Hey. You're listening to Cut for Time, a podcast from Faith Church located on the North side of Indianapolis. My name is Claire Kingsley. Each week, I'll sit down with one of our preaching pastors to discuss their Sunday sermon. Cut for time is a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation, and they'll share with us a few things that we didn't hear from the sermon on Sunday.

Thanks for listening. Alright. Welcome, everybody, to Cut For Time. I'm not Claire Kingsley. Claire has been sick in bed for at least a week now and is, you know, doesn't sound so great, vocally at the moment.

I'm not I'm not Claire Kingsley either. Yeah. That's right. So I'm Joey. I'm sitting down with Jeff, pastor Jeff, who, preached this last weekend to talk about Acts let's see.

You had a long one. It was Acts Yeah. 21 37 through 2222, if I remember correctly. Wow. Good memory.

Hey. Well, I did scripture reading, so that helped. Oh, yeah. Alright. Why don't you, recap your sermon from Sunday for us before we jump into some questions?

Yeah. So like you said, this is, a bit of a longer narrative passage. Paul has been, at the center of a big conflict in the temple. He was going there to fulfill some ritual vows, trying to smooth things over with the Jewish people in Jerusalem. He ends up at the center of a riot, has to be dragged out by the Roman garrison officials, and then that launches into this passage where Paul respectfully asks, could I please address the crowd?

And clarifies that he's not the person that Garrison Commander thinks he is. He's actually a respectable Pharisee, Jew from Tarsus, educated. He goes to speak to crowd, has an opportunity to tell this con not is conversion story even the right thing to say of song? It's a calling story, conversion story. Yeah.

Yeah. Seeing the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. So we get to hear that story again, and we're gonna hear it again, towards the end of acts as well, which is one of the things we can talk about in a minute. Paul both demonstrates a a a love and compassion connection with these people, as well as some courage to say some challenging things that that would've that he knew would be hard for them to hear, but that they needed to hear about who Jesus is, and his being the center of God's work to draw together Jew and Gentile together. And it's particularly when he gets to that part that the whole thing blows up again.

Beautiful. So we talked about how Paul is modeling being a faithful witness to Jesus even not just in the middle of opposition, but when it looks like there's, like, no positive outcome from this. And that faithful witness is less about what we say or the results that we see than it is about the way that we're reflecting Jesus. So we looked at some kind of key elements of that in this passage about Paul's connection with these people, his courage in saying some hard things, his compassion to risk his own life to tell them what they needed to hear in order to be reconciled to God, and a clarity to focus on Jesus instead of making it about him and how he's being offended and wronged. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. It was great. And, so I I got to hear it twice. I was in both services, and those four c's really stuck with me.

But I think more impactful was probably the story you shared, from your own experience with your brother. And this was I think you'd said, gosh. This is must have been 25 years ago at this point. Yeah. Right?

So, back when you were transitioning from the business world and a marketing degree and a you even got a graduate degree in marketing. Right. Right? You were working that corporate ladder, and God said, hey. Actually, I want you in ministry.

And you went through that whole process. Right. Now did your entire family react the way your brother did, or or was it mixed? I I think I shared the story, like, telling my dad that was challenging because, he I mean, I went to the grad school that he taught at in Northwestern. And so I was, like, literally following in his footsteps.

And then to have the call to say, like, actually, I am getting off that track and going in a totally different direction. I mean, you go to seminary, spend money to become downwardly mobile. He did. And, you know, he didn't respond with hostility. He even made some good kinda dad response, a long pause.

And then, like, okay. If that's what you really think you want to do, we'll support you. We'll encourage you. You know? Yeah.

My oldest brother was, the one that was kind of openly not kind of, was openly hostile. Then the middle brother, Brad, was very supportive, encouraging. And I I think in a face stories, that I did a number of years ago, I talked about talking and working through that with Emilia and, shared some of that. I I think her response was, well, God may have called you into ministry, but he didn't tell me that. So if he wants me to go along, he should say something to me.

So that let me know, oh, we're not going to seminary right away, Katie. And and it was a process of Yeah. Several years of being mentored and encouraged, having some opportunities to lead and teach and preach a couple times and working talking with the elders in our local church and figuring out what does this look like. And then both of us coming to the point of saying, okay. We we think this is now the time to turn the page and step into this calling, for sure.

So, yeah. It was definitely mixed responses Yeah. From family members. And so your one brother, who was fairly antagonistic Right. But your other brother, I mean, ultimately, he ended up following you in the ministry as well.

Yeah. He he my older brother, Brad, whom I've mentioned you know, I kind of looked up to him as a second father figure. He was someone I really respected, admired, and, he was very supportive, strong believer, very supportive of calling to ministry, but had, towards towards the end of his life, number of years ago, decided he thought God was calling him into ministry. Mhmm. So it was a really neat connection there where I, in a sense, got to mentor and encourage him Mhmm.

In in this calling and pastoral ministry. Yeah. That was really cool. Yeah. So with your, but with your brother, who wanted to let you know what he had well, he he wanted to talk to you about your calling filtered through his own experience Yeah.

With his own pain and his own heartaches, difficulty with the church, with all of that. I mean, you shared some about how difficult it must have been for him growing up. That's a really good way to put it, Joey. I'm struck by the way you just phrased that. He he he was responding to that filtered through his experience and perception.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you his own brother was becoming the enemy Yeah. Or or the person who had, you know, the symbol of the people who had hurt him in the past.

Yeah. So, I mean, you, your brother, you still talk occasionally. You know? How often do you think back on that car ride since, like, oh, I wish I'd said this or I wish I'd said that? Like, did that haunt you for decades, or was that something you were able to well, you said it was the worst car ride of your life.

Yeah. But did you kind of move past that at some point or say, okay. God's sovereign. Like, I'll I'll do you know, I did as well as I could. I mean, how how do you continue to think on that?

Man, that that's a really good question because it's, you know, not just about me and that car ride, but we probably all have all kinds of experiences like that. You know, marriage and parenting and, you know, trying to be witnesses for Jesus in in different arenas. And, that one as yeah. It's been a while. It it's been a while to process through that and allow God to help me both acknowledge how I blew it.

I mean, how I did well up to a point, but then ultimately, you know, made it about me and filtering what you said about my brother. You know, I was filtering his response to me through my experience of what he was saying to me instead of, you know, trying to focus on Jesus. And, yeah, that that's been hard to own and acknowledge, because my oldest brother doesn't have many Christians in his life at all. So I feel the weight of man, if it if it's not me, what opportunities does he have to ever even really hear the gospel or encounter, someone who's trying to walk with Jesus faithfully? But, you know, I I still also have to recognize that, Jesus is sovereign over all that, that, he's even at work in our failures and our mistakes.

And, yeah, my brother and I have had an opportunity to talk about that conversation and process through it a little bit. I mean, for one thing, he lives out in California. We don't see each other, have a lot of opportunities even to talk, but we have been able to mend some fences relationally. Yeah. It's still people some folks were asking after the sermon, like, so tell me about their relationship with your brother and what that is.

And it's like, man, it's, I I think about the How much time do you have? Yeah. Look at the line towards the end of The Lord of the Rings, where Sam is back home in the Shire and this other, young lady he's interested in make some comment to him, and and Tolkien says it was a statement that required either a thousand words or no words. Mhmm. And that's kinda what it feels like.

Well, you know, it would take 20 minutes to unpack all that. The short answer is it's complicated. It's it's a difficult relationship. I'm hopeful, you know, prayerful, and, honestly, even reliving this story and sharing it with people, God's been using that in a renewed way in my own heart, to soften my heart and compassion for my brother. And, yeah, how am I praying?

How much am I praying for him regularly even though I don't sit him that often or talk that much? Like, I I wanna be more faithful in praying for him that if it's not me, that God will bring faithful followers of Jesus in his path who can can engage with him. So it's yeah. It's it's complicated. There's there's a lot there, and and this is just one little facet of the relationship that is really hard in a lot of ways.

So how do I love my brother well at a distance through a very difficult relationship with a lot of twists and turns and hurts and misunderstandings and, yeah, different expectations for the relationship. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing all that with us and what what you shared in the sermon, of course.

Well, you had a little bit, you had a shorter time slot this last Sunday because we took some time to celebrate Tom, Tom Macy's retirement. So with a little bit shorter, sermon slot. I assume there's stuff you had to cut out. What, what'd you have to leave on the floor that you can share with us? One thing that came out from, one of the commentaries that I read that was just an observation, that I thought was helpful is this is now the second time that Paul is telling you Luke is recounting Paul's story of encountering the risen Jesus.

And I mentioned we're gonna hear it a third time Yep. Coming up in a few chapters. And and a couple of commentators pointed out something that gets repeated 3 times, in the book is really significant. Like, this this is sit up and pay attention. And the idea that Luke is repeating what he wants us to get, that acts as the story of what God is doing through his people by the spirit.

And if this this story of Paul's being a witness to the risen Jesus is that important, it's a it's a message for us and about us as well. That just as Paul has these multiple opportunities to tell the story of what Jesus has done in his life and who he is and what the gospel is about, that's true of us. So it's Luke is picturing Paul modeling, I think, for us, in the in the second half of the book of Acts, what our lives can look like, both in the, you know, hopefully, we see success and response and and people hearing the gospel and God moving in powerful ways, but also being faithful to be witnesses to Jesus and the difficulty and the opposition and the rejection and the trust that those are also opportunities to witness to Jesus. And we leave the results in God's hands while we are trying to be faithful followers of Jesus who are witnessing to who he is and what he's done, to the people that he brings across our paths. Yes.

So getting this story of the risen Jesus through Paul's telling of meeting Christ three times is significant in itself, and something to keep in mind as we're heading through this next large section towards the end of Acts. Yeah. Yeah. And that's I know we've talked about it off and on. I mean, you think of the the limits the just the physical limits on papyri, the how big of a papyri scroll can be, how much space it takes to write letters.

Right? There's no this isn't like Luke's opening up a Word document, and he can just keep going as long as he wants to. Right. Like, at some point, you you physically run out of space, and you would take the space to tell the same story multiple times, even to take the space to tell, like you mentioned in this sermon this last Sunday, to spend the last, like, 8 chapters of the book talking about Paul basically in prison in chains, getting pulled closer and closer to Rome. Like, these are It's significant that this is included.

Like, there's reasons that Luke would choose, under the holy spirit's inspiration, to include these particular stories. It'll be fun to kinda work those out over the last couple of months. There's also obviously, we've talked about it before, and it's gonna come up, over these next chapters, the paralleling of Paul's life to Jesus' life. Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem, and encounters opposition, rejection, and people turning away. We're gonna see that pattern repeated in the life of Paul.

And I I Luke's message is not like, so, you know, that's definitely what's gonna happen to all of us. But I think he's very clearly saying, following Jesus faithfully means we can at least expect that. We may not experience it in the same way, but that is par for the course for followers of Jesus. Just as Paul warns the elders in Ephesus a couple of chapters ago, we must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom. So we're heading down this path now that, like Jesus head towards Jerusalem, the cross, is gonna look more narrow, more difficult, fewer people coming around him.

There's no great stories of success. And can I trust in my life that when I'm seeing those things, it doesn't mean that God has manning me? Paul's I just that came to mind as we're talking here. I mean, Paul had expressed, like, I I wanna go to Rome to preach the gospel. Give rise to the Romans.

I hope to come to you Yep. And bring some seasonality again before this. Right. Yep. Right.

And so the way that God is gonna actually fulfill that plan and and Paul's desire is through a lot of suffering and difficulty and pain and loss. And Paul is willing to say, okay. It's worth it. And I think that's meant to cause us to reflect. Is following Jesus worth it?

Yeah. And the difficulty and and the loss, if this is accomplishing God's will, can I can I trust that God is actually using it for his purposes and for some good that I may not even see? Mhmm. Absolutely. Alright.

Well, we yeah. So there was one question that we got texted in, and it was about You made a comment about baptism, that Jews did not want to, you know The kind of baptism that John practiced or that Paul showed up and then said, hey, I was baptized because of sin, that would be pretty offensive to Jews. So there there was ritual cleansings in Jewish religious observances. Like, we talked about those recently with, Paul going through the purification for those who had traveled in gentile territory. Right?

He had to go to the traditional bath. I think it's called a mikvah or something like that. Tom Waltz is the one who should be answering this question because he taught a whole class, a Grow class, on, like, 1st century Judaism and the religious observances and all of that stuff that's just happening in the background and all that. So but we got a question that was basically just asking, like trying to square the whole, like, Jews don't get baptized with but there was ritual cleansing thing. Right.

So any insight there to help us out? I'll defer to Tom Waltz. Yeah. Is that always a you know what? That's always the right answer.

Defer to Tom. That's actually really good. Whether it's pastor Tom or Tom Waltz. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom knows. It's safe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Because, I remember hearing once, you know, the the thing about John's baptism was not so much well, there was a couple of things about it that were offensive. One is that it wasn't at the temple. It was at the Jordan River. Right. And the second was that it it was not a ritual cleansing so much it was as it was a way of of symbolically signifying, like, all of me is dirty, and I need to be clean I need to be cleansed.

And this is also happening, like, while the sacrificial system is in place as well. So it's like there are other ways to to pursue forgiveness of sin, and yet there was something about baptism that's like, well, but I have to go to a wild guy you know, some wild man in the in the desert by the river by the dirty river to get baptized when we have it all right here at the temple. That's part of what's going on. I think I think that's part of it for sure as well as what, John was communicating in in baptism. And what Jews would have communicated in the baptism of gentile proselytes is this is an initiation into the community of God and into the life of God.

And to tell Jewish people, you need to have this right that pictures You're Jewish, but you're not part of the family. Right. You're not really part of God. I mean, I think it's just it to me, it's part and parcel with Jesus talking to Nicodemus about you must be born again. You can't see the kingdom of God unless you're born again.

And, I mean, that's being pictured in baptism. So I think these these symbols and rights come together to picture, in a way that would have been offensive, understandably, to Jewish people to say, like, well, you're blind, and and you're you need sight, and you're dead, and you need new birth, and you're you're outside of the people of God, and you need to be brought in. That was very challenging, and and hard for many of those Jewish people to hear. And honestly, I you know, not wanting to go too far afield, I think it's still hard for Jewish people in contemporary culture to hear that. And I think that's the the breaking point in a sense, conversationally and and relationally, spiritually of of the gospel in some people's lives is to hear you're not automatically in.

We're we're not automatically children of God. We're we're dead, and and we need new birth. We're blind, and we need to see. And for us to be able to communicate that in a way that's respectful and compassionate and not, arrogant as though we, you know, we're the ones that are looking down on the people that are outside and unclean and But instead to say, look, we're just people who are amazed at the kindness and the grace and the rescue of Jesus, and we want to invite everyone to experience it. Because everyone needs it.

It, and Jesus wants everyone to experience his rescue in life. Really? Light in their lives. Yeah. But Yeah.

I think sometimes we forget how psychologically humbling conversion is Mhmm. To, especially for adults, to acknowledge I've gone my whole life believing, thinking, building my life on one thing, and that's completely wrong or or largely wrong, and I need to go in a whole another direction. Like, this this is really humbling. Yeah. So it's why we have to pray for the Holy Spirit to be moving in people's hearts and lives.

So And and I think it's, you know, again, where we see in the gospels, over and over and and through Acts, you know, the the gospel really resonating with people who know that they're and poor and needy and sick and Yeah. How people who are often successful and intelligent and prosperous and well established, that's hard to hear. You're on the wrong path. Yeah. To think you got it all figured out, then Yeah.

Yeah. Well, hey. This was great. I enjoyed sitting in for Claire, though I do hope and pray that she gets better and is back by next week. No no offense, but amen.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Alright. Well, thanks for joining us for Cut for Time, and we'll see you all again next week.

Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Cut for Time. If you wish to submit questions to our pastors following their sermon, you can email them to podcast at faith live it out dot org or text them into our faith church texting number, and we'll do our best to cover it in the week's episode. If this conversation blessed you in any way, we encourage you to share it with others. Thanks for listening. We'll be back again next week.