“A LIFE WORTH LIVING”
ACTS 20:17-24
From Acts 1 through the final chapter, Acts reveals why the church was born and why the church exists today: to tell the good news of Jesus Christ. The believers experienced hardship and persecution, but they did not give up. Their purpose was more important than their suffering. For these 1st century believers, it was a life worth living.
During the 19th century Crimean War, the Russian Army was dealt arms by Alfred Nobel who gained fame for his invention of dynamite. He made a fortune from its sale, building a legacy as a war profiteer.
When Alfred’s brother passed away in 1888, a French newspaper mistakenly wrote Alfred had died. The false report stated: “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.” The newspaper tagged Nobel as “The Merchant of Death”.
Having read his own obituary, Alfred set out to change his legacy. One year before his death at the age of 62, he changed his will, giving 94% of his fortune (worth around $270 million, today) as prizes for the best work in the promotion of peace. They were called the Nobel Peace Prizes.
If you were able to hit the rewind button on the story of your life, would you be pleased with how people will remember you? I suspect many of us would want to change our legacy as did Alfred Nobel. Such was the life of Paul.
Paul had been known as a persecutor of Christians, an enemy of the church. But his life was radically transformed by a personal encounter with Jesus Christ on a dusty road. Paul received forgiveness for his sin and chose to follow Jesus as his Savior. From that moment on, Paul was on a mission from God, to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. The moment you experience the salvation by grace through Christ, God puts you on a mission to tell the Good News of Jesus Christ.
As Paul nears the end of his ministry, he calls together the elders of the church in Ephesus to say good-bye. SCRIPTURE The most important thing of Paul’s life was to complete his mission of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace. If he failed to do so, then he considered his life worth nothing. A life worth living seeks to point others to Christ.
According to Thom Rainer, “Nine out of ten Christians will die without having ever shared their faith.” That means nine out of ten Christians die having lived their lives as a waste. Paul says such a life is not worth living. What is the most important thing in your life? Are you committed to being a messenger of the good news about God’s grace to other people?
The last words spoken by Christ before He went back to heaven were: But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8) “This is what I want you to do until I come back!” It is a life worth living.
Following His resurrection, Jesus said: Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; teaching them to obey all I have commanded you. And lo I am with you, even to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:19-20)
Go and make disciples of all nations. A disciple is a follower, a student. Jesus is saying we are to find others and encourage them to follow Jesus just as we do. Christ’s followers are to go into all the world, to all nations (all people groups – no one is to be left out) with the mission of making disciples.
Jesus does not have in mind political boundaries, but those people groups who live among us in Big Spring. Our planet contains seven continents: North America, South America, Africa Asia, Europe, Australia, and Antarctica. Within the past ten days, I have had conversation with individuals from six of those seven continents. In a town of 25,000 people, six of seven continents are residents. God is placing people groups in our neighborhoods!
We do not sit around and wait for the world to come to us; we go. We actively participate in telling the Good News about Jesus to others with the purpose they too will become followers of Jesus. The early church prayed and sent missionaries like Paul and Barnabas, Silas and Luke. The people who stayed home prayed for and provided financial support for those who went, but it became a cooperative effort to fulfill the Great Commission.
If we are not praying for, and financially supporting, missionaries we are missing a big part of the mission. Yes, share the good news about Jesus here at home; but also get involved in sharing it around the world by supporting those whom God has called and gifted to go around the world.
Acts 1:8 mentions Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. Our Jerusalem is our city. Our Judea is our state. Our Samaria is the United States, then there is the rest of the world. Our mission is to tell our city the good news about Jesus; but we are not to stop there. Our mission is to tell every people group the good news about Christ. A life worth living completes the task.
Each time I look into a mirror, I see my father looking back at me. I have his nose, the shape of his face, and his chin. I can still remember how my father smelled when I hugged him. He liberally splashed on Old Spice cologne. Much to the chagrin of my wife, I also wear Old Spice. I want the aroma of my father to always be with me.
The Bible says Christ’s followers share the aroma of Christ. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. (2 Corinthians 2:15) God sends those of us who have Christ’s aroma on us to show how wonderful life in Christ can be.
We who are following Christ faithfully are the best advertisement for the Good News. We have been entrusted with the mission of going and making disciples. We are the ones who have the aroma of Christ which brings others to Him. We are to go and make disciples of all nations.
The mission is not done until we have tried to tell everyone alive the good news about Jesus. It has been estimated a line of people without Christ would be 750,000 miles long reaching around the earth 30 times, and it grows 20 miles longer each day.
Jack Kelly, foreign affairs editor for USA Today, tells about being in Mogadishu, the capitol of Somalia, during a famine. “It was so bad we walked into one village and almost everybody was dead. There is a stench of death that gets into your hair, gets onto your skin, gets onto your clothes, and you can’t wash it off.
We saw this little boy. You could tell he had worms and was malnourished; his stomach was protruding. His hair turned a reddish color, and his skin was crinkled as though he was 100. Our photographer had a grapefruit, which he gave to the boy. The boy was so weak he did not have the strength to hold the grapefruit, so we cut it in half and gave it to him. He picked it up, looked at us as if to say thanks, and began to walk back towards his village.
We walked behind him in a way he could not see us. When he entered the village, there on the ground was a little boy who I first thought was dead. His eyes were extremely gazed over. It turned out this was the first boy’s younger brother. The older brother knelt down next to his younger brother, bit off a piece of grapefruit, and chewed it. Then he opened his younger brother’s mouth, put the grapefruit in, and worked his brother’s jaws up and down.
We learned the older brother had been doing that for the younger brother for two weeks. A couple days later the older brother died of malnutrition, and the younger brother lived. I remember driving home that night thinking what Jesus meant when he said, “There is no greater love than to lay down our life for somebody else.”
Will you lay down your life to complete Christ’s mission? It is a life worth living; it is why we exist.
