Persecution

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It continues to be a great honor to share the Word of God with the saints of Durbin Memorial Baptist Church.

I love Christmas hymns! This time of the year I really look forward to gathering together with the church to sing out the familiar tunes celebrating the birth of God incarnate!

There are so many joyous and beautiful songs. I’m partial to a few of them myself: Go tell it on the Mountain, over the Hills and Everywhere that Jesus Christ is born! Joy to the World (some would suggest this song is more appropriate for the second coming of Christ than the birth, but it is a joyous song nonetheless). Hark the Herald! All of these wonderful songs.

I want to begin the sermon this morning by reading the Lyrics to one of those songs: Good Christian Men Rejoice:

Good Christian men rejoice with hear and soul and voice!

Give ye heed to what we say: Jesus Christ is born today.

Man and beast before Him bow, and He is in the manger now;

Christ is born today, Christ is born today!

Good Christian men rejoice with hear and soul and voice!

Now ye hear of endless bliss: Jesus Christ was born for this!

He has opened Heaven’s door, and man is blest forever more,

Christ was born for this, Christ was born for this!

Good Christian men rejoice with hear and soul and voice!

Now ye need not fear the grave, Jesus Christ was born to save!

Calls you one and calls you all, to gain His everlasting hall,

Christ was born to save, Christ was born to save!

What a song! What a tune! What a reminder! I get excited thinking about it! Just as we all should during the Christmas season. We are reminded in this time that Jesus Christ stepped out of heaven to save sinners like us! We are reminded that we have bliss in Christ, that Christ was born so that God would lavish His grace on us! We are reminded that Christ was born to save! That He was born to crush the head of the Serpent! He was born to reconcile a unholy creature to a holy God!

We might think of Christmas songs as sweet or peaceful, but thinking about what is really being encapsulated in these songs gets my blood pressure rising! It is is exciting! It is good news that ought to be shared! It is good news that we center our faith, our practice, our church upon! Christ came to save sinners and did so by stepping out of glory into the lowly manger! He has come to save!

I hope that we are as excited as ever to come together for the purpose of worshiping our God because it is manifestly evident that He is worthy to be praised. I also hope that the truths we know, learn, and sing about in the Christmas season overflow into the rest of your life and are carried into it beyond the Sunday morning worship service. I hope that tomorrow you walk through the office whistling, humming, singing to yourself or even out loud for everyone to hear, Good Christian Men rejoice! Christ was born to save!

You might be able to even spread a little bit of *real* Christmas cheer that way. You might be able to have a gospel conversation that way. It is the calling of the church sharing the message of Christ as ambassadors, God making His appeal through us, to a world that is in desperate need of reconciliation.

However, we need to be aware, that this world, blind to its present reality and eternal destination, often times does not want to hear the truth of their condition. If we go much further than a culturally acceptable, “Merry Christmas” we may be met with a “Bah Humbug.”

Today as we continue to look at the early church in the book of Acts, we are going to see that the power of Jesus Christ and the message of the gospel is not always well received by others. Further, it is often times not just met a dismissive attitude, but an aggressive attitude. If we are bold with the joy, hope, and truth of the gospel, it is likely that we will face earthly persecution of some form because of it.

I tell you this, not so that you would be discouraged to go beyond the pleasantries of a “Merry Christmas” but so that we can be prepared, grounded, and enabled to do so and face whatever backlash may occur.

In fact, Christ Himself said that His faithful followers should actually expect to be persecuted.

John 15:20–21 ESV

Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.

If you haven’t already, open your Bibles to Acts 4. Today, we are looking at the first taste of persecution on the early church since its big launch at Pentecost. Today’s story picks up after Peter and John were used by God to heal a lame man who had been unable to walk for over 40 years. As the man leaped around the temple, many gathered to see what had occured. Peter then preached on the seriousness of the people’s sin in rejecting Christ and called them to repentance. All of this taking place in the public square, in Solomon’s portico, in the temple, in Jerusalem. Where we are picking up this morning, we will be seeing the reaction from to Peter’s gospel proclamation.

It is my hope this morning that as we walk through the text, we will see that the gospel is offensive and will be met with opposition, but that it is worthy to be proclaimed and full of the power to save, and how we are to deal with persecution should it come our way.

Let’s begin looking at the beginning of chapter 4

Acts 4:1–3 ESV

And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening.

Talk about some Bah Humbug! While Peter and John are speaking to the people about Christ’s fulfillment of God’s plan of redemption, the leaders of the temple and the Sadducees come up and have them arrested! There is a progression throughout the book of Acts that we should be noting as have been walking through Acts 3 and 4 for the last few weeks. First there was a healing. That healing was ultimately evangelistic in nature because it opened the door for preaching. Following the preaching comes persecution. Healing leads to preaching leads to persecution. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The apostles would have remembered the promise of persecution we read a few moments ago from John 15. So how does this persecution play out:

We read here that the leaders of the temple were first annoyed! Why were they annoyed? Because Peter and John were telling folks that Jesus resurrected from the dead and the Sadducees denied the entire possibility of a resurrection. Were told later on in the book of Acts that the Sadduccees had a few doctrinal distinctions, they say there is no such thing as a resurrection, nor angels, nor spirit. (Acts 23:8). The Sadducees were a sect of Judaism. There were Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and Zealots. The largest of the groups was the Pharisees, but the most influential was the Sadducees. That is because every High Priest during this time period was a Sadducee. The Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court if you would, was controlled by Sadducees. Why does this matter? Well, it matters because it means that the theology of the Sadducees influenced every part of Jewish life at that time. I’m going to use a word that we have to be careful about because I’m using it in the philosophical sense and not necessarily the political sense we usually take it. The Sadduccees were liberal theologians. The great preacher Charles Spurgeon described the Sadduccees thusly: “The Sadducees, as you know, were the Broad School, the liberals, the advanced thinkers, the modern-thought people of the day. If you want a bitter sneer, a biting sarcasm, or a cruel action, I commend you to these large-hearted gentlemen. They are liberal to everybody, except to those who hold the truth; and for those they have a reserve of concentrated bitterness which far excels wormwood and gall. They are so liberal to their brother errorists that they have no tolerance to spare for evangelicals.”

I bring all of this up because if we are looking to make modern application to today, we should note that we increasingly live in a theologically liberal leaning world. Much like the Sadducees, the prevailing tastemakers and thought leaders in our society deny the mighty works of God, the resurrection of Christ, the the existence of angels and spiritual realities. They are claiming claiming to be open for all ideas and influences to flourish in a democratic society, while at the same time laughing at, mocking, or being annoyed by Christians who hold to the Truth proclaimed in the Word of God.

In our text this morning the Sadduccees act on their annoyance. They use their power to arrest Peter and John, maybe even the lame man too, and hold them overnight. Why does Luke give this detail about it being evening? The simple answer is that Jewish law forbade night trials! Of course this did not prevent the Sanhedrin from illegally trying Jesus, although they clearly were under a time constraint because of the Passover feast (and more importantly because God had sovereignly foreordained the Lamb of God would be sacrificed on the Passover). And besides, in this case they had no time constraint, so the 71 members of the Sanhedrin could enjoy an evening meal with their families and take care of these upstarts the next day.

Now as we are seeking to make application from this text, we need to be careful not to develop a false martyr complex. It is true that we live in a theologically liberal leaning world in which holding to the truth of Scripture is increasingly opposed. However, in our direct context, I do not know of anyone being imprisoned in the middle of night for doing some street preaching. That time may come and if it does may we have the boldness of Peter and John, but we shouldn’t read this text looking to victimize ourselves and our circumstance when we have been made the Victors in Christ! The point of the message this morning is to make us aware that the gospel is offensive and will be opposed, but that it is also worthy to be shared!

The Sadducees were particularly offended by the proclamation of Jesus’ Resurrection. They denied the possibility. The mighty resurrection of Jesus Christ displaying the power and Majesty of God didn’t fit into their humanistic, man-centric theology. In their man-first worldview there was no room for Miraculous Resurrection. But the ressurection did occur indeed. In fact, I’ve shared this before, but what I to be the most simple and effective proof of the resurrection of Jesus Christ for us today is the simple existence of the church at all. Go back and read the gospels. The disciples were bumbling and scared. They don’t look good at all throughout the whole life of Jesus and they look even worse in His death. If they were going to fake a story, they surely would have made themselves look better. But something changed between the gospels and and the book of Acts: The resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the only explanation for why the disciples would have gathered back together, formed the early church, and faced the persecution that came with it. It may annoy the Sadduccees, but there is no sense in denying the resurrection of Jesus Christ!

And not everyone in attendance to the scene was annoyed, in fact many received this fact gladly look at the next verse:

Acts 4:4 ESV

But many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand.

We are catching sight of Romans 10 in action: Romans 10:9 “because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

2000 Men join the early church we saw beginning to form at Pentecost, bringing the number to 5000. The Greek here is gender specific meaning that this is specifically talking about the men. While it is not explicitly given in Scripture it is safe to estimate upwards of 10,000 converts meeting together, being devoted to the apostles teaching, breaking bread together, caring for another, and sharing the gospel from this point on when you add in the women and children that undoubtedly also believed.

What we need to see here is the gospel was responded to both by conversion and by confrontation. But we can gather from this, the principle that Conversion is worth the confrontation! Through the preaching of Peter thus far in the book of Acts, 5000 men and upwards of 10,000 people have see that Jesus Christ is Lord and believed in their hearts that God raised Him from the dead, and thus received salvation! Over 10,000 souls have been reconciled to the Creator whom their sin had kept them separated from! That is something to be celebrated! That is something to rejoice! That is something so eternally significant that it was worth the confrontation!

On Sunday nights, we’ve begun looking at suffering for the glory of God. You really need to make it a point to be here with us for that study as its not being streamed online. But last week we looked at an idea that is so essential for us to understand and yet we almost never think about it. Here is the summation of the point I want to bring up: You will spend most of your existence in eternity. Unlike the Sadducees, we do not deny the eternal nature of the soul. Every soul will spend eternity somewhere, either in glory or wrath. And on the timeline of everything, our earthly existence is but a speck when compared to eternity. That means the 30, 40, 50, if we’re fortunate 100 years we’re given on this earth are but a brief moment, a blink of the eye, when compared to our eternity. That means that while the actions of Peter and John received confrontation that lasted for a day or so, and in some ways it lasted the rest of their earthly lives as this wouldn’t be the end of their persecution, what they did and the results there of carry far beyond this moment and ring through the halls of glory for all of eternity.

Church, sharing the gospel is worth it. If your efforts are met with persecution, you can shake it off knowing its just a speck of time in comparison to eternity. If God so chooses to work through your efforts and convert the souls of those whom you are sharing with, then rejoice now and be ready to continue rejoicing with that person for all of eternity! Proclaiming the gospel has an eternal impact!

For the rest of our text this morning, Luke describes the trial that Peter and John go through. In this description we can learn a few principles on how to share the gospel boldly.

Let’s look at verses 5-12

Acts 4:5–12 ESV

On the next day their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Here we see Peter and John having their trial that was postponed the evening before this. Their question is simple but loaded with condescension. They ask Peter and John how they did “this”. "This thing" declines to describe it in any way, because that would bring into recognition the greatness of what has occured through the prophets. They ask where they got the power. It’s like they expect to find some perfect formula or ritual to perform such a feat. It is in some ways reminiscent Simon who caught a glimpse of the Holy Spirit and tried to buy it from the apostles. In both cases, Simon and the Sadducees, are attempting to cheapen the power of God.

But through Peter’s response they are corrected. “He not only answers their question but goes on to (1) identify who Jesus really is, (2) condemn the council for rejecting the Messiah, and (3) preach the gospel.”

Church, Peter was moved by the Spirit to hold tight to gospel of Jesus Christ and profess it in the face of His persecutors!

Are we able to do the same? I can tell you that if we have the same salvation as Peter and John, we have the same Spirit. That Spirit may gift us differently. We all may not be as good of a speaker as Peter nor called to speak to the masses in the same way. But that same Spirit will unite us on the same gospel. That same Spirit is our helper. All eternally impactful work in the Kingdom of God is carried out through us by the Power of the Holy Spirit. This means we have cause to be bold knowing that God is on our side and working through us! Remember that the normative experience, the regular experience of being filled with holy Spirit is simple Christian living and teaching the Word of God in accordance with the word of God. We’ve talked about this recently but if you want to push in further, make a note to study Ephesians 5 and 6. Church, we are called and uniquely equipped to cherish the gospel and boldly proclaim it wherever the Lord has placed us. In our neighborhoods, in our social media, in the grocery store, or even in the face of persecution.

One Sunday morning when Peter Cartwright was going to preach, he was told that President Andrew Jackson was in the congregation, and warned not to say anything out of line. When Cartwright stood to preach, he said, "I understand that Andrew Jackson is here. I have been requested to be guarded in my remarks. Andrew Jackson will go to hell if he doesn't repent." The congregation was shocked and wondered how the President would respond. After the service, President Jackson shook hands with Peter Cartwright and said, "Sir, if I had a regiment of men like you, I could whip the world.”

Church may we be bold with the gospel. As Peter says in his response to the Sadducees, “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Let’s see how that message sat with the Sadducees:

Acts 4:13–18 ESV

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition. But when they had commanded them to leave the council, they conferred with one another, saying, “What shall we do with these men? For that a notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. But in order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name.” So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

The Sadducees had been given every evidence necessary for belief. They had seen the miraculous healing done by the power of the name of Jesus Christ. They had been told of their own responsibility and sin in rejecting Christ. They had been told that salvation is in Christ alone. When a similar message was given by Peter at Pentecost in Acts 2, we read that the people who heard were cut to the heart and longing for salvation. When the message is received by these religious leaders in our text this morning, it is met with consternation and an attempt to silence it from spreading.

As we have spent this morning understanding the offense of the gospel but that it is still worthy to be shared, we need to understand that to some the scent of the gospel is sent of death to death. That is that not everyone who hears the Word will be believe. Many will not receive the news we share gladly. As we have said, the gospel is offensive and people do not like to be offended! In that rub of confrontation the outcome will either be reception or rejection. Here it is rejection. But just the day before for 2000 men the outcome was reception. We mustn’t allow the threat of rejection dissuade the calling we have been given.

Let’s look at how Peter and John responded:

Acts 4:19–22 ESV

But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” And when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way to punish them, because of the people, for all were praising God for what had happened. For the man on whom this sign of healing was performed was more than forty years old.

For now, Peter and John were freed. The Sadducees couldn’t come up with a reason to keep them any longer. However, if tradition is to be correct, Peter would eventually be crucified at the hands of Roman emperor Nero. John would live out his days serving in the church at Ephesus and dying of natural causes. Both would be used by God to proclaim the gospel. Both would face persecution, one more graphically than they other. But both now sit in glory hearing the blessed refrain “well done, my good and faithful servant’ While joining the angelic choir in reciting: “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!"

It is my hope this morning that as we walked through the text, we saw that the gospel is offensive and will be met with opposition, but that it is worthy to be proclaimed and full of the power to save. We deal with persecution by clinging to the gospel. The religious leaders wanted to silence Peter and John but they tell the council in effect, “Should we serve God or you?” We know from the rest of the book Acts and the evidence of history that they chose service to God. Service that makes an eternal impact. Service that truly matters. Service that may incur momentary affliction which pales in comparison to the eternal glory it gives.

Church, may we be bold with the gospel this Christmas season and every other season under the Son. We celebrate Christmas because Christ was born to save! May we not forget that. May we cherish that. And further may we share that. Even if it is met with Bah Humbug.

There is no better gift we could share than the truth of the gospel. Jesus Came to live, die, and rise again to pay the cost of sin, so that whosoever believeth in Him would not perish but be given eternal everlasting life. If you understand the weight of your sin today, repent! You will find rest in Jesus! come see me in the hymn of response and I’ll tell you more about the power in the name of Jesus! And if you have found rest in Jesus for some time, share it! Share it, even if it comes with a cost, because we can are guaranteed in Scripture that it all works out for good and His glory in the end.

Let’s pray.