Hail To The Chief -- Derek Grier
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00 (whooshing)
00:02 People sometimes ask me, you know,
00:05 "Bishop, at this stage of life,
00:06 "why don't you just take it easy and coast?"
00:10 But I say, "You weren't there the night he found me."
00:13 (audience applauding)
00:16 You didn't experience what I experienced
00:18 when he placed his hand upon me.
00:19 And I'm gonna do whatever he asks as long as I live,
00:24 as long as there's breath in my lungs,
00:27 strength in this body.
00:29 I'm indebted.
00:30 And it's not an arduous thing to do what he asks.
00:37 It's that, God, I'm grateful.
00:41 And if you could take someone like me,
00:43 give me a life, clean me up, give me a hope,
00:46 give me a future, give me images of you, God.
00:50 Help me understand who you are.
00:52 You call me by name.
00:54 The least thing I could do is say yes.
00:57 (audience applauding)
01:00 (upbeat music)
01:04 You're gonna need your running shoes this morning
01:09 because we're gonna be in Acts chapter seven,
01:11 Acts chapter eight, I think we're even gonna be
01:12 in Acts chapter nine, and then we're gonna go
01:14 to First Timothy.
01:15 So we're gonna move around just a little bit.
01:19 Let's start out in Acts chapter seven in verse 54.
01:25 And when the crowd had heard these things,
01:29 Stephan was about to become the first Christian martyr.
01:33 His crime was teaching, as Matthew 1 in 23 says,
01:38 that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us.
01:43 He preached that Jesus was greater than the temple,
01:47 that he was greater than all of the Jewish traditions,
01:51 that Jesus was the fulfillment of the law,
01:54 and when the Sanhedrin began to press him on these issues,
01:59 instead of backing up and shutting up,
02:03 he gave the longest speech in the entire book of Acts.
02:07 I believe it's Desmond Tutu that said,
02:10 "If you remain silent in the face of injustice,
02:13 "you are on the side of the oppressor."
02:15 And Stephan wouldn't allow himself to be silent.
02:20 He recognized that men and women's lives
02:22 depended on the gospel.
02:25 And when they heard this message,
02:26 the Bible says they were cut to their heart.
02:31 And if you don't let truth do its cutting,
02:34 you will never heal.
02:35 A surgeon only slashes to repair,
02:41 and sometimes God must break our hearts to save our souls.
02:45 And this is what's happening.
02:47 If God has to be hard, it's never to punish you
02:52 as much as to get through to you.
02:54 And sometimes, if you can understand nice,
02:58 God will do nice.
02:59 But if you don't understand nice,
03:01 God has to give it to you hard.
03:03 And Luke goes on in Acts and says,
03:07 how many of y'all like this line upon line teaching?
03:10 Yeah, yeah.
03:11 (audience applauding)
03:13 You know, every Sunday, I'm reminded,
03:15 25 plus years ago, people tell me,
03:17 people will never listen to you preach.
03:20 Give 'em a story, pat 'em on the head,
03:23 tell 'em about your journey,
03:25 but no one's interested in the Bible.
03:27 Give 'em a couple points.
03:29 But guess what, every Sunday, y'all show up
03:32 to hear God's word line upon line.
03:35 (audience applauding)
03:38 You may hate everything I say,
03:40 but you'll never leave here without learning God's word.
03:43 So, after he taught, they gnashed at him with their teeth
03:50 and we have two choices when we hear God's truth.
03:55 Pride or humility.
03:58 Either we soften our hearts to receive it
04:03 or harden our hearts to fight it.
04:05 How many of us have lived long enough to know
04:09 that fighting God is always a losing battle?
04:11 But Stephen, or Stephan, being full of the Holy Spirit,
04:17 and by the way, being full of the Holy Spirit
04:19 is so much more than just speaking in other tongues.
04:24 When you're full of the Holy Spirit,
04:26 when life squeezes you,
04:29 the Spirit's character begins to pour out of you.
04:32 God's love, God's joy, God's peace,
04:35 God's long-suffering, God's goodness,
04:37 God's kindness, God's faithfulness, God's gentleness,
04:40 and the final one is self-control.
04:44 It's a bookend, it starts with love,
04:46 but it ends with what? Self-control.
04:48 Because the highest form of government is self-government.
04:52 You know, I can't always govern events,
04:56 but because the Holy Spirit lives on the inside of me,
04:58 I can govern myself.
05:00 I can wait a few seconds before I speak.
05:04 You know, I know for me, one of the signs that I'm tired
05:07 is I start speaking over people.
05:09 And that's when I know I need a break,
05:11 I'm close to trouble.
05:13 And I've learned, though,
05:14 if I'm really resting in the Lord, though,
05:17 I can hold it for a second.
05:19 I don't have to say that thing, I can just hang on.
05:22 And the Spirit of God gives us power
05:25 not only to control our bodies,
05:27 but that most difficult member, our tongue.
05:29 And Stephan gazed into heaven.
05:35 So everyone's mad at him, but he has a vision of God.
05:39 And he saw the glory of the Lord, or God,
05:42 and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
05:45 And the truth here is whenever you stand up for Jesus,
05:48 he will stand up for you.
05:50 Because the Bible said he was seated on the throne,
05:52 but when Stephan stood up for him the way he did,
05:55 God had to stand up and give him an applause.
05:58 Matthew 10 and 33, Jesus continues, he says this,
06:02 "But whoever denies me before men,"
06:06 and this is why sometimes I say things you don't like,
06:09 because I'm more scared of God than I am of you.
06:11 Now, please don't get me wrong, you're scary and everything,
06:14 but between you and God, he's the scariest.
06:19 Jesus said, "Whoever denies me before men,
06:22 "him I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven."
06:27 And what we see here is that even Jesus had boundaries.
06:33 Ladies, if a man is ashamed to be with you publicly,
06:38 you should be ashamed to give him your heart privately.
06:42 Skip to verse 57.
06:45 Then they cried out with a loud voice.
06:51 These were older, distinguished men
06:53 with long robes and long beards.
06:56 This behavior was just not becoming.
06:59 They should have known better.
07:01 So they cried out with a loud voice
07:03 and stopped up their ears like children,
07:05 you know, wiggling their tongue.
07:08 I don't want to hear you, I don't want to hear.
07:09 This is what these distinguished men were brought to doing.
07:14 You see, some people don't want to hear the truth
07:16 because they can't handle their illusions being destroyed.
07:20 And they ran violently at Stephan with one accord.
07:27 Why?
07:29 Because truth sounds like hate to those who hate the truth.
07:34 And they cast him out of the city and stoned him.
07:39 And the witnesses laid down their clothes
07:45 at the feet of a young man named Saul.
07:50 This is the Bible's first mention of Saul
07:55 who later becomes our beloved Paul.
07:59 And the fact that he was there collecting coats,
08:01 and I shared this with you once when I was a kid
08:03 and there was a fist fight,
08:05 there'd always be an instigator there
08:08 saying give me your coat, give me your coat.
08:10 Because the moment you gave up your coat,
08:11 you were committed to the fight.
08:15 So Saul here is the cheerleader.
08:19 And he's, you know, rousing this thing on.
08:23 And the Bible says they stoned Stephan.
08:26 But Stephan didn't flinch, his heart was at peace,
08:29 and he was willing to pay the ultimate price
08:32 for sharing this wonderful gospel.
08:35 And if this guy would lay down his life
08:37 to tell someone the truth,
08:39 how much more, you know, in this country
08:41 where we have laws and police officers,
08:43 should we be willing to share with those we love
08:47 the truth of the gospel?
08:48 Acts chapter eight and verse one, let's do some skipping.
08:51 Now Saul was consenting to his death.
08:55 The original language here says
08:57 more than the English translation.
09:00 Saul here didn't just agree,
09:02 the Greek speaks of a person taking special,
09:05 almost in this case, a sick pleasure in something.
09:09 You see, on the surface, Saul had enough respect
09:12 to sit on the highest and most respected
09:16 and powerful religious body in the land.
09:20 But underneath it all, he was bitterly jealous
09:24 of the success of the Jesus movement.
09:27 Actually, in Matthew 27 and 18,
09:31 we actually find out that the reason Jesus was crucified
09:34 was because of envy.
09:36 People were envious of his crowds,
09:38 people were envious of his power,
09:40 people were envious of his miracles.
09:42 Envy is not an innocent emotion.
09:45 It murdered Jesus on the cross.
09:47 So whenever I see it in me, I wanna deal with it
09:50 and not just kinda wink at it and say
09:52 it's just part of the human experience.
09:54 It's very, very, very dangerous.
09:56 So we have this, again, he had on these pharisaical robes,
10:01 but also robes of the Sanhedrin and well-respected.
10:06 I mean, he looked absolutely secure on the outside.
10:09 But just because you look secure on the outside
10:11 doesn't mean there's not a storm raging on the inside.
10:14 But even more frustrating, hating someone else's success
10:20 never gets you your own.
10:22 Skip to verse three.
10:26 As for Saul, he continued to make havoc of the church.
10:31 And the term havoc there is also very, very descriptive.
10:37 It describes a wild animal wildly biting its prey.
10:42 So I mean, there was a viciousness and it was beastly.
10:49 The types of things that Paul was saying and doing.
10:55 Entering every house that he could find and identify
10:59 and dragging men and women.
11:02 The only thing worse than harming a woman,
11:04 a man, forgive me, is harming a woman.
11:06 Committing them to prison, which as I said to you last week,
11:11 this was a death sentence at this time in history.
11:16 But we're about to discover envy is not only
11:19 a thorn in the side of the one that it's directed toward,
11:25 it's actually a cancer to its carrier.
11:28 And when Saul finally met Jesus,
11:32 God not only saved the church from persecution,
11:36 Jesus saved Paul from himself.
11:39 Acts chapter nine and verse one,
11:41 we're covering a little bit of ground
11:42 and we're gonna land in Timothy.
11:44 And then Saul still, I mean, this went on for chapters,
11:50 breathing threats and murder.
11:54 This man was not just a killer, he was a murderer.
11:59 In fact, the Bible where it says in the 10 commandments,
12:03 thou shall not kill, I believe if my memory serves me right,
12:07 the Hebrew is harak and that word does not mean kill,
12:11 it means murder.
12:12 And he's not saying that you can't be a part
12:14 of the military, you can't, in case of self-defense,
12:18 you cannot do the ultimate.
12:21 But what it is saying is we are not to murder
12:24 out of ill will and vengeance and the rest.
12:28 Saul was still breathing threats and what?
12:30 Murder, here we have this religious leader.
12:34 Again, the man, I'll get to this a little bit later,
12:37 he memorized the entire Old Testament,
12:40 but he has a murderous spirit.
12:43 And he was still breathing threats and murder
12:47 against the disciples of the Lord.
12:49 Words turned into action and you gotta pay attention
12:52 to the things you say.
12:54 And he went to the high priest and asked letters from him
12:58 to the synagogue of Damascus.
13:01 So this Saul was so successful,
13:05 wreaking havoc in Jerusalem,
13:08 he wanted to spread murder ink 150 miles away
13:13 and continue to kind of franchise, if you will,
13:16 his hateful and murderous spirit,
13:20 so that if he found anyone who were of the way,
13:24 whether men or women, no sensitivity,
13:27 the fair agenda got no pass,
13:30 he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
13:33 What was happening here is the success of Christianity
13:38 brought out a mean streak in this man.
13:42 And you know, all of us will feel pulled to the dark side
13:45 from time to time, but Saul moved in and he lived there.
13:50 You know, jealousy is really a backhanded compliment.
13:54 It just means that someone fears
13:57 you live a better life than they do.
13:59 Someone just fears that somehow
14:00 you're better off than they are.
14:03 Now Saul was jealous because on the inside,
14:06 he knew he didn't have what those Christians had.
14:10 And as he journeyed and came near Damascus,
14:14 suddenly a light shone around him from heaven
14:17 and we know the rest of the story.
14:19 The light knocked him to the ground,
14:20 he got up a changed man.
14:22 And when God calls you, you have a choice.
14:24 You can come easy or you could come hard,
14:27 but you're coming.
14:28 Second Timothy two and 19 tells us
14:30 the Lord knows who are his and you know it too.
14:35 So why waste our time fighting and resisting
14:40 like the Apostle Paul?
14:42 Now we're gonna look at 30 years later
14:45 in first Timothy chapter one in verse 12.
14:48 You still following with me?
14:50 All right, so by this time,
14:54 Saul has become the beloved Apostle Paul.
14:59 And this is important.
15:01 Since God waits until our lives are over to judge us,
15:05 maybe we should wait too to judge others.
15:09 See a lot of folks would have just given up on Saul.
15:12 They couldn't see Paul in Saul.
15:15 And a lot of folks would give up on you,
15:18 but thank God it's not up to folks, it's up to God.
15:21 God sees and God knows.
15:26 Underneath all of that rank, all of that clamor, God saw you.
15:30 It's amazing the imagination and the goodness of God.
15:38 Ezekiel said that when I saw you in your blood,
15:43 no one washed your navel, no one salted you.
15:47 He's talking about a baby that was just thrown
15:49 on a garbage heap.
15:51 But I took you and I clothed you and I washed you
15:55 and I cleansed you, I made you beautiful.
15:58 And God, he took all of us out of the junk pile of life.
16:02 He saw something in us that no one else could see
16:08 and made us into the things that we're becoming today.
16:13 30 years later, he said, and I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord.
16:20 Listen, if you think about your own story,
16:25 we all got reasons to give him thanks.
16:28 (audience applauding)
16:32 The Bible doesn't say this,
16:34 but I think the scroll got a little bit wet
16:36 because as he wrote this, his mind was flooded
16:40 with his grateful memories of what the Lord had done
16:43 to him on that road to Damascus 30 years earlier.
16:47 And it's hard not to get misty-eyed
16:49 when you think about the goodness of God.
16:53 You know, since the beginning of time,
16:56 God has chosen the unlikely to do the unimaginable.
17:00 And we're all part of that journey and part of that story.
17:02 And he said, I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord.
17:05 He's trying to write some doctrinal truth,
17:09 but he got to break into doxology and praise
17:12 because of the goodness of God.
17:14 And if you really ever understand these truths,
17:17 if you ever really reflect on where you could be,
17:20 but where you're not, you would break into some praise
17:23 and give God some glory right now too.
17:26 (audience applauding)
17:30 And I thank Christ Jesus, not just my Lord,
17:35 our Lord, he delivered me and he delivered you.
17:38 That's why when we come together, we're so happy
17:40 there's a strength in this room
17:42 'cause we all got a story.
17:43 We've all been on a journey and God has been so very good.
17:48 And I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who has enabled me.
17:55 So grace not only pardons you,
18:02 but enables you to live like you could never live
18:05 on your own.
18:07 Who has enabled me because he counted me faithful,
18:10 putting me into the ministry.
18:12 But what we see here is God did not put Paul
18:15 into the ministry because he was so talented,
18:18 but because God recognized that he would live such a life
18:22 of so much gratitude for the mercy of God.
18:26 He'd be faithful to anything God asks.
18:30 People sometimes ask me, you know,
18:34 this is about this stage of life,
18:35 why don't you just take it easy and coast?
18:37 But I say you weren't there the night he found me.
18:41 (audience applauding)
18:44 You didn't experience what I experienced
18:46 when he placed his hand upon me.
18:48 And I'm going to do whatever he asks as long as I live,
18:53 as long as there's breath in my lungs,
18:55 strength in this body, I'm indebted.
19:00 And it's not an arduous thing to do what he asks.
19:05 He said, God, I'm grateful.
19:09 And if you could take someone like me, give me a life,
19:12 clean me up, give me a hope, give me a future,
19:17 give me images of you, God, help me understand who you are.
19:20 You call me by name.
19:22 The least thing I could do is say yes.
19:26 (audience applauding)
19:30 So he had to stop his writings just to say,
19:34 and I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord,
19:37 'cause you enabled me, God, to do better.
19:40 And although I was formerly a blasphemer,
19:43 which literally means one who spoke against God.
19:45 How many of y'all used to speak against church people,
19:47 speak against God, but now you're doing church stuff
19:49 and doing things, you see, yep, yep, yep.
19:51 But God knows how to reverse even the worst.
19:59 And this man who spent years speaking against God
20:04 spent the rest of his life speaking for God.
20:08 Formerly a blasphemer, but then he has a list here.
20:14 A persecutor, we just read about that.
20:17 He not only disliked Christians, he hurt them
20:21 and maimed them and murdered them and killed them.
20:24 And then he continues, an insolent man.
20:27 And sometimes you got to remember where you came from
20:29 to appreciate where you are.
20:31 Outwardly, he was once this highly, highly respected
20:37 individually, but inwardly, and his wife knew it,
20:40 he was mean, he was arrogant, he was unkind.
20:44 And you say, why would God use such a man?
20:47 The reason God uses sinners is because those are
20:53 the only types of people he can use.
20:55 (audience applauding)
20:59 Okay, all six of you in this rainy Sunday morning,
21:03 all of us, and don't look at me with that tone of voice
21:08 on your face.
21:08 All of us have done things in our lives
21:13 that we are not proud of.
21:14 Things we don't want nobody to know about.
21:18 Things we don't want to be reminded of.
21:22 All of us were aints before we were saints.
21:25 We all had horns before we had halos.
21:30 But I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly
21:35 in unbelief.
21:37 Again, as a Pharisee, now, many Jewish boys were required
21:42 to memorize the first five books of the Bible,
21:45 the Beth Tetuch, the law of Moses.
21:50 But the Pharisees had to take it a step further,
21:52 and they memorized the entire Old Testament with their mind.
21:57 But Paul never knew all that memory,
22:03 God's mercy in his heart.
22:06 And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant.
22:11 Jesus did not come just to shame sinners,
22:18 but to save sinners.
22:20 But after God forgives you, the next step
22:25 is you got to learn to forgive yourself.
22:27 (audience applauding)
22:30 There's a few of it, this goes right over my head.
22:34 I ain't never been as bad as Paul.
22:36 I ain't never, no, this message is just for you.
22:38 You see, the reason God chose a man like Paul
22:47 was to show us if God could forgive him,
22:50 and then if God could help him forgive himself,
22:55 why can't you?
22:57 Why can't I?
22:59 And he goes on, he said, "This is a faithful saying
23:04 "worthy of all acceptance."
23:06 Paul uses this phrasing five times in his letters,
23:10 and he typically uses it to say something
23:13 that's commonly known that he wants to reinforce
23:17 and vouch for.
23:18 He said, here's the statement that everybody was whispering
23:22 and he said, you know what?
23:24 I'm not hurt when people say it 'cause it's true.
23:26 "That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners
23:32 "who I am chief."
23:34 Hail to the chief.
23:37 Paul was not, or Saul was not only a bad boy,
23:43 but the worst type of boy.
23:45 - Wow.
23:46 - I can't think of any pride so dangerous,
23:52 so subtle, so insidious as self-righteousness
23:57 and religious pride.
24:01 But watch what God can do with even our worst sin
24:06 if we look to him.
24:11 However, for this reason, I obtained mercy.
24:16 So if the worst of us could obtain mercy,
24:24 how about you?
24:25 How about me?
24:28 But this next part of this sentence,
24:32 and I'm gonna wrap up there, I need you to see.
24:36 You know, when Jesus shined a light from heaven
24:40 and he who thought he knew everything and saw everything,
24:43 he walked away blind because that was his real spiritual
24:46 state and sometimes God lets your natural state
24:49 match your spiritual state and that's a mercy
24:52 when he does it.
24:53 But when Paul finally snapped out of it,
24:56 God was actually able to use this man's wicked
25:02 and worst sins to help others.
25:05 Please don't mishear me.
25:07 Sin is terribly destructive.
25:11 It'll always take you further than you wanna go,
25:13 keep you longer than you wanna stay,
25:16 and cost you more than you wanna pay.
25:19 But when he gets you out, he uses you to help
25:24 get others out.
25:25 I don't remember if it was Plato or Aristotle,
25:31 but one of those guys, I used to read those guys
25:34 when I was in school.
25:36 He said the best guard or prison guard,
25:40 or better, the best guard is a thief.
25:43 Why?
25:47 Because a thief knows all the angles.
25:49 So if God's gonna put you on guard in his house,
25:54 he wants some folks that know the angles.
25:57 You hear what I'm saying?
25:58 (audience applauding)
26:01 God can use your worst days, your worst times,
26:04 your worst behaviors.
26:06 For his glory.
26:08 I'm gonna look at this side of the room.
26:10 In the house of the Lord.
26:14 All right, and I'm gonna wrap up in just a second.
26:19 However, for this reason, this is the important part.
26:22 I obtained mercy so that in me first,
26:25 Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering,
26:28 watch this, as a what pattern, as a what pattern,
26:31 as a what pattern.
26:33 This is why God redeemed.
26:36 This is why God healed.
26:38 This is why God cleansed a man as bad as Saul.
26:43 To reveal a pattern for you and a pattern for I.
26:48 If God could take that joker and turn him
26:53 into one of history's greatest saints,
26:57 why can't God do something with you and with me?
27:03 You see, every saint has a past.
27:07 But also, every sinner has a future.
27:11 And the reason God used Paul the way he was,
27:16 the way he did, was to demonstrate a point.
27:20 And things in your life you think disqualify you from use
27:24 are the very things God wants to use
27:28 to bring him glory and honor.
27:30 I'm not saying do stupid things so grace can abound.
27:34 Sin is a mess, and like I say, what did I say?
27:36 It'll take you further than you want to go,
27:39 keep you longer than you want to stay,
27:40 and cost you more than you want to pay.
27:42 But despite that, how many of y'all know we still do it?
27:46 None of y'all lifting your hand, okay.
27:48 But God can even redeem our sins.
27:57 For this reason, I obtain mercy,
28:02 that in me first, Jesus Christ might show
28:07 all longsuffering to the worst of them,
28:10 as a pattern, a model of what God could do,
28:13 to those who are going to believe in him
28:16 for everlasting life.
28:18 God wanted to show us through Apostle Paul,
28:27 he could take people as bad as the worst,
28:31 and make them as good as the best.
28:34 Say again, through the life of the Apostle Paul,
28:38 God wanted to show us he could take people
28:43 as bad as the worst, and make them as good as the best.
28:48 No past sin is ever greater than God's present mercy.
28:58 (audience applauding)
29:02 (upbeat music)
29:04 (upbeat music)
29:07 (upbeat music)
29:09 (upbeat music)
29:12 (upbeat music)
29:15 (upbeat music)
29:18 (upbeat music)
29:20 (upbeat music)