Preaching Christ from our Pain

Have you ever had a time when it felt like things were going terribly wrong and you just didn’t want to talk to anyone?

I told you last week that that isn’t usually a problem for me—I talk all the time to anyone who will listen.

It’s one reason I usually love the few occasions when I have flown by myself. Some poor, unsuspecting person sits down next to me, and I have a captive audience for the next few hours.

I remember a time when it wasn’t like that. My wife and I were facing a very painful ministry transition that was going to cause us to move halfway across the country without a real plan. There was an event I committed to and wanted to go to, but when I flew out to the event, I had a hard time enjoying myself because of the concerns of what was to come.

There were some situations that weekend that were uncomfortable for me, and I wanted to get back to Samantha and Sarah, but I also didn’t really want to go back and face what was coming.

I had a 6:00am flight to go back home, and I was glad for the early flight, because I knew no one would want to talk to me.

We sit down on the plane, and a woman is seated next to me.

She had been at a horse show that weekend, and she wanted to tell me all about it.

I had no desire to talk, but she wasn’t picking up the hints.

As the conversation progressed, she asked me what I did for a living.

When I told her I was a pastor, she told me that she had friends who were Jewish, and she always wondered what the deal with that was.

At that moment, I realized that God had opened an opportunity for me to share with this woman not only what He had done for Abraham and his descendants, but also how He had fulfilled the promises He made them and sent Jesus as the Messiah they looked for.

For the next several minutes, God took over and allowed me to share the gospel with this woman in a way that I wish I could repeat.

I was hurting, I was tired, and I didn’t want to talk about Jesus, but it was at that moment that God wanted to use me to share His story with a woman who needed to hear.

I would love to say that the story ended with her giving her life to Christ, but it didn’t. However, she was the administrative assistant to the provost of a large university in the Midwest that was known for their work with fetal stem cells.

She never understood why Christians were so against abortion and fetal stem cell research, but I was able to show her that it was based off our understanding that God created every human being with intrinsic value, worth, and dignity.

I have no idea what God may have done with that in the days to come, but I do know that God was teaching me part of the lesson we are going to see this morning.

If you haven’t already, open your Bibles this morning to Acts 8. What we are going to see this morning is something that goes contrary to our human nature.

When things get hard, when we face loss or struggle, our natural inclination is to turn inward, isn’t it?

Are you familiar with this book? It’s titled Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

If you have ever read it, you know that in Alexander’s mind, everything that can go wrong in his day does go wrong. What’s his reaction? “I think I’ll move to Australia”.

He wants to escape, hoping it will be better somewhere else.

We all do the same thing, don’t we?

Things are difficult in our marriage, so we escape to the internet or into the arms of someone other than our spouse because we think it will make it better.

We are afraid of the future, so we eat or we stop eating, hoping that it will somehow numb the pain.

We go shopping and call it “retail therapy” or we simply binge Netflix until we drag ourselves to bed or work as much as we can to try to make something of ourselves…anything to just get through.

Do you think that those are the responses God would have us to have to difficulties in life?

As we look through God’s word this morning, we are going to see what the early church did when faced with unimaginable difficulty.

Instead of having multiple points this morning, I just want to challenge us with this action step: Preach Christ out of your pain.

Instead of numbing or running away from the pain we face, let’s use those very challenges as the opportunity to tell others about the great God we serve.

That’s what we find in the first eight verses of this chapter, so let’s read verses 1-8. After we read them, we will come back and walk through them together.

Let’s take a closer look at the emotional state of the believers in these verses.

Jump back up with me to verse 1...

Here’s the situation: Stephen, a servant of the church in Jerusalem, was just killed.

That puts Stephen as the first person to die for Jesus.

You have a note there about Saul—remember that Luke is introducing us to this man, who will show back up in a big way in Chapter 9 when God changes his name to Paul and then Paul goes on to take the Gospel around the known world.

Stephen’s death at the hands of a rioting mob was just the beginning of a series of persecutions leveled against the Christians in Jerusalem.

Verse 3 tells us what that looked like as Saul would have only been one of several who were out to destroy the church.

Did you notice what happened, though?

These persecutions caused Christians to flee Jerusalem en masse.

Where did they go? Judea & Samaria

Where did Jesus tell them to take the Gospel? Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria.

Does that sound familiar to you? If you were with us, think back all the way to the very beginning of the year when we first looked at Acts:

Acts 1:8 CSB

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

God was using the persecution of His people to accomplish His purpose.

He knew this was coming, and He was working in it the entire time.

That becomes even more incredible when we really slow down to look at what they were going through.

It’s easy to gloss over it as we read quickly, so walk through verses 1-3 with me again.

“severe persecution”

“all scattered” - You left your family, your home, your business, and everything you had known.

“mourned deeply” – because their friend and servant of Christ was dead!

Listen to the descriptive language of verse 3 – “ravaging”, “dragging off men and women”

This would have been a terrifying time! For most of us in America, we can’t even fathom this.

As Americans, many of us live incredibly comfortable lives.

Most of us, although likely not all of us, live in a safe place with enough food to eat.

What would happen to us if God decided to work this way through us?

What if people started going from house to house to throw you in jail?

What if you had to flee from the persecution that was coming, all the while still in shock and mourning because one of your church friends had been killed because he believed in Jesus?

Many of you have grown up in Christiansburg and Montgomery County…what if you were suddenly forced to leave because it wasn’t safe anymore?

Would you shake your fist at heaven and say, “God, this isn’t what I signed up for?”

Here’s what seems crazy: look at verse 4…

The ones who were scattered left, and they took the Gospel with them.

Were they hurt? Probably. Were they scared? Most likely.

But what was their response: to take the message of Christ wherever they were scattered.

They were committed to preach Christ out of their pain, no matter what!

God used pain, loss, and fear to push the early church out of their comfort zone so they could go on with Him. Are you willing to let him do the same for you?

Think about how God has always worked through pain throughout Scripture:

For Abraham and Sarah who had longed for a baby for so long, God showed Himself able to work miracles by giving them a child in their old age.

God sent Moses into the backside of the wilderness for 40 years to prepare him to lead Israel out of Egypt and back into the desert where they would spend the next 40 years.

Jeremiah faithfully called the nation of Israel to repentance, and he was falsely accused, mistreated, and shamed, yet some of the words God spoke through him bring us incredible comfort as we see how God relates to his people.

Daniel was pulled from his homeland while a young man, yet God used his exile to deliver messages to some of the greatest kings of history.

Ultimately, we see how the Son of God left the joy, comfort, and honor of heaven that was rightfully His to live on earth and then suffer and die for sin.

Let me ask you again: are you willing for God to make you uncomfortable so that He can work through you? Are you willing to preach Christ out of your pain?

Maybe you’re saying that God certainly couldn’t use you…after all, you’re just a….

Look closely at who God used. Look at the end of verse 1…

Who left Jerusalem? Everyone but the apostles.

What does that mean? It was the regular church members that took the Gospel to the nations.

Look at verse 4-5…

Don’t get confused—this isn’t the apostle Phillip, this is the Phillip from Acts 6 who was a lay-leader just like Stephen.

In case you’re not familiar with that term, by the way, “lay-leaders” is a term for people who serve and lead in the church who aren’t pastors.

That’s the Phillip we’re talking about—a lay leader in the church who was part of the team that oversaw the daily feeding ministry.

He’s the one that initially fulfilled Jesus’ command to take the Gospel to Samaria.

We’ll see next week that Peter and John came down once they heard about what God was doing, but initially, it was just Phillip!

I think it’s worth taking note of the fact that when the Gospel first leaves Jerusalem, it leaves through the lives of “ordinary” church members.

The same principle applies today. I am one guy. I try to make witnessing a way of life, attempting to share the Gospel as often as God opens the door, but there is no way that I could adequately share the Gospel with everyone in Christiansburg.

How many of you have a job somewhere? Ever been transferred, either to a new location or to a new department? Look at the discomfort of a new situation as a place where you are suddenly around a fresh group of people who need to hear about Jesus, and God has put you right in the middle of it.

I don’t work there, I don’t live in your dorm or go to your classes, so I can’t hang out and tell people about Jesus, but you can.

Maybe there is a situation that you really don’t want to deal with right now. It could be a medical problem that has you in and out of doctors’ offices or a legal issue that has you going from appointment to appointment.

Maybe you’re buying a house and you’re talking to different realtors and banks, and you are sick of having to go from place to place.

Have you thought that the reason God has you going into all those different offices is because He wants to expand His kingdom through you?

Maybe, just maybe, that God is working through all this to put you in places to share the love of Christ with people who may never run into a genuine Christian who loves them enough to tell them about Jesus.

What tough situations are you facing right now? Are you willing to look at them through the lens of God’s activity?

Phillip did, and God used him in incredible ways to draw an entire city to Christ.

Look in verses 5-8…

Do you see the incredible ways God worked through Phillip?!

I’m going to suggest something to you this morning that I believe is true: Phillip would never have seen God work the way He did had God not forced him to be uncomfortable.

Had God not allowed or directed the persecution to push His people out of the city, Phillip may have never seen God use him to draw people to Christ.

Could it be that your unwillingness to leave your comfort zone is keeping God from using you to spread His kingdom around the world?

Maybe God isn’t calling you overseas or something that seems drastic, but you still refuse to seem like the weirdo by talking to your neighbor about Christ, or by telling your co-worker about Jesus.

Listen: Preach Christ out of your pain!

Why is that?

Because when God works through our pain, only He can get credit for it!

Listen to Paul’s experience in a similar situation:

2 Corinthians 12:7–10 CSB

especially because of the extraordinary revelations. Therefore, so that I would not exalt myself, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to torment me so that I would not exalt myself. Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it would leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and in difficulties, for the sake of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

God’s power is most clearly displayed when we are at our weakest.

No one could blame Phillip’s success on how well known he was in Samaria, or how many good connections he had there; when God worked through Phillip in Samaria, it was after Phillip moved there while fleeing for his very life.

Paul wrote about that earlier in 2 Corinthians:

2 Corinthians 4:7–10 CSB

Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed. We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body.

We suffer so Christ can be exalted. We leave our comfort zone so we can tell the world that He left His to rescue us and them. We die so others can live.

There is a crucial verse that keeps jumping out at me in this passage. Look at verse 8…

When God allowed His people to be scattered, He brought the joyous message and power of the Gospel to a new city.

Here’s a question for us to think through: Does our city have any more joy because of what God is doing in and through us?

We are prayerfully looking for ways for God to use us as a church to share His love to the community, but it will take more than just special events and one-time emphases.

The way that God’s work through us can consistently bring joy to this city is when we, as individuals and families, take the love of Christ into every aspect of our life.

Can you see how this works? You share about Jesus and how He is working to your nurse at the doctor’s office, and then she hears it from her mechanic, and then her son’s best friend’s mom tells her about Jesus and what God is doing through this church…

That creates a hunger in her to find out more about who Jesus is, and she gets gloriously saved and finally finds joy.

She takes that joy with her to the office, where the doctor she works with notices the difference and hears from her and you about what Jesus has done. He gets saved, and the cycle continues until there is much joy in the city.

Are you willing to get out of your comfort zone and share the Gospel with your neighbor? Your friend? Your family? The waitress? The nurse?

You see, when we preach Christ out of our pain, God can use it to bring great joy!

So, what is hurting you today? Where is God putting you through the wringer and shaping you to look like Jesus?

What would it look like you you preached Christ out of your pain?