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ZIONSVILLE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

April 5, 2009                                                                                                  Rev. Glenn McDonald

Acts 13

 

Back to the Blueprints

(14) The Cost of Freedom

 

 

                In his book, The Life You've Always Wanted, John Ortberg tells about the time that he and his wife bought their very first piece of new furniture: a mauve sofa. "It was roughly the shade of Pepto-Bismol, but because it represented to us a substantial investment, we thought 'mauve' sounded better.

 

                "The man at the furniture store warned us not to get it when he found out we had small children. 'You don't want a mauve sofa,' he advised. 'Get something the color of dirt.' But we had the naive optimism of young parenthood. 'We know how to handle our children,' we said. 'Give us the mauve sofa.'

 

                "From that moment on, we all knew clearly the number one rule in the house. Don't sit on the mauve sofa. Don't touch the mauve sofa. Don't play around the mauve sofa. Don't eat on, breathe on, look at, or think about the mauve sofa. Remember the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden? 'On every other chair in the house you may freely sit, but upon this sofa, the mauve sofa, you may not sit, for the day you sit thereupon, you shall surely die.'

 

                Then came The Fall. One day there appeared on the mauve sofa a stain. A red stain. A red jelly stain. So my wife, who had chosen the mauve sofa and adored it, lined up our three children in front of it: Laura, age four, and Mallory, two and a half, and Johnny, six months.

 

                "'Do you see that, children?' she asked. 'That's a stain. A red stain. A red jelly stain. The man at the sofa store says it is not coming out. Not forever. Do you know how long forever is, children? That's how long we're going to stand here until one of you tells me who put the stain on the mauve sofa.'

 

                Mallory was the first to break. With trembling lips and tear-filled eyes she said, 'Laura did it.' Laura passionately denied it. Then there was silence, for the longest time. No one said a word. I knew the children wouldn't, for they had never seen their mother so upset. I knew they wouldn't, because they knew if they did, they would spend eternity in the time-out chair. I knew they wouldn't, because I was the one who put the red jelly stain on the mauve sofa, and I knew I wasn't saying anything. I figured I would find a safe place to confess — such as in a book I was going to write, maybe."

 

                Ortberg suggests that all of us have produced our share of stains, and that every one of us will ultimately have to stand in front of the couch and give an account of ourselves. This is where the Bible delivers incredibly good news. God is able and willing to forgive our sins and our stains because Jesus died for us on the cross. Actually, in today’s world, only the first half of that sentence sounds like good news. “God is able and willing to forgive our sins and stains.” Can’t we just leave it at that? Why would Jesus have to die in order to deliver God’s forgiveness?

 

                Tim Keller, who is pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, says that in New York City he doesn’t hear the question, “Does God really exist?” nearly as often as people ask, “Why can’t God just forgive us? The Christian God sounds like the vengeful gods of primitive times who needed to be appeased with human sacrifice.” Can’t God just accept us if we are sorry for what we’ve done wrong? The need for sacrifice offends people. There are theologians in our own denomination who have rejected the doctrine of the cross because to them it reeks of “divine child abuse.” Can’t we just downplay the tragic death of Jesus?

 

                Economic illustrations, especially this year, can help us get our heads around what the Bible actually teaches. Is it possible to forgive the outrageous behavior of the most reckless Wall Street investors? It is possible — but someone is still going to have to pay for their mistakes. It appears that several hundred million taxpayers, some of whom aren’t even yet born, are going to be paying for their mistakes for a very long time.

 

                If I back my car into your car in the parking lot just after this service, and put a royal dent into your radiator, you may graciously choose to forgive me. “Glenn, I know you didn’t mean it, although it would help if in the future you didn’t dial your cell phone, change your CD, and put your car into reverse all at the same time.” You may choose to forgive me — but someone is still going to have to pay for your radiator. You will pay for it, or I will pay for, or State Farm Insurance will pay for it. But let’s not for a minute fool ourselves by thinking that forgiveness means simply cleaning someone else’s slate where real damage has been done.

 

                And the Bible could not be clearer: Our sins have done real damage. We have damaged ourselves. We have damaged each other. And we have damaged our relationship with God. What exactly does the Bible mean by sin? Sin isn’t just doing bad things. It is putting good things in the place of God. Sin means elevating secondary priorities to first place, and thereby trying to find an identity and a purpose for ourselves apart from God. That is the ultimate transgression, and all of us are guilty of it.

 

1.                 Tim Keller points out that we tend to look at our own achievements, our love relationships, our talents, and our social status to give us meaning, hope, purpose, and even salvation.         Looking good, feeling good, and making good will rescue us from the meaninglessness of facing another day. But this so often creates a crisis. If I forge my identity around anything other than God, whatever threatens that identity is going to scare me to death. People who love their own bodies can be freaked out by wrinkles. But nothing is going to halt the relentless process of aging. People who build their own status around being great parents can be deeply threatened when their kids start doing things that aren’t written into the ideal script. For years, a big chunk of my identity was being the pastor of a church that didn’t go through major problems and pains. I was kind of hoping that ZPC would end up being the world’s first Teflon congregation, where the problems would just slide right off. When problems and pains came anyway, it’s amazing how insecure I felt as I finally grasped the degree to which I had not been depending on God for my identity.

 

                In her column in the Village Voice, Cynthia Heimel recently reflected on the people she had known in New York City before they became stars. One sold tickets at a move theater. Another worked the makeup counter at Macy’s. When they hit the big time, they all had something in common: They became “more angry, manic, unhappy, and unstable than they had been when they were working hard to get to the top.” Why is that so? Heimel writes:

 

                “That giant thing they were striving for, that fame thing that was going to make everything OK, that was going to make their lives bearable, that was going to fill them with ha-ha-happiness had happened, and the next day they woke up and they were still them. The disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable.”

 

                Sin is not simply doing bad things. According to the Bible, sin is putting good things in the place of God. If you don’t live for God, you will most certainly live for something else. And that will cause incredible damage to you and everyone around you.

 

                Who is able to address such damage? Tim Keller writes, “If Jesus is your center and Lord and you fail him, he will forgive you. Your career can’t die for your sins. You might say, ‘If I were a Christian I’d be going around pursued by guilt all the time!’ But we are all pursued by guilt if we don’t live up to our identity. Jesus is the one Lord you can live for who died for you — who breathed his last breath for you… Jesus is the only Lord who, if you receive him, will fulfill you completely, and, if you fail him, will forgive you eternally.”

 

                When Jesus said, at the beginning of the book of Acts, “You shall be my witnesses to the ends of the earth,” this is the essence of the message he was talking about. This is the story that his followers were to share with others. So far this year we have worked our way through the first twelve chapters of Acts. Today we arrive at number thirteen.  

 

                For the first time in history, followers of Jesus are going to take a field trip. Two early church leaders named Paul and Barnabas set out to visit places where as far as we know Jesus’ name has never been spoken. Look at verses four and five: “The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus. When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as their helper.”

 

                We learn several interesting things from these verses. First, this was a homecoming for Barnabas. We noted earlier in Acts that he had grown up in Cyprus. Second, he’s taken along his cousin John as a kind of ministry assistant. And third, Paul and Barnabas have a strategy. It’s a Jewish strategy. They visit the existing synagogues and announce that Jesus is the Messiah that God’s chosen people have been waiting for.

 

                But then something happens that they may not have been expecting. A Gentile leader named Sergius Paulus becomes a Christian. Paul and Barnabas are aware of the fact that the Holy Spirit has gradually been bringing Gentiles into the church. Does this mean they should change their evangelistic strategy? Look at verses 13 and 14: “From Paphos, Paul and his companions sailed to Perga in Pamphylia, where John left them to return to Jerusalem. From Perga they went on to Pisidian Antioch.” Now if these verses don’t exactly make your heart beat faster, and don’t do a whole lot more than make you wonder if every place name in the ancient world started with the letter P, it’s only because we fail to grasp that this is history-changing stuff.

 

                Perga is on the southern coast of modern-day Turkey. For these three Jewish men who are out on an expedition promoting Jesus as Messiah, this isn’t Kansas any more. The population of this region is overwhelmingly Gentile. So why does John leave them and go back to Jerusalem? Later in the book of Acts we will learn that Paul has become angry with John because he deserted them at this critical juncture. Apparently John wants no part of what he suspects is coming next. Paul and Barnabas end up going due north up and over the rugged Taurus Mountains, deep into the interior of a predominantly pagan part of the world.

 

                In Pisidian Antioch they do find a synagogue. Paul is invited to speak. Notice who he identifies as his audience in verse 16: “Men of Israel and you Gentiles who worship God, listen to me!” Throughout the ancient world, there were always Gentiles who longed for the spiritual experience of Judaism. Many had come to believe that the Greek gods on Mt. Olympus were just bedtime stories. These Gentiles hung around the synagogues, listening to the teaching, wondering if perhaps the God of Abraham and Moses and David could also be their God. Could this God give their lives meaning? Would this God be willing to forgive their sins?

 

                Paul holds nothing back. He launches into a crash course on Old Testament history. Then he introduces this brand new element, the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth — someone who had been alive less than 15 years earlier. Paul announces that Jesus is the Savior whom the Jews had always been waiting for. But look at the way he puts it in verse 26: “Brothers, children of Abraham, and you God-fearing Gentiles, it is to us that this message of salvation has been sent.” At this point the Jews in the audience must have been doing double-takes. What does this man mean, “to us? Is he saying that the Messiah has also come for the Gentiles?” That is precisely what Paul is saying. Beginning in verse 27 he summarizes the events of what we now call Holy Week, the very week that we are beginning to celebrate today:

 

                “The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning him they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath. Though they found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have him executed. When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to our people.

“We tell you the good news: What God promised our fathers he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus.”

 

                Now why doesn’t Paul simply say, “We’ve come all this way to tell you some good news: God accepts everybody and forgives everybody and that’s that. All-ee-all-ee-all-free!” Why bring up all these details of Jesus’ death? It’s because forgiveness is costly. It will cost you plenty to buy a new couch if you put a red jelly stain on it. Maybe you can afford that today. But who can afford to buy a new life after that life has been wrecked by selling out to anything that is less than God? Only God can pay such a price. And God did it through his Son on the cross.

 

                Years ago I was standing in line at a lunchtime salad bar on Good Friday. I was chatting with a friend about our upcoming Good Friday service when a complete stranger turned around and asked, “Why do they call it Good Friday, anyways? It certainly wasn’t good for Jesus!” No, it wasn’t. But things become very, very good for those who receive what Jesus did on the cross as a life-changing gift. Here’s what the Bible says: I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, but I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. Didn’t Jesus wrestle in the Garden of Gethsemane, yearning to avoid the pain of the Passion? It’s true that he was not glad to experience the suffering that lay ahead of him…but what compelled him to go ahead anyways was his gladness to die for you and me.

 

                So how do we respond to all of this? Paul’s crescendo comes in verses 38 and 39: “Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses.” We see the ultimate result of this invitation over in verse 48: “When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed.” Just as the Jews for centuries had appropriately celebrated the fact that they were God’s chosen people, Luke the Gentile author now goes out of his way to point out that God has chosen these Gentiles, too.

 

                All the way back in Acts chapter two, on the day of Pentecost, Peter had proclaimed, “All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” And how do we do that? We repent and we believe. To repent means to change our minds about how we are living. We stop seeking meaning, purpose, hope, and identity in anything less than Jesus.

 

                Believing means trusting. Tim Keller uses a compelling illustration. Imagine that you are walking along a high cliff. You lose your balance and begin to fall. Just beside you as you fall you happen to see a small tree that is sticking out from the cliff. This is now your only hope. It is more than strong enough to hold you. Suppose you have a firm belief that that small tree can save you, but you don’t actually reach out and take hold of it. The result is that you are going to be lost.

 

                What if, on the other hand, your mind is filled with doubt about the reliability of that tree? Even though you’re not sure, you reach out and grab it — and it saves you. What do we learn here? It’s not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you. It’s better to have weak faith in a strong branch than strong faith in a weak branch.

 

                Do you have doubts about Jesus today? Do you wonder if he really is the most worthy center of a human life? Do you wonder if he is able and willing to forgive your sins and to give you the gift of a new existence? It’s his strength, and not yours, that matters right now. Will you reach out and take hold of him invisibly, trusting that he will not let you go?