Leadership Lessons from Paul - Ben Stuart

in 2005, and it was interesting when that movie came out, Batman had to train under the tutelage of Liam Neeson. Around that same time, Obi-Wan Kenobi was being trained in Star Wars, and to become a Jedi, he had to study under Liam Neeson, Orlando Bloom wanted to fight for the kingdom of heaven, but before he could do that, he had to be forged into a soldier by Liam Neeson. And the observant asked the question, "What is the deal with Liam Neeson?" And Hollywood understood something that we all feel intrinsically, and it's this, that we want age, we want mentors, all of us want someone who's further than us in the road to look back and say, "This is the way, walk in it. Here's some learning tax I paid for you to avoid. Here's some things you need to know to accomplish what's been given to you." Now why do I mention that? Because that's where we are right now in Acts chapter 20. If you're just jumping in with us, we've been moving through the book of Acts over the last couple semesters. Acts chapter 1, we did two seasons ago, and it was about the birth of the Church of Jesus Christ and sort of the DNA of the people of Jesus. And then in Acts season 2, we looked at the expansion of the church, as it grew from a single city in Jerusalem, to become the multi-ethnic movement that was spanning across the Roman Empire. And now we're launching season 3 of the Book of Acts, the final season. And in it, we're going to watch the Apostle Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, make his way to the capital city of Jerusalem, and then on to the capital of the entire Roman Empire in Rome. And so we're going to watch in this season, politics and religion collide. Should be fun, right? But we're picking up at an interesting spot because Paul, as the gospel began to spread from Jerusalem, he went far west to tell people with no roots in the Bible who Jesus was. He established churches all throughout Asia and into Greece. And then the emperor of Rome, Claudius died, the emperor who had kicked all Jews out of

the capital of Rome. And so now the opportunity to take the gospel to Rome has arrived, Paul wants to go. And yet he's been establishing all these churches, he says, you know what, I need to go back to the OG Church in Jerusalem, make sure that they're cool with all that I've been doing and give them money because they were financially in jeopardy, and then I went ahead to Rome. And I'm going to go far east and then far west. And so what's interesting is Luke records this much what's happening in the life of the Apostle Paul. This is when he wrote 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans, but Luke will skip all that. He just focuses on the journey of Paul, and I skip the verses, but it's a lot of movement from one town to the next. You'll see as you read in your devotional part of this book. Luke is doing this on purpose. Luke who wrote the gospel of Luke, excuse me, wrote, yes, wrote the book of Acts and the gospel of Luke, there's a moment in the gospel of Luke as he's telling the story of Jesus that Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem and he begins to march toward the city where he know he'll be persecuted and killed. And as he walks towards his fate, he begins to teach his disciples all they need to know to lead the church after he's gone. It's often called the training of the 12, Jesus marching to his fate, training the 12 on the way. Luke who wrote Acts tells Paul's story almost in the same way. Paul says the Holy Spirit is constraining me to head to Jerusalem and I know persecution waits for me there. And where Jesus walked towards his fate in Jerusalem with his disciples, Paul will sail there with a multi-ethnic entourage. And yet as he does it, we get this speech where he says, "Let me train the leaders of my people on how to lead once I'm gone. Let me educate those who will lead the church on what a Christian leader looks like."

This is one of three speeches we get from Paul in the book of Acts. The first one was to a Jewish audience showing them from the Old Testament that the Messiah had to suffer and Jesus was that Messiah. The second one we got was to a Gentile, a multi-ethnic audience and Athens. It was way more philosophical. It was, "Hey, all this came from somewhere and that somewhere is someone and you were made by him and made to know him." Now this one is the only speech we get where he says, "I just want to talk to Christians, those who've put their faith in Jesus and specifically Christian leaders. Let me show you how to lead." Paul gives us the first leadership retreat that he doesn't want to go back into the city of Ephesus where he administered before because he didn't want to get hung up. He's trying to get to Jerusalem. He has them come 30 miles out and meets them on the coastline. Whether you're a Christian or not, the apostle Paul spread the message of Jesus so far that it still impacts all of our lives today. And what we get here is how I built this. And when a guy like that teaches like this, you want to take notes. And so here we're going to get leadership lessons from the great apostle. What is a Christian leader meant to do? And Paul will look at his past, he'll look at his present, and he'll look at their future. And from that we'll get five leadership principles from the apostle Paul. So he starts by looking at his past in verse 18. It says, "And when he came to them, he said to them, 'You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plot of the Jews, how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and to faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." Now, if you're taking notes, I want you to underline in verse 18, "You yourselves know

how I lived among you the whole time." And then right down next to it, demonstrate the message. It's the first leadership principle from Paul, "You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time." That's called integrity. Paul had an integrated life. He's going to tell them, "Remember what I taught, but before that he says, 'Remember how I lived.'" Because my life and my message, they matched. That's what integrity means. I'm an integrated life. My life was on display and it matched the message. And leaders, you want to be able to say that to those who follow you. So Paul will open annual clothes to speech, talking about himself and about the faithfulness of his ministry, which can sound arrogant, can sound self-serving. And there aren't arrogant, self-serving versions of talking all about yourself. This is not that. This is Paul saying, "Follow me as I followed Christ. Be like me," which some of us don't want to say that, it sounds too humble, but at the end of the day, yeah, you do. Parents, you want to be able to say that to your kids. Not just do what I say, but do like mom and dad did. We didn't do everything perfect, but we did some things right and we want you to follow what we did. You want to be a good model to your kids. Leaders, you don't want to be a hypocrite that when you give your people advice, they roll their eyes because they've seen your life and it doesn't fit the message. You want to live in such a way that you can say, "Live like me." That's a good thing to say. I remember I had a mentor once tell me what he tells people who are getting engaged all

the time. When they get married, we're called the sexual security before marriage and that's always a struggle when you love somebody and find them attractive and you want to touch them. He just said, "His speech, what to them was always this." He said, "You only get one story and this is it. What do you want to tell your kids? Do you want to tell your kids, do it like mom and dad did? Or do you want to tell them, "Don't do it like we did?" He says, "Think about the story you want to tell and live that story." Now I know as soon as I say that, some of you are like, "Well, I've already messed up. Well, this is the beauty of the gospel. Your story is not over." You can say, "Kids, I did some things wrong and I confessed and I repented and I learned and I changed." That's a good story and yet, the trajectory of your life, you want to have a life worth emulating and Paul says here, "Hey, I want you to live like I did. You yourselves know how I lived among you. You watched me and I'm going to tell you what I did because I want you to do it." Now, what did he do? That's distinctly Christian? Well, he gives you a participle, participates in it. I want you to know what I did. I served the Lord. That's what the Christian does. I answer to a higher authority. My quality of work did not go up and down based on how much I respected or liked the person I worked for. And my quality of work was not dependent on what everyone around me was doing. My conduct was guided by a higher calling.

So he says, "I served the Lord with humility." That doesn't mean like, "You all remember how humble I was?" Like he's not saying it weird like that. He's saying, "No, I wasn't domineering or demanding of special treatment." He circles back around to him at the end of this speech in verse 33, he says, "I coveted no one silver or gold or apparel." That's what he meant by humble. He said, "I didn't come preach the gospel and then demand a bunch of money or demand and nice clothes." He said, "I didn't say I was serving you, but really I was using you." I didn't say public servant when really I wanted to use the public to serve me. That's not the same. He said, "I had integrity and humility. I wasn't in this for me. I was trying to serve you." because the world's a hard place. I stayed in the game. And with trials, I faced hardship. He said, "I faced beasts and Ephesus. We were burdened beyond our strength. We despaired even of our life." He said, "I thought I was going to die there." He mentions here the plot of the Jews. That doesn't mean all Jews are bad. He was talking about there was a leadership contingent that was constantly threatening his life. Later, he'll be persecuted by Rome. At this point, it's more about his Jewish brothers to do it. And yet, in this moment, he says, "You know what? All this was hard, but when he wrote to the Corinthians, he said, "We despaired of our lives, but God made us rely on him. I lived by faith. God made me live by faith in front of you guys. So when I preach by faith, you could go, "Oh, like you do." And so my life and message matched. Donna and I say that all the time. We want our kids to watch us live by faith. I don't want them to hear dads stand up here and talk by faith and then live by fear and anxiety. I want them to see me live a life that I'm leaning so hard into God that if he's not true, I fall over. But if he is true, they see the power of God in a human life. That's my hope. We're meant to display the message. That gives you moral authority, by the way. It's a good question to ask in your devotions this week. Am I providing an example worth emulating? Paul looks at this team. He says, "I'll never see you again, but I tried to model for you how we're meant to live." But he didn't just demonstrate the message point too, as he declared the message.

Notice in verse 20, he says, "How I did not shrink back from declaring to you anything that was profitable and teaching you in public and from house to house. Testifying both to Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." He says, "I served the Lord and I did not shrink back. When it got hard, I kept going forward, not out of arrogance, but out of love. What did I do? I declared to you anything I could think of that would be profitable to you." If you're the leader in a business, a leader in a home, he said, "I evaluated the people under my care and influence and said anything I think will help them, I will say it." There's an old misquote of St. Francis of Assisi that says, "Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words." Go ahead and use them. They're necessary. Words are super helpful. So as a Christian, you say, "You know what? We want to live out a godly character that people will take God seriously because they see we live a different kind of life." But then at some point, you've got to tell them why. I see Christians do that all the time. Well, I just want to do lifestyle evangelism. They see my life and it helps them believe in the evangel, the gospel. You're like, "Yeah." But at some point, you've got to have the evangelism with the lifestyle, or else they'll come up with some alternative narrative. I don't know if she's really nice. Maybe she's from the south? Maybe he's hitting on me? No. It's that I serve the Lord and he's making me something new. And so here, Paul says, "Hey, I demonstrated the message and I declared I taught you. I testified. I was disseminating information." Teaching? And he says where he did it in public and from house to house. Little side note about church. That's why we do this in neighborhood nights. It's funny because there was a movement when I was younger where people were like, "The true church and acts met in homes." And the answer is, "Yes." And in large public rented spaces like in Ephesus. So be careful baptizing a system. Paul says, "I preached in public and I preached house to house that we minister in both." And then he gives you the message, testifying repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a great summary of the Christian message, by the way, if you're here investigating Christianity. To repent is to change course. The Bible says that we were all made in the image of God. We have dignity because of that. And we were made not just by God, but for him, made to know him. But all of us like sheep have gone astray. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We're not what we're supposed to be. And so the call of Christianity is first to repent. That means turn directions. I've been walking away from the God who made me. I don't even consider what he wants from my life. I want to turn and take God seriously. And as soon as you do that, what he puts in front of you is his son Jesus Christ. That God didn't leave us in our sin. The son of God arrived in our story. To give his life to pay for our sin, to rise, to give us hope in a future, and to change us from the inside out. And so he says, I want you to repent and put your faith in Jesus. And it's the same message, whether you're a Jew or you're a Greek, no matter what your background is, we all get in the same way. It's not that some of us need forgiveness and some of us don't, no we all do. That all of us need to repent and put our faith in Jesus. I served the Lord by speaking to you. I modeled grace, and I made known the message of grace. Parents were meant to do this, leaders, pastors, we're meant to do this. Then Paul says, if you look at my life, I demonstrated and declared the message.

I told you all I could that would benefit you. I kept pointing you to Jesus, right? Then he moves on to his present. Says, that's what happened back then. But he tells you now, when I did that, when I served you guys, when I spoke to you guys, I took a beating for that. He got hurt a lot. Why would he persist in doing that? And here we get his motivations in the present, verse 22. He says, now behold, I'm going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and affliction awaits me. Paul was led by the Spirit of God, and he says, the Spirit of God is leading me towards trouble. Constrained, but not knowing. It's some of your least favorite parts of spirituality, right? Some of us go, God, call me where to go, but then give me the specific why and what benefits I'll receive for having done so, then I'll consider your proposal, look at my counsel, and we'll give you a decision. And God's like, that's not how this works. Isn't it a democracy? He says, I run this. You obey me, 'cause you trust my character and believe I know what's best for you. And so constrained, but not knowing.

That's a horrible place to be. God, I wanna obey you, but give me guarantees. No. Other than you can trust my character, and it's good. That's what God does. And so here he says, he's sending me to Jerusalem. I don't know what's gonna happen, except I get a sense of imprisonment and affliction coming. Which I know wages were against so many people because I read a survey recently that the highest priority of a lot of young people in America is self-care. My number one priority is care for self. I'm a fan of self-care. But if that's the end result, then the end terminates on you. And in the gospel, the spirit of God is not just a means for self-care. The spirit of God wants to lead you into the purposes God has for you. If you look in the Old Testament, when God gathers a people, he says, I'm gonna give you the promised land. And he puts them in land not tucked away in some place safe. He puts them in the middle of every nation. They were conquered by every empire throughout human history. God put them in the middle of crazy town. Why did he do that? 'Cause he says, I will protect you, but I wanna position you to make a difference. I don't want you to live a safe, meaningless life. I want you to live a meaningful life

that without my power is very stressful. But if you trust me, you'll have a piece that surpasses understanding. People will say, how do you have peace in the midst of this chaos? And you say, 'cause there's a God in heaven that I've leaned so far into that you see his power at work in my life. Yes, you're meant to care for yourself spiritually as you walk out God's purposes for your life, which will often lead you to crazy. It will. And so here the spirits lead him to Jerusalem. There's trouble there, but he'll change the world from there. And so in your ruthless elimination of hurry, don't eliminate meaningful work. Delete your social media, but don't delete serving the Lord because it may affect your peace. No, you serve the Lord even if he leads you into trouble. And so I'm gonna go, well, I hate that idea. And this all sounds ominous. Like, why would I do that? Well, here we get Paul's motivation in our third point, verse 24. I do not account my life of any value, nor is precious to myself. If only I may finish my course in the ministry that I receive from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

He uses accounting language. He says, I look at my life and I look at this message. He says, and when I see them both, I can let go of this, I can't let go of this. This is worth more than my life. That's your third point. A great leader determines what's worth dying for. And Paul says, I have a message. I have meaning that means more than the man. I have a mission that's bigger than me. It's worthy of my life. You want that in life. If you don't know what you're willing to die for, then you don't know what you're living for. And living just to keep yourself alive is not enough. The human soul is made for purpose. And you are so valuable. Don't settle for a purpose that's beneath you. God is calling you to know him and to walk with him to make a difference that changes eternity. That's the Christian message. I get to know God. I get to walk with God. who come behind me. And Paul says, you know what, pain's coming. I will accept that. Why? Because I have a message that's worth more than my life. What he's saying there is my king gave me a mission. My quarterback gave me the ball.

And I'm a big enough fan for my team that I'm not going to go, well, I don't know if I run this. Is that linebacker going to tackle me? Because if he is, I am not doing this. He's like, no, I am so bought into this team, give me the ball. You might get hit. Go ahead and try it. I'm running into that D because I got a goal line that's worthy of my life. That's Paul's mentality. He uses an athletic language. He says, God gave me a race and I'm running it. I want to go and go because it's worthy of my life. All true relationships are free and costly. My wife, Donna, I did not pay to marry me. That may come as a surprise to some of you. It was free. It was free to marry her. And yet, it has cost me dearly, so much time, so much money, so much effort, so much sacrifice that I have done because of her. And yet, you're laughing and there's no sympathy. What's the matter with you? Divolging my pain. Because you know, yeah, it costs you. But it was worth it. What you got was better. And when you look at your marriage, mine with Donna, and you go, hey, your sacrifices are not worth comparing

to the benefits you have in union with that woman. And Paul looks at Jesus and goes, hey, I might get beat up a little for my association with him. I might lose my job. That's fine. Yeah, it costs me. But if I put the cost up next to him, it's not even worth comparing. He says, I know the king. I know God, I got a future. I got hope. I got the biggest questions in life answered. And so I'm going. I'm going wherever he leads because I trust him. And if you don't know Jesus like that, keep coming back because that's what we're selling here. We're not selling just a little bit of self-care, although your life will improve and you'll get more peace as you study the Bible, the record show. But we want to call you something bigger than that, that I have a relationship with God. It's free. The grace of God is free, but it will cost you. You'll be constrained in not knowing where you're going. And yet, the mission is more important than the man. And Paul says, were God sending me? I want to go. Braveheart, set it on the movie poster. All men die, few truly live. And in the gospel, we live for the greatest of all causes.

So Paul says in verse 25, "Now behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. Therefore I testify to you this day. I'm innocent of the blood of all. I did not shrink back from declaring the whole counsel of God." He says, you know what? I can't control outcomes, but I can control inputs. I don't know what people are going to do, but I'm responsible for what I'm going to do. And anything I thought would profit you, I did. And now that I'm looking at the end of our relationship, Paul's not going to die yet. Paul's got 10 more years before he's dead. But he says, I won't be with you guys anymore. He says, when I assessed what I did with you all, I gave you all I had. And let me challenge you, for those of you who are just in DC for a season, pray like that. Study this passage. Paul was in Ephesus for a season, and then he left. And as he looked back, he said, I did all I could to help them. Ask yourself, is that true of you? That I proclaim the kingdom, show people the grace of God. I displayed it and declared it in the way I lived my life, in the way I talked with people. Ask yourself that question. You want to leave it all on the field. And Paul says, I did it.

Now I'm leaving. It's your turn. So here he looks at the future, and he tells them, here's what you guys got to do. Verse 28, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. Here he's looking at the overseers, those who are in charge of the church. He called them earlier elders, which is kind of a position of honor. Here they're called overseers, episcopos. Ephes over, scope passes to look like you get scope. Episcable comes from this idea of overseer. I look over you. It's more about the actions of the office, someone who leads the church, that team that guides them is meant to oversee, and he pictures the church as a flock of sheep. And so he tells them, pay careful attention to yourself and to the flock to which the Holy Spirit made you overseers, to care for the church. So a little statement about church. This is not my church. It's not Ben's church. It's not Louie's church, it's not Passion's church. This is God's church. And so here Paul says, "Hey, God ordained to draw people to himself."

And then he purchased the church with his own blood. What does he mean by that? The blood of his own. He's talking about Jesus, Saul. Sin separated us from God. The wages of sin is death. Jesus never sinned, he didn't deserve to die. So the Bible tells us that he who knew no sin, Jesus became sin for us. Jesus said, "I will pay your debt to set you free." And so the church of Jesus Christ is those who've been purchased by his blood. This is Jesus's church. We used to tell people that all the time. When we were launching the church, I would tell people that. When we were in Uber or stuff like that. So what brought you to DC? We're launching a church. What kind of church is it? It's a Jesus church. No one liked that answer. I don't know what that means. They were looking for worship styles, teaching styles, all kinds of stuff. I was like, "I can tell you what kind of music we have. I can try to tell you what I'm gonna preach." But at the end of the day, I just wanna keep making this clear. This is Jesus's church.

He bought it. And yet, Paul looks at these leaders and say, "Jesus bought it." And then he looked at you and said, "Take care of it." Some of you have done this. If you have kids, if you do a will, you gotta go, "Okay, if I die, who takes care of my kids?" It's a pretty sobering thing. I don't know if you've ever had this. There's someone to come to you. I've had it a few times, where a dear friend has come to me and said, "Hey, I'm filling out my will. If I die, will you care for my kids?" That's a serious conversation. Even if they're in good health, they just have to picture that. And here Jesus says, "I gave my life for these kids. Take care of them." That's what Paul's doing to these elders here. He purchased them, "You take care of them." And that word, "Take care" is the idea of guard them. So he says, "Hey, I wanna demonstrate the message of Jesus. I wanna declare the message of Jesus." But then number four, if you gotta defend the people of Jesus, defend them against what? Verse 29, "I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.

And from among your own selves will arise, men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them, therefore be alert." It's the word, "Watch out." Remember that for three years, I didn't cease night or day to admonish every one of you with tears. He says, "Hey guys, I want you to live like I did. I want you to preach the message I preached, and then I want you to defend the flock of Jesus." Why defend them? Because the wolves are coming. Who are the wolves? And the Old Testament Ezekiel says this about some bad leaders. Her princes in her midst are like wolves, tearing the prey, shedding blood, destroying lives to get dishonest gain. He says, "There'll be some people that want to get authority and power in order to exploit and use people rather than serve them." Paul said, "I serve the Lord by serving you. There'll be other people who want authority so they can use you." Wolves don't care about the flourishing of the flock. They care about devouring the flock for themselves. He says, "There'll be people that want to hurt and abuse you for their own gain. You got to watch out for those." Chronicles of Narnia, I don't know if you've ever read that,

the little pevency children go to Narnia and they're little school kids and they're little school kid outfits, but they've been invited into this great battle to participate under the leadership of the great king, Aslan, who's a picture of Jesus. And one of the first things they do is they give Peter a sword because Peter has to learn how to fight the wolves and they make Peter fight him. They make Peter go to war against that which would threaten the lives of those who love, that Peter has to learn how to fight the wolves. And here he says, "Hey, wolves are coming. They're going to devour the flock." And here he says, "They're not just coming from without "verse 30, from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them." He says, "From among your own crowd, people will get up and they'll speak twisted things." What does that mean? It means they'll have the truth and then they'll put a spin on it and distort it for the goal of leading you away from the church. It's interesting. He's not getting us out of nowhere. Jesus said in Matthew 7, "Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing."

If you wonder where wolves and sheep's clothing come from, it comes from Jesus. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they're ravenous wolves. Then he says, "You will recognize them." So he says, "There's people that look like sheep, but they're actually wolves." How do you know the difference? And he says, "You see the fruit of their labors. You have to look over time at what they produce." Paul tells you their goal will be the twist truth to draw you away. So this is a whole other sermon we give for a whole other day, but I do want to say, "Be careful who you're learning and studying from." You go, "What is the fruit of their teaching? There's a whole industry now online of people that want to teach about the church." And often they'll say they're like being prophetic 'cause the prophets would say hard things about Christians and Christian leaders in the Bible. And that's true. But the goal of the prophets was always repentance and restoration. There's some people you'll follow online and their goal is not repentance and restoration. Their goal is to tear everything down, destruction. And what they'll often argue is they'll say, "Look, here's a bad Christian leader. Therefore all Christian leaders are bad.

Therefore the church is corrupt. Therefore you can't trust any of them. And therefore when you look and you just stop going to church, you just stop being involved in a Christian community and you're just online getting anxious and angry. And I just want to warn you, be careful with what you're listening to. I got off social media this summer. And if you've never done it, I get to tell you, it's pretty wonderful. (audience laughs) The serenity I experienced was amazing. But in preparation for this talk, for you, I just opened it full choke. All right, let's listen to it. And I have been anxious and angry all week. And I get it from all sides. I follow everybody. I get everybody's upset, crazy relatives, right? Like on social media, like politically, spiritually, religiously, and you just go, what's the net of all this? It's to trust no one, hate anyone, defend an attack. And it's like easy, easy. What's the goal here? And Paul says, when you come to the church, man, yes, are there bad church leaders? Yes. Are there distorted church leaders? Yes. Are there church leaders that extort people?

Yes. Is it all church leaders are most? No. No. So there's wolves, but not everybody's wolf. And the way you see wolves is they want to twist the truth and draw people away. What you see the gospel do is it'll confront people about sin, but the goal's always restoration and hope, right? And you just got to see, over time, what it is you're dealing with. One of the hardest things as a parent is to do this with kids. When you have to teach your little kids that the world's a dangerous place. One of my least favorite things is a parent. You raise them in a safe home. They're playing with their blocks and everyone around them loves them. And they just know that like every adult around me, I just love and trust, they have my best interests in mind. And then you take them to the store and they're like, "Candy, let's go." And you go, "No, no, no, no, no, no. "We don't know him." Well, he's got candy. And everyone picks me up. Yeah, but he can't. Why? 'Cause we don't know that guy. Why? It's not everybody safe.

The world's a crazy place, kids. That's a hard thing to teach kids. But if you don't, you don't help your kids. You've got to prepare them for the dangers of the world. And Paul's saying, "Hey, there are people "that will teach spiritual things that are bad. "And you've got to watch for people that will take truth "and twist it to lead you away." You'd be careful about that. Beware. And some of you go, "Well, Ben, are you about to end?" 'Cause that's a horrible place to end a sermon. Everyone get shook. Trust no one. Amen. Trouble without, trouble within, trouble in myself. What do I do? Your fifth thing is you depend on the grace of God. Paul says, "Hey, the wolves are coming and I'm leaving." But verse 32, he says, "But now I commend you." Parateeth in me. I put you alongside the kindness of God. There's real wolves in the world. They'll start podcasts, go launch churches. Some of you got church hurt, you had some pastor do something horrible and it's made you not want to trust anybody. You know, there's wolves all around me. And you go, "Yeah, but no wolf beats God. "There's a God in heaven."

And he says, "Hey, I Paul am leaving, "but you're not alone. "I commend you to the grace of God. "God, verse wolf, God wins. "So I commend you to him and to the word of his grace, "his kindness, which is able to build you up dangerous world out there there's not everyone's gonna be honest not everyone's gonna be good but there's a god in heaven who wants to offer you grace kindness you and i don't deserve and there's a community of people he's sanctified that means they're not perfect but but he's forgiven them drawn him into his family and he's making them more holy so he says hey you tuck in with the tribe you're going to be all right animals you've all seen different animal documentaries it's that lone animal that gets led off that gets devoured it's in groups that were safe and here he says hey you've got god above you you've got the father who ordained that a church would be built jesus who purchased it with his love and the holy spirit who fills you and you got each other those who are being sanctified watch each other are they gracious are they truthful are they living the message is there consistency i see their fruit over time is it producing good then i'm gonna walk together and you're gonna be all right you're gonna move it's interesting i'll close with this uh i love to stand in the lobby and visit with whoever wants to and our church i just like getting to know people out there and so there's different seasons where it's a lot of parents dropping their kids off in dc and i was a college minister and i i used to see that all the time in college station texas i would lead a ministry all these parents would come drop off their kids and you could see on their faces these parents are nervous i'm taking my baby and i'm dropping them off in this town i'm gonna leave and in college station they were essentially asking me is my baby gonna be okay and i'd be like yes they'll be fine this is a great university so many bible studies so much that's great your kid will be fine it's interesting here when parents like i'm dropping off my baby will she be okay like i don't know where she living don't run at night keep your head on a swivel girl like i'm just like i i don't know right but i tell them there are wonderful people in this community you can grow in your faith here and i just did a wedding for two people in our church one of the 23 and when i was doing their wedding i met the girl's dad and as he was talking it was

so fun to say hey you know what your daughter is great i've watched the fruit of her life over time god's changing her life and the guy she's marrying is great i've watched the grace of god change him over time and so you could tell dad's like i'm about to send my baby off is she gonna be okay she is linked up with a great man she's got the spirit of god changing her she's a part of a wonderful community she gonna be all right and yeah the world's a dangerous place but your daughter's in a good spot and friend let me tell you you have jesus christ the son of god not saying earn my love i'm given deep free that's what grace is i want you to be knit together with me and jesus says i'm gonna put my spirit in you they'll change from the inside out and then i'm gonna knit you together with my people so you can walk together and you got christ is your husband the spirit empowering you god's people being sanctified alongside you you're gonna be all right we're gonna be all right whatever the world brings we're gonna be all right and we want to be a people that say you know what i'm going to run with the king and by his grace have a wake of blessing behind us you You You