Resurrection Ripples - 1 - Witnesses

Scripture: Acts 5:27-32

Acts 5:27–32 NIV

27 The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. 28 “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.” 29 Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings! 30 The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead—whom you killed by hanging him on a cross. 31 God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins. 32 We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”

4/27/2025

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Standard

Opening Prayer:

Living God,

long ago, faithful women

proclaimed the good news

of Jesus’ resurrection,

and the world was changed forever.

Teach us to keep faith with them,

that our witness may be as bold,

our love as deep,

and our faith as true. Amen.

Witnesses

Line in the Sand

Throughout the Bible, God often called his people to cross over from one place to another. It was as if he drew that proverbial line in the sand, asking everyone to divide themselves between those who had the faith to follow him and those who did not. At the very beginning, our ancestors, Adam and Eve, were given a whole world, specifically the protection of a garden in which to live freely. The only line drawn was around one tree that they were forbidden to eat from, but they chose to leave God and cross that small, forbidden boundary. In some ways, humanity is still trapped next to that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, on the other side of the line, separated from God.

But God calls us out and asks us to step over the line and join him. He asked Noah to step out and build the ark in faith. He called Abraham to step across the line, leave his homeland, and journey to a new place where God would make a great nation from him. Moses was called to step across the line, returning to Egypt to set God‘s people free, and they were all called to cross the line through the Red Sea, following God back to their homeland with new freedom under his rule. Most of the first generation refused to keep following God faithfully, so Joshua and Caleb, along with the second generation, crossed the line of the Jordan River, eradicated the kings and kingdoms in that place, and resettled Canaan.

Everywhere they crossed over a line or found themselves in battles, the scripture tells us that God won the day despite their weakness. Afterward, they became witnesses of God's mighty acts, and what they shared as they continued to tell their stories about God calling them to cross over those lines in the sand and follow him faithfully, encouraged them every time God called them to step out in faith again.

In the New Testament, God also called his people to step out in faith. They weren’t fighting armies or trying to reclaim land. They were fighting the forces of evil, sin, and death. They were fighting to reclaim the lives and the souls of everyone. They watched Jesus preach and heal, cast out demons. Under his authority, and with his training, they got to do some of that themselves, too. They watched him raise the dead, provide miraculous food for thousands of people, and walk on water – Peter tried his hands or feet at that last one. And after Jesus died and was raised from the dead, he called them to continue his work, calling all people to cross that line in the sand, step out of their lives of sin and death, and follow Jesus into righteousness and eternal life.

Like all the faithful people of God who have gone before us, the first ripple effect of God's saving work in our lives is becoming a witness for Jesus and telling the world all that he has done for, with, around, and through us.

Failure

The week leading up to the first Easter was full of ups and downs for the disciples. The weeks that came after were not much smoother. They were very much like those Hebrew slaves who had just been freed from Egypt, about to step foot into the promised land, and realizing how big and bad the world was around them. The death and resurrection of Jesus did not make serving God easier. It made it harder. I wonder if some of the disciples thought it might be easier to preach to the pagans about Jesus, a person that they didn’t know, rather than preaching to the crowds of people who had been there in the weeks before, demanding that the Romans crucify him. That must’ve been a tough crowd.

But they did it anyway. And they got in a lot of trouble for it. The Jewish leaders had been on an emotional roller coaster themselves throughout holy week, and I’m sure some of them had some regrets about how they handled Jesus. They knew there was nothing good about what they had done, but they had felt trapped between a rock and a hard place, and were trying to choose the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately, sin is sin and evil is evil, no matter how big it is. So when Peter and some of the disciples started to get out in public, preaching about Jesus again, and witnessing that he had come back from the dead, the Jewish leaders initially showed a little bit of leniency. After all, these fishermen and other commoners were just people. They didn’t have the power of Jesus or the hearts of all the people around them.

So they had them whipped and humiliated, locked up briefly, and then sent out with the stern warning not to talk about Jesus ever again. It didn’t work. Those disciples remembered all the spiritual battles they faced with Jesus, and the lines in the sand they had crossed before following him. They weren’t going to live a life of physical freedom with their faith locked away in a cage. So they went right back to preaching.

Our passage today picks up at the second time the Jewish leaders arrested them. Those leaders wanted to know why the disciples had scored their gift of freedom and grace when they could’ve done much worse to them, and instead chose to go back and do the one thing they were asked not to do. They thought they were playing nice and that their supposed generosity might win over the disciples and stop this Jesus revolution that was happening right there in their city. They realized that they had failed to handle Jesus correctly, and now they were failing to handle his disciples. They were standing on what they thought was the right side of the line, watching more and more people crossover onto the other side, leaving them feeling vulnerable, incompetent, and guilty.

Guilt

Peter didn’t make it easier for them. I wonder if he was chosen as the spokesperson for the disciples for a day like this one. In the original Greek texts, they didn’t use dramatic punctuation or emojis the way we do today. There were no script notes on how he said what he did. We don’t know if Peter stepped up and told them calmly in a low voice or if he shouted at the top of his lungs that Jesus – the one that they had killed – had come back from the dead. They had gathered up all the power of Rome and all the people of Jerusalem behind them to rid the world of Jesus, and they failed. And now his blood was on their hands.“You want to know why I’m preaching still?“ asks Peter. “Because I follow the law of God, not the laws of men.“ (mic drop)

That was rubbing salt in the wound, no matter how passionately he said it. For those who did not cross the line with Jesus, and then panicked when they saw everyone else crossing the line and tried to hold them back, not only did they fail, but they were guilty of being on the wrong side of God’s law. All those things they meant for the good of people and did with good intentions had turned out to be villainous deeds, paving their own road to hell. And now they were being put in their place by a plainspoken fisherman who could barely read or write.

Peter concluded by telling them that Jesus had ascended to be with God and was there offering forgiveness through his sacrifice so that all God’s people might be saved and brought back into a right relationship with him. As witnesses, Peter and the other disciples were sharing their experiences with Jesus and the message he conveyed to them through the witness of the Holy Spirit.

In those last few lines, Peter extended an invitation to the very people who had most despised Jesus and plotted his death, and who were now most at odds with the disciples and all that they were doing. Peter may not have even known he was offering such an invitation to them that day. Most of the time, the altar call is given by people outside the prison bars instead of those inside. But God‘s ways are not our ways, and according to this passage, the Holy Spirit is not given to those who are extra intelligent, wise, or talented. The Holy Spirit is given to those who are obedient.

Witnesses

Almost 2000 years before Jesus was born, God brought a different kind of savior into the world. He spoke to this young man through dreams and visions, providing insight into God‘s mind and heart. Through some of his own foolishness and the jealousy he stirred up among his family, his brothers faked his death, left him in a hole, and sold him into slavery. For many years, God worked in this young man’s life, guiding him through the ups and downs, in and out of trouble, as he tried to rebuild his life from the ground up. For a long time, he was entirely forgotten.

But then disaster struck the nations, bringing drought and famine. Through a series of circumstances only God could orchestrate, he rose to a position of power in Egypt, overseeing all food production and provision. With God's help, he successfully led that nation through the famine, probably saving thousands of lives. Yet, God was doing something even greater than that.

All those pieces came together and brought his brothers to his doorstep, begging for food, willing to give up and forsake the promised land that they could not care for themselves. In that moment, they didn’t know they were bowing before their younger brother Joseph. You can find this tale of family drama, and redemption in the last chapters of the book of Genesis, and it concludes when Joseph forgives the brothers who had hurt him so much and taken away the life that he and they all could’ve had together. Then he says something profound. Joseph says, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Several generations later, the king of Egypt tried to stop the growth of God’s people by murdering their male children. This act, meant for evil, would allow Moses to be raised in Pharaoh’s palace, setting off a chain of events that would lead to the destruction of Pharaoh’s power and the freedom of God‘s people. The story repeated itself throughout the entire history of God‘s people. I wonder if any of the law experts who began accusing Peter and the disciples remembered the stories of Joseph, Moses, or any other accounts of God and His people and felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit, not because of the words Peter spoke to them, but because the Spirit of God reminded them of all He had done in their lives and helped them see where they stood that day in a new light.

Those first waves of the resurrection carried the disciples and carry us across that line in the sand from merely being spectators who watch what Jesus does to being witnesses who share with others what He has done in our lives. Thousands of people crossed that line in the sand and became followers of Jesus during those weeks after the resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and they were not making those decisions because they had all experienced miracles in their lives. They were not all people who had been sick and healed. They were not all people who were freed from demonic oppression. Most of those individuals simply heard someone else sharing what Jesus had done in their lives, and the Holy Spirit opened their eyes to their own failures and guilt and showed them the line in the sand. They heard that invitation to forgiveness and new life with Jesus. The Holy Spirit helped them see that God had been leading them their whole lives, waiting for them to step across that line.

Jesus calls all who follow Him to be His witnesses everywhere they go. The beautiful thing about this is that it doesn’t require special training or fancy words. You don’t have to memorize scriptures, prayers, or special formulas to lead people to salvation. You don’t even have to convince anyone of anything. All you need to do to be a witness for Jesus is to faithfully and obediently share what you know He has done in your life. The Holy Spirit does the rest.

We all have a witness. If you’ve been following Jesus for more than five seconds, you can share something He has done for you with others. He may not have parted the Red Sea for you; it may have just been traffic on the road to help you get somewhere at the right time. I’ve heard your stories, and most of you have many examples of how God has moved and worked in your life to bring you closer to him and to share his love with others. And I know many of you pay attention each week and each day to what God is doing in and around and with and through you now. For we are living witnesses of a life with Jesus, and our story goes on every minute we spend with him. As the gospel of John says, if we were to try to write down everything Jesus has done, no book could hold it all. We may not be the only Bible people encounter, but our witness will likely be their first encounter with the living word as they see and hear and experience Jesus through us...

Have you followed Jesus and crossed the line in the sand with Him?

Are you willing to be an intentional witness, sharing what he has done in your life, with anyone God sends you to?

If you cannot say yes to those two questions with your words and your actions, what is holding you back, keeping you tied in place?

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, we owe You everything. As the psalms tell us to sing your praise in new songs every day, we know we would never run out of lyrics. We know all of our songs and stories are variations of that common thread of Who You are and how You love us, and you continue to re-create that in new ways each day of our lives. Open our eyes to see you for who you are, and open our ears to hear you calling us to follow you. Give us the courage and the faith to follow wherever you lead and help us to share the truth and love as a witness wherever you bring us. In Jesus’ name, amen.