Grace Community Church, Mills River, NC

Acts 24:10-17 - This week we find Paul, once again, defending himself before a judge. This time, it’s King Agrippa. What’s unique about this scene is that one portion of his defense includes a recounting of his conversion story - from a life as a Pharisee, to a life as an apostle of Christ. This movement “from” one identity “to” something else will be the focus of this week’s message. How does encountering Christ move us both “from” one thing, and “to” something else?

Acts 24:10-17 - This week we will be looking at a scene in Acts where Paul engages a Roman governor on some pretty heavy topics, namely: righteousness, self-control, and judgment. This governor had a superficial knowledge of Christianity, but when Paul engaged him on a heart level, the governor would have none of it. God desires to engage us with both our minds as well as our hearts, but as we’ll see, we often struggle with surrendering our whole heart to Jesus. This is, however, what he desires - and nothing less.

Acts 23:1-11 - This week’s passage finds Paul beaten, bound, and thrown into jail. It is likely that Paul, under those circumstances, was questioning whether or not he would once again be able to publicly preach the gospel of Christ. However, in the midst of these hardships, Jesus comes to Paul and tells him to “Take courage,” and that he would indeed preach the gospel message in Rome. What is striking is the authority with which Jesus speaks; that what he said was certain to happen. Does Jesus speak to us today in a similar way? Does he still speak with the same authority? And if so, how can I know if I can trust his authority?

1 Peter 5:1-5 - Jesus is the True and Good Shepherd who continues to extend his love for his bride through the vital role of under-shepherds he appoints for the flourishing of his church. In this passage, we will examine one of the clearest pictures of those essential relationships through the lens of the life and writings of Peter.

Acts 21:1-14 - We try in vain to fit Jesus and the Gospel into our own pre-existing kingdoms as we wage a prayerful and perpetual Battle of Wills with God. We see life from our limited and emotional point of view, which leads us to fight against his path and even accuse him of either being out of control or, even worse, unloving. God is slowly revealing that he is wise enough to know what is best, loving enough to desire what is best and powerful enough to do what is best, even if it makes no sense to us. In all of this he is revealing his perfectly beautiful re-creation while miraculously using darkness to bring out His light and glory. When we are in the heat of our Battle of Wills, we actually have an opportunity to develop faith and dependence as we honestly confess to him our fears and frustrations while pleading with him to change our faith from the inside so we can pray along with Jesus “Not my will but yours be done.”

Acts 20:24 - We are all in an endless pursuit to achieve a life of value, but what constitutes value (i.e. family, accomplishments, security, accolades) is perpetually elusive. Once we get to that “rung”, endless more rungs appear. Contrary to our culture and pursuits, a life of infinite and fulfilling value is actually a gift offered by Jesus, the Man of Value. This gift is perfectly free, but has a great cost: us giving him our futile efforts toward self-glory. However, once received, we are set free from the tyrannical and murderous dictator of self-achieved-value, and set free to live a life that testifies to the goodness of Jesus.

Luke 7:36-50 - Patrick Lafferty is the Lead Pastor Candidate recommendation; unanimously decided upon by our Pastor Search Team and has the endorsement of the Session.

Acts 17:16-16:34 - Upon arriving in Athens, Paul finds what one commentator describes as, “a veritable forest of idols.” Out of a love for the people of Athens, Paul engages and comforts them by saying that what they refer to as “the unknown god,” Paul has come to make known. And in fact, this Creator “is actually not far from each one of us.” Just like the Athenians, our lives can often resemble a forest of idols. And with each idol, we try to satisfy a profound need that only the gospel of Jesus Christ can meet. Our hope, just as Paul told the Athenians, is that the God of the universe has made himself known in the person of Christ and he is indeed not far from each of us.

Acts 16:25-31 - Things are not the way they seem. The Gospel turns this world utterly upside down. The Philippian Jailer is actually the prisoner; the marginalized of society are elevated; life and light are found in the darkness of death; the typical places to which we run for hope and life (relationships, accomplishments, material things) leave us thirstier than when we started while the greatest rejected man in history, Jesus himself, is the one who includes us into the very thing we’ve longed for our whole lives, which leads us to love the way we’ve been loved.

Acts 16:1-19 - What is God’s will for my life? Where should I go and what should I do? Either overtly or covertly we all ask these questions in the effort to make the most of our lives. We see in this passage how God mysteriously, purposefully and successfully blocks and opens paths as he uses broken people to bring hope and healing to the most shocking and diverse people and places. This simultaneously draws us into awe of God and his power as well as bold humility as we see him changing the world through us.

Acts 15:1-11 - It is impossibly hard to wrap our brains and hearts around the absolute freeness and freedom of the Gospel. Jesus came to rescue us with no effort or qualification whatsoever on our part (except the qualification of being utterly disqualified). Our saved status and intimacy with Him is maintained and even grown through his effort and his grace. This allows no room to boast in our supposed personal holiness, nor room to demand others anything but knowing Christ and him crucified. Salvation from beginning to end, all the way until He returns, is “Jesus Plus Nothing”.

Acts 14:8-23 - The brokenness of creation is readily obvious and universally pervasive, overtaking the physical world, our relationships and, most especially, our spirituality. We aren’t designed for this curse we’ve earned, which leaves us scrambling for a cure. The good news is that, in the middle of our darkest, God’s hope breaks through in two ways. Firstly, He gives everybody “common grace” where he gives us “rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” as a gracious blessing to us as well as a witness to draw us to the gift-giver and the offer of the second and deeper hope: God’s “Saving Grace.” Common Grace is the temporary appetizer and witness for the fully satisfying permanent Saving Grace where the Father put our curse on Jesus in order to utterly reverse the brokenness and re-create us to himself.

Acts 13 - Experiencing supernatural life in the Spirit; repentance and renewal through the good news of Christ.

Acts 11:19-30 - The Church’s (all followers of Jesus) ultimate purpose is to glorify God. This basically involves growing together, serving together and worshipping together. In this passage, we find the infant, diverse, connected church coming together in community to grow and worship. This fuels them to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit to serve in both word and deed: in word by sharing the gospel in their local community and beyond; in deed by sending physical help (such as famine relief) to the needy abroad. The Word in our lives and our church fuels us to grow by loving up (worship) and loving out (missions).

Acts 10:9-23 - The Law makes some of us feel elite over others while making others feel inferior. Both of these vantage points don’t take into consideration that every last one of us have utterly broken God’s law and have no righteousness and no hope outside of Jesus, who has kept the law perfectly. Through his death and resurrection, he gave us access to the Father and the free gift of his perfection imputed into us. This gift and re-creation into a new identity also gives us a re-creation into a new family that is based on Jesus’ righteousness rather than ours.

Acts 9:1-19 - Jesus has raised from the dead! He has decimated death, throwing fear and sin into the abyss as he rose from the ashes. Now the Risen Jesus meets us on whatever road we are on regardless of our scandalous past or our muddy present, inviting us to join him in His Resurrection as we trade our blindness for sight and our life-taking belligerence for life-giving service.

Acts 8:26-40 - All of Scripture is the Gospel, pointing to our need of rescue and to Jesus the rescuer. It reveals the meta-narrative that we were made for something great, something beautiful; something (and someone, and by someone) perfect. But Creation has been and remains broken, leaving us in infinite need of someone to fix it. As just about every story we come across reveals, and what we constantly find in all of Scripture, there is a huge problem with a hero that will come (and has come) to save the day; to save us. In the end, he re-creates an unbreakable and eternal “happily ever after”. Every letter of Scripture reveals our greatest need and how Jesus on the cross transferred his great life for our great death. As we see and believe this ultimate eternal truth, we are first called to BE transformed and then to LIVE transformed by following the Holy Spirit’s leading, even if we don’t exactly know why or how.

Acts 8:5-25 - Inside every relationship there is a struggle between loving the person and loving what the person (or the love) does for us. This clearly enters into our faith and relationship with Jesus. Do we love Jesus, or what Jesus does for us? In this passage Simon, a publicly declared “great” local magician, is overshadowed by Holy Spirit miracles. Simon in turn was in awe of the power of God, and what that power could potentially do FOR him, but not by God himself. Ultimately his love wasn’t for Jesus but for himself. We often treat Jesus, church and one another in this exact way: “What’s in it for me?” However, Jesus, the embodiment of Love, was the opposite. He gave up all of himself; his greatness; his union with the Father in order to become less and be sacrificed for us and our inheritance. In doing this, he reveals our inherent anti-greatness while giving us the gift of his greatness.

Acts 7:1-8:1 - The Gospel is One Rescue Story with God actively, aggressively and unstoppably pursuing his meandering people throughout time and space to give us righteousness, hope and life. His pursuit is consistent, with me in rebellion from the inside (sin) and persecution from the outside (trials) because we demand to create our own manageable rightness so that we can get credit without help from him. The final and inevitable solution was God sending Jesus, the personification of Righteousness, to exchange our perpetual unrighteousness with his eternal righteousness. And, just like we did to all the prophets before him, we killed Jesus. In so doing, we actually and inadvertently ushered in the Great Transfer of Rightness: Jesus’ to us, and our un-rightness to Jesus. Now he “stands” at God’s right hand as our Divine Defense Attorney declaring to the Father that all of his children are just and right. This declaration gives us the hope to live boldly even when the world’s (and our own) courtroom declares us guilty.

Acts 6:1-7 - The Word of God is the unshakable and essential foundation of The Church (all believers) but this cannot be the only focus. An ever-growing adoration of and dependence on Jesus’ love leads us to also care for those in need, beginning within “our own house.” Many times we fail on one side or the other; we focus all of our energies on “right theology” but fail to give ourselves away to others; or we serve with all our might, but hold loosely to God’s word. Here at the infant stage of The Church there was great diversity of “insiders” and “outsiders” getting various degrees of help. The leaders saw this tug-o-war and potential division, so they dedicated themselves to their calling of holding the strong Gospel Foundation of Truth while appointing a diverse group of other leaders to focus on the practical needs of the people within the church.