EPISODE 66 ACTS CHAPTER 21 " The Law Of Legacy"

Welcome to Share the Word. In Acts chapter 21, we'll see the law of legacy at work. The most successful leaders are those who realize their job is to reproduce an effective team of new leaders that will outlast them. We'll consider how Paul, following Jesus' example, concentrated on that and why it's so essential. Acts chapter 21: The Law of Legacy. Okay, I wonder who listening thinks they are good at old movie trivia.

That's you. Here's a question for you, Jeopardy style. A 1967 Robert Aldrich movie about a group of World War II military convicts given the opportunity to gain their freedom if they successfully pull off a dangerous secret mission behind enemy lines. Man, I loved army movies when I was growing up as a kid. Does anybody have The Dirty Dozen written on your final Jeopardy answer card? Oh, I'm sorry, you had to have What is The Dirty Dozen on your card.

You know they don't make movies like that anymore. For one thing, you rarely see such a large cast of well-known actors all in one film. That film had a panoply of stars from the 1960s and 70s. Lee Marvin was the major assigned to whip this group of maladjusted sociopaths into elite special forces unit. Then there was Ernest Borgnine, the doubting general, John Cassavetes, Charles Bronson, George Kennedy, Donald Sutherland, Jim Brown, Clint Walker, and my favorite, Telly Savalas, who played Private Archer J. Maggot.

There were 12 men in all. Just a fictional story. What I think really made this movie work was that it was about a group of extremely unlikely heroes, a dozen men who came together around a cause much greater than themselves, and one which ultimately they were willing to give up their lives for, and some of them did. But the mission was successful. You know what? That's a pretty good description of how Christianity started too, as we've seen here.

A dozen men came together around a cause much greater than themselves, one they were ultimately willing to give up their lives for. Their names were not Arthur J. Maggot or Milo or Franco. Their names were Peter and James and John and Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Matthew, Thaddeus, Simon, Nathanael, another James, the son of Alphaeus, and finally, the one we've been following up close recently, the last of them, Saul of Tarsus, better known as the Apostle Paul. Those twelve men believed in the cause of Christ, that he was who he claimed to be, that everyone needed to know about him. Once they believed into that, those twelve men came to realize this mission of sharing the good news about Jesus was a cause much greater than themselves, one for which they were willing to lay down their lives if necessary.

Think about this. Had Jesus not invested himself so heavily in those dozen men, it's unlikely Christianity would have ever emerged onto the world scene in the way that it did. By that I mean, what if Jesus had come and done everything else he did, you know, the miracles, teaching multitudes of people, even dying on the cross and rising again, but had not spent the extraordinary amount of time investing himself in those twelve individuals? I seriously doubt Christianity would have ever gotten very far. I don't know if you've ever thought about that before, but it's a fact. When Jesus was here, he spent far more time personally developing those twelve men than he did addressing multitudes of people who wanted a piece of him.

We might have expected the exact opposite, that if Jesus was who he claimed to be, he would have spent all of his time talking to the largest audiences he could put together in the world's largest population centers. But he didn't. He hand-selected a dozen ordinary men and then kept them with him the entire time he engaged in his public ministry, hardly venturing beyond the borders of tiny Israel. Kept them right with him, right up to the night he was arrested. And even on that night, while alone with them in the upper room, he was still giving them all kinds of last-minute instructions. Then even after his resurrection, most of his interactions were again with them, including what we call the Great Commission about going into all the world and sharing the gospel.

Why do you think this was such a priority for Jesus? Clearly, he was most invested in developing leaders who would outlast him and expand the impact of his own public ministry. We don't have detailed records of where all the apostles went and what all they did, but it's safe to say they obeyed Jesus' commission, because in just one generation, we have records of Christianity spreading as far west as Spain, as far east as India, as far north as Serbia, as far south as Ethiopia and North Africa. Although we don't have detailed accounts of all their efforts and how they all fared, fortunately, we do have here in Acts quite a bit of information about Peter and the apostle Paul. And one thing that is clear: he did not miss the opportunity of what Jesus modeled about developing next-generation leaders. Listen to this list of names.

Crescens, Trophimus, Archippus, Tychicus, Aquila, Priscilla, Epaphras, Aristarchus, Gaius, Erastus, Titus, Timothy. Those may not be as familiar names to you as the names of Jesus' disciples, but those names and others show up in the New Testament as key individuals trained by the Apostle Paul. Spiritually, these were Paul's children, and so spiritually they were grandchildren of Jesus. These are some of the people Paul either won to Christ or discipled and then developed into Christian leaders, who then became capable of influencing others themselves. You've already heard about some of them in this series, like Aquila and Priscilla last lesson. Just as Jesus had modeled, Paul didn't only go around trying to address the largest crowds he could gather.

He obviously placed a high value on the hands-on development of preparing leaders who could succeed him, outlast him, who would carry on the expansion of Christianity when he no longer could. A big portion of his energy and time was directed right there. The most successful leaders are those who realize their job is to reproduce an effective team of leaders that will outlast them. John Maxwell wrote that, I think, in his book called 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. The most successful leaders are those who realize their job is to reproduce an effective team of leaders who will outlast them. That's what the Apostle Paul did, and he learned that from Jesus.

It wasn't only about creating as many believers as you could. It was grounding in the faith people who could become next-generation leaders. Think about this. If Paul's strategy was simply to create believers, Christianity would have grown one person at a time as he personally was able to contact and win people to faith in Christ. But since, like Jesus, his strategy was to develop leaders, each of whom was themselves capable of following Christ and producing other leaders. Then Christianity grew by multiplication.

That's why the faith grew so explosively. Applying this principle, that is that each leader won and reproduced himself or herself and twelve more leaders, in only five spiritual generations, as little as 25 or 30 years, a group of 12 people could grow into 1.2 million. That's exactly what happened. Early Christianity's growth was not by addition; it was by multiplication. That's what jumps out at me as I think about the background of Acts chapter 21. We saw in chapter 20 that Paul decided to leave Ephesus after an extended period of time there, wrapping up his third missionary journey.

But before he headed back to Jerusalem, did you read this? He backtracked through Achaia, through southern Greece, into Macedonia, northern Greece, through western Turkey and the Roman province of Asia, and through these cities where now several Christian churches existed. There were a few reasons for that. He was always interested in seeing how these young churches were doing and how he could encourage them. Second, he had written to them about a collection he was going to gather for the Jewish Christians back in Israel who were going through a hard time. Remember, this is something he and Barnabas had done many years earlier with the churches in Syria because they were keen to keep the new Gentile churches connected with the original church in Jerusalem and the apostles there.

So he saw this act of generosity, I think, brotherhood as a way of doing that. We don't read about that motive here, but we do read about in his letters written to some of these churches about this time. So Paul was in a hurry to get back to Jerusalem by Pentecost, which was essentially the Jewish Thanksgiving holiday. I think he wanted to get there because that was the perfect time to share this gift from the Gentiles. And three. When he backtracked two places like Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, and so on, he picked up some of those who were promising leaders there from those congregations, men he had won to Christ who he had been involved in training and choosing for leadership.

He wanted to take those guys with him back to Israel, back to Jerusalem, so they could see everything for themselves. Can you imagine why? I know his motivation was so they would meet some of Jesus' original disciples. They would see some of the places that Jesus lived and where he died, just as Paul was able to do when he was a young believer. Remember how he met with James and Peter and the others? How much more real things would be when Paul could take them there and they could experience these places with their own eyes.

Christians still visit Israel to this day to look out over the Sea of Galilee, or to stand on the floor of the synagogue in Nazareth where Jesus spoke, or to see the Temple Mount, or to visit the site of the crucifixion, or the place where we think Jesus was entombed. Experiencing these things is, for many people, life-changing, faith-enriching. So Paul brought these Gentile leaders with him so they could experience all of this after his third missionary journey was over. The first 17 verses of this chapter read like a travelogue of Paul and his delegation's trip back to Jerusalem. Notice how everywhere they stopped now there were Christian friends to welcome them. It shows how much Christianity has grown by this time, and also it shows Paul's stature in the early Christian community.

We're now at about 57 A.D., and so this is about 25 years after the time of Jesus. There were already believers everywhere, it seems. When I read this section, it reminds me of a trip my family took when I was a kid. My father was a pastor who had influenced a lot of people for Christ and inspired many toward Christian service over his ministry years. In fact, that was his most important legacy. I remember this summer trip once when we drove from western Pennsylvania clear to the California coast and back again.

And you know what? We never had to stay at a motel once. My parents had marked out a travel route for us over several days of travel, coming and going, and at every stopping point we stayed with people, usually a Christian family whom my father knew from his years in ministry. My parents had a network of Christian friends, most of whom were people that they had led to Christ or seriously influenced in their faith all across America. I didn't think very much about it as a ten-year-old kid or so, but today I realize the significance of that. It showed the reach of his ministry years.

It showed there was a whole community of believers who appreciated my folks enough to welcome us into their homes in Indiana, in Iowa, in Colorado, in Arizona, in California. That's exactly what Paul and his team experienced as they traveled back from what is today western Turkey to Jerusalem, making several stops along the way that Luke tells us about here. Another thing that strikes me from these verses is that explicitly, at two of the stops along the way, Paul was warned by prophets that he should not go up to Jerusalem, that trouble at the hands of enemies awaited him if he did. He clearly believed this mission to deliver the gift from the Gentile churches, as well as to introduce several of these new Gentile believers with him to the original apostles, was more important than his own safety. After all, he'd been arrested many times in the past.

He'd been in jail for a few times for the cause of Christ. He had been beaten. He'd been stoned. His life had often been in danger, so I guess the warnings didn't really deter him. Even after setting foot in Israel, a prophet by the name of Agabus explicitly warns him here that he would be arrested in Jerusalem if he went there by his Jewish enemies. Yet Paul pressed on.

His response was, Why all this weeping? You're breaking my heart. I'm ready not only to be jailed at Jerusalem, but even to die for the sake of the Lord Jesus. And Luke, who was there, says, When it was clear that we could not dissuade him, we gave up and said, 'The Lord's will be done.' Reaching the city of Jerusalem, they did meet up with James, Jesus' brother, who was by this time the acknowledged leader of the Jerusalem church, and with other leaders there. Paul gave a detailed report of all the progress in the great Gentile cities where he and his team had been working now for many years, training leaders, planting new churches.

His report was warmly received, but James was concerned that Paul was still public enemy number one of those who ran the temple. And he also knew that many of the Jewish Christians resented the fact that Paul did not teach his converts obedience to their laws and customs. So James suggested that Paul try and demonstrate his continued respect for his Jewish roots by sponsoring some young men who would be participating in an upcoming religious purification ceremony at the temple. James felt like if Paul paid their dues and participated as their sponsor, it would show everyone that the negative things they'd heard about him abandoning Judaism were just rumors. And Paul went along with that. Unfortunately, what James hoped would happen was not what happened.

That's not how it played out. Paul did pay the expenses of four young men who were fulfilling a religious vow, and he himself went up with them to the temple, where he also, through some kind of religious purification rite, prepared himself to worship. But while he was there, some Jews recently arrived from the province of Asia—remember, that's where Paul had just come from, where Ephesus was the chief city—these people recognized him, and at least one of the Gentile leaders he'd brought to Jerusalem with him. Now it's been 20-plus years or more since the temple leaders had dealt with Saul of Tarsus. He may well have not been recognizable to them anymore, but these people from Asia, where Paul had just been ministering for three years, ha, they recognized him right away. They began shouting, Men of Israel, help us!

This is the man who preaches against our people everywhere and tells everybody to disobey Jewish laws. He even speaks against the holy temple. He defiles this place by bringing Gentiles here. Oh boy. Luke said that led to pandemonium among the crowded temple precinct worshipers. He describes what happened next with these words: Paul was grabbed and dragged out of the temple, and immediately the gates were closed behind him.

As they were trying to kill him, word reached the commander of the Roman regiment that all Jerusalem was coming into an uproar. He immediately dispatched soldiers and officers ran down among the crowd. When the mob saw the commander and the troops coming, they stopped beating Paul. The Roman garrison near the temple was always on alert for problems at the temple, and fortunately they responded quickly, or Paul may have been killed by this mob. The commander immediately arrested him, and he tried to decipher from the crowd who he was and exactly what he had done to produce such a negative reaction. With one person and another shouting different accusations, which the Roman officer probably didn't understand, he ordered Paul taken to their headquarters so he could be questioned and they could sort this out.

The soldiers literally had to carry him on their shoulders to keep away from the people. Luke remembers this. They tried to protect him from this violent mob by carrying him up the steps to their headquarters. At the top of the steps, before they took him inside, Paul got the attention of the officer in charge and, speaking over the noise, asked, Hey, can I have a word with you? And the Roman commander was surprised Paul was speaking to him in Greek. He thought Paul was maybe some notorious criminal that he heard about from Egypt who had recently been causing problems in the area.

But Paul assured him, No, no, I'm a Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia. Let me speak to these people. And he was granted permission. And Luke says, So Paul, standing on the stairs, motioned to the people to be quiet, the mob. As soon as the crowd quieted, he addressed them in their own language. Wow, Paul was crazy bold, wasn't he?

What would he say in this hairy situation? We're going to find out next time as our journey through Acts continues to chapter 22. But let me say this as we wrap up this lesson. You know, I'm pretty sure Paul did not realize it at this point, but he would not be a free man again for several years. In fact, there's some question as to whether he would ever be free again. What happened when he returned to Jerusalem after so many years was certainly more than he bargained for.

But here's what I want to leave with you today. By that time, 57 A.D., Paul had now been a follower of Jesus for more than 20 years. For most of that time, after getting established in his own faith, he was busy tirelessly sharing the gospel, planting churches, and developing next generation leaders. So even if this turns out to be the end of the road for Paul's active ministry, Christianity has been well established now. There were already Christian churches stretching from Jerusalem to Rome that Paul had a major hand in founding. There were also many next generation leaders that he had won to Christ, modeled the Christian faith and leadership principles to, and shown what it meant to be a godly leader.

He had already this remarkable accomplishment. And regardless of what happens next, Christianity was set to continue its march forward because he understood and he practiced the law of legacy. Remember, the most successful leaders are those who realize their job is to reproduce an effective team of new leaders that will outlast them. If you're a Christian leader or want to be one, I hope you see how intentionally this was pursued by the Apostle Paul as he followed Jesus' own example, and how vital it was to early Christianity's success. It's very much what I've been trying to do in my little corner of the world for the last decade or so. We call it leadership development training, and close to 100 Christians have gone through that program developed by our local church.

If you're a Christian leader or a pastor listening to this, you should consider undertaking such an effort too. In the very last writing we have from Paul in our New Testament to Timothy, one of those he trained to succeed him, he penned this: Now the things that you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to reliable people who will be qualified to teach others also. That is, Timothy, my son in the faith, what you've learned from me, carefully pass it on to others who you qualify to pass it on to. That's the best way the gospel message and the Church of Jesus Christ will continue to move forward until Jesus returns. Thanks, Paul. Till, have you been passing on the good news of the gospel?

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