Christ Church (Moscow, ID)

In order to address the subject of ambition rightly, we have to remember some other things first. There is a certain kind of desire that every human being has to deal with, and this is a desire that tends to veer toward envy. If God has not given us the grace of being able to see this in ourselves, we will come into competitive situations motivated in the wrong way entirely. And the same thing is true of our ambitions. Our ambitions will lust after what God has never given.

To date we have looked at Salvation by Grace, after which we considered Sanctification by Grace. We have now come to the third message in this series, which is Glorification by Grace. We have been taken out of the miry clay (salvation), and we are in the process of being cleaned up (sanctification). But where are we being taken to? What is our destination?

Psalm 132 is one of the Psalms of Ascent, sung by the people of Israel when they traveled up to Jerusalem. I take it to be penned by Solomon, given that the language of this psalm is similar to Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple (2 Chronicles 6:41). You have to keep in mind when reading the Psalms of Ascent that the saints of old sang them on the way up to Jerusalem, but you sing them having already trekked up to the heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22). This can be a bit disorienting. And to make things even more interesting, they sang them going up to the holy city, but you sing them with the holy city coming down on your heads (Revelation 21:2–3).

This morning, we’re going to talk about envy. This is one of the most subtle and unrecognized sins that we face as Christians. Envy gets into everything, and it’s like a cancer of the soul. Proverbs 14:30 says “Envy makes the bones rot.” And when it takes root, it overpowers us. “Who can stand before envy?”

So Malta is due south of Sicily, and so they have come all the way to the west. They then sailed to Syracuse, which was in Sicily, and then to Rhegium, which right at the toe of Italy’s boot. They made their way up north to Puteoli, a port on the west coast of Italy, about 150 miles south of Rome. They came to Three Taverns, which was about 30 miles south of Rome. Some believers came out to welcome Paul there, encouraging him, and accompanying him back to Rome.

As we have gone through the book of Acts, we have had numerous occasions to notice just how tough the apostle Paul was. The shipwreck recorded in this chapter occurred about four years after the writing of 2 Corinthians. And in that book, Paul mentions three times he had been in shipwrecks, including one night and day adrift on the sea (2 Cor. 11:25). And that means that this shipwreck was his fourth one.

In this chapter, we learn the basic structure of Paul’s evangelistic message. What was the content of the gospel that he preached? And what was the process through which unbelievers were brought to faith?

As the crow flies, Caesarea was around 47 miles from Jerusalem. But because of terrain and available roads, it was around 65 miles to travel. Paul in Roman custody down in Caesarea was out of the reach of the Jews. But he was not far enough away to be out of their thinking. Two years later, he was still very much on their minds.

Lying is not just something that people do when they are little boys getting into the cookie jar. We sometimes naively assume that greater responsibility means that there must be greater levels of integrity. But it is often the case that the higher up you go—whether in civil or ecclesiastical government—the greater the incentives and pressures to give way to deceit. The cookie jar is much bigger, and deception rises to an art form.

We see in this passage how the sovereign God moves all things in accordance with His purpose and will, and He turns the machinations of the wicked back upon them. God had told Paul that he was going to bear witness to Christ in Rome; he need not worry. All plots against him would misfire.