Review / Introduction:
What is Conviction?
Leviticus 26:17 - ...you shall flee when none pursues you.
Proverbs 28:1 - The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.
Leviticus 26:19 - ...I will break the pride of your power,
Herod, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Richard Nixon, Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Osama Bin Laden, Nicolae Ceaușescu
Leviticus 26:41 - if then their uncircumcised heart is humble
Two Things Humble People Say:
- God gets all the Glory (Acts 21:17-20a)
- I will lay down my Rights. (Acts 21:20b-26)
2 Corinthians 10:17 - Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:35-00:41
Chapter 21. We're following the Apostle Paul, a man on a mission.
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And he is taking an offering from the Gentile churches to the poor church in Jerusalem.
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He's racing to get there before Pentecost, and as we saw last week, he was under great conviction.
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Nothing could stop him.
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All right, how many of you know the name Ralph Kiner?
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Okay, who was Ralph Kiner shout it out The greatest pirate home run hitter, well, I heard a great story about him this week you want to hear it Ralph Kiner relays his story. He said after the season in which I hit 37 home runs. I asked Pittsburgh Pirate GM Branch Rickey for a raise.
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He refused.
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And Ralph Kiner reminded the GM, "Hey, I led the league in home runs!" To which Rickey replied, "Hey, where did we finish in the standings this year?" And Kiner replied, "Well, we finished last." "Well," Ricky said, "we can finish last without you." Today we are talking about humility.
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What is humility?
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Sometimes I think when we hear the word "humble" or "having humility," we think of the person that's just constantly speaking poorly about themselves.
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"Oh, I'm just no good. I'm just a lousy person, and I have no talents, and I have no friends, And we think of this like self-abasing person, but that's not humility.
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In fact, that's actually the opposite of humility.
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Humility is not thinking less of yourself.
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Humility is thinking of yourself less.
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In other words, like they're shooting a movie right now, right?
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And who's the star of the movie?
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That's me.
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I'm the headliner, my name is on the marquee, and you're all just supporting actors in this, and that's not humility. Humility views self as an unnamed extra in the movie.
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That's what humility is.
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And I want to tell you today that a humble person is a fearless person.
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Like, wait a second, what does humility have to do with fearlessness?
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And the answer is everything.
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Coincidentally, this week I was reading devotionally the book of Leviticus.
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And I was in Leviticus chapter 26.
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In Leviticus 26.17, do we have that verse?
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God was giving the law, and He was warning of the consequences of disobedience for Israel.
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But God said to Israel, "If you disobey the law," He said, "you shall flee when none pursues you." And can anybody guess why that jumped out at me from the page?
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What's our theme verse this year?
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Like, "The righteous are bold as a lion," right?
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But what's the first part of the verse?
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"The wicked flee, though no one pursues," right?
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Proverbs 28.1.
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So this really jumped out at me.
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Like, well, wait a second, if God is pronouncing this as a consequence, what's the crime?
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Well, if you go down to chapter 26 and verse 19 in Leviticus, God says, "I will break the pride of your power." There it is, it's pride. The root of all sin is pride.
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You take every sin, any sin that you or anyone commits, it boils back down to pride.
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It boils back down to this attitude of, "I do what I want to do. Nobody tells me what to do.
04:58-05:19
I don't have to listen to anyone. It's all about me." What I want to show you today is that when you choose to live that way, you choose to live in fear, Because pride is naturally fearful.
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Fearing what?
05:22-05:26
Well, for example, pride fears for results.
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Pride fears perceptions, constantly worried about what people think about me.
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Pride fears accusations, constantly fearful of what people are saying about me.
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and pride, fierce criticism, fearing somebody say something that is critical of what I'm trying to do.
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We're going to play a little game. You ready?
05:52-05:54
One question. Do we have that list of names?
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We're going to play "What do these people have in common?" Okay, Herod, first one.
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I want to talk about Herod. I'm talking about kill all the male babies.
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Herod, when Jesus was born. Herod.
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Okay, Herod, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Richard Nixon, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Osama Bin Laden, Nicolae Ceausescu.
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You're like, "Wait a minute, I'm not sure who Nicolae Ceausescu is." Back in the year 2000, we built a medical center for some missionaries in Romania, and I got a tour of this man's palace.
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He was a Romanian dictator who was executed in 1989.
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And as I toured his palace, one theme about this man kept coming up over and over and over and over and over again.
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So I did a little reading this week, a little bit about the biographies of these men.
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What do they all have in common?
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You're like, "I know, I know what they all have in common.
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These are all people I am not sending a Christmas card to." Maybe. That's not the answer I was looking for.
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These were all mighty, but prideful and fearful world leaders.
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It's an interesting study. Look them up.
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Every single one of these individuals was completely paranoid.
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No trust, not even for close people, this constantly walking around with this attitude of, "Everybody's out to get me, everybody.
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My closest friends, my family members, everybody's out to get me and they're going to turn on me and tear me down in a second." See, at Harvest Bible Chapel this year, we are going for, "I will not fear." So what's the alternative to fearful pride?
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What's the cure?
07:58-08:01
Well, as I was going further down in Leviticus, like I thought we were on Acts today.
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We are, just hang on a second.
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As I was going further down in Leviticus, the Lord says in chapter 26, verse 41, if Israel confesses their sin, repents of their sin, He says, "If then their uncircumcised hearts is humble." So you could say pride is the root of wickedness And humility is the root of fearlessness.
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There's no fear in humility.
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And when you get your life to the place where you are so focused on the Lord, and you are so focused on loving other people, and your attention is so drawn there that it's done being drawn on yourself, You're going to experience fearless humility.
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So in your outline today, we're back in Acts 21, and this passage highlights the humility of the Apostle Paul.
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So in your outline, here's two things today, just two things.
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Two things humble people say, number one, jot this down, God gets all the glory.
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Two things humble people say, number one, is God gets all the glory.
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Verse 17 says, "When we had come to Jerusalem, the brothers received us gladly." Okay, so they finally made it to Jerusalem.
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And you might put a little star beside this verse in your Bible because we've been talking about Paul's missionary journeys to your acts.
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This is the end of the missionary journeys.
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It's not the end of Paul's story, but this is the end of the missionary journeys.
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Verse 18, "On the following day, Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present." Now, this James would be the half-brother of Jesus Christ Himself.
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Like, what do you mean, "half-brother"?
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Well, they had different fathers, but the same mother. Right? Half-brother.
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The disciple James, the brother of John, son of Zebedee, he was murdered back in chapter 12, in verse 2.
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This James, the half-brother of Jesus, became the leader in the Jerusalem church.
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All right, verse 19, "After greeting them, he related one by one," here it is, "the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.
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And when they heard it, they glorified God.
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Then they said to him, 'You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed.
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We're going to go on here in a second. Let's stop here.
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Notice it says, "The things that God had done." Underline that in your Bible.
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"The things that God had done." What was the result? When Paul recounted what was happening, they glorified God despite everything that we had seen so far in Acts.
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You have to note that Paul never made it about Him.
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All the glory went to God.
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You don't see Paul showing up to Jerusalem saying, "Hey, why don't you kids sit down, let me tell you how an apostle takes care of business.
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I saved nine people in this city, and I saved six people in that city.
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Oh, let me tell you about the time that I rose a kid from the dead, And I went here and I did this, and I went here and I did that." And that wasn't Paul's story at all.
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Paul's like, "Let me tell you what the Lord has done.
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Let me tell you the things that I got to see the Lord accomplish." And Paul, because of having that right perspective, I believe that's why God used Paul so mightily.
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This is a wonderful reminder that salvation is God's work.
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It's not man's.
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And that takes the fear out of witnessing.
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Right?
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If it was up to you to be able to save people by being persuasive, then you could keep a little checklist of successes and failures, but salvation isn't up to you.
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You can't change anybody's heart.
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Salvation is the work of the Holy Spirit.
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Again, with results.
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We could just look at attendances at churches and say, "Well, obviously whatever church has the most people is doing the best job." It's a work of the Holy Spirit.
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Serving Christ in any way, whether you're on the worship team or you work in the nursery, or you're greeting and loving people as they come in the door.
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You see, all the fear is taken out of those things when you realize this is the work of the Lord.
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It's not up to me and my strength and my power and my creativity.
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It's up to the power of the Lord to accomplish.
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When I talk about humility, when I think about humility and how to describe humility, I always think about the same thing.
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And that is this nasty old work glove.
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This guy is the picture of humility.
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Just imagine with me, just imagine with me that we all lost our marbles one day and we are going to interview this glove.
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It's like, well, glove, you know, why don't you tell us about yourself, glove?
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And the glove says, well, Let me just tell you a little bit about my life.
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Do you know, a month or so ago, I sealed the driveway, and then I planted a garden, and several times this summer, I mowed the lawn, and over the years, I've been used to help people move and all kinds of work around the yard.
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And we would say to the glove, "Oh, did you?
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"Did you do that?" Because we know on your own, glove, you are just a dirty, useless tool, right?
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This thing has been present for so many countless hours of yard work, but I promise you, if I leave that thing here and go home, it's not gonna get any yard work done sitting on this podium.
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So what makes the difference?
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You see, when the hand is in the glove, suddenly this glove is capable of doing anything that the hand wants it to do.
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Church, this is your pep talk for the day.
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You are nothing more than a dirty old work glove.
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are loved. But you are nothing more than a dirty old work glove. Why? Because listen, you are useless on your own. I am useless on my own. But when we let the hand represent the biblical truth that the Christian life isn't "let me try really hard to get stuff done." The Christian life, the Bible says, is Jesus Christ living within us.
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You see, Christ in you wants to accomplish great things.
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And yet, even though, if you were just standing across the street and just looking at the glove while I was out working in the yard, you might start to convince yourself after a while, "Look at all of the things that that glove can do." But the truth is, it's the power inside the glove, but only that power that is able to accomplish anything.
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This glove has no fear.
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That glove doesn't sit around in the garage going, "Well, I don't know how to seal a driveway, I've never done that before." Or, "I don't have the ability to till a garden." You see, it just says, "Hey, when the hand's in me, I'm just along for the ride.
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I just let it use me and great things get done.
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So we too have nothing to fear.
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Because just like this glove would give all of the credit to the wearer of the glove for the work that gets done, we too can give credit to the right place.
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I can't stand before you and say, "Look at all the things I accomplished.
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I didn't accomplish anything.
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I'm just a dirty old work glove.
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And anything that looks like has been done by me has actually been done through me.
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That's why Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10.17, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord." The first thing humble people say is this, "God gets all the glory." The second thing humble people say, Number two, I will lay down my rights.
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I will lay down my rights.
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All right, now this is a difficult little chunk here.
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We're gonna go through this, but I wanna make sure that you're tuned in because this is setting the stage for the events that take us to the rest of Acts.
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So we're just going to take a couple of minutes here and slow down, and I want you to understand what's happening here, otherwise you're going to miss what the Holy Spirit is teaching us through the text.
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Okay, so you ready?
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Look at verse 20 again.
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"They said to him, they said to Paul, 'You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed.
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They are all zealous for the law.
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And they have been told about you, that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or walk according to our customs.
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What's going on here?
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Let's pause here for a second.
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First of all, thousands of converted Jews were still zealous for the law.
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Understand, this was a point of transition between the old covenant and the new covenant.
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And many born-again followers of Jesus Christ Jews still participated in temple ceremony.
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And we can understand that, right?
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Your whole life you grow up, this is the way of the Lord, the temple, this is God's way, This is part of our religious work before the Lord, and Christ accomplishes His work, but you've already had a lifetime of, "This is how I worship." Now, these Jews that were Christ-followers were not involved in the temple things for salvation, like, "Well, I've got to earn my way to heaven." It's not like meritorious good works were accumulating because of their involvement with the temple.
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This was just part of their heritage.
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This was just part of their culture.
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And some here might say, "Well, isn't that bad?
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Like, you know, we were just singing about we're free in Christ, so shouldn't they have just completely walked away from that?
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Aren't they being legalistic?" Well, what they did isn't condemned in the New Testament.
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What they were doing was just living life as a first century Jew.
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So what's the problem?
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Well, the problem we see in the text, Paul's enemies, these old-school religious, non-believing-in-Jesus Jews, did believe that you were saved by your works, you were saved by your Jewishness.
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So when Paul came into Jerusalem, they saw an opportunity to attack him and discredit him.
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How did they do that?
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Here it is. Paul's enemies were telling these Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, "Hey, do you know when Paul goes out and preaches to Jews that live near the Gentiles, do you know he tells them to denounce Judaism?
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He tells them, 'Forget about Moses, don't circumcise your children.'" "Yeah, Paul has really become anti-Jew." Which is actually total lies.
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Nowhere did Paul say any of these things he was accused of.
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And I'm sure he taught that those things don't save you, but I'd like to remind you that Paul himself did some very Old Testament Jewish things.
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We've already seen in Acts. Remember Acts 16.
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Paul had Timothy circumcised, so as not to cause an offense.
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Acts 18, we saw that Paul himself took a Nazarite vow.
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Is everybody with me? Do you see how the plot is being set up here?
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"Hey, Paul is coming to town and..." They are lying about you, man.
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They are saying that you are denouncing Judaism everywhere you go, where Jews are hanging out with the Gentiles.
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Look at verse 22.
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They said, "What then is to be done?
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They will certainly hear that you have come." So they're like, "Okay, Paul, now that you're in town and these rumors have been spread, we've got to act now, and we've got to act fast, because there's going to be a confrontation between Paul and the Jews who had been lied to about Paul." Verse 23, they said, "Do therefore what we tell you.
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We have four men who are under a vow.
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Take these men and purify yourself along with them and pay their expenses, so that they may shave their heads.
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Thus, all will know that there is nothing in what they have been told about you, but that you yourself also live in observance of the law." It's like, "All right, here's the plan, Paul.
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You're going to be accused of being anti-Jewish, but we got a plan.
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We got these four guys that took a Nazarite vow." Now Nazarite vows, we've talked about these before.
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Some of them were lifelong, you know, like Samson, like John the Baptist, they were their whole lives.
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Some of them were just for 30 days.
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And Nazarite vow, there were three rules when you took the Nazarite vows.
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Anybody remember what they are?
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Cade knows what they are.
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You're like, "Don't get them wet, don't expose them to sunlight." And those are the gremlins.
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The Nazarite vow had different rules.
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You know what they are?
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You can't touch dead things, you can't drink alcohol, and you can't cut your hair.
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Exactly. Very good.
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So like, "Look, Paul, we got these four guys, they were under a Nazarite vow.
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So here's what you're going to do.
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You're going to march to the temple with them.
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They're about to cross the finish line of their vow, their 30 days apparently was almost up, and you're going to go down and you're going to purify yourself, first of all.
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What does that mean?
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Well, in the Jews' eyes, Paul would have been unclean, because he was in Gentile territory.
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So according to Jewish custom, if you were hanging out with a bunch of Gentiles, you had to ritually be cleansed when you went to the temple.
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It's like, "Look, go down with these guys, purify yourself, and pay their expenses." In other words, pay for their haircut, pay for their sacrifices.
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And Paul, if you do that, if you're willing to just walk down with them and go through these things, everyone is going to see that you haven't abandoned your Jewish heritage or denounced the zealous Jewish Christ followers.
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It's kind of complicated what's happening here.
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So sometimes you've got to pump the brakes and slow down and see what's going on.
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But you see what's happening.
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Look, Paul, here's the vernacular.
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I tried to think of a nicer way to say it, but I couldn't think of it.
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But the terminology we use today is, like, "throw him a bone." Look, just throw him a bone.
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Did Paul have to do these things? No, he didn't.
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They're like, "Look, people are accusing you of being anti-Semitic, even though you're Jewish, even though we've seen you do Jewish things.
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Throw them a bone." That's what was going on here.
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Verse 25, "But as for the Gentiles who have believed, we have sent a letter with our judgment that they should abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality." Now, just a reminder that the Gentiles were not bound by Jewish ritual.
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The stuff that they were doing here didn't contradict the letter that they drafted.
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We studied that way back in chapter 15, remember?
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And they just sort of paraphrased the contents of that letter.
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Look at verse 26.
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It says, "Then Paul took the men, and the next day he purified himself along with them, and went into the temple, giving notice when the days of purification would be fulfilled, and the offering presented for each one of them." Was Paul compromising his beliefs? No, he was not.
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No biblical truth was compromised. So what's happening in this passage?
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What's happening is what Paul sums up in 1 Corinthians 9.22, when he says, "I become all things to all people so that I might win some." Paul's like, "When I'm with Jews, I act like the Jews.
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When I'm with Gentiles, I act like the Gentiles." Paul was willing to - here it is, don't miss this - He didn't want anything in the way of an opportunity to share the gospel.
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You see, when these guys came to Paul and said, "Hey, purify yourself, pay for these guys' haircuts, and let everybody see that you're not..." Paul could have said, "You know what? I'm free in Christ, man. I don't have to do that.
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I don't have to do that. I don't have to prove myself to nobody, alright?
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I have freedom in Christ. I don't have to prove myself to anybody." That kind of stubbornness would have been destructive.
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What I'm about to share with you is one of the most foreign concepts to preach.
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But at Harvest Bible Chapel we believe in expository verse-by-verse preaching, so that's why we're covering this.
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But I have to tell you, when I was preparing this this week, I thought, "This country as a whole, by and large, preaching this message, it's going to go right over most people's heads.
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Not that it's intellectually challenging, it's just what the Bible teaches concerning humility is so foreign to the way that we live.
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Because all everyone wants to talk about is their rights.
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I have rights. You have to give me my rights.
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You can't turn the news on without seeing somebody protesting, fighting, rallying against something for their rights.
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Like the, um, I don't know if you've heard about this, sometimes I come across these obscure little news articles, but have you heard that during a sporting contest, American football, "Did you hear that some of the athletes have been kneeling during the national anthem?" Did anybody hear about this?
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I had to verify that. I'm like, "Really? That happens?" I know, right? Anybody else hear about that?
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It's on any time I turn on the news.
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They're talking about who's kneeling and why they're kneeling, and do they have a right to kneel?
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And look, we all have thoughts on that.
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I certainly am not making this a political thing.
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But I will say that kneeling greatly offends people.
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And the people that kneel say, "It's my right. It's my right to kneel.
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And you can't infringe upon my rights." But I want you to know that Jesus' followers, according to God's Word, don't think that way.
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Do you know how Jesus' followers think?
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1 Corinthians 6, verses 19-20. Here's how Jesus' followers think.
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"You are not your own. You were bought with a price." You see, Jesus' followers are glad to lay down their rights.
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Jesus' followers know that humility is the harder path.
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Jesus' followers know that looking out for number one is easy, and insisting on your own way is natural, and enforcing your rights is second nature.
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We all have that in us.
30:42-30:50
"I'm going to stand up for my rights, and I don't care who it offends!" Jesus' followers don't think like that.
30:51-30:59
Husbands, you have to lay down your rights for the sake of your marriage.
31:01-31:15
You know, how many husbands say, "I worked all day, I have the right to relax when I get home." I imagine most, if not all, every husband in here has said something like that.
31:16-31:23
I have the right to relax. I worked all day." Maybe you do have that right.
31:25-31:31
But as Christ followers, are we so sold on holding on to our rights?
31:33-31:37
Or are we more sold on laying them down to serve other people?
31:40-31:45
Wives, moms, you have to lay down your rights for the sake of your home.
31:47-31:49
I worked hard all day too.
31:49-31:52
I have the right to spend money however I see fit.
31:54-31:55
You do have that right.
31:58-32:04
But are we so concerned with holding on to our rights, or laying them down?
32:06-32:08
Somebody here who has been offended by someone.
32:10-32:13
You have to lay down your rights about being right.
32:15-32:26
"She wronged me. She has to come to me and apologize to me." And if she doesn't do that, look, you need to lay down that right.
32:27-32:31
I wouldn't even call that a right actually, because biblically you're on the hook either way.
32:32-32:41
But you need to lay down that right by humbling yourself and taking the initiative and going to the person and seeking reconciliation.
32:44-32:50
You know, when I go to a party, I have every right to have a beer.
32:52-33:03
And I can pull it out of the cooler and crack it open and let everybody see, "I have freedom in Christ and I have the right to do this!" but I won't.
33:04-33:04
Why?
33:06-33:13
Because I think, what if there's somebody that might be a stumbling block for them, just because of my position?
33:14-33:24
Or what if there's a child here who, maybe that affects them down the road when they're thinking about alcohol and thinking about the time they saw Pastor Jeff have a beer.
33:26-33:31
I have the right to do it, but it's a right that I'm glad to lay down.
33:34-33:42
Jesus, He had every right to be treated like the King of the universe.
33:44-33:52
But that was a right that He laid down when He Himself laid down on the cross.
33:54-34:03
Jesus said, "I will gladly lay down my rights for the sake of the salvation of everyone who's going to turn to me.
34:05-34:16
So we too will gladly lay down our rights for the sake of God-like love for people.
34:18-34:25
And when we are willing to lay down our rights, there's a beautiful by-product of that.
34:26-34:34
When we're willing to lay down our rights, That means we also get to lay down the fear of losing our rights.
34:37-34:39
So as always church, when you leave here today, you have a choice.
34:40-34:44
You can choose to walk out and still live in pride.
34:45-34:47
Make sure that you keep the spotlight on yourself.
34:48-34:52
Make sure that you insist on your rights.
34:54-34:57
And you're going to join that list of great people that lived in fear.
34:59-35:05
Or you can do as Scripture commands and humble yourself.
35:06-35:09
Because the humble person is the fearless person.
35:11-35:21
The person that says, "God gets all the glory, and I'm willing to lay down my rights for the sake of His kingdom." Let me pray.
35:22-35:59
Father in Heaven, You have commanded us over and over and over word to humble ourselves. There's so much that you want to do in us, but we have to be willing to be humble before you. Father give us perspective, remind us at the end of the day we're no different than an old work glove. In and of Of ourselves, we are just a valueless tool.
36:01-36:05
But with you alive and active within us, Father, you do incredible things.
36:08-36:17
Father, as a church, I pray for every home, every individual represented here this morning, that we would commit ourselves afresh to giving you the glory.
36:18-36:32
inserting ourselves in this story, wanting people to think about how great we are, how spiritual we are, or let people see how great you are through us.
36:35-36:37
Father, show us what it means to lay down our rights.
36:39-36:51
We live in a day where this whole concept is just so out of control, that all anybody What he thinks about is what's in it for them.
36:53-36:55
What's right for me, what's fair for me.
36:57-36:59
When your Word shows us something so different.
37:01-37:08
When your Word shows us that if it means not offending someone, I'm willing to lay down my right.
37:11-37:28
Give us, Father, the fearlessness that comes walk humbly before you. And yes, Father, all glory and honor and praise goes to you, where it rightly belongs, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Acts 21:17-26
Tell of a time people told lies about you. What happened? How did it make you feel? How did you handle it? How would you handle it if you had to do it all over again?
Why did Paul agree to go along with the purification / ceremony with these 4 men? Isn't that legalistic? What advice would you have given Paul if you were there with him during this time?
What does this passage teach us about handling enemies? What does this passage say about handling “weaker brothers” (true Christians still holding onto old traditions)?
My big Take-Away from this message was:
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another, and HBC, to grow in humility in these two areas: Glory to God and giving up my rights.