ACTS "The Death That Brings Life"- Acts 21:10- 14

Guest (Male): Paul said in Galatians 2:20, he said, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Pastor Brett Meador. Discovering the essence of life is a life in Christ.
Host (Brett Meador): Paul's saying this is the secret. Learning to die to yourself. Basically, this signifies that through faith in Jesus, believers experience a new life. Brand new life.
Guest (Male): Paul's insistence on returning to Jerusalem despite cautions of imminent severe danger was not a result of rebellion, but of obedience to the call of God. The warnings from the Holy Spirit were intended to prepare Paul, not to discourage him. And so coming up, Pastor Brett Meador adds understanding from today's word of a life lived faithfully surrendered to the Lord.
Host (Brett Meador): The story in front of us in this study of Acts, it happens with Paul back in the land of Israel from his third missionary journey. Strange little story, they're just all hanging out, Christians who love Paul. Agabus comes and gives a word of prophecy and with his hands tied and his feet tied, he says, "The one who owns this belt is going to be tied up when he goes to Jerusalem just like this." And the people, oh, they start weeping, "Oh, Paul, don't go to Jerusalem, man. We love you. We don't want you getting tied up and bound up." And Paul said, "Why are you breaking my heart here, you guys? I'm going to go to Jerusalem, and I don't care if they bind me up. I'm ready to die if need be." He wasn't afraid of death. Why? Because Paul had such an understanding of life after death and what that actually means. I'm not only willing to be tied up, I'm willing to lay down my life for the cause of Christ. It begs the question, and I would ask you to consider this personally. Because the Bible actually gives us a bunch of things that we are to die to spiritually. What does the Bible ask of us as Christians? We're called to sort of lay down our lives in a different way and maybe that'll be an indicator of how you'd be willing to do if your life was on the line. Let me give you four that might be helpful for us to take a little bit of a test. Number one, are you willing to die to sin? As it turns out, the Bible tells us that you and I are to reckon our old sinful self as dead. And that's a behavioral thing. It's something you and I are asked of by God. Romans chapter 6, verse 1. He says, "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" "God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?" He's going to argue that there's this part of you that you need to reckon as dead. He calls it your old man. Before you were a Christian, you had this old sin nature and it wants to whisper in your ear, "Do these bad things and sin against God." Should we continue in sin and let grace abound? "God forbid," he says. And then he explains further, verse 3, "Know ye not that so many of us were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death? Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in the newness of life." Paul's saying, "Don't you guys understand? Baptism is sort of a dying and being put in the grave." That's what baptism's a picture of. And then even as Christ rose from the grave, we too come out of the tomb of death and we are made alive, resurrected, and baptism is a type of that. In fact, read on, verse 6, it says, "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin, for he that is dead is freed from sin." So you're reckoning the old sin nature dead. There's another one that the Bible talks about dying, not just dying to sin, reckoning the old man dead, but also dying to self, number two on our list. Are you willing to die to yourself? Because the Bible, in fact, Jesus talks about that topic more than most other topics. It's amazing how the world and even Christian books are written about loving yourself. How many times does Jesus say, "Love yourself?" The Bible does not teach, "Love yourself." Although there's all kinds of psychology and Christian books talking about, "Oh, you first, you can love other people, you have to love yourself." That's total hogwash because the Bible says totally the opposite thing. In fact, the scripture I put on this one is Matthew 16. Would you turn over to Matthew 16, verse 24? These are the words of Christ, and it's not just here, it's all throughout the Bible. This idea of what Jesus is going to say about dying or denying oneself. He says in Matthew 16, verse 24. It says, "Then said Jesus unto his disciples, 'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and then he shall reward every man according to his works.'" Here, Jesus says, "Man, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself." This is what it means really to die to yourself. The world says, "Pamper yourself, treat yourself. You deserve a break today. Look out for number one." These are worldly concepts, but the Bible says no, Jesus says no, you're to die to yourself sacrificially die. Philippians chapter 2 articulates it beautifully. Paul says to the Philippian church, "Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves." Do you understand how that's so contrary to what the world taught you? Psychology and education saying, "We need to learn to build our self-esteem." You know, when Jesus was asked that most powerful question, "What is the greatest commandment?" Jesus answered in Matthew 22, verses 36 through 40. "Master, which is the great commandment of the law?" And Jesus said unto him, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. But," verse 39, "And the second is like unto it, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.'" This is something we forget to talk about about this. We always say, "Yeah, you got to love God and love people." And that's true. But Jesus threw something in there that's kind of a little bit of like, "Oh, ouch!" He says, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." It's like Jesus is presupposing you all love yourselves, which is true. The idea is, you got to kind of say, instead of loving yourself as much as we do, we got to transfer that over, die to yourself and give that over to the Lord so that you might be effective. So, how are you doing so far on our little litmus test? Are you dying to sin? Have you got that one down? How about dying to self? You got that down? What about, are you dying to worry? How many of you spend a lot of time worrying about, "Oh man, I'm worried about tomorrow?" Because the Bible says he wants you to knock that off. The Bible's clear on that. Don't worry, and don't worry about tomorrow. Are you a worrywart? It's been said, and truly said, "Worrying does not take away tomorrow's troubles, it takes away today's peace." When you're sitting around worrying, you're just ruining your peace today. You're worrying about something about tomorrow. You know, it's interesting because here I put a text to this and Jesus addressed this head on in Matthew chapter 6. Red letters, in fact, one of the most red letters in the Bible is recorded here in Matthew 6 because it's the Sermon on the Mount. And Jesus deals with this idea of worrying about tomorrow pretty soundly. Matthew 6:25, Jesus said, "Therefore I say unto you, take no thought." Some of your newer translations say, "Don't worry about your life. What you shall eat, or what you shall drink, nor yet for your body what you shall put on for clothes," is the idea. "Is not the life more than the meat and the body more than raiment, or clothing?" "Behold the fowls, the birds of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap or gather in barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they?" Question, are you better than a bird? There's a whole extreme environmentalism that says people should be more important than animals, and there's a veganism that's kind of next level that says, "We should not kill our brethren, the animals." No, Jesus slew fish, slaughtered them and ate them, and probably enjoyed them, I would say. Veganism, you can't make a biblical case for that. And people are more important than animals. The Bible said, Jesus asked this rhetorical question because the obvious answer is when he says, "You know, the birds of the air, God cares about them, yes, but are you as people not much better than they?" That's a question people grapple with today and the Bible gives us the answer that's important. Verse 27, "Which of you by taking thought or worrying can add one cubit to your stature? And why take ye thought for raiment or clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow." Don't you wonder if Jesus when he's preaching the Sermon on the Mount there may have been beautiful lilies growing in the field there. Jesus said, "Look at those lilies of the field." He said, "Look how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these." Like these lilies are more beautiful than Solomon's raiment. "Wherefore," verse 30, "If God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is now it is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore, take no thought, saying, 'What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed?' For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knoweth the things you have need of, of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Jesus nails this down, we as Christians are not supposed to worry. Paul would echo this in Philippians when he said, "Be anxious for how much? Nothing. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, giving it to the Lord in prayer with thanksgiving and supplication, let your requests be made known unto God and instead of worry," he says, "And the peace of God will rule your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus." You see, God's will for the Christian is to not be anxious, to not be worried, but to put our trust in the Lord and to seek him first. And then let all these other things be added. If the birds aren't worried about what they're going to wear and what they're going to eat, we bird brains should stop worrying as well. We should be trusting in a Lord that says, "I will take care of your needs." Now, by the way, there's another side to this coin because some of you might say, "Cool, I'm not going to worry about what I'm going to eat or wear, so I'm going to sit and play Call of Duty in my mom's basement as I'm a 35-year-old now." No, another scripture says, "If you don't work, what? You don't eat." So the ethic of work is still part of the equation. But it's when you sit around, "Oh, I'm so worried that I'm going to not eat." That's not really of the Lord. You need to die to your worry. Let it go and not sit around worrying about tomorrow. Take your burdens and where do you place them? On him. "My burden is easy, my load is light." But if I want to be the one that bears your burden, if your burden is anxiety, guess what? He'll take that care, that worry right off your shoulders and he'll put it on himself. And not only is he able to not worry about it, but he has the power to make sure you're taken care of. He's the one who's called Jehovah Jireh, the one who provides all things. So we literally do have someone we can give our worries to. And we forget that. And we discount that as, "Well, that's not real." It's as real as the sunrise as we see every day. The Lord says, "I will never let the righteous fall. No man will ever pluck you out of my hand." There's all kinds of promises in the word of God that says, "I'll take care of that for you." But we sit around and we worry and we don't add one inch to our stature by worrying. Are you willing to die to that? Because some of you are saying, "Brett, that's just the way I am, I'm a worrier, I was wired that way." Can I remind you, you and I were not saved to stay the same way we are. We were saved by Jesus, by his grace to make us improve. You're a work of art that he's working on. We are his workmanship, poima in the Greek, a work of art created in Christ Jesus to bring forth good fruit. This is what the Lord wants to do in your life. One more, are you willing to die to sin, die to self, die to your worry? What about this one? Are you willing to die to your own agenda? As it turns out, the Bible teaches that there's times where you just have to, there's something you really, really want, but you got to let it go. Sometimes you're really, really right to want something, but you're still not willing to let it go. This is a hard one, your agenda, things you think are right and good. Can I just say? We're supposed to give up on those things. Let them go. But, "Brett, what if I'm right? What if my agenda and my plan is right?" Well, that's where I redirect you back to our text here, because not only do we see Paul's willingness to lay down his life, but we also see kind of an interesting side note in this story back to Acts 21. When we looked at the story, part of the story is interesting because a word is given by Agabus, a word of prophecy that says, it's like a word of exhortation really, if whoever wears this belt goes to Jerusalem, he's going to end up being tied up there. Can I remind you, he's not saying, "Don't go to Jerusalem, thus saith the Holy Ghost, don't go to Jerusalem." That's not what he said. He said, "Whoever owns this belt, if they go to Jerusalem, they're going to be tied up hand and foot." So the question is, should Paul go to Jerusalem? The people there, including Luke, the author of the book, a physician, a smart guy. Luke and all the people say, "Don't go to Jerusalem, Paul!" And they start weeping, "Oh, Paul, no, don't do it!" And Paul's like, "Why do you break my heart and why are you weeping? I'm going. I don't care if they tie me up, and I don't even care for my life on this." So who is correct? One of those two had to be wrong. How insistent were the people here? Well, did you see it? Verse 12, "When we heard these things, both we and they of this place besought," that's a very strong word, "we besought him not to go to Jerusalem." "Paul, whatever you do, don't go to Jerusalem!" And Paul says, "I'm going. I don't care if I die." And then after much persuading, how did we know they tried to persuade? Well, look at verse 14, "And when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, 'The will of the Lord be done.'" You know, some of you need to die to your argument, your agenda, your thinking you're right about stuff. I love this story because some of you, this might be a life verse. In fact, verse 14 should be a life verse for who? There's people that I know, and I see this in counseling situations, it's a tricky one because they're nice people. And we know that nobody's righteous. We're all sinners, right? Would we agree with that? That's what the Bible says. On that level, we understand that. But do you know people that are kind of amazingly righteous? There's actually some people that compared to me, I just kind of go, "Wow!" They've got a sense of integrity and rightness, and they're not willing to see any wavering, and they're kind of hard on themselves, and they're really hard on everybody else because they have such a sense of doing things rightly. And you say, "Well, Brett, is that wrong?" Well, it can be. It can be. What do you mean, Brett? Well, have you ever been the one and see, here's the problem, the people that have this trait, they're the last ones to know about this. Where you're right and with a sense of integrity and righteousness. Maybe let's just use an example, you're at work and your boss is doing something inefficiently, and you know a more efficient way to do things. And you know how to make people happier in the way that you communicate at work, and you know this and this and you know that and that, and your boss is sick of hearing it from you! And he's about to fire you. Is there ever a time where you should just say, "You know what? I need to take an off-ramp here," or are you going to stand your ground because you're right and he's wrong? See, I love that there's an exit ramp here in the story. It says in verse 14, "And when Paul would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, 'The will of the Lord be done.'" There's a point in your life where you might want to pray about saying, "Is this time to back off?" You know, if you're that person, there's chances are maybe you have been fired. Or maybe your family doesn't want to have Thanksgiving with you anymore. Maybe your kids are not in talking, speaking terms with you anymore because of your sense of self-righteousness. There's a difference, by the way, between self-righteousness versus just what is right and standing your ground and integrity. I'm not saying you should compromise that, but I am saying there's times where like these people said, "Okay, Paul, we know you're going to be bound up if you go to Jerusalem." They were right. But Paul was also right. We know he was willing to be bound up and even die, and eventually he would be bound up and die. But all of that was part of God's plan. Sometimes you have to just say, "Okay, I'm going to cease from trying to convince you, but I'm going to say, 'The will of the Lord be done.'" There's a time where you have to die to your own agenda even if you think your agenda is dead right. Sometimes you got to let it go. Some of you that don't do that, be careful on this one. Some of you are so much sticklers for being right, maybe you really are right. But there's a time where you have to cease and say, "The will of the Lord be done." Dying to your agenda. Well, with all these things, I'm just giving you examples. There's plenty more where that came from. But, you know, when we ask this list, "Are you willing to die to sin, die to yourself, die to your worries and die to your agendas?" We could go to a longer list than that. But this is where, you know, the Bible tells us this over and over again, too many people don't understand the laying down of your life to sin and to self. It's not just, there's so many other scriptures. Look at Luke chapter 9, verse 23. Where it says this, "And he said to them all, 'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall save it.'" Look what Paul said in Galatians 2:20. He said, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." You see, some of you are saying, "Brett, this whole thing about die, die, die, it's kind of grim, kind of sick of hearing it, can we go yet?" But I want to show you Paul saying, "I am crucified with Christ." But is he bummed about that? No, as you read this, you realize, "No, this is the essence of his life." He figured it out. As I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live while everybody else is living death. I'm living, yet not I, but Christ living in me, and the life which I now live is in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Paul's saying, "This is the secret, learning to die to yourself." Basically, this signifies that through faith in Jesus, believers experience a new life, brand new life. You see, if you die, the great thing about God, one of his specialties is turning death into what? Life. God's good at that. He resurrects. Lazarus could have been healed, but instead he died. Well, that's bad. Yeah, but Jesus came days later, and he said, "Lazarus, come forth," and he was raised from death to life. And it says later in the story that people came from all over to see Lazarus, whom God had raised from the dead. That's God's specialty. God had a greater work with Lazarus. Rather than just healing him, he said, "I'm going to see him die and then raise him from the dead." Luke chapter 17, verse 33, "Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it. Whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it." So as we die to ourselves, what happens? It's a way to prioritize your relationship with God and grow in spiritual maturity through the self-denial and obedience to Christ. It's about following and mirroring the example Christ set of his love and not self-serving pursuits that you and I have of trying to do better, be stronger, be better than everybody else, but to die to yourself. So this transformation God wants to do from death to life. It's really right there. It's right there for you. The question is, are you willing to die to these things?