Finish Strong

So here we are talking about finishing strong. We’re talking about weeks of being in a book of the Bible. And for many of us, it’s the longest we’ve ever spent in one book of the Bible. And that’s okay; no shame around that. But we gotta also remember that when we read these passages, three months for us, or 12 weeks of being in Scripture in the book of Acts might seem like a really long time, but for these people in the book of Acts, a day to read one chapter might be three years of their life. These people we read of in their stories, they were living this in real time, just like somebody might tell your story to a generation in the future, and they’ll tell them about how you left your country and you started your life in this country. They’ll tell how you married somebody, and you raised a family, and it’ll sound like it just happened overnight. But it took 50 years; it took 60 years.

So we have to be careful. We have to slow down as we read. And what we’re going to do to slow down this week is we’re going to take seven chapters, and I’m going to tell you the stories that are happening because the writer of the book of Acts is a man named Luke. Luke wrote Acts and he wrote the book of Luke. So Paul did not write this. Peter did not write that. They’re characters in the story. But Luke makes a little distinction. Towards chapter 20 and 21, he starts focusing on Paul, who used to be Saul. See, there’s a lot of drama. There’s a lot—well, why was he Saul? Read it for yourself. There’s a lot of cool things in there, but Luke starts in these last eight chapters really focusing on the story of Paul and who he is. And we’re going to hear more about that. He focuses on Paul because Paul is on this journey to finish strong.

You remember when you were in high school, maybe you are in high school, and you went into senior year, and how quickly did you get into “senioritis”? You were done. I mean, some of our upcoming seniors, I went to camp with them weeks ago, and I’m like, “When do you think you hit senioritis?” And some of them are like, “I already have it, and I haven’t even started my senior year yet”. Right? We sometimes dream of being done with a phase of our life. We dream of what’s next. And yet Paul was living in his race, and he was called to finish well. Because how many know that anybody can start anything? We have a lot of starters, because passion and energy and inspiration will start us down the road. But passion doesn’t always get us across the finish line. Our passions can lie to us. Our passions can change; our passions can shift. And here we are down one road, and next thing you know, we’re off to the left and we never finish a race that maybe we felt called to or that God called us to.

And so Paul is modeling for us, and Luke is describing this for us in the book of Acts, a picture of faithfulness, because the starting line of life and of a journey in Jesus is crowded with enthusiasm. You ever seen a marathon being run? It is chaotic. Everybody’s at the front. But have you ever seen the end of a marathon? They come crawling across one at a time. It’s important that we finish well. The finish line reveals endurance. The finish line reveals character. The finish line reveals what was worth giving your life and time and effort and money and family and energy and your soul. The finish line reveals a lot, and Paul knows the finish line is coming and he knows he must finish well.

Here’s what we learn about Paul: faithfulness mattered more than comfort. Faithfulness mattered more than comfort. And how many times have we made decisions about life, about our education, about relationships, about where we’re going to live, based on comfort? And it’s easy to do in a country like ours because we’re so used to the life of comfort.

You know what I started doing yesterday? Yesterday I was sick most of the week, and I had a lot of time to think about a lot of things. And so I sat down and I thought, I want to look at every dollar I spend and see where it goes. Now, I’m already a good steward; I already organize my life. And Libby and I give—we give about 19% of our income back to the church we believe in every year. We were challenged by John and Kathy Burke, our founding pastors: can every year, we sacrifice less for us and give more towards the Kingdom of God? So I did that for about five years when I was executive pastor. And so we’re like, okay, how do we challenge ourselves? We were challenged by our former pastors, and now we’re the pastors.

And so I’m going through all of that, and yet I haven’t gone as meticulous. And I’m wondering—I started categorizing how much of my life, even though we give well above and beyond, and even though we support missionaries, and even though we have a daughter in college (gosh, that’s costing us so much), even though we have all that going on, how much do we still spend on comfort? I dare you to go home and just add up how much you spent on having something bring food to you when you have a car. Many of you are able-bodied and the place you order from is seven minutes down the road. How much are we throwing away for comfort? And then we turn around and say, “God, will you provide ?” That’s not even my message; that is just free.

So Paul tells us faithfulness matters more than comfort. As we look at these eight chapters, there are going to be these four big umbrellas that we’re going to learn from, and you can study them on your own, in your groups, or with people.

The first umbrella is this, from Acts chapter 20: finishing strong requires a clear mission. Finishing strong requires a clear mission. As Paul leaves Ephesus, he knows suffering is awaiting him. Ephesus is a city. And here’s what we find in verse 24: “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me.” That’s a lot to say. Am I at a place, are you at a place to say, “My life means nothing to me”? He continues, “My only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, which is to declare the good news about the grace of God.” Wow. Paul is saying it’s not my life’s aim to self-preserve. My aim is to complete the mission set before me, and Paul keeps the finish line in mind—the mission in mind.

Now remember Paul’s story in Acts chapter 9. Same book, chapter 9. He is Saul; he is the Jew of all Jews. He is highly educated, he has all of the right connections, and he’s given the responsibility to start going after those who are following “the Way”—those who are following the way of Jesus, the disciples of Jesus. So he is on a rampage, going after those who are following the Way. And on the road to Damascus, he has an encounter with Jesus. The light knocks him off his horse, he goes blind, and he recognizes that this being is the Lord Jesus. All he hears from that being is, “Go to Straight Street and I will tell you what to do from there.” That’s it.

And at the same time, God is speaking to Ananias, who is a follower of the way of Jesus. He’s telling Ananias, “I need you to go to Straight Street, and you are going to basically help disciple Saul.” And he’s like, “Oh, okay, hold on. Hold on one second. You want me to put my life on the line to go interact with somebody who would rather kill me, because you have a great plan to use their life? You got it.” And God begins to tell Ananias, He says, “Go, because I have chosen him—Saul at the time—to serve me, to make my name known to the Gentiles and kings and people of Israel. And I myself will show him all that he must suffer for my sake.” This is how it started for Saul—just a life surrendered because he had this encounter, this belief of who Jesus was.

And then you fast forward to Acts 23. We’re going to get there in a little bit, but I want to fast forward a bit. This is how Luke, the writer of the book, talks about Paul. Now Saul has gone to Paul; he’s traveled, he’s preaching about Jesus, he’s being faithful to Jesus, he’s running his race, and he’s trying to finish well. He’s got all this persecution around him, and people are trying to kill him. And Luke is there, and Luke gets to see with his own eyes how Paul is running his race. Look what Luke says. He says that night the Lord stood by Paul and said, “Don’t be afraid. You have given your witness to me here in Jerusalem.”

He made it! He made it to Jerusalem. He kept his eye on the prize and he made it to Jerusalem. God himself was standing next to Paul saying, “Don’t be afraid. I’m with you. You made it to Jerusalem.” And that had to make Paul feel good, except the Lord adds, “and…” We’d be like, “And what? And what? I made it here. It took my whole life to get here to Jerusalem, and you’re throwing an ‘and’?” “And you must also do the same in Rome.” So glad you made it, now you’re going to get back on a boat, and you’re going to fight for your life to go to another city.

It kind of reminds me, in a minor way, of when I go to the grocery store. I know this happens to nobody else here. I already know somebody over here is about to get in trouble, starting to laugh over here. I go to the grocery store and I come home. My wife’s waiting for me and we get everything, and she goes—oh, she gets really sweet and really nice. That’s not my wife after the grocery store. After the grocery store, my wife is focused. She’s like, “We’re going to organize to put things away, no mess, to clean everything up.” And I’m like, “Yes.” But when I come home and she’s like, “Hi, honey,” I’m like, “Oh, you forgot to tell me something, didn’t you? Hey, can you go back and get this one thing?”

I fought the maniacs at HEB—and they’re maniacs, because I think the store just makes you go crazy. I fought the lines, I prayed for a great parking spot, and you want me to pray again for a good parking spot? Because it’s Texas, I’m not going to; I don’t want to park too far from the door. She’s like, “I just need you to do one more thing. I need you to go back to Rome… I mean, go back to HEB.” You know what, it is tuna tonight for dinner. We’ll get it tomorrow.

If that’s how I feel about a run to the grocery store, can you imagine? Paul fought with all he had to get back to Jerusalem, and then God says, “Don’t worry, I’m with you. Oh, and I want you to go to Rome.” How many of us would have just quit right there? See, no matter what Paul was facing, there was clarity about his mission, and he never lost sight of his purpose—his “why.” So finishing strong means remembering why you started.

Let me tell you, friends, something’s going to happen in that relationship. Something’s going to happen on your career path. Something’s going to happen while you’re at school. Something’s going to happen with your money, or with the economy. Something’s going to happen where somebody is going to get sick. Something’s going to happen with your marriage, or somebody is going to die. You might have something happen to you. There are going to be all sorts of things in life that are going to try to distract us, and we don’t get to just stop and say, “You changed the rules.” The rules are always changing.

Be honest with yourself: how many of you throughout life have worked so hard and somebody changed a rule about something? Somebody changed something about your trajectory, and you had to start your life—or what felt like your business life or your educational life—all over again? Raise your hand. Look around. Keep your hand raised; look around. And the enemy of our soul will say, “You’re the only one.” But no, it’s just the human condition.

And yet Paul says, “I know why I exist. I kept my eye on the prize.” And if we’re not careful, we will do to our heart and soul and to our relationship with God what we do with business, what we do with marriage, what we do with our parents, what we do with whatever we do—we will just want to start over. God’s like, “Wait, wait, wait. There’s only one race you run with me, and there’s phases, and there’s mileage markers, and there’s good miles and bad miles. There are times you’re walking, sometimes you’re crawling, but just keep going. Keep your eyes on the prize, the mission.”

So now you have a mission, but it takes a lot more than a mission to keep going and to finish strong. The second umbrella is this, from Acts 21 through 23: finishing strong requires courage through opposition. Because you can have clarity, but now we got to have courage through opposition.

So everyone around Paul tells him not to go to Jerusalem. He’s traveling, he’s preaching, he’s telling people about Jesus, he’s starting churches, and everyone says, “Do not go to Jerusalem.” His disciples warn him, his friends warn him, and Paul goes anyway because he has a clear mission of what he’s supposed to do. So he’s arrested in these chapters, he’s beaten, he’s falsely accused, and he’s imprisoned. Nowhere is anybody asking him, “Hey, are you comfortable?”

That’s a question we ask in modern times. Do you know, just maybe 100 years ago, nobody was asking you if you were comfortable? Your great-grandparents, or maybe if you’re a little older, your grandparents—nobody was asking, “Are you comfortable?” That’s a modern construct from the last 100 years. For thousands and tens of thousands of years before us, nobody was asking about comfort. And now we won’t go visit our in-laws because they don’t have the right pillows. We’ll request another room because we don’t like the sheets on the hotel bed. We don’t like to suffer; we don’t like anything that’s different. And it makes me wonder, do we really have courage?

Next time you’re at the airport, or next time you’re driving down the road and you see a service person who’s being honored, or the remains of a service person being brought back to our country, I dare you to not just clap, to not maybe just give up your seat on the airplane to this person. I dare you to sit and wonder what it’s like to be the family of that person who gave up their life so you could decide if you were going to have Starbucks or not, so you could decide if you were comfortable enough to go to church or not. Is that what we’re really going to live our life for? Is there a sin in comfort? Absolutely not—if you can give it away.

Paul doesn’t face being arrested and beaten and falsely accused and imprisoned and say, “Gosh, God, I wish I had a better pillow right now.” He’s saying, “God, I just want to please you with my life.” Look, we only finish strong when we have courage. And in Acts 21 through 23, I mean, Paul goes to Jerusalem. He’s compelled by the Spirit. I wrote all these things down because I want to make sure I get them. The brothers pleaded with him not to go; he turned aside and he went anyway. He entered the temples, and every one of them turned to chaos. The Lord was still with him through it all, and he was able to share about Christ in all kinds of venues. Many still didn’t listen to him. Before the religious leaders, division broke out between Pharisees and Sadducees because he declared that the hope of the world, Jesus, had resurrected from the dead. And that night, as friends faded, the Savior remained.

He said, “Take courage. As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify about me in Rome.” And on that night, 40 men made a covenant, made a pact that they were going to kill Paul—not just some sort of religious group. Forty men said, “We will not eat or sleep until we have killed this man.” And yet God provided a way out. They chased him around the country, but through his nephew’s courage and the commander’s protection, he was escorted by cover of night to Caesarea. The chains had become his companion, and yet the chains did not keep him from sharing the gospel.

When I was in high school, I was a troubled kid, and I threw a party one time—well, not just one time, but there was this one time I threw a party. I didn’t know that my parents, who were out of town, had told the neighbors that nobody was supposed to be there, because I was supposed to be staying at my friend Rudy’s house. So I thought it was just an empty house. Nobody had cell phones back then, you know? So we’re just kind of doing our thing. My parents had told the neighbors, “Nobody’s supposed to be there. If anybody’s in the house, call the police.” They forgot to tell me that part.

Police show up. It was a small party—there were like 60 people, okay? But somehow a lot of us got arrested, and it wasn’t funny. People were crying. These were like athletes who had Division One scholarships. These were people who knew they were in trouble. I was one of those people that had offers for college, but I was high—I was a hurting kid. And everybody’s crying, everybody’s in their chains, we’re all at the police station, and everybody’s like, “Oh, call your lawyer, call this.”

And my parents are out of town. They asked, “Who do you want to call?” I’m like, I’m not calling anybody; I’m staying here. I knew the law; I knew they had to let me out by the end of the weekend. I’ll just stay here all weekend; don’t call nobody. If you call my dad, I’d rather be dead, so I’ll just stay here. So I had nothing to lose. All my friends are crying—girls, guys—they’re like, “Oh my gosh, blah blah blah.” And all of a sudden, because I thought it was funny, I started singing, “Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?” And someone goes, “Shut up!” I said, “Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do?” And before you knew it, my 30 friends who got arrested with me were all singing Bad Boys from Cops.

And it was funny, until they all got picked up by their parents and I’m there by myself. And the officer looks at me and goes, “Whatcha gonna do, boy?” So I called my youth pastor. Well, I never went to student ministry; he wasn’t technically my youth pastor, but my youth pastor had been in prison before and he came to Christ in prison. His name was Jackie. I’ve told stories about him in the past. I didn’t originally like Jackie; he didn’t represent who I was. Jackie was straight from the hood—he used to be a gangster and he walked like this, saying, “What’s up, lay? I’m gonna tell you about Jesus today.” And I was like, “Oh, for real?”

But I called Jackie, and Jackie shows up at the jail, and he looks at me and he says, “I know what it’s like to live in those chains. But the physical chains you have are nothing compared to the emotional and spiritual chains in your life.” And he talked to me and preached to me, and I was like, “Boy, just get me out of here.”

See, for Paul, he had physical chains and he didn’t do what I did. He didn’t make fun of it; he didn’t try to be stronger than it or try to be bigger than it. In his chains, he still proclaimed the gospel of Jesus. What are you doing with your chains? Complaining about them? Saying, “They’re too tight. God, if you love me…” Paul just said, “In my distress, I’m going to be of good courage. God has gone before me. I’m here for Him, because of Him. My life is not my own. I will be of good courage.”

And what is good courage? We learn this in Psalm 27, verse 14, which says: “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.” Good courage is when you know that the energy you have to muster up is not your own strength. Good courage is when whatever energy you do have comes from the Maker of heaven and earth. My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. I have good courage in Him that makes its way and manifests its way through me; it is not me, it’s not my strength. How many of us are trying to have courage in ourselves, and we forget to have good courage in the One who created you, formed you, shaped you, and is actually walking with you? Finishing strong means obedience when obedience becomes costly.

So now we have clarity, we have our “why,” and now we have courage that might cost us. Third, finishing strong requires endurance in the waiting. In chapters 24 through 26, Paul spends years in prison. Everybody say years—years! I know it took you two minutes to read that verse, but it spent three years of his life to live that verse. No church plant tours, no packed crowds, no visible momentum. Yet Paul continues preaching before governors and kings and officials, a prisoner of the Way. He’s a follower of the Way; he is marginalized, he’s a nobody. And yet he goes before Felix, Festus, and Herod Agrippa II. These are historical figures that he goes before, and he presents the good news of Jesus. The mission didn’t stop because the circumstance changed.

He says this in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, starting in verse 16: “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

You are not wasting away. He’s saying, yes, I am being pressed on. Earlier in the chapter he says we’re like these treasures in jars of clay, and we are being pressed on every side and it feels like you’re losing. It feels like you are, but when we die to ourselves, we get life in Christ. And when we get life in Christ, we get to bring life to others by dying to ourselves. And I know it’s hard to say that, friends; I know it’s hard to believe it, and I know very much it’s hard to live it.

But can I tell you something, friends? No matter what you’re facing—I know dozens of people in our church who are waiting for doctor reports, and as a pastor, my heart’s been really heavy lately, knowing how much sickness is rampant in our church body. And I gotta tell you, you are not wasting away. Your body may have one sign or one signal, but inside of you, God is creating something that will not waste away and may not last the temporal, but it will last for the eternal. And if we keep focused, the life you do have that God gives can be given to someone else, and they will find eternal life because of how you live yours.

Or are we going to just be comfortable Americans when we die, and when we’re sick we’re just going to be holed up in some bed? My dad this week decided to not take his final medicine that they have to offer him. He said, “Son, if I take this, I’ll be stuck in a bed for the next six months and that’s how I’m going to live. But if I don’t take it, I can still travel and preach the gospel. I’ll still have cancer and I’ll still be sick, but I’m not wasting away. This body may be giving out on me, but what God is doing in me can bring life to others. So I’d rather say no to a medicine and say yes to the eternal healing that is coming.”

And can I tell you, I know you feel like you’re wasting away. I know it feels like it stopped working, but when it feels like it’s not working on the outside, maybe, just maybe, God is building something on the inside of you. And your death is not just a death; your death is a life invested in Christ. And what He gives back to you is this life eternal. And what comes out of you to your friends and for your family—for my father, his grandkids. He was at my daughter’s wedding a few weeks ago, and he got on the dance floor for just five minutes. But my kids will remember that my dad didn’t waste away in a back room dying of cancer. He got on the dance floor and he danced in life, and he preached the gospel, and he shared with everybody that even though I’m wasting away, God is building something in me. But can you believe it for you? Can you believe it for you? Finishing strong means being faithful in seasons that feel unproductive.

I wasn’t going to put this in the notes, but I feel like I should say it. I know for some of you your marriage feels unproductive. I know for some of you—that was the nicest way I could put it. For some of you, the life you’re living with someone else feels unbearable. And I know you have to do your due diligence of what that means and what that looks like. But can I tell you something? Maybe, just maybe, both of you have given up. What would it look like for God to resurrect something in there that on the outside might be wasting away? Maybe God’s creating something internal inside that marriage that is going to bear fruit in children and grandchildren and those around you, because everybody around you knows. But what if both of you submitted your life to Christ? What if both of you submitted your way and your will and said, “We want to finish strong, even when it doesn’t feel productive, even though it might cost me something? What if I regained the mission of the why?”

The last thing we learn: finishing strong requires trusting God through the storm. These last two chapters are where I have spent most of my time in the book of Acts in these last three months as a pastor and as a leader, watching Pastor Paul. In these last two chapters, he’s now going from Jerusalem to the extra assignment of going to Rome, and look what happens. He endures a shipwreck, a snakebite from a viper, a winter stuck on an island, and the voyage to Rome to give his life feels disastrous. And yet, in the back of his mind, he keeps hearing, “You must testify in Rome. You must get to Rome.” The ship breaks apart, but God’s promise does not.

See, Paul is on a ship carrying the promise of God to Rome, and the ship falls apart. So in our human thinking, the vessel carrying the promise breaks apart, so it must mean the promise breaks apart. But the promise is still intact. What have you put God’s promise inside of that has fallen apart, subsequently thinking that the promise has now fallen apart? The vessel broke, but it didn’t break him. He wasn’t free, he was not wealthy, he was not comfortable, but he was faithful. See, finishing strong means trusting God’s promises when circumstances suggest otherwise.

It is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane saying, “Are you sure, God? Do I have to? Do I have to drink of this cup? I know the promise inside me, God. I know I’m your Son. I know that I’m supposed to be this perfect sacrifice. But are you sure I need to drink of this cup ?” And although everybody abandoned him and his body was about to be broken, he still carried the promise all the way to the cross. And Paul carried the promise all the way to Rome, even though the vessel he was in fell apart.

Acts 27 and 28 show us what it looks like for one disciple to carry that mission to the finish. Luke decides to focus the last part of the book on Paul, this disciple he’s walking with that is challenging his life and how he is living his life. And Paul’s life increasingly echoes the words of Jesus. Look at this, it’s on the screens: Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem; Paul set his face towards Jerusalem. It didn’t end there. Jesus was falsely accused; Paul was falsely accused. Jesus stood before rulers and governors; Paul stands before rulers and governors. Even as a prisoner, Jesus suffered while accomplishing his mission; Paul suffers while accomplishing his mission.

Here’s what Luke, the writer of Acts, wants us to know: Luke is showing us that a life fully surrendered to Jesus will often look like the life of Jesus. A life fully surrendered to Jesus will often look like the life of Jesus. And these are Paul’s words again: “My only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me.” What would that look like for us?

We’re going to remember Jesus today. We’re going to break bread together, and we’re going to sing a song to reflect and get ready, and then we’re going to proclaim that song. But this last week, I had a staffer reach out and they said, “You know, as we’re breaking bread together this weekend, what would it look like when we take the elements of the bread and the cup? Yes, we remember the body of Jesus and his brokenness and his stripes that were for us. We remember the blood that came forward that cleanses us of unrighteousness, that takes away all the sin of the world. And yes, we take the bread and we take the cup, and we do it in community together, and we celebrate and remember Jesus.”

But this is the challenge they gave me—I thought it was a good challenge: “What if when we take the bread and we take the cup, on top of that, we say, ‘God, I accept the call and the commission to not just remember Jesus, to not just be in a community, but I accept the bread and the cup to commit to being like Jesus, to follow the example of Paul so that our lives are surrendered to be like Him’?”

Could you say that today as you think about what I’m sharing right now, and as you come up and get ready to take your bread and cup? Could it be like verse 32 that we heard earlier from Tara? “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.” When you come in and you take the bread and the cup back to your seat, and we take it together, as you’re sitting there thinking about this and singing this song, you say, “God, how can I be more and more like Jesus? How can I be more and more like him?”

So if you’re able, I want you to stand across this room. And here’s what we’re going to do when you exit your section: be aware of where the table is for you. There are tables right here in the front, and tables in the middle. I want you to exit your section to the left, towards the table that’s in front of your section. This helps us stay organized. And as you get the bread and take the cup, go back to your seat and we’re going to take it together. But I commission you, I call you: as you take this bread and this cup back to your seat, think about what it means for your life to be commissioned to Christ, to be more like Him. Let’s pray.