The Next Chapter of Acts

Some time ago I read a story of a man called Ted DeMoss, who's an insurance executive, a big CEO of an insurance company in the US. And he wrote a story about how he started off with what his sort of job was, which was selling insurance door to door. And this guy, Ted DeMoss, is a Christian and he tells a story. In the course of my job selling insurance, I walked into an apartment building one day to call on a man whose name had been sent to my office in response to a direct mail program. I went to the door of his 3rd floor apartment and knocked.

The man spoke through the door without opening it. "Who's out there?" he said. I had learned in selling insurance that you never say the insurance man. So I just cheerfully replied, "My name is Ted DeMoss."

The man inside bristled defensively. "If I open this door, I'll throw you down those stairs. Now get away from the door." Since I sincerely thought that he had inquired about insurance, I persisted. "Mister, I am not going to hurt you.

Please open the door. I've got to talk to you." I fully intended to talk with the man about insurance, but when he opened the door, I realised there was no point in that. Before me stood a man with a white beard who looked like a thin version of Santa Claus. I've been in the business long, but I knew that he was too old to buy any insurance I might be able to sell him.

Looking directly at me, he demanded, "Okay, so I've opened the door. Now what do you wanna talk about?" "I want to come and talk with you," I said. "What do you wanna talk about?" he snapped.

I persisted. "May I come in?" And as I spoke, the spirit of God impressed me to talk with this man, a complete stranger, about Jesus Christ. At age 25, I had never done that before. Finally, he stepped aside and said, "Okay, come in."

I entered and we both sat down on the couch in the living room. Looking straight at me, the elderly man curiously asked, "What do you wanna talk about?" I paused for a moment, then said the only thing that came to mind, "I want to read the Bible to you." He consented warily, but he said, "I don't have a Bible. Do you have one?

He asked me. And I said, "No." He said, "Okay. Well, maybe there's something around here. I'm not sure whether I have one or not.

I've been blind for many years." I asked if I could look around the apartment for one and he agreed. And after a brief search, found a Bible, an old one, covered in dust on top of a stack of books. When walking back to the couch, I opened the Bible to the third chapter of John and began to read slowly. The further I read, the more scared I felt.

My Christian friends had never told me what to do next. So I read slower and more deliberately until I got to verse 18. "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only son." I finished that verse, praying silently for the Lord to give me wisdom as to what I should do next. I looked over at the old man, and what I saw shocked me.

His beard was wet with tears. God had gripped the man with the gospel of Jesus. "Sir," I asked, "would you like to invite Jesus Christ into your life right now? Right here?" The man nodded thoughtfully.

"Well, I would like to do that right now, but not here. Where do you wanna do it?" "I want to do it with my mother," he said. Mentally, I was scratching my head that the man was 81 years old. And I thought, "What do I say now?"

I decided to ask, "Okay, where is your mother?" "In the kitchen," he pointed. Thinking that he had a picture of her hanging in the kitchen, I suppose he wanted to go there for sentimental reasons, made our way back to the kitchen, and to my surprise, there was his mother sitting in a canvas backed chair. She was 98 years old and she was an invalid. I can still hear the old man's words as if he was speaking to them today.

"Mother, God has sent a man to our home. I had gone on this call thinking the insurance company had sent me, but I quickly realised that what he was saying was true. He's been reading the Bible to me," he said, "and I'm going to accept Jesus Christ." Now I had never heard anyone scream like she did in my life. When she regained control of her emotions, the aged woman said an amazing thing, "Mister, I don't know who you are, but I've prayed for my boy every day for over eighty years."

Her son and I got on our knees and I had the joy of praying with him and seeing him come to Christ. What an amazing story and an amazing way of how God can completely change our view of what our day is going to look like. This morning, as we're sort of preparing ourselves and I guess being commissioned in our activity this afternoon, I thought I'd like to read with you from Acts 28. And we're going to be reading from verse 16 which is sort of a bit awkward but we'll start from verse 16 and we'll read to the end of the chapter. Luke writes, "When we got to Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself with a soldier to guard him.

Three days later, he called together, this is Paul, the leaders of the Jews. When they had assembled, Paul said to them, 'My brothers, although I have done nothing against our people or against the customs of our ancestors, I was arrested in Jerusalem and handed over to the Romans. They examined me and wanted to release me because I was not guilty of any crime deserving death. But when the Jews objected, I was compelled to appeal to Caesar, not that I had any charge to bring against my own people. For this reason, I have asked to see you and to talk with you.

It is because of the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain.' They replied, 'We have not received any letters from Judea concerning you, and none of the brothers who have come from there has reported or said anything bad about you. But we want to hear what your views are, for we know that people everywhere are talking against this sect.' They arranged to meet Paul on a certain day and came in even larger numbers to the place where he was staying. From morning till evening, he explained and declared to them the kingdom of God and tried to convince them about Jesus from the law of Moses and from the prophets.

Some were convinced by what he said, but others would not believe. They disagreed amongst themselves and began to leave after Paul had made this final statement. "The Spirit spoke the truth to your forefathers when He said through Isaiah the prophet, 'Go to this people and say, you will be ever hearing, but never understanding. You will be ever seeing, but never perceiving. For this people's heart has become calloused.

They hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them.' Therefore, I want you to know that God's salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen." 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.

Last week we mentioned it briefly, but in Acts 1, we see Jesus tell His disciples that soon the Holy Spirit was going to come upon them, and they were going to be witnesses to Jerusalem where they were staying, to Judea, the surrounding countryside, to Samaria, to the north, and then to the ends of the earth. The call to witness lay at the heart of Jesus' final instructions to the apostles in Acts. It took the martyrdom of Stephen, however, for the gospel and the witness of the church in those days to move out of Jerusalem. But as the story unfolds in Acts, the programme of Jesus Christ is carried through. "Be my witnesses."

The church of today stands in similar succession to this first generation of believers, only when it comes to a similar witness. When you read through Acts, notice something very interesting. The idea of what witnessing is starts to take a particular shape. You see the responsibility of witnessing for the apostolic community, which was the church, is not so much the responsibility of the individual, but is the responsibility of the community of believers. The responsibility of being a witness is the responsibility of all of us.

Jesus said, "You are to be my witnesses." He said, "You, in the plural, you all are to be my witnesses. Not you, Peter. Not you, John. All of you, as a group, as a community, are to witness about me."

As a church, we are a group to carry the amazing message of the gospel that Jesus Christ has come to set us free. You see, the gospel doesn't have the power merely to cut across the racial, social, and economic barriers, but it spans across all generations and across all time and centuries as well. From the disciples who first heard the word of Jesus to us now, it's a message that does not become obsolete. In fact, it's the church's greatest asset. Because we live in an age where ideas are superfluous.

They are flexible. In an age where systems of thought as well as techniques and resources are of a throwaway nature. Our message is the same. Our message is the same. It doesn't change.

A message that is the only way to salvation. The church can still display the same confidence in the gospel that Paul had when he first said in Romans 1:16, "I am not ashamed of the gospel. I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes." When we step out this morning, this afternoon, and we do our surveys, and although we may not be required to give an explanation or to evangalise directly or anything like that, there may be an opportunity like Ted DeMoss had. There may be an invitation for you to come inside and read the Bible.

Will we take it? We have the same confidence. We have the same promise that the disciples had. We have the same comfort that Paul had in Romans 1:16 that we don't have to be ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God. It is the power of God for the salvation of many.

Our church has good news to offer this world. Our church has good news to offer this world. News which brings hope. That's why we're stepping out to do the survey. That's why we need to find out where our neighbours are at.

That's why we need to understand what their needs are. In our world, in this world, there's little hope. Our generation says there is no God. God is dead. Our generation says there's no real point to life.

You make meaning out of your life whatever way you want to. We've come to an age where hope has been eroded. And for many, the only real truth in life is tax and death. Death is God. Death awaits us as a cement floor awaits a dropping light bulb.

By contrast, however, the church says with Peter, the leader of the early church, "Praise be to God the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In His great mercy, He has given us new birth into a living hope. A hope that cannot die. A hope that cannot fade. A hope that will never perish."

And so we see throughout the book of Acts that the church community living a contrasting lifestyle. They are a community that is inclusive, that reaches out to the servants, to the slaves and brings them in. That reaches out to women, the second class citizens of that time and brings them in. They break bread together, they eat together, they do life together. We see a community that is a contrast to society.

A lifestyle of inclusion and grace. The church community carries a message of hope and rescue to their neighbours. And many, many people believe in Jesus Christ through their witness. And so when we get to Acts 28, what we've just read, and we read that last verse saying that Paul boldly and without hindrance preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ. We see the mark of the early church.

We see the mark of a man that was deeply committed to this gospel or this good news of hope. See, Paul didn't go there and start complaining about his chains or his prison centers or being unfairly imprisoned. Although it was plain to everyone, even the Jews seeing him said, "We haven't heard anything bad about you. We don't understand why you are here in Rome." He didn't spend his time talking about his own suffering.

He didn't preach about the uncomfy mattress that they gave him to sleep on in his house prison. He pointed them to Jesus, the place where there is real hope to be found. The message that we carry today and in the future isn't a message about this church. It's not a message about this church. It isn't a message about Christianity versus evolution, although you might be passionate about that.

It isn't about whether or not we should vote for a Christian politician or not. Our message is about Jesus and His death and His resurrection and His love for sinners. That is our message. And the message of Acts is this, it isn't our persuasiveness, it isn't our wit, it isn't our intelligence or our wisdom or our familiarity with doctrines that saves us. It is the gospel of Christ and it alone that has the power of salvation.

Paul could have preached till the cows came home and he was an ineffective communicator. He was trained by the greatest Greek rhetorical speakers. And he could have used many, many convincing arguments, but ultimately, it was the good news that Jesus saves that changed the lives of ordinary people. In the book of Acts, the seemingly impossible mission was accomplished. That mission that Jesus said in the beginning, "You are to go from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth."

In Acts 28, we see that it was mission accomplished. The gospel had reached all the way to Rome, all the way to the capital. At the end of Acts, we see the gospel spreading right to this point. And the great hero of the story wasn't Paul nor was it Peter or Luke or Silas. The hero was the Lord Jesus Christ and His message and what He had done.

The hero was the one who protected His messengers and empowered them through the Holy Spirit. And this morning as we go out, we have the promise that He empowers us in just the same way. What a great, great promise. We have the promise that as He was with His servants, Peter and Paul and Barnabas, in the same way He will be with us. In the last verse of Acts 28, we see that the story of Acts isn't finished.

We never find out what happened to Paul. We never find out what happened to Paul. We know that the story finishes in Rome. And it's one of those frustrating things, you know, when you're watching a really good movie and then all of a sudden the end comes and it's just a black screen and you don't know what happened. And there's all these questions that still, you know, left hanging.

It's like that. And scholars have debated why Luke ended the book like this. Perhaps he ran out of paper. But I believe Luke was saying this, the story isn't finished. The hero isn't Paul.

It's not about him. The story is going on. There's an Acts chapter 29 that's still being written. That's where we find ourselves this morning, today, in the process of writing Acts 29. The promise is that that gospel commission that "You are to go from Jerusalem, Judea to the ends of the earth" is still happening today.

We have and we stand in that same line with the church community of two thousand years ago. So we have a great opportunity this morning. We have a great calling, a great God who's going to go with us, be with us, and empower us.