Living for Jesus
Text – Acts 21:1-16 (vs. 13)
Reading – 2 Corinthians 4
Songs – BOW: 170, 139a, 216, 213, 103b:1&5
Here in the West we live in a day and age of great tolerance and religious freedom. It hasn’t always been that way. The freedoms we enjoy today have been won by difficult costly life-and-death struggles such as during the time of the Reformation. Many thousands were martyred for the faith during those years and it’s due to their struggle that we enjoy the spiritual freedom we have today. There are some who still suffer that struggle today. In the Sudan, in the Orissa province of India, in China and in parts of the Muslim world the cost of being a Christian is often high. There’s no room for complacency on our part either. It would be foolish for us to think that the freedom we enjoy today will continue indefinitely. If Biblical influence in this country were to wane, the necessary conditions for tolerance and freedom will wane with it and it will become harder to live as a Christian.
I n some ways it is hard now, not because of persecution but because of something more subtle and more dangerous, and that is the influence of worldliness in the church. That influence is powerful and has already had its effect on the church in Australia. In the last 40 years or so many have deserted the church opting to follow the devil rather than follow Christ, preferring to enjoy an easy comfortable carefree life in the world rather than live life of discipleship. So let’s think about the very important question of discipleship.
In Die trich Bonhoeffer’s classic The Cost of Discipleship, he makes a distinction between “cheap” and “costly” grace . But what is “cheap” grace? In Bonhoeffer’s words: Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline and communion without confession . Cheap grace is grace without discipleship , grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ. Or, to put it even more clearly, it is to hear the gospel preached as follows: Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness.” The main defect of such a proclamation is that it contains no demand for discipleship.
So then what does it mean to live for Jesus and to be a disciple of Christ?
Paul summed this up for us in our text where he said “I am ready n ot only to be bound but to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”
I want to look at that text in three parts:
1. the cost of being a disciple
2. the heart of a disciple
3. the motive of discipleship
1. First let’s think about the cost of discipleship. Paul probably would have liked to stay at Ephesus. He probably could have had a long pastorate there. We can see that by the way the session at Ephesus loved Paul. When Paul met them for the last time elders wept and embraced him and kissed him. Judging by the Ephesian elders’ warmth towards Paul, he probably could have comfortably ministered on at Ephesus for a few more years. Perhaps he even entertained such pleasant thoughts during his two years in Ephesus making tents, preaching regularly, seeing the fruits of his labours and enjoying the company of good friends like Priscilla and Aquila.
However, if Paul did have such thoughts he soon removed them from his mind. He disclosed to the elders that he was “compelled by the Spirit of God to go to Jerusalem, not knowing what might happen to him there.” And he also added “I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me.”
And then when Paul left Miletus, crossed the Mediterranean by ship and reached Tyre, just north of Jerusalem, Acts 21:4 says that the followers of Jesus at Tyre told Paul through the Spirit not to go on to Jerusalem.
The question that arises is: How can the Spirit advise the church at Tyre against something which the same Spirit compelled Paul to do? I think the solution is found with the prophet Agabus who is mentioned in verse 10. Agabus also warned Paul through the Spirit that it would be dangerous for him to go on to Jerusalem where he would most certainly be arrested. But there was no advice from Agabus through the Spirit telling Paul not to go. It would seem that the church at Tyre had the same message from the Spirit warning Paul of the hardships and therefore naturally urged him not to go for his own safety’s sake. But in the end we can see in verse 14 that if it was the Lord’s will for Paul to go then he would have to go.
I t’s not that there are two contradictory messages; what we see is that the Holy Spirit didn’t just reveal Paul’s mission but also the cost of undertaking that mission. There would be hardship. There was no promise of an easy gospel victory here. Instead what Paul could expect was to share in Christ’s sufferings.
After all Jesus said quite plainly to His disciples that there would be a cost to following Him. He said in Mark 8:34-45, “If the world hates you bear in mind that it hated me first”, and….. “If anyone would follow me he must deny himself take up his cross…..for who ever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and the gospel will save it.”
T he Spirit gave Paul the same message through the churches on his way to Jerusalem. He warned Paul of hardships ahead and in that way prepared Paul for his mission.
Not many people are called to be missionaries and evangelists exactly like Paul was, making exactly the kinds of sacrifices Paul made. However we are called to be disciples and that involves a cost. Now what is that cost for you and I? It’s not an easy thing to quantify the cost.
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It depends on where you are and what the Lord might ask of you of you at any given time.
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It depends on w hether or not you really are or want to be a disciple or follower of Jesus.
And in order to answer that question you need to understand the heart of a disciple of Christ.
2. So in the second place let’s think about that for a moment, the heart of discipleship.
When Paul was warned at Caesarea by Agabus, the people who were with him, including Luke, begged Paul not to go. Paul answered, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”
H e had already said as much to the elders in Miletus in chapter 20:24 when he said “I consider my life worth nothing to me if only… I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me…the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.”
It wasn’t that Paul didn’t value his own life. But as Calvin once wrote, “he wasn’t so gripped by a blind love of living that he lost sight of the reason for living.”
And so i n reflecting on his own ministry Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:11 says this “We who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake so that His life may be revealed in our mortal bodies.” For Paul, life was all about living for Jesus , and so it must be for every Christian.
E lsewhere in Paul’s writings he applies these things to the church and that means … to you and me.
I n Ephesians 2:10 it says that you are created by God in Jesus Christ to do the good works God has prepared for us to do.
Romans 12:1 we are called “to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.”
And in Roman 14 :8 “If we live, we live to the Lord and if we die we die to the Lord so whether we live or die we belong to the Lord.”
The Heidelberg Catechism sums it up rather beautifully where it says “I am not my own but belong body and soul to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.”
That is really the heart of discipleship. Accepting the fact that as a Christian you are not your own…. You belong to God.
Even for unbelievers, this is true to some extent. Because God has created all creatures all of mankind is accountable and answerable to God. But for Christians it is especially true.
He not only created you but also redeemed you. He purchased you for himself,.. for his special saving purposes with the precious blood of his only begotten son Jesus Christ. You and I are not our own, we belong body and soul to our faithful Jesus Christ.
Do you believe that? That you belong to Jesus? That ’s the heart of discipleship. And if you believe that you belong to Him, then as God gives you the strength and opportunities you’ll also be ready to meet the cost of discipleship, what ever that may be,……. what ever the Lord Jesus asks you to do. Not because you have to, but because you want to, because you know that He gave up his life for you, because you know that he loves you and that you love him.
And what has he asked you to do?
Have you professed your faith in Chr ist and publicly in this church? If so then he’s asking you to honour your vows that you made before God and his people. In those vows you promised to do all you can with the help of the Holy Spirit to strengthen your love and commitment to the church and its means of grace, honouring and submitting to its supervision and discipline, and to join with the people of God in doing the work of the Lord wherever you are.
Are you married ? Then honour your wedding vows,… for better or for worse. Nowadays the main goal in marriage seems to be personal happiness. So if the marriage is an unhappy one, the easy thing to do is just to break marriage.
But for the Christian our chief end,… our goal in life is not our personal happiness. Rather our chief end is to glorify God and if necessary endure the unhappy marriage and keep working on it to preserve the sacred institution of marriage rather than contribute even further to the wholesale breakdown of marriage which we are seeing in society today.
Has God blessed you with children and have you had your children b aptized? Then the cost of discipleship at home is to do whatever you can to train up your children in the fear and instruction of the Lord.
Has the Lord blesse d with a spiritual gift? Maybe the Lord has laid it upon your heart to serve him in some special capacity in the life of the church. There are sacrifices to be made to fulfil such a task. Are your prepared to make those sacrifices for the sake of Christ?
Or could it be for someone here that the Lord has laid a burden upon your heart to serve him in fulltime ministry? Are you prepared to make the sacrifices and follow Jesus where he would have you go in the gospel ministry?
It depends on whether or not you have a disciple’s heart; whether or not you can really say, “I am not my own but belong body and soul to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.” That’s the heart of discipleship. Note well that discipleship is more often than not about ordinary everyday things; about regular little steps of faithfulness, in our homes, our church in our personal lives.
3. Fin ally then, the motive of discipleship. Paul said emphatically “I am ready not only to be bound but to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” Paul’s motive?… His own glory? Money? A nice position at First Church Jerusalem? No…… his motive is first and foremost to glorify the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The name of Jesus Christ was everything to Paul. For Paul, to die was gain because then he would be with his Lord Jesus.
Jesus ’ Name is worthy of our discipleship and our sacrifice for exactly the same reasons. To spell them out, those reasons are:
First: Who He is .
Jesus is the eternal Son of God.
As John 1;1 says “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God…..Through Him all things were made” Vs 14. “The word became flesh and dwelt among us”.
Or a s Hebrews 1 puts it God made the universe through his Son. And His Son is “the radiance of God’s glory, the exact representation of God’s being, sustaining all things by His powerful word.”
Yes . Jesus is worthy of our discipleship and our devotion simply because of who He is. He is the second person of the triune Godhead. He is, as Isaiah put it, “Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of peace. Of the increase of His Government and peace there will be no end.”
Jesus is also worthy of ou r devotion because of what he has done for us.
Thoug h He is “the Alpha & the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end”… though He is Holy, Almighty God,.. He put aside His majesty and glory and died for sinners like you and me. He was obedient to death,… the worst, cruellest kind of death, death on a cross. He bore God’s wrath;…the penalty for our sin and thereby won salvation and merited eternal life for all who repent and believe, and therefore is more than worthy of our devotion and discipleship.
Finally he is worthy of our service because of what he is doing now and in the future. He showers gifts on us (Eph 4).
He is preparing a place for us (John 14).
He continually intercedes for us with his Heavenly Father (Hebrews 7:25).
E ven though we are often reluctant and unprofitable servants, even though, like the disciples were, we are slow in coming to grips with the heart of discipleship, Christ still blesses us with everlasting mercies.
So what better motivation is there to live for Jesus! It is as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:14 “for Christ’s love compels us…” Therefore Jesus Christ is our Lord.
But there was another motive implied in Paul’s being prepared to meet the cost of being a disciple and that was the church . One of the things that compelled Paul to go to Jerusalem and make any sacrifice to get there, was the bond between the Jewish and Gentile church. He was keen to tell the Jewish Christians what God had been doing among the Gentiles and to remind them that Christ had given his life to destroy the barrier between Jew and Gentile.
The wellbeing of the church here at this church is a good and noble motive for our discipleship too. God has established this church. Christ died and rose for this church. So let us do everything we can to help build this church and make it an edifying and God-honouring church.
So do you have a disciple’s heart? Can you say, “I am not my own but belong body and soul to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ?” Are you prepared to pay the cost of discipleship if called upon by keeping your vows and living like a disciple of Christ in your homes, relationships, your church and in your personal lives?
Are you prepared to ( as the well-known cadet hymn says):
Live for Jesus and share his love
With every person I know
Doing the will of my Saviour above
Praising His name as I go
I am so grateful for what he has done
By Father, Spirit and Jesus the Son
Living for Jesus in all that I do
That’s how I travel life’s road.
Amen