Howdy Mars Hill Church and our extended family
of Mars Hill Global; I'm Pastor Sutton Turner,
your executive pastor here in Ethiopia.
Some might ask, "What is our extended family
of Mars Hill Global?"
Well, that's 250,000 people that join us by podcast
each and every week!
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give over and beyond your tithe to Mars Hill Global.
We're planting churches in Ethiopia, India,
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because we want to see more people be saved by Jesus.
We want to see more people grow with Jesus
and we want to see more people on Jesus' mission.
I pray that you would consider being a part
of the extended family of Mars Hill Global.
Go to marshillchurch.com/global and sign up today.
Jesus is doing some incredible things
and we would like you to be a part of what Jesus is already doing.
Howdy, Pastor Sutton Turner here with Mars Hill Church.
On behalf of Pastor Mark Driscoll I want to say welcome.
Thank you for joining us today.
Jesus is using Mars Hill Church to make disciples
and plant churches all over the world,
and it wouldn't happen without your help.
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our brothers and sisters throughout the United States
and around the world connected to Mars Hill Church
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Right now let's join my favorite Bible teacher,
pastor Mark Driscoll, for today's sermon.
You will receive power.
All right, if you've got a Bible, go to Acts 9,
starting in verse 19.
We continue our study of the book of Acts.
And if you're new to Mars Hill
or new to Christianity,
the center of the whole Bible is really a person,
and his name is Jesus Christ.
And orbiting around that person, Jesus Christ,
are principles on how to live your life--do this,
don't do that, a lot of wisdom and good advice--
as well as people.
And the Bible includes the stories of some of the most
amazing, fascinating, life-changing, earth-shattering,
eternity-altering people in the history of the world,
and today we're going to get to know one of them.
His name is Saul.
You may know him a little more familiarly as Paul.
And what you're going to read and study with me is his
testimony, but let me explain how this is different.
In our day, there's a real fascination,
a love for, biography.
And so whether it's a testimonial on a talk radio
or television show, or it's a runaway movie,
or it's a best-selling book, we love biographies.
We love to hear about someone who overcame adversity,
someone who stood in the face of opposition,
someone who was able to pull themselves up by
their bootstraps to do better, to try harder,
to get some great victory, and to emerge triumphant
over their circumstances.
And so our culture is littered with these stories,
and the difference between a biography and a testimony
is this: God.
Because a biography is about what they did and a testimony
is about what God did.
A biography is about how they're a winner,
and a testimony is about how God's a winner.
And a biography ultimately is about my glory,
"Look what I did,"
and a testimony is about God's glory,
"Look what he did."
And so, as Christians, we learn from the Bible that we're not
to seek to have a biography,
a story in which we are the hero,
we are the victor, we are the triumphant,
we are the glorious,
but have a testimony where God is the hero, God is the victor,
God is triumphant, and God is glorious for us
because he loves us,
because he's gracious, and merciful, and compassionate,
and good, and he's the hero and we're not,
and he gets the glory and we don't.
And all of chapter 9 of the book of Acts is the testimony of
Saul of Tarsus, also known as Paul the Apostle.
And so what I want to do today as we study this together,
I want you to think about your own life and ask yourself,
"Am I living for a biography or a testimony?
"Am I living so that others would be impressed with who I am
"and what I've done,
"or living in such a way that others would be
impressed by who Jesus is and what he's done for me?"
And I'm going to ask you five questions,
and those will be the basis for your Community Group discussions
this week.
And I want you to think about your life and how it can be
a testimony, because ultimately a testimony,
it encourages Christians.
How many of you, as Christians, someone tells you their story of
God's grace in their life and it absolutely encourages you?
Like, "That's amazing.
I have so much joy and hope to hear of God's love for you."
It also not only encourages believers,
it evangelizes unbelievers.
And some of you, you may not understand the power
of your testimony.
Revelation says in the face of adversity,
God's people overcame them "by the blood of the lamb
and by the word of their testimony."
Your testimony is powerful because it testifies not just
that God is alive, and loving, and good, and powerful,
and true, but he has manifest that in your life.
And as you share that with others,
you become a living epistle.
You become a story of God's grace that not only encourages
believers, but it evangelizes unbelievers and it makes
the story of Jesus all that more intriguing for them.
And so today, we're going to look at the testimony of Saul,
and I want to start with this question for you.
What were you like as a non-Christian?
For those of you who are non-Christians, welcome,
we love you, we're glad to have you.
We all started where you are, as a non-Christian.
For those of you who are Christians,
what were you like as a non-Christian?
For me, looking back, God saved me in college.
I was very self-righteous, thought I was better than
everyone, very proud, very independent.
And some of you would say, "And what has changed?"
You know, it's still in process, right?
I'm a hard colt to get a saddle on
and Jesus is still working on me.
But for sure, if you would have came along and said,
"So who's at the center of your life?"
I would say, "Well, I am.
I'm my highest authority and everything is about me."
What were you like as a non-Christian?
As we're looking at the story of Saul, Paul,
the first half of Acts 19 tells us that he was very religious,
very religious, exceedingly devout, that he was relentless,
that he--if he believed he was on a mission from God,
he could not be stopped.
Now, he was sincere, but he was sincerely wrong.
He was relentless, but in the wrong direction,
for the wrong cause, on the wrong mission.
He was religious, he was relentless, and he was ravaging.
The Bible actually used that word,
that Saul was ravaging the church.
What we learn about him is that he hated Christ
and he hated Christians.
And if you ask the Christians in that day,
"Who is the greatest enemy to Christianity?"
they would have said Saul of Tarsus.
He was the equivalent in our day of a guy who's sort of leading
a terrorist group that is out to assault, and incarcerate,
and execute Christians.
He was that kind of man.
And as a result, he put to death
the early church deacon, Stephen.
He oversaw his murder.
He murdered a Christian.
The Christians fled, the church was emptied, people scattered,
and he got permission like a bounty hunter to pursue them
upwards of 150 miles on foot
with the right to legally arrest them--
grandmas, grandpas, kids, women, men, everybody--
and bring them back for trial,
possibly incarceration, or even execution, bound in chains.
That's Saul of Tarsus.
That is who he is and what he is like as a non-Christian.
How about you?
What were you like as a non-Christian?
The second part of a testimony is this.
How did your view of Jesus change?
If you would have asked me before I became a Christian,
"What do you think about Jesus?"
"Nice guy, good platitudes, decent example."
"Is he God?"
"I don't think so."
"Is he your Lord in charge of your life?"
"Not at all."
"Do you live for him or listen to him?"
"No, I don't."
How about you?
For those of you who are non-Christians,
what's your view of Jesus?
What's your view of Jesus?
For those of you who are Christians,
how has your view of Jesus changed
since becoming a Christian?
Well, as I told you, Saul thought that Jesus was
a blasphemer, a godless man who was saying he was the God-man.
He thought that Jesus was perhaps the most ungodly person
who had ever lived, and he hated Christ,
and he hated Christians who worshiped Jesus as God.
And then his view of Jesus changed.
We saw earlier in chapter 9, Jesus comes down from heaven,
and Saul literally has an encounter with Jesus,
and his view of Jesus changes.
And then we read this,
Acts 9, beginning in verse 19,
the second half.
"For some days he was with the disciples at Damascus.
"And immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues,
"saying, 'He is the Son of God.'
"And all who heard him were amazed and said,
"'Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those
who called upon this name?'"
Wasn't he killing preachers, now he's preaching?
Didn't he hate Jesus, now he loves Jesus?
What happened to this guy?
How many of you are newer Christians and your friends
are asking you that question?
You're like, "I love Jesus."
They're like, "Who are you?"
"'And has he not come here for this purpose,
to bring them bound'"--
right, arrested, chained, shackled--
"'before the chief priests?'
But Saul increased all the more in strength,"--
so the Holy Spirit is working in and through him--
"and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving
that Jesus was the Christ."
Here's Saul's view of Jesus.
We just learned it through two titles:
Son of God and Christ.
And the important thing with titles is sometimes the titles
in the Bible are different than the titles that we use,
so we can sort of miss the significance of the titles.
But the titles are very important because poured into
them is a lot of meaning--a lot of meaning.
So today, let's say you're in a Muslim country that's ruled
by a royal family and someone says they're a prince.
All right, if you live in that culture and context,
prince is loaded with meaning.
In our country, prince, not so much.
You're like, "Isn't he the little guy that lives in
"Minnesota, wears a raspberry beret,
"goes out in the purple rain?
Is it that?"
You know, we don't--prince doesn't mean as much, right?
So, we need to look culturally--
what did the titles mean?
How would they have heard it?
So that we can understand it
and get the most meaning from it.
And these two titles are very significant.
He is the Son of God and he is the Christ.
That's what Paul is proclaiming.
That is what he is declaring because his view of Jesus
has been changing.
When it says that Jesus is the Son of God,
this is a direct claim to be God, to be divinity.
See, in our day, we kind of define ourselves
by who our father is.
So it is in the Bible.
There's a lot of genealogies.
So and so, this was their father,
and then their father had this father,
and a lot of it is traced through the family line
through the man.
In addition, in our day, even some of our last names
reflect this.
You meet somebody, Jackson, it means at some point there was
a guy named Jack and he had a son.
Who's that guy?
Well, that's Jack's son, right?
Mattheson, who's that?
Well, that's Matthew's son.
We define ourselves by who our father is,
and we all have sinful, fallen, flawed, earthly fathers.
Jesus comes along.
"Who's your father?"
He says, "My Father is God."
No one had ever said that.
He had an adoptive earthly father named Joseph,
but he's saying that ultimately his father is God the Father,
and that he is not just a son of Joseph,
he is the Son of God.
And we use the analogy, the expression in our day,
"Like father, like son."
That's why Jesus says, "If you've seen me,
"you've seen the Father.
I and the Father are one."
He's saying that God is his Father and they're equal.
He's putting himself on the same plane as God the Father.
They have the same attributes, the same authority,
they share in the same glory.
If I commission one of my sons on my behalf,
they show up with my authority.
Jesus is saying, "I come with the Father's authority.
I come on his behalf."
Well, those who heard this heard this clearly
as a claim to be God.
And I need you to understand this,
particularly for those of you who are not yet Christians.
And this may be the day that your life goes from a biography
to a testimony, and that's what I'm praying for you.
But they heard this and said, "He's saying he's God."
And you need to know this.
Jesus was opposed, Jesus was arrested, Jesus was crucified,
Jesus was murdered because he said he was God.
And Saul comes along, and he hates Christ because he said he
was God, and he hates Christians because they worship him as God,
and then he meets Jesus Christ,
he becomes a Christian,
and he proclaims that Jesus is the son of God.
Secondly, he says that Jesus is the Christ.
This means the Anointed One.
It's also called the Messiah.
And this is that God the Holy Spirit resides on
and works through this person
in a supernatural, miraculous, inexplicable way,
and that there are people who are anointed--
in the Old Testament, there are prophets, and priests,
and kings, and the Holy Spirit indwells,
and empowers, and transforms,
and uses them for God's supernatural work on the earth--
but the prophecies were given and the anticipation
was awaiting the coming of one who would be the Anointed One,
unlike everyone else, in a category unto themselves,
the person who would come with God's power and God's authority
on God's mission for God's glory, the Anointed One.
Nobody like them, nobody alongside of them,
nobody in the same category as them.
And Saul is saying that Jesus Christ
is the Anointed One.
He has authority as God and power as God that is
unprecedented, unparalleled, and unequaled.
Do you see this radical change?
How many of you, this has been, to some degree, your experience.
You thought Jesus was a good man,
now you know he's the God-man.
You thought Jesus was a good example,
and now all of a sudden you realize he's Lord, God,
Savior, King, and Christ.
That you're understanding of Jesus has completely expanded,
and changed, and transformed.
This is one of the ways how we know who the Christians are
and the non-Christians are.
And if you love somebody, and you're talking to them,
and you're not sure if they're a Christian or a non-Christian,
just start asking them this simple question.
"What do you think about Jesus?"
And if they don't say things like, "He's the Son of God,
he's the Christ, he's God," they're not yet at the point
where they are a Christian.
They may be somewhere in the process,
but they don't understand Jesus,
and their view of Jesus hasn't changed.
One of the most interesting questions to ask somebody if you
want to see whether or not they're a Christian is,
"How has your view of Jesus changed?"
And if they say, "It hasn't," "Well, then you haven't met him,
so let's talk about him."
"Well, I used to think this, and now I think that."
"Oh okay, well then maybe you did meet him."
And Saul assuredly met him.
Now, here's the important thing.
What Saul is saying is not important unless it's true.
And if it is true, it's radical.
And what Saul is doing is he is echoing what Jesus
had already been saying.
And if you're here and you're not a Christian,
let me say this.
You may have heard that Jesus never said he was God,
and that over time his disciples wrote some books,
and made some stuff up, and maybe even they were
well-intended, but they made mistakes and they said he was
the Son of God, and they said he was the Christ,
and they said he was the Lord, but that's not really
what he believed and that's not what he said.
I'll prove to you that this is exactly what Jesus said.
He said that he was the Son of God and the Christ.
And so when Saul is speaking,
it is Jesus whom he is echoing, right?
So, Jesus is the Son of God and the Christ.
We see this in Matthew 26:63-65.
Here's Jesus.
"And the high priest said to him,"--
So friends, the context is this.
It's like a trial.
Jesus his been deposed, right?
He's on trial.
Somebody's keeping a record, right?
Those who are going to render the verdict are present.
And the charge is this, "You say you're God.
"Now, we want to give you an opportunity to recant,
"to say, 'Oh, I was misinterpreted, misunderstood.'
"We want you to clarify that.
"We want you to, if you did say it,
"apologize for that and agree never to say it again.
"The issue is he says he's God.
We need to hear from him what he truly believes."
--"And the high priest said to him, 'I adjure you,'"--
I command you-- "by the living God,"--
Okay, this is kind of funny, right?
This is like, "Put your hand on the Bible.
Do you swear to tell the truth?"
"Oh yeah, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth,
nothing but the truth, so help me, me."
I mean, it's weird how they're telling God to tell the truth
because God is watching.
And God's like, "Oh yes, I am."
I mean, it's just sort of--anyway, I find that funny.
Okay, "And the high priest said to him,
'I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are'"--
what are the two issues?
"The Christ, the Son of God."
Sound familiar?
"Yes or no, are you the Christ and the Son of God?"
"Jesus said to him, 'You have said so.'"
"Yeah, you got that right.
Nailed it, bullseye, good job."
"Then the high priest tore his robes and said,
'He has uttered blasphemy.'"
What's blasphemy?
When someone says they're God and they're not God.
If I told you right now, "I'm God," that would be blasphemy.
I didn't say it. Don't Twitter it.
That's not what I'm saying, okay?
I'm not God.
I'm very sure I'm not God.
I don't wake up every morning, look in the mirror,
"Hello, Lord."
I'm for sure.
The closer I get to Jesus, the more I realize
I'm not like Jesus, okay?
To say you're God--people who say, "Jesus was a good man,
he just made a mistake saying he was God,"
good men don't make mistakes like that.
Cult leaders do.
Sociopaths do.
People who are insane do.
Good people don't say, "I'm God, worship me, and when you die,
trust in me."
You don't say that if you're a good person
and it's a false statement.
Friends, Christianity comes down to what Jesus said
about himself, and it's true or it's false.
And if it's true, he's God.
If it's not true, he's a blasphemer,
a man claiming to be God who's not God.
And just so you know, there is no other major world religion
in the history of the world that has its founder
making this claim, "I'm God."
In fact, we tend to consider those most holy who are clear
that they're unholy, right?
We want to follow someone who knows that they're not perfect,
and Jesus says he's perfect.
So that's either true or false, and this is a magnificent,
extraordinary, unprecedented, unparalleled claim.
And they rightly understand, if he says he's God
and he's not God, he's guilty of what?
Blasphemy.
And the consequence is death.
And friend, if you're not a Christian,
you need to know that's why they crucified him.
Not because he fed people, not because he petted lambs,
not because he hung out with children,
they killed him because he said he was God,
and that's either true or false.
"'He has uttered blasphemy.
What further witnesses do we need?'"
They're saying, "Case closed.
"We had people ready to testify.
"We don't even need their testimony.
"We can make this trial very short.
He just told us he's God, case closed."
"You have now heard his blasphemy."
Non-Christian, who do you think that Jesus is?
And if you are a Christian or you become a Christian,
who you think Jesus is has to change.
Has to change.
It has to change.
Has your understanding of Jesus changed?
Would you now say, "He is the Son of God
and he is the Christ,"
or would you say, "He is a blasphemer"?
Truly, those are the only two categories that we have.
And so Saul's view of Jesus has radically changed because he
would have said previously, "Blasphemer,"
and now he says, "Lord."
Question number three for discussion
in your Community Group this week,
and you can use these five questions.
What does time alone with Jesus look like for you?
Saul has been converted.
He's starting to proclaim his testimony,
talking about who Jesus is and what Jesus has done in his life.
And in a moment, when we get back into Acts,
you'll see it'll say, after "many days."
So, there's a time gap right here in Acts,
and most Bible commentators believe that that gap is
explained by Paul writing this in Galatians 1:15-18:
"But when he who had set me apart before I was born,"--
God chose to save him-- "and who called me by his grace,
was pleased to reveal his Son to me,"-- that's Jesus--
"in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles,"--
those are non-Jewish folk like you and me--
"I did not immediately consult with anyone;
"nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles
before me,"-- that's where the leaders were--
"but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.
Then after three years"-- and there's the timeline,
three years-- "I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas"--
that is Peter-- "and remained with him fifteen days."
Here's what he's saying:
"My testimony is I met Jesus.
"My life, my heart, my mind changed.
"I started talking about him and then God called me
into 3 years of solitude."
And he says he's out in the desert.
The area he is in is sort of the same area where we hear
about Sinai during the Exodus, where Moses received
the Ten Commandments, where Elijah preached.
It's desert, barren, wasteland, middle of nowhere.
And he's there for how long?
Three years. Doing what?
Preparing for the ministry that God would have for him.
We see that God's servants often are called by God
to seasons of solitude, withdrawing.
We see this with Moses.
We see this with the prophets.
They lived in exile, oftentimes apart from God's people in
community out in the wilderness.
We see this with John the Baptizer,
the voice of the one crying from the wilderness.
We see this with the Lord Jesus where he gets
40 days in solitude before his public ministry commences.
And here we see it with Saul, Paul,
3 years essentially in isolation.
And let me say this to you.
Solitude is not just running from something,
it's running to someone.
Oftentimes, when life gets hard, things get dark, we are scared,
you know, we just--we run to get away from it or them.
Solitude is where we not only run from someone or something,
we run to Jesus to get time with him.
This is the difference.
If you're always just running from something but you're
not running to Jesus, that's not very helpful.
But if you're running from something and you're running to
Jesus, that can be very helpful.
And so here, his solitude is not to escape all the conflict,
and all the controversy, and all the trouble, and you know,
he murdered somebody, oversaw their murder,
and there's a big blow up, and he's just trying to lay low.
No, that's not it.
He's running to get time with Jesus.
What does time alone with Jesus look like for you?
We can assume, I think reasonably so,
and I'm one who's reticent to infer anything from
the Scriptures, but reading his testimony in Galatians 1,
reading his testimony in Philippians,
reading the account in Acts 9, he knew a lot of Bible,
at least Old Testament, but he didn't know Jesus.
So, he's probably studying the Bible saying, "Okay,
"I knew the Bible, but I don't know Jesus so I don't
"really understand the Bible.
I need to figure out how this all connects to Jesus."
This is time for prayer, talking to the Lord,
listening to the Lord.
This is time for study and reflection.
This is time for journaling, processing, considering.
This is time for repenting, and singing, and worshiping,
and spending time with God.
Jesus is alive and he's very glad to meet with you through
the person, the presence, and the power of the Holy Spirit.
All right, he'll never leave you, he'll never forsake you.
He'll be with you always to the end of the age.
That's what he promised.
And here's what happens, we have three gods in our world
who do not allow us to enjoy the presence of God,
and they are hurry, worry, and busy.
And that false trinity of hurry, worry, and busy,
it absolutely overtakes us.
When's the last time you got some time alone with God?
And I know you're busy, and I'm busy, and we're busy, but man,
if we don't start with time with the Lord,
we'll do the wrong thing in the wrong way with the wrong motive,
and all of our efforts will be in vain,
and that's certainly my experience.
Anytime I thought, "Well, I'm going to go to work and then
ask God to bless it," God's like, "Wrong order.
"Meet with me.
"I'll tell you what to do, and how to do it,
"and prepare you for it, and get your heart ready,
and then it'll be to my glory."
If you don't have time for the Lord, something is wrong.
Something is wrong.
Something is very wrong.
Lord, what do you want to convict me of?
How do you want to change me?
What do you want me to think through?
What do I need to study? Where do I need to grow?
How do I need you to comfort me?
What is next for me? Who do you want me to love?
And I'll tell you, in our age, technology unquestionably
contributes to this great problem, amen?
24 hours a day, 7 days a week,
beeping, buzzing, ringing.
It never ends.
You know, I mean, it should say on our phone, you know,
"This is your lord.
"He controls your life and your destiny.
"It overrules anyone and anything,
and intrudes at any time."
And I'm not saying that technology is bad,
I'm not saying it's good, I'm just saying it is.
Technology, like everything, is an opportunity to either help us
to know the Lord or hinder our knowing of the Lord.
And it's so amazing because sometimes we'll even run, through
our technology, to people when we should run to the Lord first.
You have a problem, it's not like, "Okay,
I've got to talk to the Lord about this," it's like,
"I need to call or text someone."
Instead of praying it through and processing it through,
it's like, "I'm just going to post it in social media
and let everybody get involved."
And then the Holy Spirit shows up an hour later
and you're like, "I was wrong."
I mean, we don't start with the Lord.
We use technology to run to people first
when we should run to Jesus first.
And then we allow people and things to just crash into our
life, even when we're trying to get time alone with Jesus.
And I'm not saying technology is bad. And I have a phone.
Last year I dropped it in the lake
and it honestly felt like I got saved again.
My wife looked at me and she's like, "What happened?"
I was like, "I dropped my phone in the lake."
She was like, "Oh no!"
I was like, "Oh yeah!"
She's like, "What are you going to do?"
I was like, "I'm going to wait a few weeks
to get another phone."
I mean, it literally--it was like--I mean,
if the rapture happened today, I would drop my phone
on the way up.
Like, I don't--whatever, you know?
Like, I don't need this anymore.
But what can happen is sometimes we get so consumed by--we're
playing games, we're texting, we're updating, we're reading,
we're surfing, we're wandering, and all of a sudden you're like,
"What happened?
"I didn't get time with Jesus, why?
"All my time was spent doing something that is maybe not
evil, but is definitely not as helpful."
Sometimes, at least for me, you need to just turn the phone off,
right?
And sometimes get away.
I mean, it's interesting here that oftentimes when God
wants his people to enjoy solitude, they get away.
The Bible says that Jesus often withdrew to lonely places
to get alone with the Father.
How many of you, you can't really get time
with the Lord at home?
You're like, "I've got to paint that wall.
"That's a lot of laundry.
"My cat threw up.
Those dishes are dirty," right?
And you have a hard time getting time with the Lord at home,
so sometimes it's literally going away from your routine and
turning off your technology so that you can run to Jesus
and get some time with him.
And friend, I would submit to you that these are
crucial times, these are significant times,
these are divine appointment times for reading, for praying,
for journaling, for repenting, for mourning, for singing,
whatever it may be, and God is very glad to meet with you.
And what Saul says is, he says, "You know,
I got 3 years with Jesus before I started doing ministry."
I honestly wish I would have gotten more years with Jesus
before I started this ministry for Jesus to straighten out
some things in my character and my attitude,
and to make sure I was working on a testimony
and not a biography.
And what I love about Paul's example as well is his humility
and his submission to authority.
What he says in this text is, "I spent 3 years with Jesus,
"and then I went to meet with the leaders to tell them my
"testimony and for them to confirm God's calling on my life
to preach the good news of Jesus to the Gentiles."
What he didn't say was, "Jesus came down and saved me,
"set me aside for 3 years, I graduated with honors,
and now I serve the Lord."
He says, "And I submit myself to the leaders."
It's very important after you get time with the Lord
to confirm what it is you believe he has said through
godly leadership because you know what?
We can get it wrong.
And so he comes with the full confidence of Jesus' calling
and the confirmation by godly leadership.
What does time alone with Jesus look like for you?
Question number four, how have you suffered for Christ?
It's interesting because Saul was a guy
who caused Christians to suffer,
and then he's going to suffer as a Christian.
Part of being a Christian is suffering.
Sometimes we suffer because of our sin,
we did something wrong,
and we're reaping the consequence.
Sometimes we suffer because someone has sinned against us.
Sometimes we suffer just because we're part of Christianity
and some people don't like Christians
because they don't like Christ.
Here is Saul's suffering.
Acts 9:23-26, "When many days had passed."
So, I think--do you see that?
I think that's the 3 years he talks about in Galatians 1.
I think there's the gap in there,
and Galatians 1 fills the gap.
"When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him,"
the religious folks, "but their plot became known to Saul.
"They were watching the gates day and night in order to kill him,
but his disciples," a couple guys that were still with him,
"took him by night and let him down
"through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket.
"And when he had come to Jerusalem,
"he attempted to join the disciples.
"And they were all afraid of him,
for they did not believe that he was a disciple."
He suffers from non-Christians and Christians, okay?
How many of you know that that's the way it still works?
So, the non-Christians, they cause him to suffer.
They have a plot to kill him, a real plot.
And the way it would work in a fortified city
is there would be a gate,
and you'd pass in and out of the gate.
This is how they could control
who was coming in and out of the city
to keep the people safe.
So, they position guards 24 hours a day at the gates.
This is like you're on the FBI's most wanted list
and you're on the no-fly list, right,
and the Air Marshals are posted at every airport looking for you.
And if they find you, they're going to arrest you
and it's going to go really bad for you
because they're going to kill you.
So, he can't get out of town and they're looking for him.
Well, they're going to find him, right?
I mean, it's a town that's fortified walls in a city.
You can only hide in that area for so long
before they find you.
So, the non-Christians are causing him to suffer,
so they come up with a plan.
There's a hole in the wall and we could, you know,
get a rope and a basket, and put you in it,
and lower you down to escape at night when nobody's looking.
This is all going to be under cover of secrecy.
Paul says to the Corinthians
that actually this was kind of embarrassing for him.
This wasn't a real Jack Bauer moment for Saul, right?
It's not like, "I fought my way out!"
He's like, "No, I snuck out in a laundry basket."
This was humbling for him.
How many of you,
you would not want this to be your story, right?
A bunch of angry men came against me!
"What'd you do, Grandpa?"
At night, I snuck out in a laundry basket.
"Oh, not as brave as we were hoping, Grandpa.
We were hoping for a bigger story."
Yeah, it was kind of embarrassing.
It was kind of humbling.
That's what Saul says.
He kind of ran for his life.
He was opposed by non-Christians.
So then, he's going to run-- he's going to flee to the Christians.
"These guys hate me,
I'm going to go to my brothers and sisters in Christ."
And they don't want to talk to him.
They're afraid of him.
Now, what we can do is, in hindsight, we can say,
"Well, that's not very loving."
Because we weren't there, amen?
How many of you would be like,
"There was a known terrorist who got saved,
wants to join your Community Group."
You're like, "No, we got other Community Groups."
"No, no, no, he's going to need a place to stay.
He wants to sleep on your couch."
"No."
It comes time, you're like,
"Let's all close our eyes and pray."
"No, I'm going to keep at least one open.
This dude's in my Community Group."
"What does he do?" "He blows up Christians."
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah, I used to go to Community Group."
You know, you and I, we'd be afraid of this guy, amen?
You're like, "I don't know if I trust this guy.
I don't think he's safe."
So, what do the Christians do? They don't embrace him,
they don't surround him, they withdraw.
So all of a sudden, here's Saul. He's got no team.
The team he used to be on, "Let's kill the Christians,"
now he's a Christian, that team's trying to kill him.
Now he's on Team Jesus.
He runs to Team Jesus and Team Jesus says,
"We're not sure about you. We're not ready to receive you.
We're not ready to help you."
How disappointing do you think it was for Saul
when he genuinely loved Jesus
and was trying to do the right thing,
and the brothers and sisters in Christ
are the ones who rejected him.
Have you ever felt that?
You're like, "The Christians rejected me.
"The Christians didn't help me.
The Christians caused me to suffer."
This is part of the Christian life because non-Christians
and Christians are both sinners, and sometimes sinners sin.
And I have failed people, and you have failed people,
and people have failed you, and people have failed me,
and some of them belong to Jesus.
How have you suffered as a Christian,
from non-Christians and from Christians?
That's part of our testimony.
Now, what happens when we're suffering--
I think at least three things happen.
Number one, we learn about Christ.
We learn about Jesus.
You're like, "Jesus, you suffered.
"I mean, the non-Christians didn't love you,
"and even the religious people,
"even your disciples who knew,
"or should have known, who you are, they failed you.
They weren't there for you. They didn't support you."
Jesus knows what it's like to suffer.
And so as we suffer, we come to appreciate Jesus more.
I don't know about you, if I was God,
I wouldn't come down to suffer.
No way. No way.
And I wouldn't have done what Jesus did,
and that is pour myself into people
who then just sort of fail you and disown you
like Thomas, and Judas, and Peter.
I mean, the friends that he had
weren't friends when he needed them the most.
So as we suffer, we learn more and appreciate more
the sufferings of Jesus.
Number two, we become more like Jesus through suffering.
And I don't know about you, I want to become like Jesus,
but I don't want to suffer.
And the truth is, there's no way to become more like Jesus
but through suffering.
Hebrews has a line about Jesus that's sort of a mind-blower.
It says he became perfected through his suffering.
We become more like Jesus
on the path to eternal perfection through suffering.
We become more like Jesus.
God takes seasons of suffering to do a work to change us, right?
I'll be honest with you, I'm in a season like that.
Time alone with Jesus listening, hard circumstances,
learning to appreciate Jesus more,
see the ways that I'm not like him,
and ask him to help me to change to become more like him.
And oftentimes, those kinds of things don't happen
unless there's pressure and suffering.
And so suffering is not always a good thing,
but it can always become a good thing
if we take it to Jesus,
and we appreciate it more, and we become more like him.
And thirdly, it becomes a witness.
As we are suffering, how we behave,
it really reveals who we are and who we love, right?
If in suffering, you say, "You know,
"I want to pursue humility by the grace of God.
"I want to grow in godliness by the grace of God.
"I want to appreciate Jesus more.
I want to become more like Jesus,"
that's part of your testimony.
People see that and they're like,
"Wow, that's a unique way to face suffering."
That's a very unique way to face suffering.
That's not how most people face suffering.
They either try to get very strong and conquer it
or they feel very defeated, and deflated,
and overwhelmed by it, and it results in depression.
To instead say, "No, no, I just want to sit in it.
"I want to steep in it.
"I want to marinade in this season
"so that I can learn what God wants me to learn
and become more like Jesus."
Well, Saul spent 3 years with Jesus
and then he found that he was experiencing suffering
from non-Christians and Christians.
And you're going to experience suffering
from non-Christians and Christians,
but it's a great opportunity that God gives us
if we will see it as an opportunity.
And number five, lastly, what role does church community play
in your life?
There is no such thing as a personal relationship
with Jesus.
It also includes the rest of God's family, the church.
And so to become a Christian is to be reconciled to
God as Father, but reconciled to other Christians
as brothers and sisters.
That's what the Bible says.
And here, we're going to see Paul's interaction with
the community of the church.
Acts 9:27-31, "But Barnabas took him and brought him
"to the apostles and declared to them
how on the road he had seen the Lord,"--
that's Jesus-- "who spoke to him,
"and how at Damascus he had preached boldly
"in the name of Jesus.
"So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem,
"preaching boldly in the name of the Lord.
"And he spoke and disputed against the Hellenists.
"But they were seeking to kill him.
"And when the brothers learned this,
"they brought him down to Caesarea
"and sent him off to Tarsus.
"So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria
"had peace and was being built up.
"And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort
of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied."
Here's what it says, that the church was reticent and hesitant
to embrace Saul of Tarsus.
And so it took a mediator, a reconciler.
It took a man of peace named Barnabas.
Barney, okay, literally means, "Son of encouragement."
Jesus is the Son of God,
but Barnabas is the son of encouragement.
This means that he has the gift of encouragement.
We learned two things early on in Acts.
In Acts 5, we learned that Barnabas was a generous man.
Here we learn that he's a gracious man.
And these two things go together, he's a giver.
He gives his money and he gives his love.
In Acts 5, we see that he's a very generous man,
he sells land, he gives a very large gift
to the church.
He's a very generous man.
And here, we see his generosity doesn't just include his wealth,
but his love.
His love.
And these go together.
As you and I learn how to give, it transforms us.
As we learn to give wealth, we learn to give all.
And here, what Barnabas is doing is he is taking
a tremendous risk because love is a risk.
It just is.
If you won't take a risk, then you can't love anybody.
And if you're wanting to love somebody,
you have to take a risk that they could betray you,
they could harm you, they could hurt you, they could fail you,
they could attack you.
That's the risk that Barnabas is taking with Saul.
That's why nobody else wanted to take the risk.
He murders Christians.
He's like a bounty hunter who has the right legally
to hurt Christians.
"We're not taking the risk."
Barnabas, he's the encourager,
and he has faith, and he has hope.
"You know what? God could change him.
"Maybe he has.
Let me go talk to him," and Barnabas takes the risk.
For those of you who have the gift of encouragement,
you have faith, and you have hope, and you are a gift.
And part of your ministry is loving first so that others can
be welcomed into the family God and that strained relationships
can be reconciled.
Praise God for those of you who are the sons and daughters
of encouragement.
He's that guy.
And just so you know, everybody loves the person with
the spiritual gift of encouragement.
Who doesn't?
And you know who has the gift of encouragement,
because when the worst thing happens,
they're the first person you call.
Something happened, they're like, "You know what?
"It's going to be okay.
"God loves you, I love you, and you're not alone.
"We're here for you.
Let's look on the bright side."
You're like, "You're pouring hope and faith into me.
"I don't have it, and God gave it to you to pour into me.
"You are an encouragement, you are a blessing, you are a hope,
you are a help."
If you know somebody like that, would you do me the favor of
just encouraging the encouragers this week, thanking them?
Sometimes they get discredited, "Oh, you're just naive.
You're just an optimist."
"No, I'm a Christian and I believe that God can do things,
and so I take a risk, and I love people, and I see what he does."
That's Barnabas.
My natural proclivity is not Barnabas.
My natural proclivity is like the other apostles, like,
"Pssh, yeah right, great.
"Paul's over there?
Good luck with that."
You know, like, Barnabas is like, "Hey, welcome!
"Did you fill out a visitor card?
Do you want to have coffee?"
He's that guy.
But can you see where this risk is real?
If he takes--Saul shows up like,
"I want to meet with all the leaders."
"You killed the last one you met with.
How about we meet one at a time?"
You know?
"No, I want to meet them in a group."
"What's under the coat? Open it."
You know, you're like boop, boop, boop.
Guy with a wand comes out, you know?
He takes him in to the apostles.
He says, "You know what? I've talked to him.
"I think he's met Jesus.
"I think he's a changed man.
"I think his heart is broken.
"I think God has a calling on his life
and we're here to confirm that," and history is changed.
And what we learn a lot about is Paul the Apostle, but man,
a lot of it was made possible by Barnabas the encourager.
Those of you with the gift of encouragement can be
significantly used to reconcile relationships so that the gospel
can be unleashed by people who otherwise may not find a place
in the church.
That's the story of Barnabas.
Well, what happens to the church is--it says this in verse 31.
"So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria
"had peace, was being built up.
"And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort
of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied."
What the church has had previously in Acts is it had
some time of peace like around Pentecost.
Thousands are saved, it's amazing,
and then all of the sudden, you know, the U.S.S. Jesus
hits some real storms.
And God's people are on their way to the kingdom, but man,
all of the sudden the swells come up, and there's opposition,
and arrests, and there's the murder of a deacon,
and the church scatters, and people are fleeing,
and there's great turmoil, and the church is really
in the middle of quite a storm.
That's where we're at, Mars Hill.
That's where we're at.
We've had seasons where it was calm,
then all of the sudden the waves hit.
And certain people are falling off the deck,
and others are throwing up over the side,
and nobody's laying in the lounge chair anymore
drinking a fruity drink with an umbrella in it
because it's not that time.
And the church goes through these seasons.
And our church goes through these seasons where it's peace
and smooth sailing, and then it's storm and high seas.
They had been in a season of great storm.
And I tell you this because sometimes even
the cultural narratives that we're so familiar with,
they reorient our understanding of Christianity in a way
that is not helpful.
So, the average Disney story is something like this.
Having two daughters, I've seen my share of princess movies.
Not because that's my thing, but because that's their thing
and I love them.
Okay, so, I'm going to clarify all my Disney insights.
But I've watched a lot of princess movies,
and usually here's how it works.
There's a princess in distress, and here comes a glorious prince
to rescue and save her.
They ride off into the sunset
and they live happily ever after.
And we think Christianity's like that.
The church is a bride.
She's a princess and Jesus is the Prince of Peace.
It's in the book, all right?
And in the end, he's got a kingdom that's safe for her
where he'll treasure her, and love her,
and they'll live together forever.
But we're not there yet.
In the end, that's how it all works out,
but we're not there yet.
In the middle, they're riding through a dark forest,
and there are arrows flying at them.
And it's not just, "And they rode off into the sunset
and lived happily ever after,"
it's that they had a long journey
to get to the kingdom.
And I love the honesty of the Bible and the love for
the church, and here it really talks about the church.
And up until this point, primarily in Acts 9,
it's been talking about one guy, Saul.
"So God loves you, and God knows you, and God cares for you,
and me too."
But then it pulls back and it says,
"Okay, how is this affecting the church?"
We always need to be asking, how is this affecting the church?
And right now for us is not calm, it's storm.
And the first thing people ask is like,
"When's it going to end?"
I don't know.
What we can learn is what the Holy Spirit did in
and through them.
It says, number one, that the church was built up.
People got stronger, godlier.
All right, they started to get their proverbial sea legs.
"Okay, okay, okay, this is a little difficult
but I'm going to figure this out by the grace of God."
My prayer for me, and our leaders,
and you is that we be built up, we be more godly.
If we're going to fail, let's not fail in humility.
If we're going to fail, let's not fail in seeking godliness.
The church is being built up.
And for those of you who are newer believers--I don't know
how many, 5,000-6,000 people have been baptized in
the last 5 years at Mars Hill.
A lot of new believers.
We all need to be built up, including the new believers,
but me too.
So, my question is, for myself, "God, okay,
"as I get time with the Lord Jesus,
"how do I need to grow in godliness?
"How do I need to grow in humility?
"How can I be built up so that out of deep love and affection
"for your church and your people,
"I can help the leaders to be built up
and together we can help the people to be built up?"
I'd appreciate it if you prayed with me for that.
It also says that the fear of the Lord increased.
And when you're in a storm, there's so much to be afraid of.
This can be a personal storm, a congregational storm,
a cultural storm, a vocational storm.
I don't know, but any storm you're in,
it's so easy to become fearful.
And what happens is that when we become fearful,
we become false prophets.
And what the fear does, it sees the future
but with no hope or grace.
And it sees it in cataclysmic, worst case scenario,
doom and gloom.
And what happens then is that fear causes us to live without
any faith, without any hope, and as a result, without much love.
Subsequently then, we live in anxiety, and terror,
and fear of the worst case scenario.
Whether or not it ever comes to pass,
it robs us of joy and life along the way.
And in this world, there is so much to be fearful of.
That's why the number one command of the Bible, the thing
that the Bible commands more than anything else--
if you were God talking to your people and saying,
"What would I tell them more than anything?"
He says this about 150 times, "Fear not."
Because it's--everybody gets afraid,
and people always get afraid,
and there's so much to be afraid of.
But that sounds kind of mean, right?
It's like if one of my kids in the middle of the night is
screaming because they're having a nightmare, and I run upstairs,
and I'm like, "Fear not!"
and then I go back to bed.
Okay, that didn't help.
And I've looked at every occasion in the Bible where God
says, "Fear not," or something akin to that,
and then he says something afterward.
"For I am with you."
Oh, this is what I would tell my child that was having
a nightmare, fearful, filled with terror.
I would come up and say, "Fear not, Dad is with you.
I'm right here."
That's where I rub their back, I kiss them on the head,
I pray over them, I snuggle up next to them.
"I'm here.
I'm here."
That's the Father God of the Bible.
When he says, "Fear not," he then says, "For I'm with you."
And it says that they increased in the fear of the Lord,
and what the fear of the Lord does--you're going to live
with fear.
Okay, here's an insight to the human condition.
You're going to live with fear, and the fear of the Lord
displaces all other fears.
That's why Proverbs says, "The fear of the Lord is
the beginning of wisdom."
If fear is at the center of your life,
you're going to do a lot of foolish things,
but if the fear of the Lord is in the center of your life,
you'll respond to your circumstances with wisdom.
So, the fear of the Lord displaces the other fears,
and the fear of the Lord starts with this.
"What does God say? What does God want?
"What does godliness look like?
"What would honor the Lord?
"What would give glory to the Lord?
What's the right thing to do?"
not "What will give me the outcome I desire?"
Fear causes us to make decisions to get an outcome
that we desire.
Fear of the Lord changes the outcome we desire.
The desire then becomes, "What glorifies God?"
not "What gives me the outcome I want?"
Do you see where that changed?
And some of you say, "Is that easy?"
No.
"Mark, are you any good at it?"
Psh, no, but I read the book and that's what it says.
And every time I practice that, it's good,
and every time I fail to practice that, it's bad.
The fear of the Lord increased.
Who or what are you afraid of?
God is alone to be feared, revered, respected, honored.
At the center of your motivation is his glory,
not a particular outcome.
That's what faith is.
It also says that they experience the comfort
of the Holy Spirit.
The church would have had a season of mourning
and grieving.
People are leaving, and fleeing, and scattering, and suffering,
and dying, and there's mourning, lamenting, grieving.
God has been showing me this in a profoundly deep way
in recent months.
And the Bible talks a lot about grieving, and lamenting,
and mourning, and the highest category of the Psalms
are psalms of lament.
And this is where you see reality but you don't allow it
to drive you to anger or depression.
You work it out with the Lord, and it allows you
to see everyone, including yourself, including myself,
through the eyes of the Lord, accurately, and soberly,
and honestly.
It's a great gift.
And to emotionally work it out in a healthy way with the Lord
so that he can comfort you.
Because sometimes comfort is not in circumstances,
sometimes comfort is not in people.
Like Saul, we run to people and they're not there for us.
We look into the future and it doesn't look good for us.
We look around us and it's peril that surrounds us.
You're like, "Where do I go for comfort?"
So we have comfort food.
We create whole categories to replace the Holy Spirit:
comfort food, alcohol, drugs, sexual sin, gambling,
shopping, spending, freaking out, whatever your thing is.
What you're looking for is relief.
What you're really looking for is comfort.
And so Jesus promised--he said, "I will send you the Comforter."
That's the Holy Spirit.
And the Holy Spirit is how God is present with us,
never leaves us nor forsakes us.
He is the arms of the Father wrapped around
the children of God
as they lay fearful and frightful in their bed because
their mind is filled with a nightmare that they think
is real, whether or not it in fact is,
and he comes to comfort.
The Holy Spirit is a tremendous--
he is a tremendous comforter.
I'm experiencing him in a way I never have.
I want you to experience him in a way you never have.
Because things may not get better, but by God's grace,
you can get better.
And then it says that the church multiplied.
More people met Jesus.
All right, once we grow in the fear of the Lord,
we grieve and are comforted.
Then all of the sudden we're able to stop looking just at
ourselves and realize there's still people that don't know
Jesus, that God ultimately wants us to be on mission
so that people meet Jesus.
And so the church multiplies, people are learning about Jesus.
If you're here today, Jesus is seeking you.
You're here for a divine appointment with him.
Just like he met with Saul, he's here to meet with you today
and to flip your life from a biography about you
to a testimony about him.
And it says that essentially, if I had to summarize it,
that the people of God grew in godliness.
My prayer is that I would grow in godliness,
that you would grow in godliness,
that we would grow in godliness.
That the church grew in godliness.
It reflected more the person and work of Jesus.
And that's a testimony, amen?
That's a testimony.
What we're going to do now is we're going to respond.
We're going to respond with our tithes and offerings.
That's part of our testimony.
You need to know that giving is part of your testimony.
It's like, "All that I am and all that I have,
"it belongs to Jesus.
See, it belongs to Jesus."
It's a testimony.
We're also going to partake of Communion.
We do this every week as part of our testimony to say,
"You know what?
Jesus is the Son of God and he is the Christ."
Right?
"And he is my Savior."
And as we partake of the bread, we remember his broken body.
We testify to it.
As we partake of the drink, we remember his shed blood.
We testify to it.
And as we partake of it, we testify that we're sinners
and that our life is not a biography.
And we're not the hero, we're the villain.
And that Jesus is the hero and that our life is to be
a testimony, amen?
And then we sing.
You know why we sing?
We sing as part of our testimony.
Jesus is alive.
Jesus is glorious.
Jesus is worthy.
Jesus is good.
Jesus is the Son of God.
Jesus is the Christ.
And so we sing and we celebrate who Jesus is and what he's done.
And we do that individually as part of our individual
testimony, and we do that congregationally as part of our
collective testimony.
All of our voices going together,
all of our testimonies colliding together to give glory to Jesus
because he is the Son of God and he is the Christ.
And it's a great, sweet, wonderful time.
And then we're going to commission you to go forth
and tell your testimony.
And I--honestly, I woke up today with a sense of great enthusiasm
and excitement because I believe that there are people that Jesus
has you to talk to.
There's somebody that he wants you to go be a Barnabas too.
There are people that need to hear of Jesus' work in your life
as we're hearing of Jesus' work in Saul's life.
And God is going to use that to encourage those
who are believers, even in community group this week,
and to evangelize unbelievers.
So I want you to understand the power of the testimony that God
has given you and how much richer and better it is than
just having a biography, amen?
Father, thank you so much that I get to teach the Bible
at Mars Hill Church,
and not only that, that I get to learn the Bible
first for myself.
And I thank you, Lord God, that your timeless word is always
timely, and that even, Lord God, when we lay out the preaching
schedule years in advance as we have with Acts.
Every week, I get to open it up and just shake my head
and chuckle because it's perfect.
It absolutely fits where I'm at, and where we're at,
and what you're doing to change me,
and what you're doing to change us.
Help us to grow in the fear of the Lord.
Help us to experience the comfort of the Holy Spirit.
Help us to stay low and grow in godliness.
And Lord, during this season we find ourselves in,
please allow us to be Barnabas to one another,
to put an arm around, to take a risk, to love well,
to believe the best.
And Jesus, let our lives be a testimony.
Rescue me, rescue us from the pursuit of a biography.
"What we did--" no, it's about what Jesus did.
"How great we are--" no, it's about how great Jesus is.
"How we made a difference--" no, how Jesus makes a difference.
Jesus, we want to have a testimony, so Holy Spirit,
help us to have a testimony and to share our testimony
for the encouragement of the believers and the evangelism
of the unbelievers so that Jesus would get glory.
In his name we pray, amen.
Howdy, Pastor Sutton Turner here
and I want to thank you for joining us today.
The service has just ended,
but you can still play an important role at Mars Hill.
July 4th, America's Independence Day, is almost here
and I want to ask you to please consider
making a special gift to Mars Hill in honor of our troops.
You might not know it, but the same sermon you just enjoyed
is streamed to our troops around the world.
They can't get to their home church
because of their deployment,
but they can listen to Pastor Mark teach the Bible
each and every week.
Your gift helps ensure streaming of this content
to our Armed Services.
You'll help ensure any member of our Armed Services
anywhere in the world
can learn more about Jesus and live in their faith.
Your gift also helps plant churches, equip church planters,
and distribute Bibles and study materials all over the world.
The impact you'll have on the lives of our service members
and countless others around the world is eternal.
Please make your gift today by going to marshill.com/give.
Thank you and God bless you.