The Final Episode

Acts 28:30-31

He lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him,  proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.

Sermon Transcript:

Hey everybody. I’m going to have you turn to Acts chapter 28, please.

Acts chapter 28. As we come to the final two verses of the book of Acts, as we complete this series together, I’m And I did want to highlight that the title of this sermon has nothing to do with my eminent demise or retirement. Um, it was pointed out to me, the final episode by Pastor Mark. Um, we are anticipating my retirement late this year, not late next year.

Whew, whew. a year from now or so. Okay. Acts chapter twenty eight. I’d like to read verse thirty and thirty one. It’s talking about the apostle Paul who has now come to, to Rome as a prisoner and we read these words. He lived there two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.

Father, we come to you this morning. Lord, thank you for the way you have taught us from this fantastic portion of scripture. Lord, we’ve learned so much about walking with you and trusting you as we’ve journeyed through the book of Acts these 22 months. And Lord, I pray as we reflect today back As we enter this passage and see its visual of the lessons that the entire book are about, Lord speak into us, direct us, grow us, encourage us in our walk with Jesus, I pray in Jesus name, Amen.

Long running TV series are famous for their final episodes. Writers labor long and hard to come up with a final episode that accomplishes at least one of the following things. And I’ve read some articles on this and these are typical things that they try to emphasize in those. Uh, final episodes. Number one, they hopefully tie up loose ends and unanswered questions.

Another thing they try to do is to, in some ways, summarize the message of the whole series. In other final episodes, they give a sense of what the future holds for the main characters. There have been some famous final episodes. watched final episode in history. 77 percent of people that had TVs watched the final of M.

A. S. H. Which basically, the story of the 4077 hospital unit serving in Korea during the Korean War. Their final episode basically focused on the future of the members of the team at the cast. Lost was a series, a group of people from a plane crash. Crashed into some fictitious, mysterious, bizarre island in the South Pacific.

Um, there, variety of events, if you saw the series as, as I did. Um, you came to the final episode and for many of us, certainly not all, but for many of us were kind of left, Ah, this didn’t work, this final episode. A lot of questions were still unanswered. You really weren’t sure what was going on with the characters in the future.

A series I did not watch, but certainly was one that was prominently known and famous was The Sopranos. And this was the story of the Mafia, a fictitious… Mob boss, Tony Soprano. He was the mob boss of a fictional North Jersey crime family. And the series was largely about him and his own processing. It actually began in the first episode with him going into a therapy appointment.

And the idea that this series is largely going to be seen through the thinking of, of Tony Soprano. Tony Soprano in the final episode is found in a diner. where he is waiting for his family to come. And it’s interesting. I have watched that episode of watching as, um, he’s sitting in the seat in the diner and every time the door opens in the diner.

Um, which he intentionally has a view of to see who’s coming in. When he first comes into the diner, he cases everybody that’s there, notices the ones he would thinks are a little bit suspicious, potentially threatening to him. He sits down and there’s a bell that rings every time somebody comes in the door.

Every time the bell rings, he immediately looks up, cases the person, and watches, again, just evaluating, looking, evaluating life. The series ends in this final episode in, in somewhat of a shocking way. And if you have, you are watching this series, this is gonna be a, an alert. Don’t listen to me. Um, I don’t know how you do that, but this is gonna be one of those apologize later, I guess.

But, but basically what happened is he’s looking down at his onion rings and his wife and his son have joined him there. He’s got the music going on the jukebox and All of a sudden, he looks up and everything goes dark. And then the credits come on, implying the show is older. And apparently there were, there were people all over the country that thought their TV broke or something happened.

But it actually was the end of the show for a lot of people. It was, uh, for some people at least, it was frustrating because they never really understood what happened to him. But for many critics and eventually many fans, it was the perfect ending. Because it depicted the mind of Tony Soprano, always having to check everywhere out for enemies, danger, threats.

He lived with the unknown. At any moment, his life and the lives of those he cared about faced an uncertain and potentially violent ending. The sudden darkness left the audience debating if he was murdered. They entered into the thoughts and trepidations, the unknown unresolved dangers that Tony lived with through the whole series.

This morning we come to the final episode in the book of Acts. And again, it is intended, I think, to be a, a, a focused ending for us. Paul has arrived in Rome, a prisoner of the empire. In this final episode, these two verses we just read. Paul is in house arrest, but it does not end as we might expect the book to end.

We’ve traveled with Paul for years. We’ve traveled with him, uh, through these many chapters, the majority of the book of Acts. And what we would expect does not happen. It does not tell us what Paul’s future will be. As a matter of fact, we hear that he’s in Roman incarceration for a couple of years, but Paul will live eight years beyond that incarceration.

He will go out, he will do some degree of missionary work, um, he will do some writing, and then he will be incarcerated again in Rome. And that Roman imprisonment, which will again last probably a couple of years, will be when he writes some of the most famous of his letters. But it will also end in his execution under Emperor Nero.

None of that’s told to us here. Luke doesn’t even tell us ultimately what’s going on and continuing in the future of the church at this moment. What Luke does do is recap in these two verses the whole story of the book of Acts. He focused us on what the story will continue to be because the story of the book of Acts, and we’ve entitled it.

This is the spirit at work to the ends of the earth. That it is, Luke is telling us, this is continuing, it’s continuing with Paul, and the picture is that this is going to be the ongoing story. In our first sermon on the book of Acts, 63 sermons ago, I took us to Rome to introduce the series, and now we’re back in Rome for the last sermon of our series.

I’d like to just read to you a statement, or a paragraph, that I shared as we began this series. Just a few years before Christ’s birth, Rome constructed their first heated pool, erected on grounds on Equiline Hill just outside the ancient walls of Rome. The hill had been left undeveloped because of its history.

It was the hill where rebellious slaves were crucified. And buried in a massive common grave. The hill was reclaimed by developers in order to build some of the most opulent estates and villas in the empire. But as they dug up the ground on, on the vulture infested location, they unearthed thousands of skeletons of nameless, executed slaves.

No place in the empire depicted such a contrast. The hill portrayed the disparity of the most disdained of the Roman Empire and the most privileged. Crucifixion was reserved for slave revolts and societal psychopaths. People who were a harm not only to others, but to the whole order of goodness. When a slave revolt happened, the condemned malfactors were hung dying on crosses along the roads into Rome, writhing on the cross in unspeakable pain.

For hours into days, they served as a warning to the many slaves in the empire. Those that were crucified within the empire were considered the least…

Very few public records of crucifixions list the names of the victims. Their insignificance was declared by being buried in common, unmarked graves. To be crucified was far worse, a far worse stigma than receiving the electric chair today. It was a symbol of shame, revulsion, and utter contempt. We begin our series this morning with a question.

How could a religion whose central belief was in the work and teachings of a crucified man become the dominant belief system of the Roman Empire? Luke’s historical record of the book of Acts answers the question. This book shows the spirit at work to the end of the earth. It is the Holy Spirit, the spirit Jesus sent to the world that made it happen.

And Luke highlights four things the Spirit did to make faith in a crucified man, the dominant belief system in the Roman Empire. At that time I mentioned those four things in our first sermon in Acts, and I’m going to reiterate them today, because all four are found in the final episode here. In Acts 28, the spirit at work to the ends of the earth in our message this morning would conclude with this word Continues the spirit at work to the ends of the earth Continues we find four things that the book of Acts portrays to us as we look back this morning About what the spirit does That caused such astonishing results in the Roman Empire and ultimately to the cosmos, to the earth itself, to our whole world.

Number one, he spreads the message of Jesus kingdom throughout the world. It says in verse 31 that Paul was, while under house arrest, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ. In Paul’s actions here and what is taking place, all four of these elements are presented in himself in what he’s doing.

First of all, the Spirit spread the message of Jesus kingdom throughout the world. Paul continued to do this with the Spirit empowerment that the early Christians also continued to do. To tell people about Jesus, Acts is actually the second book of a series that Luke had written. Luke had written the book of Luke, he had written the book of Acts, and both formed a two volume set, the book of Luke.

Was the story of Jesus at work through his life his death and his resurrection in volume 2 It is the spirit at work through Jesus followers declaring the influence of Jesus life, death, and resurrection. And in Acts chapter 1, Jesus had prophesied just before he went to heaven, You will receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you.

You will be witness to me in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The entire book of Acts is the unfolding of that story, of the Spirit’s power to take the message of Christ. And his kingdom throughout the world, the Spirit gave power to preach Jesus gospel. We’ve seen this as we looked, and we see it here, as Paul is still, even incarcerated man, proclaiming the gospel of Christ.

In Acts chapter 4, verse 13, it says, Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, They were astonished, and they recognized they had been with Jesus as Peter and, as these, as Peter and John were drawn in before the religious leaders of the day in Jerusalem.

They recognized, these guys are nobodies! They’re not trained, they’re not educated, and yet they are boldly, with authority, proclaiming the message of, of the one that they proclaim. As a Roman, uh, uh, appointed leader would say later in the book of Acts, They talked about, quote, a dead man named Jesus, who they said was alive.

Uneducated guys, common guys, but empowered by the Spirit of God. They were powered to preach Jesus gospel, the good news. They were powered to do Jesus works. We see them authenticated by signs and wonders and miracles that Jesus had manifested in his ministry. As he empowered them to cast out demons, to, to heal the sick.

He authenticated the messengers as they proclaimed their message as it went forth. A ministry that I believe happens in parts of the world today when the scriptures have not been provided. It’s amazing what is happening in the Muslim world when the gospel goes into it. People are receiving dreams.

People are seeing manifestations of the spirit that we don’t typically anticipate. Or C, in our culture where we have Scripture and so much involvement of the Word of God in our lives already. But God authenticates the new messaging of the Gospel to peoples. And the result was in Acts chapter 6 verse 7, the disciples in Jerusalem multiplied greatly.

And this amazing statement. A great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. In pagan cities, in Ephesus, in Colossae, in, in Corinth, in, in Philippi, multitudes believed. There was power to preach Jesus gospel. There was power to do Jesus works. But neither of those were the practical tool that the Spirit of God used most prominently to take the gospel forward in the first century.

It was the third reality. It was the power to make Jesus known to their own worlds.

Last week, J. R. Briggs spoke a, a, to me, a stirring challenge from the scripture. As he talked to us about, from the book of Luke, God’s challenge to the Gadarene demoniac, the man who had been, had demons cast out of him, and rather than taking him along with him, he says, go back to your people and bear witness to me.

The guy wanted to leave, but he says, no, I want you to tell people what I have done for you. And J. R. talked about how he was sent back to his own oikos. And I thought he very effectively presented that an oikos in the scripture is a household. It referred to not just one’s immediate family, although it referred to that, but it also referred to co workers and friends and one’s social group.

It is, it is the network in which you did life. Many times, a number of those people living even with their own dwelling. And he said this is where we’re called to present Jesus. He made the statement, which I, I thought was a great statement, he says, We are missionaries disguised as good neighbors, friends, and family members.

And the book of Acts reminds us that the early believers knew that.

Some of the most well known converts to Christ in the book of Acts. Teach us about this. Lydia, a businesswoman, was an owner, a business owner in Macedonia. She was the one who, it says, brought her whole household to here. Paul and Barnabas share the truth. Crispus, the synagogue ruler in Corinth. Brought his whole household, and it says all of them came to Christ.

Cornelius, a Roman centurion in Caesarea, gathered his whole household of friends and family to meet with Peter. And an unnamed jailer in Philippi brought his whole household to hear Paul and Silas as he was saved, as were the members of his household.

The way the Gospel ultimately goes forth and the power of the Spirit. It’s not by a preacher. It’s not ultimately by miraculous works. It’s the day to day lives of people living out the gospel and speaking the gospel to people they know and love. I thought JR nailed it perfectly, and it was just a great segue to what I wanted to say this morning, although he said it in a way that I had not planned to say it.

But the perspective that we are called as missionaries Disguised as family members, as good neighbors, as sports buddies. It’s vitally important to talk to people about Jesus, but it’s probably more important to talk to Jesus about people. I would guess that none of us are really actively involved in sharing Jesus with others for whom we are not talking to Jesus about first.

If you say, well, I don’t, I wouldn’t know how to begin to talk to people about Christ or what, well, start talking to Christ about those people. And watch how your heart will be drawn to them and how it will be natural sometime in work or in some association to just say, Hey man, can I pray with you about that?

Can I, can I just, uh, tell you what Jesus, how he’s helped me with that. Just naturally, your heart will be drawn and one of the greatest gifts we can give to each other is to pray for each other’s oikos. This is how the early church took the message of Christ. Fourth, in the Spirit’s power. Secondly, the Spirit sustains Jesus people against all opposition.

You’ll notice here, it says that Paul proclaimed Jesus kingdom with all boldness. And again, I, I really believe Luke intentionally ends his book With these realities and all four of the focuses of the book of Acts He says it’s still being done by Paul. And as we finish the book, this isn’t so much a story about Paul It’s about the Spirit’s work and Paul’s doing it at the very end It’s a way of saying, you know, the Spirit’s work just keeps rolling to people that are available.

He sustains Jesus people against all opposition. Paul’s in jail, and many times in his letters, we’ve highlighted this as we’ve gone through this series, Paul acknowledges his own fears, his anxieties, his weaknesses. In 1 Corinthians 11, he summarizes some of the reasons, 2 Corinthians 11, he summarizes why he says, With 39 lashes on five different occasions.

I was beaten with rods, which meant like, uh, not quite baseball sized, but rods that were thick. These were not coat hangers he was being hit with, these were, these were clubs. He says that happened three different times. I was stoned and left for dead once. I was shipwrecked three times. And then he says these statements.

I faced dangers from robbers, dangers from my own people, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, dangers from false brothers. I faced toil and hardship, many sleepless nights, often hungry and thirsty, cold and exposed and I carried the daily pressure of anxiety, he said, over my concerns for the churches and how they were doing.

When Paul went out and, and, and shared the gospel with people, and then he came back and established them in the faith, it says, this is what they did in Acts chapter 14, verse 22. They said this. They were strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God.

There are no exceptions. If you are living wholeheartedly with Christ, you will face struggles. You will face opposition. You have an enemy. He’s not really your enemy. He’s the enemy of the one who has rescued you, who has embraced you, who has loved you to himself. But the best way he has to attack his enemy is through his enemy’s people.

You will face struggles. You do have a target on your back, and you may be thinking, oh well, sign me up.

Paul tells us this in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, we’re afflicted in every way. But we’re not crushed. We’re perplexed, but we are not driven to despair. We’re persecuted, but not forsaken. We’re struck down, but not destroyed. Always carrying in our bodies the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

Paul spoke with a boldness that was not his own, he was able to sustain. I mean, if there’s anybody that you just wanna say, Paul, be quiet. Okay. You’re here in Rome. You’re under the, you’re under the shadow of the emperor. You’re just waiting for your appearance before him. He’s already threatened by Christianity and you’re the prime spokesman.

Be quiet. Can’t, there’s a boldness, there’s a call. There’s a sense that I belong to someone else. It’s a boldness given by the Spirit of God. And if you walk with Jesus, you will face hardship in following him at times. But you will find joy in sharing in his sufferings, and you will find peace and contentment in him that will more than compensate for any loss you experience.

Paul believed that. I remember reading the story of an old time preacher. And his friends were with him, and they knew he had been slandered, he had been wronged, he had been misrepresented. It was just, it was… And they knew the weight and the sorrow of it for him. And they said, how can you handle this? Why aren’t you retaliating?

Why aren’t you embittered? Why aren’t you going after them? How do you endure the pain? And here’s what he said, Ah, but I have Christ. Paul would say, Why do I keep talking? I have Christ. I have Him. He’s sweeter than anything I’ve lost. He enables me to, to, when I feel crushed, to not be destroyed by it. When I’m perplexed, to not be completely lost in despair.

He sustains us against all opposition. Third, He fulfills God’s sovereign purposes. It says here that Paul, and the last words in the original actually is this word. Without hindrance. It actually is two words in the original. Um, it actually is one word in the original, two in the English. No hindrance. Most commentators believe this is chosen by Luke to say God was enabling Paul at this season of his life to just have some liberty.

There was, in God’s sovereign purposes, a season of no hindrance. One of the things we’ve tried to highlight as we’ve gone through the book of Acts is how much we see God’s sovereign purposes lived out. We saw it in Acts chapter 2, the first sermon that’s ever preached, where Peter stood up and, and Peter said, This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

Peter is saying God’s purpose prevailed. Jesus was crucified. By false accusations out of envy and pride and fear and bitterness of lawless men. But ultimately, it happened by God’s defined, sovereign plan. The cross was ordained. God used all those elements, but ultimately, in what seemed the deepest, darkest, most terrifying moment in the lives of the followers, was actually the greatest.

In Acts chapter 8 we see the persecution that began in the church largely at the hands of a young man named Saul. And it caused the church to be scattered and people actually had to take their families out of Jerusalem and they spread to Judea and Samaria. And all of a sudden, we find out that the very thing that we’re told in Acts chapter 1, verse 8, that the, that the, the church will take the message forth, that it will go not only in Jerusalem, but to Judea and Samaria, and ultimately the ends of the earth will, it began to spread by God’s sovereign purposes, by persecution into those very areas that he said the Spirit would take it.

In Acts chapter 16, Paul is traveling through what is modern day Turkey, and he says, I wanted to go towards Ephesus to the west, and the Spirit restrained me. And then I wanted to go up by the Black Sea in Bithynia, where I knew there were, there were lots of transplanted Jews, and, and there was a, a, a, a, a, capital, uh, port cities, that I wanted to take the guy, and the Spirit said no, and he says, finally we just sort of ended up at the end of Turkey, nowhere else to go in the ancient city of, Of Troy, which was then called Troas.

And there God said, okay, you’re right where I want you to be. And he gave me the, what’s called the Macedonian vision. The vision of a guy over in Macedonia in Greece. And he says, in, in the vision the guy is saying, come over. So Paul went, and again, God’s giving him nose. And yet it’s all part of God’s purposing for Paul.

When Paul returned to Jerusalem and all his friends told him, don’t go. Because things are too hot. Paul says, no, I’m supposed to go to Jerusalem, then I’m going on to Rome, then I’m going on to Spain. I’m gonna do my big fourth missionary journey, which never happened. But he went to Jerusalem and was arrested, and ultimately God sovereignly used.

The Roman authorities to send him as a prisoner to Rome, the very place that God had told him he would ultimately go. Pastor Ben, two weeks ago, in looking back in the book of Acts, called this the unknown knowns. I liked it. I like the phrase. You know what you’re supposed to do, but there’s a lot of pieces of it you don’t know.

And a lot that you don’t expect along the way. We don’t know what the future holds. We really do lean into the one who holds the future.

The fourth thing we find that the book of Acts has reminded us of, that again is portrayed here in this closing episode, he makes one people out of all backgrounds. He welcomed all who came to him. Here in Rome, he’s welcoming Jew and Gentile, that’s taken place just in the verses right before this, making of multiple religious backgrounds, cultural heritage, and ethnicities one people by giving them the same experience.

In Acts chapter 10, Peter went to the household of Cornelius, a Roman soldier. It’s a Gentile home, it’s a home of the Goyims, and he says to them, Guys, you know I’m not supposed to be here. I mean, by my tradition, by my religious law, I’m not even allowed to be in your house. God told me to come here, and he saw that they had the same experience with the Holy Spirit.

That they stood on equal footing in Christ, broken, self centered, humbled sinners, gathering at the cross. And they also were compelled to have the same response. In Acts 2. 41 it says, So those who received, and it’s actually the word welcomed, same word where it says Paul welcomed these people. The word were baptized and there were added that day about 3, 000 souls.

He welcomed everyone in the hope that they would welcome his word about Jesus here, Paul, in Rome. The final episode of Acts is given as a recap of the Spirit. in his work as he has been throughout the 30 years of the Book of Acts. It’s Dr. Luke’s way of saying, and Paul’s life reminds us, the Spirit is still doing this.

Still spreading the message of Jesus kingdom. Still sustaining God’s people against all opposition. Still fulfilling God’s sovereign purposes. Still making one people out of all backgrounds. And the spirit is still looking today, this morning, for Peters and Pauls, for Barnabas and Aristarchus, for tax collectors and businesswomen, for young people and seniors, for soldiers and slaves, for demon dominated, or people of religious aristocracy, for people raised in the palace of the emperor, or people serving as temple prostitutes.

The gospel is for all and the call to live your life wholeheartedly for Jesus is extended to everyone because the Spirit continues to be at work to the ends of the earth. Lord we look to you this morning and if we just take in these few moments to

summarize in the final episode we see here as Paul personifies it.

Lord, may there be a renewed passion in our lives to be available to Christ,

to go to our oikos, to pray for our oikos, to lean into the Spirit of God, to believe you to do among us and through us that which has been your plan in all these centuries begun in the early church. In Jesus name, Amen.