One of my favorite memes about Chuck Norris.
I know. If you don't know, Chuck Norris
went to be with the Lord a couple days ago and he was
somebody who was integral in my upbringing, right?
I watched all those karate movies, Van Damme, Bruce Lee,
all of it, but the memes didn't catch on until the mid 2000s and
one of them was Chuck Norris doesn't do push ups, he pushes
the earth down. But there's one and all of those
are fictitious, but there's actually one that is true.
The grave will not hold Chuck Norris.
Why? Because Jesus was his Lord, and
someday when everything comes down, he will be resurrected.
So there's only one meme that works, and it's the one that
only God can deliver. Let's pray Lord, this morning
we're coming in from all different places and different
things on our brains. So for the next little bit,
could we just focus on you? Can we just focus on your word?
Can we just focus on what it means and how we should then go
live? It's your name, we pray.
Amen. Last week, did you know this was
a 2 parter? Usually the blog gives it away,
right, that whoever's preaching the blog kind of preps you for
who that is. But last week we looked at Acts
5 and we saw a contrast between the believers who were kind of
all in and those who held back. Now, the big word that was kind
of attached to the word held back was nosphisimi, and I had a
lot of fun conversations about that after the service last
week. And what's interesting is that
last week had to do a lot with people's possessions, right?
The things that are tangible, the things that they have, you
can lay them down, whatever. Today is a different kind of
possession. Today's possession is of far
greater value, and that is the Kingdom.
What happens in this part of Acts 5 is that we go from
temporal possessions and what it might look to lay those down
like to what it means to deliver the Kingdom.
Now, a lot of times when you hear this all in talk, you're
like, well, yeah, I'm sure that worked for them.
They saw Jesus live, they saw him die, and they saw him rise
again. They could be bold, of course,
wouldn't you? But how much more is it for us
to be full of zeal, ready to do whatever it takes?
So one of the questions that we are going to ponder today is
this. It's not what am I willing to
give, but what am I willing to lose?
Now the apostles and all of that, they were not met with
kindness or willingness or there was no partnership with the
religious elite, right? Those, those religious elite
were neither willing to give nor willing to lose.
And the disciples, the apostles, they were met with scorn,
jealousy, and in a lot of cases some pretty deep, intense
hatred. And not every and not everybody
responded to Jesus the same way, as you'll see either in his life
or through his death or in his resurrection.
But today we are going to look at a response.
So Jerry read the first part of this, Acts 517 through 29.
So let's just do a real quick review because there are certain
things in here I do not want you to miss.
But we'd have a three-part sermon and that would bleed in
the Palm Sunday and that wouldn't work.
The high priest was all kinds of jealous.
And he decides to arrest the apostles and place them in a
public prison. And that didn't last very long,
because the Angel came and broke him out, right?
He broke him out and said, hey, go stand in the temple and speak
the words of this life. And at dawn they rode, and they
began to teach. Maybe they were afraid, I don't
know. But if I had just been broke out
of jail and I had the potential to go back into jail, I might be
a little bit more bold about, hey, probably he'll break me out
of jail again, right? So maybe there's a little bit of
that going on. But nevertheless, the high
priest summons them and they send guys out and they find
nothing. If you don't find this part
hilarious, I don't know what to tell you.
Because as it is written, they show up to to investigate.
The doors are locked, the guards are in their place, and nobody's
saying nothing about nothing. Either because they're afraid of
losing their jobs, or they really don't know what happened,
or they're still afraid but like everyone's now confused about
this. What could this mean?
What happened? Now, we are all familiar with
groups of people who are in charge who cannot get their
stories straight or acts together right.
But this made me I laughed out loud as I sat and read it
because it's just so ridiculous. And then somebody who's not
really involved says, hey, they're over here teaching,
like, like the town's snitch, right?
And so you have, you have them go over there.
And that's like, hey, we, we need to break.
We need to bring you in. They don't do so violently
because they were afraid of the crowd.
Did you notice that? They were afraid that the crowd
would stone them because of what they would be doing to the
apostles. And so they gather them up and
they bring them in before the council and it is clear that
they have lost all control. So when they're brought in for
questioning and they and they say these things, remember I
said Peter had a cold line last week where he said, hey, the
feet of the men are here and they're going to carry you out.
This line's even colder. This line is borderline frozen.
Here's what he says. We must obey God rather than
men. Man, this was a guy who had did
not have his act together with the rooster and the whole thing.
And here he is dropping cold, cold truth.
Have you ever stepped into something that you knew God was
calling you to and you thought, hey, once we get on the other
side of this, all the details are going to fall into place,
right? But instead, here's what you
get. That door opens, things get
harder. Like, where's the easy button?
The clarity that you were wanting or looking for actually
is painful and costly and I think we can sometimes forget
that more money means more problems, that the breakthrough
that we are looking for often times leads to bigger and deeper
and more guaranteed harder parts of a journey.
But most of us will never face a courtroom like the apostles.
But we most certainly face smaller versions of the same
test every day. The obedience test, the loyalty
test, the truth test, whether we admit it or not is another
thing. What does it look like staying
silent when you know you should speak up?
Bending the truth just enough to avoid conflict?
Choosing approval over integrity?
Because the biggest threats to being obedient are never loud.
They are convenient and these concessions are rarely
spotlighted like they most often times happen in your own mind
and heart. Nobody else knows, and they
happen quietly. But we know, don't we, My
friends, it's simple math. Obedience is costly, but
compromise costs a whole lot more.
You may lie, but eventually the truth wins.
And we learned last week that God is not above telling others
on us. Because how did Peter know?
Going to say God snitched. That's the best kind of snitch,
by the way. But a big question looms for us.
Where in our lives right now is obedience being negotiated?
We pick up in verse 30, Peter says we must obey God, not men.
That's not the only thing he says, right?
Here's the rest of what he says. And I want you to be looking at
it, and I want you to see if you can pick up some of the things
he's putting down. Number verse 30, The God of our
fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree.
God exalted him at his right hand as leader and Savior to
give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.
And we are witnesses in these things, and so is the Holy
Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him.
See, Peter doesn't have an issue telling them how he feels or
what he thinks. He makes several very important
qualifying statements. Verse 30, the God of our
fathers, It's not the God of my father.
He is saying, hey Sadducees, this is the same God we're
talking about. He raised Jesus from the dead
and then he says whom you killed.
OK, let's not forget that. That's that's that's on you guys
on a tree. Now this was one that I almost
walked past, but just like no spism.
I when I get into the original language, I'm like, oh, what's
this? And here's the deal.
Why do they say tree and not cross?
You have any idea? OK, thank you, Christy.
All right, text, text it to me. But either way, a tree, right?
A cross and a tree, It was the worst form of death that a Roman
could give. It's very bad.
But why a tree? Because Deuteronomy 2122 and 23
says cursed is the man who hangs on a It is both equal parts
terrible for Romans, equal parts terrible for Jews.
And so Peter says mind is blown. And then what you would expect
from a curse is, is something going downward.
But then he says he was exalted. He has no one.
Exalted means that means highest of the high.
Then Jesus was exalted, sitting at the right hand, which is a
very important spot as leader and Savior, which means he's in
charge and only through him can it be accomplished.
Why? To give repentance to Israel.
He's basically saying you guys need to repent and the
forgiveness of sins and we are witnesses to these things and so
is the Holy Spirit. And So what that what that is
meant to really say. I mean, Pentecost just happened
not that long ago, right? So he is he is giving the
entirety of it to these guys in a response.
And he says, hey, we're all in agreement over here.
You want to know what their response was?
321 kill them when they heard this verse 33, they were enraged
and wanted to kill them. But a Pharisee, OK, so there's
Sadducees here, right? And then a Pharisee has to come
in and say, hey guys, just hold on, right?
That's the that's the kind of bipartisanship we could hope
for, right? But a Pharisee in the council
named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law held in honor by all the
people. So this was like somebody major
walking into the space. He stood up, which is a whole
posture thing, right? That means pay attention because
they were sitting down. Standing up means I'm about to
say something. And he gave orders to put them
outside for a little while. See, Peter pushed all the
buttons. But was he wrong though?
And he laid out the story of the gospel in like 4 or five
sentences. And his retort made the
Sadducees so upset that somebody from somewhere else, a different
part of the religious elite, had to come in and say, stop.
But who was Gamaliel, really? Just real quick on him.
He was the grandson of the steamed halal, The Who was the
founder of Israel's strongest school of religion.
So like when people talked about Gamaliel, they called him Rabin
or Rabban, which is our teacher. That's way different than Rob or
Rabbi, right? So that's basically like good,
better, best. Gamaliel is the best, right?
He's considered that. And so here's what he says.
Men of Israel, take care what you are about to do to these
men. But before these, for before
these days, Theodos rose up claiming to be somebody, and a
number of men, about 400, joined him.
He was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed, and
it came to nothing. And after him, Judas the
Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of
those after him. He, too, perished.
And all who followed him were scattered.
So he's trying to make an argument about like, hey, we
have, we have handled this type of conflict before.
And it didn't end how everybody thought it would end.
Those guys disappeared and it was over.
Now a lot of commentators talk about like, what meant if some
of his motivations have been like, was he actually trying to
keep peace? Was he in control of the
situation? But if you look at it, it
doesn't seem like he was convinced about who Jesus was,
right? And since he was highly
esteemed. He probably had a lot to lose.
Now the back stories of these uprisings are for another day.
And you get you get a free doughnut after service if you go
look him up. But it is super interesting that
these things occurred. He goes on to say this.
So in this present case, I tell you, keep away from these men
and let them alone. For if this plan or this
undertaking is of man, it will fail.
But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them.
You might even be found opposing God.
So he says, just stick your heads in the sand, stick to the
script and it'll all shake out. But the irony here is I hope you
caught it. They are already in opposition
to God. They just don't believe it about
themselves. Remember last week we talked a
little bit about like how when we lie, we lie best to who?
Ourselves and so you have this heads in the sand kind of
posture. But God wants the good news to
go out and he is going to make it happen.
So go ahead and arrest them again.
God will have them out likely before dawn.
So this whole thing only further emboldens the disciples.
Like, you would think that they would have been deterred, but it
just keeps getting bolder. Now.
Did you notice? And this was something I didn't
catch until like I was reading for the 10th time.
At what point did the disciples become the apostles?
You also get a free doughnut, if you could tell me that after the
service. But they are no longer referred
to as disciples, which kind of has AJV feel to it.
Apostles has a varsity feel to it.
And so I thought that was just something you needed to hear.
God levelled them up. Coincidentally, Chuck Norris's
birthday was a couple days ago and he turned 86 and he said, I
don't age, I level up. So there's something to that.
The Lord's using Chuck today. So they took his advice, and
when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and
charged them not to speak in his name, in the name of Jesus, and
let them go. All right, so we won't kill him,
but let's rough him up real good.
And they were basically let off with a warning, Like, was that
going to work? They had to know that that was
not going to work. And this reminds me of like,
plot lines and shows that kids watch.
I'm about to throw one of them under the bus.
It's called Paw Patrol. Paw Patrol has a guy named Mare
Humdinger, Right? And consistently Mayor Humdinger
does terrible things and the Paw Patrol comes in and saves the
day and they let Mayor Humdinger off with a warning even when he
kidnaps cats. Like there's things that he
should be thrown in jail for. And the Paw Patrol just says
I'll let you go with a stiff warning.
But or it's like, I just recently started re watching the
Transformers from 1984 and in like the very first episode, I
kid you not, the Autobots get rid of the Decepticons and at
the end they go, those guys probably won't be back anytime
soon. And that was episode #1 right?
So like fooling ourselves. It's not, it's not something
that doesn't happen. But aren't you glad that God
doesn't approach things that way?
That when he deals with sin and death, there's no cutscene and
the devil sitting in the chair going and he's petting a cat
like Doctor Claw. I'll get you next time, Jesus.
Next time, there's none of that. There is no next time because
when God does it, He does it. Jesus puts death to death and
because of this we can live a life that's worthy of living.
So do not be confused. None of this is going to be
easy. Obedience is tested in the small
moments as well as the big ones. Verse 41 Then they left the
presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted
worthy of what to suffer, to suffer dishonor for the name.
You know there is nothing like feeling faithful.
Think about the times in your life where you had to be
faithful but it cost you. Maybe it was a hard season in
your marriage that you stuck it out and it made you stronger.
Maybe it was a financial struggle that you had to lock in
on and eat beans and rice and it taught you discipline.
Or perhaps you stood up to someone or someone's that were
wrong and you stood for the truth.
Or even if you took a risk and it didn't pay off, at least not
the way that you thought it would.
And I bet at a time, none of those things felt like gifts.
But how you view it matters. How the disciples viewed this
matters. Some people call it the light at
the end of the tunnel. But when you are able to connect
pain with purpose, the memory is forged by the meaning.
That's how trust works. The apostles were not validated
by accolades. They were validated in
suffering. And that is exactly what Jesus
means when He said that everyone must pick up their cross daily.
Not blind obedience, but eyes wide open obedience because the
purpose is there. We have a why?
What about our now verse 42 and every day in the temple and from
house to house, which means they didn't stay in one spot.
They went from the crowd to the door to door.
They did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is
Jesus, here is the now. They did not stop.
They were more bold. They took more risks, and we
have them to thank. We stand on their shoulders,
public and private, large and small.
No stone was left unturned. And who benefited?
Generations after generations after generations after
generations? And guess what?
Who kept it moving generations after generations after
generations? Guess what?
We're at the lead of this generation.
Faithfulness is caught, not just taught.
The Pharisees and the Sadducees thought that it was what they
what they taught and what they held on to that made them
faithful. The disciples turned apostles
understood that it was what they caught was the faithfulness of
the life that they saw Jesus live.
They caught it and then they taught it.
There was no, no fizz, am I here?
So what might God be calling you to do in this legacy of
faithfulness? Hopefully, it's not something
that will have you wearing orange or pinstripes.
Kids and students, hear me out. God is calling you to put your
faith and trust in Him to make Jesus first in your life as the
foundation for all of the things that He's going to ask you to do
in the future. Do you hear Him calling adults?
It's the same thing. However, we might need to
reinvest in this vision and even if we do not see immediate
results or feel the satisfaction of success, we need to do it.
It's not one day, it's day one. We get judged at the end, not
the middle. So ask Jesus to get you
realigned, to get you refocused, to get you recommitted, so that
you can be relaunched, so that they can be renewed.
And along the way we might stop. But God cannot be stopped.
And aren't we glad? Let's pray, Lord, You are
unstoppable. Your purposes and your plans,
they are unmovable. And it is a privilege and a joy
if we get to suffer for your name.
Amen.