Paul continues sharing his final words with the elders of the Church in Ephesus, revealing the incredible power of life focused on Christ.
Transcription (automatically-generated):
As we rejoin our study in the Book of Acts, the Apostle Paul is on his way to Jerusalem, following the leading of the Holy Spirit. He's stopped in the town of Miletus, the coastal town of Miletus, where he has called the elders of the church in nearby Ephesus to come and meet with him one last time. Ephesus, you may recall, was one of the most prominent cities in the Roman province of Asia, which is present-day Turkey. And Paul had planted a church while ministering there for around three years. We ended our previous study in the middle of his parting words to these elders.
And so we pick things up. In Acts, chapter 20, verse 20, we read Paul speaking to the elders. You know that I did not hesitate to proclaim anything to you that was profitable and to teach you publicly and from house to house. Paul shared everything he knew about Christ with those Ephesians. He gave himself to teaching in public, in the synagogue, and then later in the lecture hall of Tyrannus.
He gave himself to teaching at church gatherings and in homes at smaller gatherings. Wherever he found someone who desired to know the truth or be instructed further in how to follow Christ, Paul would minister. He was always teaching, pouring out everything the Lord had taught him so that it could be poured into the Ephesians. A willingness to boldly speak the truth is not a calling for evangelists or apostles only, but for every Christian. And while not every Christian is called to teach a congregation or engage in public debates like Paul, our brother Peter told us that we are all to be ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason, for the hope that is in you with gentleness and reverence every believer.
What Peter is telling us is called to know the Gospel well enough to share it. We are not called to only be able to share the story of how we came to know Christ, of how we were saved, how we became a Christian. We are called to be ready at all times to share the Gospel, the story of creation, sin, and most importantly, redemption through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. And we're called to do this boldly, as the Spirit gives us opportunity. How do I know that boldness is the call of every believer?
Well, you'll recall back in Acts, chapter four, verse 29, these verses are on your outlines. The Church together prayed, grant that your servants may speak our Word with all boldness. They didn't pray. Grant that our elders. Grant that the apostles.
Grant that those with the gift of evangelism may speak Your Word with all boldness. They prayed, speaking of themselves collectively. Lord, help your servants to speak Your Word with all boldness. And then two verses later, we read they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God boldly. The church collectively prayed for boldness and received boldness in the same way we should pray for boldness, that we might receive boldness from the Holy Spirit and be ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in you.
Would you write this down? Christians must be able to share the gospel, must be able to share the gospel. We have to know how to do. It can't be a situation where you can tell everyone how to make your secret recipe of apple pie or the statistics for your favorite football player, but you don't know the gospel. You've got to be able, if you are a Christian, to share the gospel.
And if you need some help learning how to do that, I've put a link on your outline to a website that'll give you a real simple model for effectively sharing the gospel. And if the truth is that if I came to you right now and I said, can you share the gospel with me in five minutes or less and you couldn't do it, you need to go to that website and memorize that model so that you can do it, so that the Lord can use you. Paul says, I did not hesitate to proclaim anything to you that was profitable. In his second Epistle, to his protege Timothy, his final letter before his death, Paul explained what was profitable, writing that all Scripture is inspired by God. It's literally breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Paul's teaching was profitable because all he did when he was with the Ephesians was expound on the Scriptures. He taught them, explaining the Scriptures so they could understand them. He rebuked them, applying the Scriptures to their lives so that it convicted them of their sin. He corrected them, showing them how to turn from sin to Christ, and he trained them in righteousness, showing them how to obey the commands of Christ and walk in his ways. As a result, those who received ministry from Paul found themselves complete, better translated as adequate.
The idea being they knew what they needed to know and were equipped for every good work. If you and I want to be biblical Christians, if we want to know what we need to know and be equipped for every good work, we must embrace being taught, being rebuked, being corrected, and being trained in righteousness. I really want us to recognize this. Peter tells us that where God's word is being honored, people are going to be taught, rebuked, corrected, and trained in righteousness. I know a lot of Christians who are open to being taught and trained, but they're not open to being rebuked or corrected.
But we must be. We must be. It's necessary for our growth and sanctification. Are you open to being taught, rebuked, corrected, and trained by the Word of God? You might say, oh, absolutely.
Let me add this caveat. Even if it's through another person who's sharing the word of God, we must be. We must be, because, yes, the Lord works directly through His Spirit in our lives. But I don't know if you're aware of this yet. If you've been walking with the Lord for a while, you are.
Sometimes we're not that good at listening. And so, the Lord has to send another brother or sister to help us listen, and they may help us by rebuking us or correcting us. And you can't follow Christ and have the attitude of, no, he'll tell me directly if there's anything he wants me to know. He's probably been trying. You're just not listening that well.
Christian, I don't care how long you've been following Jesus. I don't care how old you are or how young you are. If you've been following Jesus a long time, you should be mature enough actually to know and understand that we also need to sometimes be rebuked and corrected. And those who love Christ and want to be like Christ are open to receiving a rebuke or a correction if it means they can get more accurately and faithfully on the path of following Christ. Those who love Christ would not rather walk off the path because of their pride and ego.
They would rather have someone tell them, hey, you're off the path. Oh, thank you so much for letting me know, because I want to be on the path. Because many people don't want to be rebuked or corrected by the Scriptures, we can't assume that everybody does. And that's part of the reason for church membership. It's a way for a man or woman to put up their hand and say, I want to be taught, rebuked, corrected, and trained in righteousness by the word of God.
I want that in my life. I want to be on the path. And so, we do that with church members. We don't do that with everybody, because it wouldn't be reasonable to assume that everybody wants that. So, church membership is the method we use to identify and keep track of who has put up their hand and said, I want that.
Paul tells us in verse 21, I testified to both Jews and Greeks about repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus. Repentance, as you hopefully know by now, is a change of mind, and it's at the core of the Gospel. The message is to change your mind about who God is and change your mind about the gods that you're serving - because everybody is serving a God right now. Paul's call was turn from worthless things to the true and living God - repent. And we talked a few weeks ago about this concept of turning from and turning to Christ is in the opposite direction from all other gods and sins.
And so, as you turn to Christ, you can't help but turn from your sins and your false gods. There's no way to turn to Christ without turning from those things, and there's no way to turn back to those things without turning from Christ. Paul's gospel message called people to change their minds about who God is, turn from their sins and false gods, and turn to Jesus by placing their faith in Him as Lord and Savior. And that's what the Christian life is over and over again on a daily basis. It's turning toward Christ and turning from sin and false gods over and over and over again.
In situation after situation in thought after thought, the Christian life is saying, I choose Christ. Over and over and over and over again. And after facing and making that choice countless times, the most amazing thing happens. You begin to eventually understand how much more beautiful and good Christ is than everything else, and you begin to understand how hideous and detestable your sins and false gods and idols really are. See, when you start, you might be in the place of, like, I really want to do that, but deep down, I know that's better.
But the more you choose Christ over and over and over again, the more you begin to see how wonderful he is and how detestable everything else is. And when you find that you've turned back to this, you find yourself saying, oh, why am I here? I don't even want this. I want him. That's what happens the more you make that choice.
And this reality is why David wrote taste and see that the Lord is good. Taste and see that the Lord is good. There's many people who are over here enjoying their sins, enjoying their idols, enjoying their false gods, and they think, what's better than this? And they only think that because they have not tasted and seen how good the Lord is. It brought to my mind the words of the famous hymn "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus."
The first verse and chorus declare, O Saul, are you weary and troubled? No light in the darkness you see there's light for a look at the Savior and life more abundant and free turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. I looked up who wrote that hymn, and it was a woman named Helen Howarth Lemmel, who penned it in 1922. But as I was reading about that, I read too that it was inspired by a tract called Focused, written by a female missionary named Lilias Trotter. And if you're like me, your response is, who is Lilius Trotter?
And I have to tell you, I began researching this woman, and what I found was absolutely astonishing. Astonishing. She was like a character from the Book of Acts who lived in the 19th and 20th centuries. She came from a wealthy and elitist family in England and was on track to become the greatest living English artist of her time. She had the most illustrious mentor she could have had, the most famous Renaissance man in England in the late 19th earliest 20th century, a man named John Ruskin.
And yet she was gripped by the Gospel and gripped by the love of God to such a degree that she started wandering the streets of Victoria in London in the middle of the night, alone, trying to minister to prostitutes and get them off the street. And she responded to the call of the Holy Spirit on her life and ended up walking away from her life of privilege entirely, moving to Algeria as a single woman who knew no Arabic and no French, and then lived among and loved the people there for 40 years, sharing Christ until her death in incredibly difficult circumstances. She was a profound artist, writer, and thinker. And I can't recommend to you highly enough the 2015 documentary about her life called "Many Beautiful Things." I'm going to post a link to it on Facebook and Twitter tomorrow, so look out for that.
Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus was inspired by Lilius Trotter's poem called Focused, which was inspired by and quotes the words of the Apostle Paul, who wrote to the Philippians for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. And one thing I do - forgetting what is behind and reaching toward what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God's heavenly call in Christ Jesus. And so, I want to read to you Trotter's work that inspired the hymn Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus. While living in Algeria, she wrote this. It was in a little wood in early morning.
The sun was climbing behind a steep cliff in the east, and its light was flooding nearer and nearer, and then making pools among the trees. Suddenly, from a dark corner of purple brown stems and tawny moss, there shone out a great golden star. It was just a dandelion and half-withered, but it was full face to the sun and had caught into it, into its heart all the glory it could hold, and was shining so radiantly that the dew that lay on it still made a perfect aerial round its head. And it seemed to talk, standing there to talk about the possibility of making the very best of these loves of ours. For if the Son of Righteousness has risen upon our hearts, there is an ocean of grace and love and power lying all around us, an ocean to which all earthly light is but a drop.
And it is ready to transfigure us as the sunshine transfigured the dandelion, and on the same condition that we stand full face to God, gathered up focused lives, intent on one aim Christ. These are the loves on which God can concentrate. Blessedness it is all for all. By a law as unvarying as any law that governs the material universe. We see the principle shadowed and the trend of science.
The telephone and the wireless in the realm of sound, the use of radium, and the ultraviolet rays in the realm of light. All these work by gathering into focus currents and waves that, dispersed, cannot serve us in every branch of learning and workmanship. The tendency of these days is to specialize, to take up one point and follow it to the uttermost. And Satan knows well the power of concentration. If a soul is likely to get under the sway of the inspiration, this one thing I do.
He will turn all his energies to bring in side interests that will shatter the gathering intensity. And they lie all around these interests. Never has it been so easy to live in half a dozen good, harmless worlds at once. Art, music, social science, games, motoring, the following of some profession, and so on and between them we run the risk of drifting about, the good, hiding the best, even more effectually than it could be hidden by downright frivolity with its smothered heartache as its own emptiness. It is easy to find out whether our lives are focused, and if so, where the focus lies.
Where do our thoughts settle when consciousness comes back in the morning? Where do they swing back when the pressure is off during the day? Does this test not give the clue? Then dare to have it out with God. And after all, that is the shortest way.
Dare to lay bare your whole life and being before Him, and ask Him to show you whether or not all is focused on Christ and his glory. Dare to face the fact that, unfocused good and useful as it may seem, it will prove to have failed of its purpose. What does this focusing mean? Study the matter and you will see that it begins, that it means two things gathering in all that can be gathered and letting the rest drop. The working of any lens, microscope, telescope, camera will show you this.
The lens of your own eye in the room where you are sitting as clearly as any other. Look at the window bars and the beyond is only a shadow. Look through at the distance and it is the bars that turn into ghosts. You have to choose which you will fix your gaze upon and let the other go. Are we ready for a cleavage to be wrought through the whole range of our lives?
Like the division long ago at the taking of Jericho? The division between things that could be passed through the fire of consecration into the treasury of the Lord, and the things that, unable to bide the fire, must be destroyed. All aims, all ambitions, all desires, all pursuits. Shall we dare to drop them if they cannot be gathered sharply and clearly into the focus of "this one thing I do." Will it not make life narrow, this focusing?
In a sense, it will, just as the mountain path grows narrower. For it matters more and more the higher we go where we set our feet. But there is always, as it narrows, a wider and wider outlook and purer, clearer air. Narrow as Christ's life was narrow. This is our aim.
Narrow as regards self seeking, broad as the love of God to all around. Is there anything to fear in that? And in the narrowing and focusing, the channel will be prepared for God's power. Like the stream hemmed between the rock beds that wells up in a spring, like the burning glass that gathers the rays into an intensity that will kindle fire, it is worthwhile to let God see what he can do with these lives of ours. When to live is Christ.
How do we bring things to a focus in the world of optics? Not by looking at the things to be dropped, but by looking at the one point that is to be brought out. Turn full your soul's vision to Jesus and look and look at Him. And a strange dimness will come over all that is apart from Him. And the divine attraction by which God's saints are made even in this 20th century, will lay hold of you.
For he is worthy to have all there is to be had in the heart that he has died to win, taste and see that the Lord is good. Turn from sin and false, gods and idols, and turn to Christ over and over and over again, day by day. Why? Because he's better, because he's good, because he's glorious, because he's kind, because he's gracious, because he's love, and because he alone is worthy. And when you see that clearly, your prayer will become, lord, please keep my eyes on you.
I don't want them to be on anything else.
Write this down. The Christian life is the decision to choose Christ. Moment to moment and day by day, it's the decision to choose Christ.
Paul continues in verse 22 and now I am on my way to Jerusalem, compelled by the Spirit, not knowing what I will encounter there, except that in every town the Holy Spirit warns me that chains and afflictions are waiting for me. The Holy Spirit was calling Paul to travel to Jerusalem but was also warning him that he would face imprisonment and afflictions there. And as Paul continues to travel, these warnings will continue and will ramp up in terms of intensity. In the next chapter, it will be revealed to Paul that these afflictions will likely lead to his death, which they would. At this point, Paul knows only that imprisonment and afflictions await him in Jerusalem.
He assumes they will be temporary, as his plans were to continue to Rome and then Spain and spend the rest of his life ministering in the western Mediterranean region. The holy Spirit didn't need to warn Paul to prepare him for suffering. If you've been with us through our study of Acts, you know Paul was always ready to suffer. He was always up for it. The Holy Spirit didn't need to warn him on other occasions, like when he got beaten potentially to death, and that didn't deter Paul one bit.
Just a few weeks ago, we read that he was ready to rush into the amphitheater in Ephesus, where over 20,000 people wanted to kill him. He didn't care. He's saying, let me go. So why is the Holy Spirit warning Paul about what's waiting for him in Jerusalem? Well, Scripture doesn't give us a firm answer, but I can think of two reasons.
Firstly, the Holy Spirit may have been giving Paul an opportunity to say his goodbyes and share some last words with those that he loved. It also could be that it would have been helpful for Paul to know by the time he got to Jerusalem that no miracle was coming this time and that the end of his earthly life was near. It would allow him to fix all his hope on heaven and avoid any unnecessary discouragements brought about by hoping for an earthly resolution to his trials. While difficult, this knowledge about his future was a kindness given by God to Paul. Verse 20 our just epic.
The words of Paul but I consider my life of no value to myself. My purpose is to finish my course and the ministry I received from the Lord Jews to testify to the Gospel of God's grace. This is why we love Paul so much. When writing to the Philippians, likely from a cramped jail cell in Rome shortly before his death, Paul would tell the Philippian believers, my eager expectation and hope is that I will not be ashamed about anything but that now, as always, with all courage, Christ will be highly honored in my body, whether by life or by death. Paul embodied the understanding every believer must have about the transaction that takes place when we become Christians.
Yes, in the divine exchange, we trade our sin for the righteousness of Christ. That's the Savior part of salvation. But we also trade ownership of our lives. Christ now owns us. We serve Him and his agenda, and he's free to send us wherever he pleases, even if it leads to our earthly death.
That's the "Lord" part of salvation. And it's what Paul is alluding to when he tells the Ephesian elders, I consider my life of no value to myself. My purpose is to finish my course and the ministry I received from the Lord Jesus. He's saying, Christ owns me, and I have one goal in my life doing the things that Christ has called me to do so that he will be highly honored in my body, whether by life or by death. It's the same focus that defined the life of Lilias Trotter.
It's the same focus that every believer is called to develop in their life. We're not called to sit back and say, hey, listen, if I ever get an important ministry calling like Paul or Lilius Trotter, then I'll start focusing on Christ with seriousness. Such focus is not the product of flicking some sort of internal switch. It is developed. It results from being faithful in little things and then growing to be faithful in larger things.
It results from being focused despite all the mundane distractions of daily life so that the Lord can trust you will be focused when there are even more significant distractions. People who do great things for God are not exceptional people. They're ordinary people with an exceptional focus on God. And that can be anyone, anyone who desires to be that person. To the man or woman who desires to be focused on Christ and his calling on their life, I would offer this encouragement.
Begin with today. The Lord has given you today. What has he asked you to do with today? Don't worry about a five or ten-year plan. What has he asked you to do today?
What has he asked you to do tomorrow? Will you focus and ensure that tomorrow you spend time in His Word? Will you focus and ensure that tomorrow you spend time in prayer and worship? Will you focus on serving those the Lord has placed in your life today? Tomorrow your spouse, your kids, your friends, your coworkers, your classmates, your brothers and sisters in Christ, will you focus tomorrow on what God has called you to do tomorrow?
Or will you be distracted by the myriad of distractions available to us in this 21st century?
You will discover that in order to do what God has called you to do with today and tomorrow, some of those distractions will have to be laid aside. Some trivial pursuits will need to be shelved. Some selfish indulgences will need to die because your life right now is full. I don't care if you are a single person married with 20 kids. Your life is full right now with something.
A lot of us have lives that are full of distractions and unnecessary things. And so, if you say, I'll pursue Christ when I find some room, you never will. You have to make room by shelving those selfish desires, those trivial pursuits, those distractions. You have to carve out that space for the Lord. There will be a tension between the desires of your flesh and the desires of your spirit.
There always is. Welcome to life. But understand this. Understand this - the focus I'm talking about is not about perfection. It's about clarity.
It's about clarity. It's about having a clear goal, the goal of Christ, and pursuing that goal. It's about having a level of clarity. Because what clarity does is it removes the confusion about how we measure success. For those who love Christ, success is defined as obedience to Christ.
Those who love Christ cannot reach the end of their day. Observe that it was primarily spent on themselves and say, that was a day well lived. Rather, the question is, did I obey and glorify Christ in my life today? That's the clarity that the disciple of Christ must have. Oh, it was a pretty good day.
If the way you evaluate the success of your day doesn't include Christ, you're wasting your life. You're wasting your life, maybe with good intentions, but you're wasting your life. We must have clarity that Christ is the metric. Him being honored, him being glorified, him being exalted, him being blessed, him being obeyed. I'm not calling you to perfection, but I am exhorting you to be a man, our woman, who is focused, who has clarity on who the Lord of our lives is.
Write this down. The Christian's focus is obeying and glorifying Christ with their life. The Christian's focus is obeying and glorifying Christ with their life. And the blessing of living this way is that at the end of your life, you will be able to say what Paul wrote to Timothy I have fought the good fight. I finished the race.
I have kept the faith. There is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day. And you will hear Jesus say to you, well done, good and faithful servant. Share your master's joy. Paul devoted his life to the Gospel of God's grace.
You are a sinner. You are separated from God by your sins. You are a slave to your sins. But the Lord loved you before you were even born. And because he loved you, he came to the earth, took your sins upon Himself, was Judea for them on the cross, and now offers you the forgiveness of your sins, past, present, and future, and adoption into his family, where you will spend eternity if you so desire.
That is the gospel of God's grace. You are forgiven. You are loved. You are adopted.
If you so desire, turn to Jesus and receive his forgiveness. Receive his love. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, which he will give to you. Receive him as lord. Receive his love, joy, peace, rest, and hope, if you so desire, it's available to you.
That is the gospel of God's grace. Paul said it like this in Romans five where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more, so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness, resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. I don't care who you are, where you are, or what you've done. God's grace is available to all who will repent and turn to Jews, and you will not believe what his grace will do in your life.
It's more than you could imagine, and if you're saved. But right now, you're struggling with sin. Here's what I know. I don't have to tell you. That sin is bad.
You're either experiencing the negative consequences of your sin already, or you're about to. But here's what you might need to be reminded of living in God's grace is so much better. So much better. Your sins are forgiven. He still loves you.
So repent and come back. Come back to him. Grace means there's nothing you can do to make God love you more. And there's nothing you can do to make Him love you any less. Maybe you're in home groups and you thought, well, he's got to love me more because I read all the way through Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
Nope. You mean I didn't have to read Jeremiah and Ezekiel to get the Lord to love me? Nope. He can't love you anymore. He already loves you perfectly.
He just loves you. End of sentence. We don't do those kinds of things to get God to love us. There's no point. He already loves us, and he couldn't love us any more than he does right now.
We do those kinds of things because we love Him. We're so blown away by his grace and his kindness and his mercy and his love that we just want more of Him. We want to know more about Him. See, some of us have heard this, but we haven't heard this.
There is nothing we can do to make God love us more, and there's nothing we can do to make Him love us any less than he does right now. He just loves us. He just loves us. That is the gospel of God's grace. So, would you write this down?
We cannot earn God's love. We can only respond to it. We cannot earn God's love. We can only respond to it. And that's what the Christian life is.
It's a response to the love of God. Verse 25. Paul says, and now I know that none of you among whom I went about preaching the Kingdom, will ever see me again because Paul's plans were to travel to Jerusalem and then Rome, which he hoped to use as a base from which to minister to the western Mediterranean region and countries like Spain. Verse 26 therefore, I declare to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you because I did not avoid declaring to you the whole plan of God. That's an interesting phrase.
I'm innocent of the blood of all of you. It's a reference to the ministry of prophets like Ezekiel. Some of you might recall this from this home group semester. And I'll just read to you from Ezekiel 33, verses one to nine, where it says, the word of the Lord came to me, son of man, speak to your people and tell them, suppose I bring the sword against a land, and the people of that land select a man from among them, appointing him as their watchman. And suppose he sees the sword coming against the land and blows his ram's horn to warn the people.
Then if anyone hears the sound of the ram's horn but ignores the warning and the sword comes and takes him away, his death will be his own fault. Since he heard the sound of the ram's horn but ignored the warning, his death is his own fault. If he had taken warning, he would have saved his life. However, suppose the watchman sees the sword coming but doesn't blow the ram's horn so that the people aren't warned, and the sword comes and takes away their lives. Then they've been taken away because of their iniquity.
But I will hold the watchmen accountable for their blood. As for you, son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. When you hear a word from my mouth, give them a warning from me. If I say to the wicked, wicked one, you will surely die, but you do not speak out to warn him about his way. That wicked person will die for his iniquity, yet I will hold you responsible for his blood.
But if you warn a wicked person to turn from his way and he doesn't turn from it, he will die for his iniquity. But you will have rescued yourself. Part of the ministry of every pastor is to be a watchman. When Paul says I'm innocent of the blood of all of you, he was saying, I've given you all the warnings and information you need to make wise choices as you navigate the days ahead. My conscience is clean, and I've done my job as a watchman of the Church of Ephesus.
I'm innocent of the blood of all of you because I did not avoid declaring to you the whole plan of God. Other translations render it I have not shunned to declare to you the whole council of God. Here's the important implication for pastors even today those who don't declare the whole plan of God, those who don't declare the whole council of God are guilty of the blood of those they teach and will be chastised by God for their failure. How does a pastor do that? By sharing the parts of the gospel that people want to hear.
By leaving out the tough parts. By teaching Jesus as savior but leaving out Jesus as Lord. By teaching the part where Jesus forgives your sins and makes a way for you to spend eternity in heaven, but leaving out the part where salvation also includes giving our life to Christ and Him becoming master of your life. By teaching a false, palatable, easy-to-digest, that-goes-down-easy kind of gospel that is pleasant to people's ears but has no saving power because it's a lie. By teaching the Bible in such an incomplete way that people believe they're saved when they're not, the Word declares such pastors have blood on their hands.
Therefore, we talk about difficult things when they come up in the text. Therefore, we teach primarily verse by verse through the Bible here at Gospel City. BJ and I will answer to God for whether we teach the whole plan of God. We desire to have clean hands before the Lord more than we desire to have more people attending our services. Our goal is to follow Paul's example in this.
So, if you ever leave Gospel City in a moment of regrettable and delusional madness, make sure you find a church that teaches the whole council of God, a church that goes through the Scriptures verse by verse, because that church is committed to teaching the word of God the way God wants it taught. If you ever find yourself somewhere where there's not a solid Bible-teaching church, go with the best you can find and listen to Gospel City online because I promise we'll be doing it. Now, this will be heavy, but I need to say it. If you've been coming consistently to Gospel City for six months or more, but have not given your life to Christ, you need to know that your blood is on your own hands because you've heard us declare to you the whole plan of God. You've heard the gospel.
You're not ignorant. You're simply rejecting Christ. We're so glad you're here. We're so glad you're here. We love you.
We want you here. I'm not trying to make anybody feel bad. I'm trying to make sure that my own hands are clean before the Lord, and they would not be if I allowed you to believe that you are okay living your life separated from God. You're not okay. You're not okay.
Your spirit is dead in your sins. You have no hope outside of Christ. You are ruled by your sin. You are not a free person but praise God, you have unending hope and unending life available to you through Christ. And he loves you.
He loves you so much. And so if you're separated from God right now, turn from your sins, from your idols, your false gods, and turn to him today. Turn to him today, please. And if you want to do that, don't leave today without talking to me or BJ. You can come and find us during the time of worship.
Find BJ because I'll be playing and singing. It'll be weird if you're hey, hey, can I talk? So, talk to BJ. Or talk to either of us after the service, just come up to us and just say, hey, I think I want to give my life to Jesus. We won't embarrass you.
It won't be weird. We'll just talk with you and help you do that. And so, with that, I'm going to ask BJ. To come up and close us in just a second here. I just want to ask, do you have clarity on the purpose of your existence?
Because if you're a Christian, the reason you exist is to obey and glorify Christ, to know Him, and enjoy Him forever. That's why you're here. Life's purpose is not a mystery. If you belong to Jesus and you were made to belong to him, the purpose of your life is to obey and glorify Christ so that you can know Him and enjoy Him forever. And if you have that clarity already, I want to ask, is your life focused on these purposes, or are you distracted by a thousand shiny things?
Is your life focused on Christ? I pray it is. And I pray that if it's not, something has stirred in you this evening that says, I want it. I want it to be.