Life Lessons with Dr. Steve Schell

84 - Real Repentance

It’s easy to confuse the terms “works of the Law” with “works worthy of repentance.” We can take the truth that we are saved by faith and not by works to mean that our works don’t matter; in fact some people consider any attempt to produce good works to be dangerous because it might lead to self-righteousness. The result of this kind of thinking has been believers who are nearly devoid of good works. Some sincere, but confused, believers are careful not to do anything that might resemble a good work, and even scold others when they step out to do something for God. The result is a very low level of discipleship and a very poor reputation in the community.

Today, as we listen to Paul explain his faith to King Agrippa, we hear him say something that might surprise us, especially coming from the apostle who taught fervently against works. Listen again to what he told Agrippa: “So, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly sight, but first [went] to [the Jews] in Damascus and Jerusalem and all the countryside of Judea, and [then] to the nations, [and] I announced to [them that they must] repent and turn [and call] upon God, practicing works worthy of repentance” (my translation). Paul assured the king that he had not disobeyed the commands Jesus gave him; in fact it was his obedience to those commands that got him in trouble. He said he first went to the Jews and preached the Gospel to them whether they lived in Damascus (Ac 9:19-25), Jerusalem (Ac 9:26-30; 22:17-21; Gal 1:18), or even out in the rural countryside of Judea. Then he went to the Gentiles (nations). And everywhere he went his message was the same: He told people to repent and turn to God “doing works worthy of repentance.”

83 - Spiritual Conversations - b

It’s one thing to believe that God still speaks to us today, but it’s quite another to know how to listen to His voice. Many believers, many long-time believers, have never been around anyone who actually lived this way. They have no models to show them how or prove to them it works. Yes, they read about such things in the Bible, but outside of that the Christians they know seem to function just like non-Christians when it comes to making decisions, the only difference being that a Christian will use a different system of values to guide his or her choice. Whether someone is a Christian or a non-Christian, most people tend to make decisions by using their deductive reasoning. They evaluate the possibilities, and then choose the best, or maybe the safest, course of action. The Christian hopes the choice they make will please God, but God Himself has remained a passive observer in the process. There was no divine voice or spiritual revelation involved, just well-intended human reasoning. And that type of decision-making is not wrong; it’s just not enough. It’s always our desire to please Him that pleases Him. And frankly, there are a lot of day-to-day decisions which need to be made this way. We have been given a rational mind and are meant to use it. But as believers we’ve also been given the Spirit of God to dwell in us, and His presence is not just a biblical truth to affirm. He is a Person who has joined Himself to us. We don’t have a distant God we pray to. We have a living God who is near us every moment, and who wants to guide us through life. 

In a previous message we introduced the subject of “spiritual conversations.” We observed Jesus’ words to Paul about “kicking against the goads” (Ac 26:14), and said that such a statement revealed that God had begun a “conversation” with Paul long before Paul realized it. His spirit knew things his mind didn’t understand, and we noted that this type of spiritual deafness was not unique to Paul. We too can get stuck in the reasonings of our rational mind and not hear what the Spirit is saying to us. Our lesson today is meant to help us step out into our own “spiritual conversations” with God. In other words, to help someone who wants to hear God’s voice and see what the Spirit is doing, get started. 
Spiritual conversations (revisited)
God has given us a mind and He wants us to use it, but He warns us not to “lean” on it (Pr 3:5). We’re also supposed to listen to Him with our spiritual “ears” and observe what He’s doing with our spiritual “eyes” (Mt 13:13). It’s normal and right to seek God’s will by testing a decision, using biblical criteria to determine which choice would be acceptable to Him. And this kind of biblical examination of our decisions is always appropriate. If a choice violates a biblical principle, it’s not from God. But this mental process of elimination is not the only way God wants to guide us. We must also spiritually listen for His voice, and that can be challenging because it requires faith. It means I have to acknowledge someone I can’t see with my eyes and obey a voice I didn’t hear with my ears. I have to allow a part of me to awaken which other people may mock.

82 - Spiritual Conversations - a

We know a lot more about God than our minds are able or willing to understand. We’ve all had experiences that we know took place, but we can’t explain. There have been moments in our lives when we recognized that someone was present with us, even if we didn’t know His name. There have been times when an unseen hand came out of nowhere to protect us, or a voice interrupted our thoughts with information we needed to hear. Since we are spiritual beings living in a spiritual world, it shouldn’t surprise us when such things take place, but it usually does, because we live in a culture that has been trying to deny that anything spiritual exists, for the past 300 years. We’re repeatedly told that the universe arose out of nothing, that life is a meaningless accident, and that when we die our conscious minds cease to exist and our bodies decompose and return to the earth. And those voices are getting louder and more demanding. So people tend to hide their spiritual experiences, feeling confused or even embarrassed that they had them. They assume they must have imagined it, or what happened was merely a very unusual coincidence. Yet spiritual encounters can’t be explained away that easily, because deep down inside there’s a part of us that still remembers what happened.

Paul shared his testimony with Agrippa in an effort to help this man listen to his own heart. The king was an expert in religious tradition, but at the same time tragically enslaved to the passions of his flesh. The man desperately needed Jesus, but his rational mind was in the way, so Paul shared his own personal story to try to help him listen to his spirit. On this occasion Paul described everything Jesus said to him during that encounter on the road to Damascus. He disclosed things that aren’t recorded anywhere else, and he did so for a reason. He was trying to awaken Agrippa’s spirit to remember things he had already heard. If we listen carefully he’ll awaken ours as well.

81 - Paul's Hope

Standing in front of a Jewish king and queen, a Roman governor, and the prominent men of Caesarea, Paul said the reason he was on trial wasn’t because he had done anything wrong, it was because of his faith. In fact, the trial was really about God. Does He or does He not raise dead people to life? He said it was this hope of eternal life that motivated the patriarchs of Israel, and it was this hope that motivated Jews in every generation to serve God zealously, day and night. Yet strangely that hope is not always matched with faith. We can long for something we don’t really believe will happen. People can wrestle with the fact of their mortality, and passionately yearn to escape the grip of death, but when actually confronted with the question of whether or not they believe God will raise them from the dead, the truth is they don’t. Because if they did, then why would it be so hard to believe that He has already raised someone from the dead?

Paul’s logic is flawless: if we really believe God can and will raise dead people to life then why would it be so shocking to hear someone say He’s already done it; that a man has already escaped the grave, forever? When Paul comes to the end of his testimony he makes this statement, “…I stand to this day testifying to small and great, stating nothing but what the prophets and Moses said was going to take place, that the Christ was to suffer, and that by reason of His resurrection from the dead He would be the first to proclaim light both to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles” (Ac 26:22-23). When Paul spoke those words, the governor pronounced him crazy (v24), the king said he was almost persuaded (v28), and everybody got up and walked out.

That’s how they responded then, but the question before us today is how will we respond. It’s not enough, says Paul, to believe there must be a God. Actually, it takes a strange form of faith to believe there isn’t one. It’s not enough to believe there must be a celestial land where human spirits go after they die. Nearly every culture on earth believes that. It’s nearly intolerable for humans to bury our loved ones with no hope of ever seeing them again, to assume that their existence has been snuffed out like a candle. As he stood in that courtroom Paul placed in front of them the issue that is at the heart of all biblical faith: that God will physically raise the dead to life, all of them, both the good and the bad. Some may say that’s crazy. Some may draw close but never commit. And some, like Paul, choose to believe, and that changes everything.

80 - The Gift of Truth

Character is who we are under pressure. It’s a part of us that we form one choice at a time. In effect, our personality becomes a collection of habits. When certain things happen we find ourselves responding the same way over and over again. And the older we get the deeper those patterns grow. We still have a free will and change is possible, but those habits grow so strong it’s as though they are now dragging us along through life. We are often unaware of how strong a habit has become until we face a crisis and need to act differently. If we actually try to change we quickly discover it’s not nearly as easy as we thought it would be. We’ve been making excuses for our behavior and giving ourselves permission to do certain things so often that we came to believe those excuses. Change can appear dangerous or even wrong. Many people try to compartmentalize their character. They think they can act one way in one area of their life, and another way in another area. But they’re fooling themselves. Habits are habits, and the patterns developed in one area are soon guiding the way we respond in another. In particular, the willingness to lie “when necessary” is a very difficult habit to break because in those situations there is always a price to pay for telling the truth. We probably learned to lie, if indeed we did, in order to avoid conflict. Our goal was to protect ourselves and preserve peace, not deceive someone. But once we let that habit in, it grew to have a far greater power over us than we expected. It began controlling us, rather than us controlling it. 

Festus realizes he is going to pay a heavy personal price if he gives Paul justice. His political future could be at stake. Little does he know, he will be dead within two years, so he doesn’t have a political future to protect. At that moment he was simply trying to avoid the kind of controversy Felix had experienced. He’d watched how much influence Israel’s religious leaders had in Rome, and he didn’t want to end up like Felix who barely escaped Nero’s wrath when he returned. So what must have been an old habit took over. He would try to appear impartial while trying to manipulate the situation with lies. 

79 - Courageous Decisions

There are several very good reasons for postponing a decision: not enough information, a wrong attitude, or waiting for others to catch up. But there comes a moment when a decision must be made. To delay is fearful or cruel. I might pretend that the reason I’m delaying is that I don’t have enough information, but the truth may be that I simply don’t have the courage to do the right thing, so I do nothing. I play out in my mind what I think people might do to me, or what the results would be if I make a certain decision. Then I play out in my mind what would happen if I made a different decision. Often when I do this, I see trouble down both paths, which leaves me immobilized. I’m afraid to go one way and I’m afraid to go the other. No path seems safe, so I try to stay precariously balanced in the middle, by not making any decision at all.

As the judge in Paul’s trial, Felix was caught in the middle. If he gave Paul justice he faced political backlash from the Jewish leaders and he was already in trouble with Rome for doing a poor job as governor. If they complained to the emperor he could lose his job or worse. On the other hand, Roman law protected Roman citizens, and nothing had been proven that would justify Paul’s imprisonment or death, and he came from an influential family who might demand an investigation. We know Paul’s family probably would not have done so because Paul had become a Christian, but Felix didn’t know that. All he could see was potential trouble. So, he tried to keep everybody partially happy. He left Paul in custody, that would keep the religious leaders happy, but at the same time, he gave Paul some personal freedom so he wouldn’t suffer too much. Faced with a difficult decision, and trying to protect himself, he tried to handle the situation by choosing inaction and compromise. 

78 - Hearing Both Sides

When I only hear one side of an argument I usually find myself agreeing with the person who’s talking to me. They seem totally sincere and lay out their case carefully and I have no reason to doubt that they’re telling me the truth, so I tend to accept their conclusions, which, if they happen to be upset with another person or group of people, leaves me feeling the same way. I pick up their offense and make it my own. This kind of transfer happens all the time, and all of us are vulnerable to being drawn in. No one is trying to be unfair, but the verdict seems so clear. What other conclusion can we reach? That is, until the other person gets to present their side. Then, almost always, we find we’re hearing new information that the first person didn’t give us, but which changes the picture rather dramatically. What at first appeared so obvious, now looks more complicated, or in some cases, radically different. Solomon warned us about this. He said, “The first to plead his case seems right, until another comes and examines him” (Pr 18:17). He’s warning us that it’s always wise to hear both sides of an argument before making a judgment. And I think all of us would agree. Of course we should. It’s only fair. But in practice we often don’t, because it’s awkward to tell someone we aren’t ready to join them in their judgment against another person and it takes courage to tell someone else what’s been said about them. People might get angry, and we don’t want to create an even bigger problem. So we quietly remind ourselves there’s probably another side to this story… but we remain silent, or maybe we choose the easier path, which is to ignore justice and embrace our friend’s anger.

What we’re watching take place in this courtroom in Caesarea is Roman law at work. Their law insisted that a citizen had a right to answer accusers. No one could go to a judge and get a decision based on only their side of the story. If they accused someone of something, that person had the right to hear those charges, from them, and then to defend themselves. Only after hearing both sides would a judge or jury make a decision.

We could read through this section of Acts and easily miss this basic, but profound, truth: a person has a right to answer their accusers. It was sad to watch how unjustly Paul was treated in Israel’s religious court. That “judge” ordered him to be struck in the mouth after he made his first statement (Ac 23:2). But he was a disgracefully corrupt man who didn’t care about truth. By contrast, Felix, the Roman governor, let Paul speak without interruption, and in doing so was simply practicing justice. The lesson for us today is to do the same, and to remember that justice isn’t reserved for courts of law. It should be at work every time we hear a bad report about someone else. We too should withhold judgment until we hear the other side.

77 - God's Overrulling Hand

We’re watching a proverb being lived out. Solomon wrote, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but the counsel of the Lord will stand” (Pr 19:21). The psalmist said the same thing this way, “Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke and it was done, He commanded, and it stood fast. The Lord nullifies the counsel of the nations, He frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart from generation to generation” (Ps 33:8-11).

On the same night when a group of men were forming a plot to kill Paul, Jesus appeared to him and told him to cheer up because he was going to Rome. No matter how careful these men were to hide their plans, or how determined they were to carry them out, God almost effortlessly overruled them. The turning point comes at verse 16. Somehow a young man heard information he should not have been able to hear. That simple fact changed everything. God can overrule humans so easily it’s almost laughable. We’ll never outwit Him. 

But, does God overrule in all situations? Obviously not, yet as we see time after time in the Bible He does overrule the evil attacks that come against His people so that they can fulfill the plan He has for them. Paul was in the middle of God’s will, doing what he believed God wanted him to do, but that didn’t mean it was an easy path. He suffered a great deal, and in the future he would die by execution. But not until God’s time arrived, until then, God’s hand repeatedly protected him. Or, maybe I should say, especially then, God’s hand protected him (2Ti 1:12; 4:6-8). Let’s watch God protect Paul, and then realize He will do the same for us.

76 - Learning To Listen

Jesus appeared to Paul four times. The first time was at his conversion on the road to Damascus (Ac 9:5); the second was in the temple after he returned to Jerusalem (Ac 22:17-18); the third was in Corinth when he grew fearful because it looked like he was going to face another violent attack (Ac 18:9-10); and the fourth is here in a jail cell during his last visit to Jerusalem. 

The Lord is always watching over us. He knows when pressure becomes too great for us to bear, and because He is our Shepherd, there will always be special moments when He comes to strengthen us. But, you and I need to hear from Him much more often than that. Having Him show up occasionally in the midst of a crisis is not the same as walking with Him day by day. Yes, we need Him at our side in desperate situations, and it’s a joy to tell stories about those amazing encounters. But, Jesus promised much more. He said He would be with us always (Mt 28:20); that He would never leave us nor forsake us (Heb 13:5). He said He calls us His “friends” which means He will reveal to us “all things that I have heard from My Father…” (Jn 15:15). And each of us, when we have taken the time to press in and listen, can testify that He does speak to us, yet for some reason there seems to be obstacles, something in our old human nature, or maybe it’s something that opposes us in the spiritual dimension, which makes hearing His voice difficult at times. We can go through dark seasons when it’s very hard to hear from Him, when we feel alone, when we’re confused about which way to go. I believe this is what Paul was experiencing in that jail cell. But Jesus came… and spoke to him. 

75 - Love Without Borders

The crowd was actually standing in a place called the Court of the Gentiles when they heard Paul say he had been commanded to carry the message of salvation to the Gentiles. The purpose of that enormous courtyard which surrounded the temple was to provide a place where Gentiles could draw near to God, a place where they could pray and be taught about the true God. Over and over again Israel’s prophets declared a day would come when Gentile nations would travel from faraway places to Jerusalem to learn about Him. Yes, Israel was to separate itself from false religions and the immoral practices of these Gentiles, but nowhere in Scripture are they told to despise any group of human beings, or be indifferent to their spiritual destiny. In fact, one need only look at the list of King David’s ancestors to see the names of Gentiles whose faith had made a way for them to become part of God’s people (Mt 1:3-6). Yet, when Paul said God cared enough about Gentiles to send him to them, the reaction of the crowd was outrage. They said a man like Paul shouldn’t be allowed to live. How did this kind of prejudice get such a deep hold on their hearts, and what on earth made them think God felt the same way they did?