Good morning, everyone. It's good to see you this morning. Thank you for coming out on this rainy day and if you have a Bible, you'll want to turn with me to Acts, chapter 28, Acts, chapter 28. And while you're turning there, let me welcome all of you who are visiting with us this morning. We're delighted to have you. You honor us by being willing to come and be with us today. But we hope that in addition to showing that kind of appreciation to you, you'll also know that you have been in the presence of God today during this worship service. And as you all know, this is a very special Sunday when the congregation of this church is voting for a new pastor, and I hate to tell you this, but you ain't done with me yet. A few of you have wondered how quickly I'm going to get out and others have wondered how slowly I'm going to get out. So let me just tell you, at this time, it appears that I'm going to continue to preach at least for the month of May and then maybe spotted times during the rest of the summer. So you're not quite done with me, and we're going to be looking at the book of Acts as long as I'm here. And we wait for that final day, don't we? Acts, chapter 28, we'll read the last two verses, verse 30 and verse 31. Here, now the word of our God. For two whole years, Paul stayed there in his own rented house, and welcomed all who came to see him. Boldly, and without hindrance, he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ. May God add his rich blessing to the reading of his word. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, we bow before you. Teach us, please. We call no one our teacher, but you because we trust you to give us the truth, truth from the Father, truth from your own hand. And now, as we have read these verses, verses that seem obscure to us in many ways, the last verses of this book of Acts. We come to you, especially, depended upon you and your spirit, to enliven our hearts, to open our ears, to open our eyes that we may see and hear, and be encouraged by you. Teach us, Lord Jesus, and as you do, we will give you the praise and the honor for it. Amen. How do you measure success? That's a great question, isn't it? It's a question I think that all of us at one time or another ask ourselves on a very personal level. Maybe parents ask that on a family level, what makes for a successful family? Business people will say, what makes for a successful business? And on a day like today, at a time like this at independent Presbyterian Church, I hope you're all asking yourselves at least a similar question to what makes a church a success. How do you measure it? It's an important question for all of us to ask personally and as the body of Christ, because success is something that we want to have. Now, we just read the last two verses in the book of Acts, and in some ways it may seem like a very strange thing to read as the scripture reading for a Sunday morning worship service. But if you look at verse 30 again, I want to tell you something about it, and that is that in the original language, the verse ends perhaps a little more dramatically than it ends in the new international version. If I were to read this more like the Greek itself reads, it would be something like this, verse 31, boldly, Paul preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ without hindrance. The very last words of this book are without hindrance, or as it might be translated openly, or as it might be translated with great success. As Luke writes this book, known as the book of Acts, the second of two volumes in the New Testament that he wrote, he ends it with a very important word, without hindrance, successfully. And so, as we look at this passage, we may wonder to ourselves, why did this man think that what he had written in the book of Acts should be ended this way? It's because as far as he was concerned, as he wrote to his friend and perhaps patron theophilus, the story he tells in the book of Acts is one of great success. As we take a look at this verse, it's just the first of several times we're going to look at the book of Acts. In fact, on Sunday evenings, we're actually going to be studying different parts of the book of Acts to support what we do here on these last Sunday mornings of my time. We're going to notice how it is that Luke describes success for the Christian, how he describes success for Christian families and even for churches. And we see him summarizing in many ways what he says throughout the entire book right here in these last two verses, this last scene of the book. And the first thing that we notice here is that Luke says something. He indicates something that's quite the opposite of what we might think success to be. It's almost counterintuitive. It's so opposite of the way we normally think about success. Listen to what he says again in verse 30. For two years, two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. Earlier in the chapter, Paul has arrived in the city of Rome. And he is now in a rented house. It was expensive to rent houses in Rome. That wasn't probably so good. And he was having to pay for it. But it's even worse than that. The Apostle Paul at this point in his life is under house arrest. Remember he appealed to see Caesar and to declare the gospel to Caesar. And at this point, he is actually imprisoned in this home. Welcoming visitors, yes, to be sure, but nevertheless, a prisoner for the sake of Jesus. And by telling us this at the end of the book, Luke is indicating something that he indicates throughout the entire book of Acts. And it's this, success for Christians, success for the Christian church equals trouble. Well, that's strange, isn't it? Because usually when we think of being successful, we think of that meaning that the trials are over. If you're going to be a successful business person, well then you've reached the goal that you've strove to reach for so many years. If you're going to have a successful family, you're thinking, well, the problems are over. I made it through. We did what we had hoped to do, but not so with the book of Acts. The book of Acts, from beginning to end, is all about the trials, the troubles, the hardships and the challenges that individuals, families, and churches meet. And as far as this book of the Bible is concerned, if you want to be successful, you must realize that success comes with trouble. Now, I have a friend who is a long-term therapist. In fact, she's the chairman of Third Millennium, the ministry that I am the president of, and she's a very highly respected therapist. And she has an adage that she always teaches people. Let me tell it to you. Tension causes growth, and growth causes tension. How about that? Now, think about what she says there, and you can understand how it's true in your own personal life. Let's start with the second half. Growth causes tension. When a person grows psychologically, or when they grow up, even biologically, growth occurs as they deal with tension. Growth leads to tension. I mean, think about this for your young children, when they go off to school. Isn't it true that as tiny toddlers, you try to protect them from almost every problem they encounter, but on that first day of school, you have to let go. And it isn't long before they come back saying, you know, she doesn't like me. My best friend forever, my BFF, is no longer my best friend. I didn't get an A in that class. Math is hard for me. And you always think to yourself as an adult, I don't like this. I wish I could just fix it and make life really easy for my child, but tension is a part of growth. And as that child grows, that child will be facing tension. But think about it in just the opposite way as well. Tension causes growth. The child who faces problems and is able to deal with them, even failures at times, grows as a human being. This is the way it is with people, with families, and even churches. Success does not mean ease. Success from the biblical point of view, from Christ's point of view, does not mean that the troubles are over, that the challenges are over, on the contrary, tension causes growth. And growth causes tension. And all through the book of Acts, Luke writes about tensions inside of the church, that caused the church to grow spiritually to mature spiritually, as it faces those internal challenges. And it talks about the experience of oppression and trial and trouble from the world. Because as the church would grow both numerically and spiritually, the world took notice and began to oppose the church. This is the dynamic of the entire book because it is the dynamic of the Christian life in the Christian church. In every age, after all, this was the pristine first century church, where presumably they didn't have all the problems and all the baggage that you and I have, but on the contrary, they did, as we will see in the weeks to come. But all through this book, Luke makes it very clear. You want to be successful as the Christian church? It equals trial. It equals trouble. It equals challenges. Early in Christian history in the days of St. Augustine, it was the fact that troubles came to people. And he dealt with those troubles by writing a particular book called The City of God. Now, what people had done was they had begun to think that if you're a Christian and you're faithful, things ought to be okay, but things weren't okay. Troubles were all around the church and in the church. And Augustine had to proclaim in this book that the city of God is our hope, the city of God, the kingdom of God is our hope, not the absence of troubles. So as you think about your own life, as you think about your own church, don't be expecting things to be easy now that you're going to get a new pastor. All the troubles are gone. All the trials and challenges are gone. I hope not because if that's true, do you know what it means? You're dead
because that's the only condition in which the body of Christ exists and has ease. Luke makes that very clear as he deals here with the very last scene of his book and is something he wants us to remember every day of our lives. But Luke is not just interested in presenting in this last scene the fact that there will be tension and that growth comes along with that and success comes along with that. But he also wants to make it clear how it is that in the midst of troubles and trials, the Apostle Paul was able to have success in a positive sense. What did he do? How do you boil it all down to what makes for a successful church the measurement of success? And he tells us two things in the last verse of his book. Take a look first at the first half of verse 31. Boldly, Paul preached the kingdom of God. This was success as far as the Book of Acts is concerned. Paul is in Rome and he is boldly proclaiming the kingdom of God. I don't know if you've noticed it or not. I've been here for 14 months and for 14 months almost every Sunday morning I have been trying to convince you that from Genesis to Revelation, the theme of the Bible is the coming of the kingdom of God. Have you noticed it? I hope you have. If you haven't, well then I failed. So if I failed then let me say it to you as plainly as I can. From the Book of Genesis 4, the hope of the Bible is that God would make the world into such a place that it would be appropriate for him to dwell here in all of his glory. And that would mean that the world would be holy and righteous to be sure that there would be no injustice in the world any longer, no trials, no troubles for anyone who existed in the world at that time. Sickness would be gone, death and suffering would be gone. It would be a magnificent time in the history of the world, the culmination of all of history, the great kingdom of God. And this is the theme of the Book of Acts, that the kingdom of God is coming. But oddly enough the Book of Acts actually begins, it doesn't just end with the kingdom of God but it actually begins with the kingdom of God. You recall that when Jesus resurrected from the dead and he was with his disciples and explained some things to them, they looked at him in Acts chapter 1 and verse 6 and they said this, okay, okay, we've got it, we've got it, is this the time now that you're going to restore the kingdom to Israel? You see the book starts off with, is this the time of the kingdom? Are you about to do it, Jesus? That question that's raised at the beginning of the Book of Acts is being answered by the whole Book of Acts and is being answered right here in this verse as well. When is the kingdom coming? How is God transforming the earth into his wonderful idyllic kingdom? That question was very important to the first century church because in their day they had faced the crisis of the people of Israel who were the centerpiece of God's kingdom, the people of Israel having been oppressed, having been exiled, having been dominated by evil kingdoms throughout the world for hundreds of years. Oh it's true, some people had not given up hope. The zealots were one of the parties among the Israelites in Palestine in Jesus' day that had not given up hope, they thought that they just brazen their swords and attacked the Romans, they would be set free by God. Of course the zealots were wrong, the zealot movement basically ended when the few of them ran off to that fortress out of the middle of the desert that you know of, Masada and when the Romans surrounded it and built a rampart up to it over a period of years and finally entered that mountain top city and actually found all the people they are dead having committed suicide. The zealot movement was a lost cause and then there were other people who decided what we need to do as Israelites is just face facts and that is that the kingdom of God is not coming. Let's just compromise with Rome, let's just give in. And in the midst of that kind of crisis, Jesus came and announced that the kingdom was coming in him. Amazing when you think about it, hard to believe and that's why the apostles began this book with saying is this the time? Is it going to happen now and is why Luke ends this book with Paul proclaiming the kingdom of God because in his day many had given up hopes for this except the followers of Jesus. Do you realize that in the 21st century we face a very similar situation? We have had in recent centuries a number of major utopian visionary movements in the world. One of them primarily in the east call it Marxism, call it malwism, whatever you want to call it, Marxism taught that if we will just follow a particular political program then we will one day reach utopia that humanity will be happy, a classless society where there will be no injustices, no sickness, no illness, it'll be wonderful, it'll be a fantastic paradise that we will create on the earth. But look at Marxism now, where is it except in the minds of just a few people here and there, it's a fallen program but it's not just in the east where this is true, is it? Today more than ever before we are finally waking up to the idea that the Western democratic utopia that was supposed to bring peace and safety and comfort to all of the world is itself stumbling and falling and perhaps failing. A lot of us are reading our hands right now asking what's happened to America, what's happened to it? And we too then began to become just as pessimistic as the people around us wondering if things will ever change, if there is any hope and we simply give up like they do and become cynical like they do. One of the ways in which we often deal with this is to become nostalgic, nostalgic about the past. I'm sure you've heard people say these kinds of things because we all want to say them, there was a time and things were the way they should be. If we could just go back 100 years, if we could just go back 200 years in American history then things would be the way they are supposed to be and of course nostalgia is only something you can have with a little bit of distance as you idealize the past. You all remember Camelot don't you? Where the sun always shines and it never rains, where everyone is happy and in love, where everything is absolutely magnificent. Oh yeah, until you get there and once you get the Camelot you discover it wasn't so great after all. This is the way it is in the body of Christ. The Apostle Paul could have been saying to himself, you know what we need to do? Let's go back to the days of David. Let's go back to the days of Solomon. Let's go back to the good old days when things were the way they were supposed to be. Israel was strong and the people of God were moving out and conquering new territories. Let's go back. Let's go back but he doesn't do that. As a Jew who has come to Jesus, he says, no, I'm boldly proclaiming the kingdom of God in the future. And so we find that for every Christian person, every Christian family, every Christian church success is measured in terms of are we holding on to the hope of the kingdom of God ever before us? Or have we become nostalgic about the past or cynical about the present? Are we holding on to the hope that the world will one day be transformed into the kingdom of God if we are and we are boldly proclaiming it as the Apostle Paul did here in this passage. Despite the trials, then we are being to use Luke's words successful. But Luke goes one step further in verse 31. Paul and his under house arrest was not simply proclaiming the kingdom of God, keeping that hope alive, but listen to what else Luke says. Boldly and without hindrance, Paul preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you know that we still have people in our cities right here in this country, in fact, right here in Memphis, that still go around singing songs like we are the world, we are the children. All we have to do is just lock arms and be nice to each other. Love will find a way and we will conquer all and things will be good and we'll be able to bring utopia to this world. There are still a few diehards out there that are optimistic about the future. And they think that if we can just bury our swords over religion, give up on certain distinctives that we believe in, especially we Christians, the majority religion, then we will find peace and harmony coming to the earth and that good things will come. And Christians, I mean well-meaning Christians, Bible believing, faithful followers of Jesus are often tempted to buy into that kind of dream, that the only hope now for the world is to give up on religion, to give up on the distinctives of what Christianity teaches. But here we find Luke saying, that's not the successful church, that's not the successful Christian, because Paul did not just proclaim some anonymous kingdom of God, some anonymous utopia that was coming one day, he personalized it. He didn't personalize it in terms of his own life. He didn't say, oh yeah, and I told them all the good things I had done to bring the kingdom of God. No. What he says here is that he proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ. He personalized the hope of the future to one person and one person only, Jesus of Nazareth, whom here he calls the Lord, the ruler, and whom he calls the Christ, the Messiah of Israel, the great King. You and I are in a day when you can look back on many people in the history of the world who have done great things. We can look back on political leaders, we can look back on religious leaders, we can look back on local leaders, and we can say, you know, they did something good there, but there's something that's different about Jesus in comparison with every figure that has ever walked on this planet. I don't hear how great he was. Every single one of them were frail, faulted, and stumbling, sinful human beings. That even if they accomplished great things or made wonderful discoveries that transformed the earth in some way, they were still just people and sinful at that. But this Jesus, we're told, had no flaws. Oh, yes, he was a man, but what a man he was without sin, without failure. Not only did he learn the Bible of his day and obey it, but he also listened to God's call in his own life and followed away that in many respects seems absurd. He followed away that in many respects seems like a loser, but he did it because he was willing to obey his father in heaven. He was so righteous that he even gave up his own life on the cross. He actually suffered God's judgment against people like you and me who fail, and he suffered God's judgment so that by faith in him we might actually succeed. But more than this, he didn't just die, he actually rose again from the dead because he was so good. And even beyond that, he was taken up to heaven where he now ensures that every single event in history is moving toward the success of the kingdom of God spreading to the ends of the earth. Do you know what this means for us? This means that as individuals, that as families, even as a local church, our personal connection to Jesus of Nazareth is the only hope we have of being successful. The temptations are great, aren't they? To invest yourself in other ways, other definitions of success, but here Luke makes it very plain that if you want to go forward without hindrance with great openness with success, ending his book that way, it must involve you in relationship with Jesus, attached to him like you're attached to no one else, as your Lord, as your Savior, as your king Lee Messiah. That must happen individually, but it must also happen as a church. I do not care what outward successes we may have as a church in the future, if this church does not place plainly all of its hopes in the king of Israel, in Jesus of Nazareth, then it is a failure. Despite the pressures of the world to say that there are many ways to salvation, despite the pressures of the world to tell us calm down about this Jesus and the things that he taught, we must stand boldly even if it causes trouble for us and that day is soon to come. So how then is it that we will measure success? As we begin a new chapter in the history of this church, how are you going to measure success? Will it be by the absence of trials and troubles, hiccups here and there? I hope not if you do, you're missing the point of the book of Acts because tension causes growth and growth causes tension. So what is success? A successful church is a church that holds onto the hope despite everything that's going on around it that the kingdom of God is coming and we stand forward with boldness. And a successful Christian church is one that says there is only one who can bring the kingdom of God and his name is Jesus. If we will do that, then we will be a successful church. Let's pray together. Our Lord Jesus, how we delight in you and honor you that though we are tempted in many ways to want ease, to want fun, to want enjoyment, we know that success comes only through trial. But we delight in you that even in the worst of trials, our hope is alive for the kingdom of God. And we bless you and you alone for making the kingdom of God a reality in our future.