse 17. And now from Miletus, he, that is Paul, he sent to Ephesus and he called the elders of the church to come to him. And we're just all on the same page, Miletus, Ephesus, elders, right? We're like jumping right into the middle of a storyline here. So what's happening in the book of Acts is well into the explosion of the Jesus movement beyond Jerusalem. Paul becomes a key figure and he makes

little tours, itinerant tours around the Mediterranean coast and countries. And he camps out in different cities for weeks or months, sometimes a couple years. He meets people and he finds people that he knows already. And he is a martyr. He's a fan of Porcaino. He can't help but talk about this Jesus. Because as you read his letters, if you're doing the 90-day plan, we're going to start his first letter and read them in the next couple weeks. Clearly, Jesus encountered him at a moment where his sin was so exposed and so real to him that the grace and forgiveness of Jesus, it utterly transformed man.

but the grace and forgiveness of Jesus, it utterly transformed man. And so he made his entire life about becoming a martyr on behalf of this Jesus, one who testifies, one who knows the facts and who is experiencing those facts changing his life. And so he's on a journey and I'm gonna give you a map right here to kind of show you where he's at.

So he had three of these missions recounted to us in the book of Acts, three tours. And so this is the third one. And you can see it's kind of hard on the map here. There's a starting point here in the city of Antioch there in Syria. That's where he starts. Antioch was Paul's home-based church. They were his sending church. And he actually always traveled with people and so on with a network of other people who were doing the same thing. And so he kind of tours his way up. He ends up in Ephesus. They're in the red circle. And during his time there and his previous visits, he stayed there for two years being a martyr, testifying to this Jesus. Lots of people became Christians there. In fact, so many people became

Christians that there were so many Greeks and Romans who used to worship idols becoming Christians and stop buying idols anymore. It actually impacted the local economy, right, of idol makers. And so the idol makers all get ticked off and they start a riot and they want to kill Paul because they're like, he's killing our livelihood, right? And Paul's like, yeah, I know, I know. And I like it. This manufacturing of idols and false gods in Paul's worldview is actually dehumanizing people. There's a lot of money to be made off of it, but in Paul's mind, in a gospel-centered worldview, it actually destroys people. Idolatry does. Very much like pornography in our culture. Huge moneymaker, huge moneymaker. it's actually dehumanizing people who are chained to it and so paul made no excuses for it he talked about turning from the idols towards the living god

and so a riot started in ephesus he had to leave because his life was in danger and so he left and visited some other places and when he came back he wanted to see the people from the church in ephesus and so he called them to miletus because they were afraid that if he came back, he wanted to see the people from the church in Ephesus. And so he called them to Miletus because they were afraid that if he went into town, he would get killed and he probably would have. So he calls the elders to him. These are the elders of this church and he gives these final words to them.

And again, this is the speech of a faithful witness. Let's read it. Verse 18, when they came to him, he said to them, you yourselves, you know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews. And again, if you've been reading through the book of Acts, you know that he goes into a town, he meets people, he starts to talk about Jesus. Some people are

stoked, some people are not stoked at all. They want to kick him out of town or they want to kill him. Verse 20, you know how I didn't shrink back from declaring to you anything that was profitable or from teaching you in public or from house to house. And then look what he says next, verse 21. What was he doing as he was going around teaching in public and hanging out and meeting all these people? Verse 21, how does he describe what he was doing? He was testifying. What's the Greek word? You know it now.

It's martyreo. This is the word right here. Let's pay attention. What is he testifying about? Being a witness is pointing people to something. He's pointing to both Jews and to Greeks about what? What does he say? About repentance towards God and faith

in our Lord Jesus Christ. He's testifying, he's bearing witness about repentance and faith. Now there's two good religious words, right, if you've ever heard them, repentance and faith. I don't know if you have negative or positive associations when you hear those words. Repentance and faith are two of the key, and I've come to see some of the most beautiful words to describe how the facts of Jesus become a lived experience that's transforming me personally. So repentance is this idea of turning. That's what the word means. It just means turning. And so it reflects this idea in part of the story of the gospel that all humanity is lost in this search,

this grand search that all humanity is on. And we're searching for all kinds of different things. We're searching for meaning. We're searching for purpose. We're searching for approval and affection, right? For success. And the story of the scriptures is essentially telling us we're searching, we're looking, we're looking. And sometimes story of the scriptures is essentially telling us we're

searching, we're looking, we're looking, and sometimes we find the semblance of it or the taste of it. We find it in a person, in a career, and we find it in different things and so on, but it never satisfies. It never fully gives us quite what we're looking for. We keep hunting, we keep hunting. Maybe we're willing to burn some relational bridges. Maybe we're willing to snub some people because of it. Maybe make some unethical decisions, which maybe I wouldn't have made otherwise. But come on, this is for the sake of my career. This is for the sake of this girl that I got. Man, I got to get this girl, you know. And so, it's just humans. We're searching. And we just leave this trail of wreckage behind us as we go on the search. And the idea of

repentance is, this is the way we're going. And I come to this realization as I hear the story about Jesus that that thing that I'm searching, I'm not going to find it there. That thing can't, that person, that thing cannot bring me life. It can't. And so repentance is this act that just means to turn. Turn towards God. But you're not just turning away from something. You're always turning to something. Towards God and to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so as I turn from that thing to give me true life, I grab on and trust to Jesus. Actually, he's the thing that I've been looking for all along without even knowing it.

It's repentance and faith. And Paul says he's testifying that in public and from house to house, this is one of the themes in his teaching about the good news of Jesus, is about repentance and faith. And let me just ask you, is repentance and faith in Jesus, is that something you can just know about intellectually? Like, no chance, right? Like, you're not going to talk about repentance unless you've experienced the power and the life-giving reality of turning from things that cannot ever give you life, right? How can you talk about Porcino if you've never been there? You know what I'm saying? It just won't work. It won't work. You can talk about it, but it will lack conviction. You can't be a faithful martyr unless you've experienced the power of this turning

and grabbing onto Jesus in trust and in faith. And so it may be for some of you that you did that maybe once and it was just a long time ago and so you're living off the fumes of that experience. All right? And if so, then you need to remind yourself there are still quite a lot of dark corners in your heart if you're being honest with yourself. And certain, I hope your friends would

be honest with you to tell you that, but your roommate sure will because they live with you, you know. So, there's still a lot of repenting still to be done. And if being in a community of Jesus where Jesus says he's actually portable and present and real through the scriptures and through prayer and through others and through the spirit, then this is not just a one-time thing. This is actually something that happens every day. It's the everyday repentance. It's perpetual conversion. And Paul says, I went around being a witness that this has to happen for us to find true life all of the time. Let's keep reading. It gets better. Verse 22. He says, and now, behold, I'm going to Jerusalem. He says, I'm constrained by the Spirit.

I don't know what's going to happen to me there, except I do know this. The Holy Spirit martyrails to me that in every city, imprisonment and afflictions await me. Winner of a job description right there. So I'll sign up. But look what he says here. This is actually very powerful. He says, but I do not account my life of any value or even as precious to myself

if only I can finish the course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus. So let's just pause real quick here. Now look, see, we think of witness as something like verbal, something to do with words. I tell people about Porcino or something. No, it's actually, it's much, much more than that. Because what he's describing the course of his life. He's describing how he thinks about where he's going to go, what he's going to spend his waking hours doing, the choices, what we might call work or vocation. He says, even that I've submitted to the desire that Jesus makes my kind of jobs and where and what I do to be a witness, my actions. So he's a witness in words,

but he's also a witness in deeds and with his life. And so he says, Jesus gave up everything to die on the cross for me. How can I do anything less but then to give up everything for the sake of being a martyr for Jesus, a witness, right? So in his actions, he's assigned pointing to Jesus, right? He doesn't have to say anything. Just look at the course of his life and you can see, holy cow, this guy, this guy encountered something real in Jesus. And look what he's testifying about. He says, I need to finish my course, the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, which is to do what? What does he say? To testify, to be a martyr, to witness to what? To the gospel of the grace of God, the good news about the grace of

God. Paul says he testified to two things wherever he went. The turning, repentance, and faith, grabbing onto Jesus. And then this is like the twin part of that. If I've come to the end of my rope, I've come to this dead end, and here's this person, place, or thing that I thought was going to give me life, it's not. And I come to the end of that, and I turn, and I grab onto Jesus in faith and trust. The good news about the grace of God is that it's precisely in that act of humility and turning to Jesus that his grace comes to meet us there. And that's the point of the cross, right? Because the point of the cross is that we've all racked up not just this huge debt, but we've created a trail of wreckage in our lives as we go on the great quest and the great search. And so when I come and I turn and I kneel before Jesus and I reach

out to him in faith, he absorbs just all of the mess that I have produced with my life. He absorbs it into himself on the cross. And what do I get out of the deal? I get grace. I get forgiveness. And I get the presence of Jesus to begin to search those dark corners of my heart to make me into a new kind of human being. Because I think I can become a new kind of human being but I think that this Jesus has a way of making me one. Because after all, he can reverse death.

Maybe he can actually help heal my anger problem. Maybe he can help me find a way to find grace and to reconcile this broken relationship. Maybe he can find a way to break my stingy heart so that I can actually start being generous towards others and thinking about them more than myself. Maybe you can see how this works here. And so the good news of the grace of God

is that it's precisely in this turning and humbly reaching out to Jesus and trust, it's right there that he meets us. Not when you think you have what it takes to make yourself better, but when you realize you don't, that's where the grace of God meets us. So powerful.

And he says these are the two things that he testified to, repentance and faith, and to the gospel of God's grace to meet us right there in our sin and in our brokenness. Verse 25, he says, and now behold, I know that none of you among whom I've gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. Therefore, I testify to you this day, I'm innocent of the blood of you all, for I didn't shrink back from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Paul saw it as his obligation when he started a community of Jesus to pass on to them everything he possibly could in terms of understanding both the facts or the reality of the gospel,

but also they needed to experience the truth of that. And he said, my hands are clean. I've done everything I could. Now he's turning it over to the leaders. Verse 28, he says to these leaders, he says, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all of the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God which he obtained with his own blood. In other words, Paul said, I've done my part. I played my role as a witness. Now you guys are going to pick up the reins. And these are verses that make people like me quake in my boots, right? Because this is a really big responsibility and it's not carried by any one person. Notice he invited the elders, the leaders of that community. Look at what he says in verse 28. What are these leaders of this church supposed to do

first and foremost? Pay attention to all the people in your church who disagree with you. Pay attention to all the people in the church who annoy with you. Pay attention to all the people in the church who annoy you. No. What does he say? Pay attention first and foremost to what? To yourselves. Because see, it's very, very quickly, any community of Jesus, the moment that the reality of Jesus becomes divorced from my personal experience, then we just like keep a religious ritual thing going and we do it because the way we've always done it, right? And so he says, pay extra close attention to yourselves. The leadership

of a church community is constantly experiencing that repentance leading to life, grabbing onto Jesus in faith. And then make sure that you protect that witness among church. And the church is like sheep, and you need to care for the sheep because the value of the sheep is the very life of Jesus himself, the value of these ones for whom Jesus died. And so we have a community of people here, and you may not like each other. You know, maybe you've had a relational conflict with someone here in the church before. Imagine, Maybe you've had a relational conflict with someone here in the church before. Imagine that happening. So can you imagine even the ability to overcome a conflict, to overcome a disagreement with someone in the community of the church

because you realize that's someone for whom Jesus died. I don't like them, but I'm going to find a way to forgive them and reconcile that relationship. Because it's the value of that person in this community of witness here. Just imagine, what if a community of Jesus became the kind of place where people, like, come to look for how to, like, deal with forgiveness and conflict resolution and so on? What if it's through those kinds of things that the church becomes a witness?

It's both word and it's deed. And that's something the leaders of the church are to help foster, keep our attention in the right place. Verse 29, I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men who speak distorted things to draw away disciples after them. So be alert. Remembering that for three years I didn't cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears. You can see the pathos here. He was so concerned that the reality of Jesus be experienced in such a consistent, continual way among the community of witness that he's like, I did whatever it takes. I just never even slept. I just hung out with people all the time, constantly trying to encourage and challenge

people to turn to Jesus and experience the true life that comes from him. Clearly, did he ever sleep? You know, you have to wonder this about this guy. Verse 32, he says, and now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I didn't covet anyone's silver or gold or apparel. And you're thinking, what? Why is he talking about money and clothes right now? This is my favorite part of the speech. He says, I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. You yourselves know that these hands of mine, they ministered or they served my own necessity He says, Clearly, he talked with people it's more blessed to give than to receive. Clearly, he talked with people about Jesus and was a witness in that way. But look at what he's

done here. So in other words, he's an itinerant, like missionary. And typically you would think, oh, itinerant missionaries, right? They need to raise support. They need to get support from the churches that they start or might go to financial support or something. But Paul did this very differently. He didn't do it that way. He said that was right and that that's a great way to do it. But he said, I'm not going to. He found a creative way to actually provide for himself financially. And we find out earlier in the book of Acts, he had a trade skill. He made like designer tents out of goat skins. He was a leather worker. He worked with leather. I like to think that if he worked here today, he would make motorcycle leathers, right? So it's a very unique skill that

he had. And what he would do, he would go into a city. And the first thing, he would go like meet people in a Jewish synagogue or something. And he'd go to the marketplace and he'd set up shop. And it was a way for him to meet people. It was also a way for him to make money to provide for himself. And because he talks about this in his letters. Think about this, you guys. He says, what could be a better pointer and a witness to the gospel? The gospel is about God's generosity to us in Jesus. He just, in our spiritual poverty, God's generous and he just gives us the riches of Jesus. And he says, how could I make my life tell that story? I know. I won't ever ask anybody for money. I'll work so hard that I actually have enough to support myself and give to the poor out of the abundance of me working. And so that the

churches can receive the story of Jesus and the gospel just as a pure gift. How's that? That's so rad. He saw his witness to Jesus, not just like that he knows some facts and can tell people about them. His mind and his heart are so just bowled over with the grace and the generosity of God. He finds creative ways to make even his finances tell the story of the gospel. You know what I'm saying? That's a form of witness in word and deed. And if you were here last week, you know that this is an area of real growth. This is our growth edge as a church. It's precisely this area right here of seeing that even our finances

need to be channeled into telling the story of generosity and grace through Jesus. So Paul's speech ends, it ends right here. I know there's been a lot thrown at us, so let me just kind of summarize this and bring it home with a few questions. And here's the questions that I would ask you as we look at this model of witness. First of all, do you even think about your life in these categories? Do you view church as something that exists for you? Or do you see yourself as someone who's been a recipient of such incredible grace and someone who met you when you turned to find life and to hold on to Jesus in faith. And so your life now exists to point to this one. This one who met you.

This Jesus who lived and died and was raised for you. And who's present with you in the spirit. This is what it's about. It's being a witness. Rethinking every part of my life, my relationships. How does this point to Jesus? And if that's a new category for you, then I just say, stop right there. That's a big issue. Let's just focus on that one. That's huge. That's huge. But then the second question would be, if I'm going to be a faithful witness, I'm going to need to know something about the

facts and the reality that I want my life to point to. And so, yeah, you know, I had these tacos and they were pretty good, but I don't quite remember where the place is and where it was. That's not helpful for people. So I'm actually growing in my knowledge and understanding of this Jesus who gave himself for me, the reality, the facts about this Jesus, so that I can actually point people to what is true. But at the same time, there might be some of us who actually, we kind of like and geek out on this kind of stuff, but we're real short on experiencing the reality of that grace completely transforming our lives.

And so some of us might need to grow in this area of learning the facts about Jesus, and some of us might need to grow in this area of actually renewing our commitment to renewal of repentance and letting Jesus speak to those dark corners of my life in a new and a fresh way. Witness for Jesus can't live off the fumes of what happened five, ten years ago. It's about perpetual conversion of all of my life to become a witness to Jesus. And so do you see yourself as a witness? Are you a faithful witness with knowing the facts and the realities about Jesus? Are you a faithful witness in terms of constantly new, fresh experiences of his grace and his generosity that's just changing you from the inside out? That's where I'm going to leave

us. I think that's enough from Paul's challenge to just give us some time here to just be in the presence of portable Jesus. He said he's here. And to allow him to speak to us and to point stuff out in our hearts and in our minds where we are not being faithful witnesses.

And if you're feeling guilty right now about not being a faithful witness, that's a good thing. Because that means it can allow you to repent and to experience His grace in a new way. You guys, thanks for listening to the Strange Bible Podcast. Hope this was helpful for you. And we'll just keep cruising through key themes in the New Testament in the next episode. So we'll see you then. Thank you.