Courageous Christians and Our Local Mission

Welcome

Well, good morning everyone! Happy Mother’s day. My name is Dan and I serve as one of the pastors here at Lifepoint Worthington.

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Wide Open World -

Every year, we take a few weeks to refocus our church on the work we believe God has called us to locally, nationally, and globally through a series called Wide Open World.

And this series is both a reminder AND an invitation.

It’s a reminder to us that the purpose of the church is not simply to exist but make Jesus famous among the nations - to multiply follows of Jesus - we say it this way at Lifepoint, we exist to Draw Life from God and point others to Him.

But it’s also an invitation.

It’s an invitation to each one of us to join a mission that is far just a starting another church service in Worthington…an invitation to step into a new way of life, with a recalibrated purpose and goal…to join in on what you were created to be apart of…join the larger story of what God is doing in Columbus, our Nation, and across the world.

Over the next three weeks, I want to lay before you the grand scope of the work God has called us to. But my goal is not to give you three practical ways you can join in on this work. Instead, I want to stir within you something far more potent.

The French novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said it this way:

If you want to build a ship, don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work, rather teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean.

I want to stir, within each of us, a yearning for Jesus to be made famous here AND there - across the Wide Open World.

Let me pray, and then we’ll get started.

PRAY

Introduction

A few years back visited the church on the west side of Chicago. It was absolutely beautiful!

inside was all of this incredible architecture, art, and sculpture. It even boast of having the largest collection of renaissance art outside of Venice.

And then I got into a very interesting conversation with the individual showing me around as we were walking and talking. I started to ask him about the life of this particular church. I wanted to know what were the people like who attend, what does a typical weekend look like, and how is the sense of community in this place.

Then he started to tell me the story of this church over the last 50 years or so. At one point, at its height, this church he said, would see close to 13 to 14 services a weekend, engaging with over 70,000 people each week. But that was at its peak—it has been quite a while since that many people have been there.

For a number of reasons, that number had shrunk drastically—to somewhere around 150 on a good weekend.

70,000 to 150 people.

Now, I’m sure there are a lot of individual reasons that added up over the years for this to happen. Changing neighborhoods, people moving, frustrations, or just walking away from the church.

But this one church, I think serves as a snapshot of something happening across the country—something that researchers have called “Becoming post-Christian”. It is the process of a society steadily working to distance itself from a strong Christian heritage and become more and more secular. That doesn’t mean that more and more people are walking away from Christianity, what Post-Christian means is that more and more people do not identify as Christian amidst a society and culture that has been for the last 250 has been DOMINATED by Christianity…it’s evidence is all over the place in a city like Columbus! It’s why there are church buildings everywhere.

So when we talk about something like, “Share your faith with your neighbor,” how do you actually go about doing that in the environment we are in today? What do we need in order to take up the missional mandate of the New Testament to “…make disciples of all nations…”?

If you have your bible, open with me to Acts chapter 5. Acts 5 and we’ll be in vv. 12-42 today. And what we’ll be looking at today are three attributes of Courageous Christians…who step into that space to courageously share their faith, but perhaps more importantly, we’ll see in this story why they do it. We’re going to do this a little differently today: I’m going to give the overview of the story and then we’re going to jump into the details.

Story

Like I said, I want to give us the quick overview of what happened, and then we’ll go into more details on the three characteristics that produce courageous Christians.

Starting in v. 12 (Acts 5:12), we have another summary of the early church—a snapshot of what they’re busy doing. Look at v. 12 (Acts 5:12).

Acts 5:12 ESV

12 Now many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon’s Portico.

We see this several times already in the book of Acts: that the earliest Christians are gathering in public to share the news of Jesus and are healing those who are sick.

But in chapter 5 (Acts 5:12-42), we also see the first example of real persecution against Christians.

This is the first time we see physical harm against the church because of what they are doing as Followers of Jesus.

Look with me at v. 17 (Acts 5:17-18)

Acts 5:17–18 ESV

But the high priest rose up, and all who were with him (that is, the party of the Sadducees), and filled with jealousy they arrested the apostles and put them in the public prison.

These are the religious elite. They run the show in Jerusalem. Earlier this is the same group commanded the Apostles to stop talking about Jesus. They are done hearing about this guy and as best they can tell, they dealt with him once and for all by sending him to his death.

And yet here these people are, once again out in the streets with this absurd idea that Jesus is alive and well. And you can image, politicians then have the same kind of response they’d have today at being publicly humiliated. So they throw these christians in jail.

And the next day, at day break, the apostles are back in the Temple area, preaching about Jesus to everyone who would listen.

And the religious leaders are enraged.

And here they are—deliberately disobeying what they had said AND here they are again!

So the Sanhedrin brings the apostles back into something like their court room…and they say in v. 28 (Acts 5:28).

Acts 5:28 ESV

saying, “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.”

And Peter, who is quickly becoming more and more of a problem for the religious leaders, reminds them of what he told them last time: that if they have to choose between obeying them and God, they’re going to choose God every time.

Look at v. 33 (Acts 5:33)

Acts 5:33 ESV

When they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them.

This is what is coming - and they know Sanhedrin has the power to make this happen. It’s very real threat…and they know this can happen because the apostles just saw the same thing happen with Jesus a few weeks earlier.

But at this point, one of the religious leaders, a highly respected individual named Gamaliel, stands up and begins to explain to the rest of Sanhedrin that, essentially, they are making too big a deal out of this. That this kind of thing has happened before…where a radical leader like Jesus has amassed a following but when he dies, the followers dissolve and it ends up being nothing. On the other hand, he warns them, if the claims about Jesus are true, then there will be nothing they can do to stop this Jesus movement because they won’t be fighting men but God. And he counsels them to drop it and move on.

So they take his advice, call the the apostles back in the room, beat them, and tell them to stop talking about Jesus.

Worthy to Suffer Dishonor

And this, I think, is the most interesting part of the story.

Look at v. 41 (Acts 5:41).

Acts 5:41 ESV

41 Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name.

PAUSE

Rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor.

What an odd response…right? Worthy to suffer dishonor

And the big question that I walk away with is, where does this response come from? Because that’s not the response I think I would have…honestly.

What produces that?

And I think it’s really important question for us to wrestle with…because this is one the things that we so often try to avoid—dishonor, disrespect, or some kind of humiliation. But there is something different about the apostles here in literally celebrating the fact that they were considered worthy of dishonor.

I think there is something missing in our faith when we don’t really have a category for this kind of response; something that is beautifully resilient about the Christian faith that can look at persecution and not simply run in fear, but be ready come what may.

And I think we call this resilience, courage.

And as your pastor, I feel it’s part of my role to set a culture here at this church that is producing a kind of courageous Christianity that is prepared for what is ahead of us. You will see more and more the Christian life being pushed to the margins of society as we live in an increasingly post-Christian culture…a society that has a growing intolerance for and rejection of the Christian worldview. We will find ourselves in very similar places as the earliest followers of Jesus, living a world that is hostile to the claims of Christianity.

To be a Christian, we will need to develop a reliance, borne out a genuine belief in the goodness of the message of Jesus…seeing the Gospel as good news for us, not just a worldview or set of intellectual beliefs. So I ask the question again, what produces the kind of response the apostles had in the face of persecution…that they would count themselves worthy of suffering dishonor. I want to look at three attributes of Courageous Christians that we get from this story that I think will help answer our question today.

Faithful Witness

Here’s the first attribute of Courageous Christians. They have a faithful witness.

A faithful witness.

Look back at v. 12 (Acts 5:12). Remember this is the snapshot of what the Christians were doing…sharing the message of Jesus in very public way. We’re told in v. 12 (Acts 5:12) that they set up shop in a place called Solomon’s Portico.

Let me show you a picture of where this would have been.

SLIDE

This is the Temple complex. Solomon’s Portico was a section that most people would need to pass by in order to get in the actual temple…this the center of cultural and religious activity for the Jewish people. And there the Christians are gathering to teach publically about Jesus. They are where they will be seen heard.

And they are out there regularly. This is where they are caught teaching in v. 12 (Acts 5:12), it’s where the go back teaching in v. 21 (Acts 5:21), and it’s where the end up teaching in v. 42 (Acts 5:42).

The point is they have a regular, faithful witness to the message of Jesus out in public—showing and sharing the love of Christ with anyone they encounter out in Solomon’s Portico.

Where is our Solomon’s Portico

And I think it’s worth asking the question, “Where is our Solomon’s Portico”? In Worthington? On the North Side of Columbus? In our neighborhoods? Where is our ‘Solomon’s Portico’? It’s this question I keep coming back to as I read this story in the book of Acts.

Because that’s where we need to be with a faithful witness to the Gospel.

Is it the Worthington Green? Is is the Worthington Market?

Maybe it’s at work as you are intentionally engaging in spiritual conversations with a coworker.

Soccer / Baseball practice

Maybe it’s out in front of your place as you’re getting to know you’re neighbors and having conversations with them?

This summer, I want us to be in ‘Solomon’s Portico’ with creative ideas on how to have spiritual conversations with people. Because that is what it looks like to join these early Christians in ‘Solomon’s Portico’ with a faithful witness to the message of Jesus.

And this will take our whole church family together.

Where do we need to show up?

Where do we need to be present?

Where do we need to be engaged here in our community with a faithful witness to the message of Jesus?

Local Partnerships

EXPAND

To be clear, I’m not necessarily saying we use the same strategy, but that we bring the same intentionality.

This is the first attribute of Courageous Christians; that they have a faithful witness.

Convicting Convictions

The second attribute of Courages Christins is their convicting convictions. Conviction Convictions.

And what I mean by that is that, in their context, they have a set of beliefs about Jesus that will end in them in prison at least and if they keep going, it’s going to get them killed. And they are so committed to their faith in Christ, that neither jail or death shakes them.

That is an amazing thing to consider.

History bares out that these convictions were not just found in the earliest Christians, but has consistently marked Courageous Christians throughout generations.

Between 54-68 A.D., Christians were first exposed to widespread, state-sponsored persecution under the Roman government. In fact, some of the earliest charges against Christians was that they were atheists because they refused to worship to Roman gods. The Roman historian, Tacitus records for us that “Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn apart by dogs, crucified, or burnt to serve as nightly illumination.”

This was the known punishment in the Roman World for being found out as a Christian—and yet even as this is going on, Tertullian, a second century author and christian philosopher is recorded as saying, “Kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to dust…The more you mow us down, the more we grow; the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

Why?

What was even attractive enough about Christianity for people to willingly join and identify with this so early on, knowing that your faith was almost considered treason?

And I think we have to ask…do we have that same kind of conviction?

Would I give my life to hold on to my Christian faith?

As Linn Manuel Miranda has famous asked through Alexander Hamilton, what will you fall for?

And I don’t ask that as like a ‘let’s get hyped up about of faith’ kind of question. I mean that as a very real question.

Leslie Newbigin was a British theologian, missionary and cultural anthropologist, who studied extensively the intersection of Faith and Culture described our current situation this way:

What we have is . . . a pagan society whose public life is ruled by beliefs which are false. And because it is not a pre-Christian paganism, but a paganism born out of the rejection of Christianity, it is far tougher and more resistant to the Gospel than the pre-Christian paganisms with which foreign missionaries have been in contact during the past two hundred years. Here, without possibility of question, is the most challenging missionary frontier of our time.

Right here and now in a community like Worthington, Ohio.

Consider the growing chasm between the Christianity and Cultural on questions of sexuality and gender.

50 years ago you would be hard pressed to find much, if any, meaningful difference between the values of popular cultural and christian culture. And I’m not saying that with a, “I wish we could just go back to the way things were” but as a way to say that the church cannot simply continue to exists with the same assumptions about cultural engagement we’ve had for generations.

We find ourselves in the minority of cultural influence.

The realities of a post-Christian world make a faithful public witness dangerous.

And yet, I don’t think that this should lead us to panic, but it does mean Christians today must be thoughtful and intentional. I’ve said this before, but we cannot afford to simply cling to the theological coat-tails of those who have gone before us, but must think through and understand the claims of Christianity for ourselves. Convicting convictions are the by-product of wrestling deeply with hard questions about our faith, and knowing not just what we believe, but why we believe it.

Some of you have burning questions about Christianity and cultural…how should we really think about sexuality, politics, race, life? And at the same time, I think the church has done a poor job of fostering conversation about these things in the past; the church as an institution has often been intolerant itself of hard questions.

But, hear me, if you’ve got questions, let’s explore them together. To think independently does not mean to think in isolation…write them down, come and ask. Bring them up in small group and we’ll work together to find strong resources to work through this stuff together!

You see, in Acts 5, the apostles can stand before the political and religious authorities and say in v. 29 (Acts 5:29), “We must obey God rather than man.” because they are convinced of the claims of the Gospel—they have seen with their own eyes, they have experienced the Holy Spirit work in and through them.

They have convictions for which they will be convicted…and they hold on to them.

Why?

Confident Hope

And this leads to the third attribute of Courageous Christians: they have a fixed hope. A Confident Hope.

And what I mean by that is courageous christians, look to the claims of the Gospel and see them just not as something that needs to be intellectually consumed, but experientially enjoyed. I’ll say that again, the apostles understand that the Christian Faith is not just intellectual consumed as if it stays in the mind, but it is to be enjoyed.

Now, that doesn’t mean that all of the Christian life is just one bundle of joy; that every experience is happily taken with a smile and no hardship. No. But they do recognize that there is some good to be experienced in the Gospel: a word that literally means good news.

This is why they can say in v. 30 (Acts 5:30-32):

Acts 5:30–32 ESV

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 to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”

They see that there is a treasure in the message of Jesus, that on the cross, he has taken our sin, offering forgiveness to all who believe in him…bringing redemption, healing and restoration to anyone who trusts in Him and him alone! It’s the belief that, in Christ, we are offered life to the full; life the way it is meant to be lived, everlasting life!

This is what is offered to us when we put our trust in Christ. We are able to experience this everlasting life when we put our faith in Jesus, pledging our allegiance to Him and Him alone! We too are brought into new, everlasting life through the death and resurrection of Jesus on our behalf. It is a promise of everlasting life that is greater than what this world has to offer.

That does not mean we will be spared from hardship in this life…it does not mean that everything we experience will be good; and that we just take it with a smile! No, the Apostles in Acts 5 are living proof of that very fact—that real suffering is a part of the normal Christian life. But with this life comes the great hope that this is not the only life…but we look to the promise of eternal life with Christ—we look on to the day when there will be no more weeping, mourning, or sorrow; when everything wrong will be made right. We look with hope to promise of heaven and the reality of perfect, everlasting peace.

This is why they have no problem in saying they must God rather than man, because even if men take their lives, they don’t really take it away! Because, in Christ, they have what cannot be stolen, they have what cannot be shaken. They have what they cannot lose!

They have, what Paul talks about in Romans 8 (Romans 8:38-39)!

Romans 8:38–39 ESV

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is the confident hope of Courageous Christians…that at the end of the day, they are willing to give it all up! As was written by Jim Elliot, a missionary in South America who was killed for his work, said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

Friends, the question we must ask ourselves, is this: do I enjoy the Christian life? Do I have a fixed confidence in the good news of Jesus? Is this a treasure or a trap?

And by now, we should see the stakes…because with no confident hope, we will have no convicting convictions. With no convicting convictions we will have no faithful witness because the cost will be too great. We will forever look at the reaction of the Apostles, to celebrate being counted worthy of dishonor and simply think they missed it…when the reality it’s we who have lost it!

The extent to which we treasure the gospel, is the extent we are willing to endure dishonor.

Conclusion

Practical: How do I cultivate this enjoyment and treasuring of the Gospel in my life?

Pray

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And friends, as we cultivate this, what we will see is that will begin to join the apostles in a willingness to celebrate being worthy of suffering dishonor.