Acts 5:17-42 | "Standing in Obedience"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

It is our prayer that God would reveal Christ through his word, because that's what he's given us.

To reveal himself to us.

Would you take your Bible, please, and open it to the book of Acts.

The book of Acts this morning.

1934 seems like a long time ago to most of us.

1934, the Third Reich was beginning to exert its power in Germany.

And on January 8th, 1934, the New York Times carried a headline stating that pastors all over Germany were continuing to preach in defiance of Nazi orders.

Seems like a long time ago.

A different world.

Where some in our world would have the audacity to tell God's people, stop declaring the Word of God.

This morning, January 16th, 2022, many Canadian churches are engaging in illegal activities.

Perhaps even at this very moment, pastors and teachers across Canada are actively violating Canadian law that muzzles the ministry of the Word of God.

Although I could, I'm not speaking about the shutting down of churches in Quebec province from COVID fears.

I'm not talking about limiting church attendance or the requiring of certain behaviors within the churches of Christ due to COVID, although I could digress into that.

No, I'm talking about something much more sinister that has taken place in that country, and it is known as the Canadian Bill C4.

C4.

Ironically, on January 7th, the day before that infamous day in 1934, on January 7th, 2022, Bill C4 became Canadian law, and that law has elevated an unbiblical view of human sexuality to the level of law code.

This law makes preaching, teaching, and counseling about God's view of human sexuality a criminal act, if taken at face value.

Now the Canadian courts will likely take the next few months and years to decide precisely how the law is applied, but as it stands this very moment, proclaiming the truth of God's purpose for humanity as it pertains to sexuality, gender, and sin is a criminal act in Canada.

In response, many churches across that country are preaching today on God's view of human sexuality to declare that God's word will not be muzzle.

Even if those who stand firmly upon that word face the consequences for doing so.

Lest you think that even that is a border away.

The city of Lafayette, Indiana is at this time considering a local law.

Making it against the law to counsel someone in a biblical way regarding human sexuality and gender.

Friends, the time is coming for the church in the Western world to take a stand for what God says, and it is going to cost us something.

Are you ready for that cost to impact you?

Are you prepared to stand firm?

Are you prepared to trust God even when it hurts?

Already we see it in our country at several levels, from local universities to individual communities to government offices.

This reality is nothing new.

When we consider it in light of world history or even church history.

Saints of all ages have carried the cross of Christ in costful and painful ways.

Take, for example, just one, John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim's Progress.

The only book in history that perhaps could compare with the Bible in terms of its publication, the amount it's been published.

John Bunyan wrote that book while he was sitting in a dirty prison simply for preaching the gospel to small gatherings of Christ's people.

He remained imprisoned for 12 years.

He could have been let out if he would have agreed to stop preaching.

But he told the officials that if he was released from prison, he would go and preach that very same day.

Christianity has held a favored status in the Western world for a couple of centuries now that has enabled us to follow Christ largely with ease.

That era is ending.

Perhaps more rapidly than we realize.

Maybe more subtly than we have anticipated.

It's now at your doorstep.

If you take a day trip to Winnipeg and you encounter a person who is struggling with their opposite sex attraction, and you strike up a conversation with them and you share with them about the hope of the gospel that makes people whole, you could be fined or go to Canadian prison if caught or reported.

Will you stand for God's view of human beings?

Will you stand for biblical sexuality?

Will you stand upon Scripture if it costs you?

Surely the hope of Christ is worth the price.

It doesn't cost us yet, at least not much.

But be sure that it will.

Maybe sooner than we expect.

So today I am preaching in solidarity with our Canadian brothers and sisters, and not just with them, but with those around the world who day by day feel the splinters of Christ's cross digging into their skin.

Who labor under the crushing weight of the cross of Jesus.

And we gather to prepare ourselves with the hope of Christ through the word of Christ.

So if you will, I'd like to look at Acts chapter 5.

Acts 5 · chapter mention

Not the beginning of the chapter, which is sort of depressing, where God killed two people in a church service.

No, I want to begin looking at Acts chapter 5 and verse 17.

Acts 5 · chapter mention

If you'd like to follow along, I will read to the end of the chapter.

It says, But the high priest who 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.

But during the night, an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out, and said, Go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life.

When the apostles heard this, they entered the temple at daybreak and began to teach.

Now when the high priest came and those who were with him, they called together the council and all the Senate of the people of Israel and sent to the prison to have them brought out.

But when the officers came, they did not find them in the prison.

And so they returned and reported, They found the prison securely locked, and all the guards standing at the doors, but when we opened up the doors, found no one inside.

Now, when the captain of the temple and the chief priest heard these words, they were greatly perplexed about them, wondering what this would come to.

Someone came and told them, Look, the men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people.

Then the captain with the officers went and brought them, but not by force, for they were afraid of being stoned by the people.

And when they had brought them, they set them before the council.

And the high priest questioned them, saying, We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, the name of Jesus, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching.

And you intend to bring this man's blood upon us.

But Peter and the apostles answered, We must obey God rather than men.

The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree.

But 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.

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

But a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, the teacher of the law held in honor by all the people, stood up and gave orders to put the men outside for a little while.

And he said to them, Men of Israel, take care what you are about to do with these men.

For before these days Thutic rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him.

He was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing.

After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census, and drew away some of the people after him.

He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered.

So in the 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.

He might even be found opposing God.

So they took his advice.

And when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus and let them go.

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

And every day in the temple and from house to house they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.

Amen.

This account likely occurred with within a two to maybe four months of the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ in the city of Jerusalem.

The early church is still being established.

Thousands upon thousands of people are placing their faith not in the religious system of Judaism, but in Jesus.

The crucified and risen and ascended Messiah.

They're struggling.

They're struggling with the opposition from Jewish religious leaders.

And it's understandable why those first Christians were causing such a stir.

They're upsetting the proverbial apple cart.

They're turning the world upside down through the public proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah.

Churches today get all stirred up when genuine believers choose to depart one church for another gospel-believing church.

That's not what's happening here.

In the Jewish mind, Christians were leaving the Jewish faith for another religion altogether.

Not simply another religion, but something that was blasphemous.

Already, in the previous chapter in Acts chapter 4, Peter and John were arrested and placed in custody for speaking of Jesus and his resurrection.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

The church is praying for boldness, asking God to give them boldness to keep on speaking.

Why would they need to keep on speaking with boldness?

Well, it's because they are facing hardship and imprisonment and pain.

The Jewish leaders didn't know what to do with this new problem, but they knew they had to squash it immediately.

And so we have this account that proceeds in five stages.

The arena is the city of Jerusalem.

And the net is tightening around the Christians.

And so the focus becomes a large room, much like the room we're in this morning, where the Jewish ruling council gathered for official business.

The setting in which all of this takes place is one that is perhaps best described as apostolic obedience.

The apostles are leading the growing, fledgling church, and they're meeting with whoever is able to gather each day in the temple's outer region to teach and to heal.

We see that in verse 12 of this chapter 5 of Acts.

When you read of Solomon's portico, it's the columned surround all the way around Herod's temple.

It's an open place to gather, and so the apostles would gather each day, and whoever was there would gather and hear them teach.

People were coming to faith in Christ by the droves, and God was working to overcome all of the opposition, working powerfully through the apostles.

Why were they doing that?

It's because what we read in chapter 1, specifically chapter 1 and verse 8, where Jesus, the risen Christ, said to these apostles, You will be my witnesses, first in where?

Jerusalem.

The apostles are acting in obedience to the word of Christ.

But as you read through the book of Acts, you can't miss.

You can't miss the tension.

We've already noted Peter and John were both in prison already.

They were threatened.

They were told, stop speaking in the name of Jesus.

Now in verse 13 here, there's there's a vague hint that some people are even fearing joining with the Christians out of fear of what might happen to them.

Do you know that Canadian churches are meeting in secret in some places?

It was known that the Jewish leadership wasn't too keen on this new faith.

So some were choosing not to be publicly identified with this new Christian thing.

And it's then that a second arrest occurs.

In verse 18, we see that it is a public arrest of the apostles.

Back in chapter 4, it's only Peter and John.

At the very least, this time it is a majority of the 12 apostles, if not all 12.

This is serious business.

They've ignored the order to no longer speak of Jesus.

And so the Jewish leaders choose to fix the problem by arresting all of the apostles.

Imagine showing up on Sunday morning to worship together with God's people with no pastoral staff.

Because we're all sitting in jail.

Well, at least you have the elders who can step up and fill the spot.

Maybe we are released on Monday or Tuesday.

We gather together next Sunday and we preach the gospel again the next Sunday.

And after that Sunday, on Monday morning, we are all in jail.

And so the elders and the pastors are all together sitting in a jail cell, and you have nobody to lead you.

When Luke wrote public prison, verse 18, he could have referred to the standard community jail, or he could have been referring to the method of the arrest.

That is, it was done in public.

And given the flow of the situation here, that seems to be the best way to understand what happened.

The Jewish leaders wanted to make a definitive statement.

So they arrested the apostles, as we might say today, on Sunday morning during the church gathering, in order to make a point.

Maybe we might even say they had television cameras present to make sure that everybody knows.

But they did not account for God's response to the arrest of his obedient witnesses.

Because that public arrest turns into a private rescue.

And you can't read this in an understanding way and conclude that God is humorless.

It says, but during the night, an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out.

And said, Go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life.

The Jewish world of Jesus' time was ruled by politics, not so much different than our world today.

Remember, Solomon said that there's nothing new under the sun?

That is absolutely true.

It's just the details might vary.

In the world of Acts, there were three or four leading Jewish groups, but only two were prominent.

The Sadducees were the largest and most conservative group, and so they were the dominant ruling authority.

The Sadducees had as their primary responsibility controlling the Temple Mount and leading all of the worship services.

So it makes sense why they are the ones to arrest the apostles for teaching because it's in the temple.

It's their realm of authority.

The other group, the other primary group, were the Pharisees, and the Pharisees were more respected by the common people.

You might say they got the majority of the common votes.

And because they were more respected in the community than the Sadducees, the Sadducees often catered to the will of the Pharisees just to keep the peace.

They also didn't want to give up control, so they had to appease.

And it says here that the Sadducees were filled with jealousy because of the apostles gaining greater crowds than they were.

See, nothing's changed.

Don't miss this though.

Luke emphasizes for his readers that the Sadducees were the party behind the arrest.

Now, why does that point to God's sense of humor?

Well, you see, the Sadducees only believed in the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament.

They didn't read and they didn't teach the rest of the Old Testament.

They just focused on that first five books of the law of Moses.

And so they missed a whole lot of other things that came along with the rest of the Old Testament.

And along with that, they didn't believe in things that were in their minds miraculous.

So they didn't believe in the resurrection.

And you might remember the story of Jesus entertaining the Sadducees with a confrontation in the gospel accounts where Jesus said to them, Oh, by the way, you don't believe in the resurrection.

I know that.

But there's a story in the Torah that you uphold that indicates that the resurrection is true.

What about that?

So that's this group.

They didn't believe in anything that was not what we might say scientifically observable.

Even more, they didn't believe in angels.

So what does God do in response to these leaders who refuse to believe in God's power to do the miraculous and God's power to work through his angelic messengers?

And who refuse to hear his human messengers.

He sends an angel.

You don't believe in angels?

You don't believe in the miraculous?

Fine.

Let me show you.

Let me show you.

He sends an angel to thwart their plan.

And all of the apostles are let out miraculously so that nothing is disturbed and the guards are clueless.

My friends, there's some applied truth to be gained here.

When God's word is the standard upon which we function, and when God's word is the standard upon which we stand, at the minimum we should expect public scrutiny.

Likely we should expect worse.

God is powerful.

He can deliver in ways that even you don't believe he can deliver.

But whether or not he delivers or doesn't deliver, he will do what is most advantageous for his purpose and what brings glory to his name.

You can count on that.

Now, maybe you are sitting here thinking, you know, I think you're overblowing the reality of the situation, Pastor.

Well, let me give you another example.

Consider the Finnish government official who is currently charged with crimes against humanity under the Finnish criminal code.

What is her crime against humanity, you might ask?

Her crime is using the social media app Twitter to post a tweet of some of her favorite Bible verses.

That is a crime against humanity, apparently.

J.C.

Ryle wrote, True Christianity will cost a man the favor of the world.

He must be content to be thought ill of.

And they're told to return to the temple and to speak to everyone.

Why?

Because these are the words of life.

They're the only words of life.

Defy the Sadducees and proclaim the only truth that can bring true and lasting life.

I don't know about you, but I can imagine myself feeling pretty confident if God sent an angel to walk me out of jail so that no one else knows about it.

If I was in jail for preaching and an angel came and led me out and told me to go back to preaching, I'd probably feel pretty confident.

That'd be an adrenaline rush.

What does the scripture say?

If God is for me, who can be against me?

And that's what happened, verse 21.

They wasted no time returning to speak of Jesus at the break of day on the Sadducees' turf.

I love that.

I love that.

They want them out, they do everything within their power to get rid of them, get them off of their turf, and what happens?

They show back up the next day.

If the world opposes the word of God, what do we do?

We just keep preaching the word of God.

Escaping prison would intensify the problem all by itself, but it's ramped even further when there's this awkward recognition by the Sadducees.

They call the entire council together.

And as the council is gathering together, they send some trustworthy officers to go to the jail and to gather up the apostles and to bring them to the council to be interrogated.

But, verse 23, small problem.

The jail's empty.

We don't know what's happened to them.

They're gone.

And not just that, but everything is in order.

The doors are locked, the guards are posted.

Nothing happened.

They did everything right, except for believe God.

They did everything right except for accounting for angels and the power of God.

Says they were greatly perplexed in verse 24, wondering what's this gonna come to?

Well, yeah.

If your plan is completely undone in ways that you cannot explain, you're gonna wonder what's going on.

Slightly awkward.

It's slightly slightly awkward when you are the ruling party, you are the power, the powerful party calling this meeting to interrogate some prisoners, and all of a sudden the prisoners disappear.

That's not all.

Someone, unnamed, verse 25, ratted on the apostles.

Look, the men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people.

Beloved, whether God rescues or not, the reality that he has and that he can rescue ought to infuse us to stand firmly, confidently on the word of God and to proclaim it boldly.

Someone else has rightly said, your beliefs about the sovereignty of God don't really matter when everything is cool and good and alright.

Your beliefs about the sovereignty of God matter when you can say, like Job, though you slay me, yet will I trust in you.

In our account, the balance of power has shifted slightly.

Because the Sadducees no longer know what to do.

They're the ruling party, they're the power players here.

And all of a sudden their plan has been undermined and they're scrambling.

They're scrambling because the apostles are popular.

And they're gaining in popularity with the people, so much so that the Sadducees are afraid of being stoned to death by the people if they go out and arrest the apostles in public again.

Somehow they're brought in for questioning.

And it is here in this question and answer period that is more like an interrogation that we see a power-filled interaction.

Not a powerful interaction, but a power-filled interaction.

It is power-filled because there are 70 men of great authority and influence in the Jewish world interrogating twelve apostles.

Perhaps even they are there with their attendants and their legal experts gathered together to interrogate these untaught and untrained preachers.

But this time there's more to it because there is an accusation not only of rebellion, but that accusation of rebellion comes with a side of defensiveness.

It begins with some fearful questioning by the chief disbeliever of angels.

The high priest questioned them, verse 27, saying, We strictly charged you not to teach in this name.

This is the most influential Jewish leader throwing down the gauntlet first by accusing them of violating the council's order to stop preaching God's word.

If Hollywood portrayed this, we might hear the high priest character saying, How dare you! We gave you an order.

Who are you to violate this order?

And not only that, you intend to bring this man's blood upon us.

This man is Jesus, and his blood refers to his crucifixion.

The high priest is saying, Not only have you rebelled against our order to stop speaking of Scripture in the name of Jesus, but you are actually accusing us of murder.

That's a serious charge.

And it seems to show a level of uncertainty and even fear in the high priest.

But the apostles, on the other hand, are fearless in their preaching.

Led by Peter in verse 29, they preach the gospel to their accusers.

Their lives are being held in the hands of 70 judges who are ready to condemn them for speaking of Jesus.

And what do they do?

Let me tell you about Jesus.

That's what they do.

They preach the gospel.

And look how fearless they are.

We must obey God rather than men.

In other words, flip that around.

Sadducees and Pharisees, you have a place of power, but you are not greater than our God.

Sorry.

No, not sorry.

You are not greater than God.

Yes, we are proclaiming the resurrection, in which the vast majority of you Sadducees don't believe.

Why are we proclaiming the resurrection?

Because Jesus rose from the dead.

The tomb is empty.

Why was he in the tomb in the first place?

You put him on the cross.

You crucified him.

You made him into a curse.

You sought to kill him, but God overruled your action.

Hmm.

What did God just do in the prison?

He overruled their action.

God overruled your action to kill his son, proving that now, today, this very day, through Jesus, there is repentance and forgiveness of sins, and that is true for you today, if you have never placed your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

This message has not changed.

Peter says, we have God's Spirit, and along with the Holy Spirit, we testify to the truthfulness of these things.

This morning, churches in Canada are proclaiming the truthfulness of God's word in the face of their government.

And they will face the consequences.

The truth is that we must believe and obey Jesus over any human authority that inhibits or contradicts his word.

Clearly, the apostles were already convinced of that truth.

As the great Puritan theologian John Owen said, the moment we abandon the Bible as the sole authority in faith and practice is the moment we accept and follow false authorities.

So instead, we trust in Christ.

We trust in his word that enabled these apostles to testify of Jesus fearlessly.

Beloved, the church has been praying with boldness.

What do we see?

Boldness.

It is time that the Church of Christ pray for boldness.

But we also see in this account God's providential oversight.

God providentially cares for his witnesses all throughout this event.

And just in case you don't understand this, God's providential oversight is greater than any witness protection program.

Look at how God moves on behalf of these apostles.

The council, probably here referring mainly to the Sadducees, reacts with unbelief.

Not just we disagree, kind of unbelief, but a kind that rages with hatred.

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

Now that's a strong language, but the fact is our English translation softened Luke's tone just a little bit.

The word here for enraged means to be sawn in two.

To be cut in half.

It's a figure of speech that refers to the reaction you would have if the absolute worst thing were done to you.

They reacted as though the apostles were attempting to cut them apart.

And the authorities didn't merely want to kill the apostles.

This reaction speaks of a premeditated execution.

In other words, they were ready in that moment to take those twelve apostles and nail them to a cross.

The unbelieving world reacts to the truth of God's world with a rage and a decisive, premeditated counter-response to the truth of God's word.

They don't just seek to undo what we've said.

They seek to react to it with a completely different message to take it away.

That's the reaction to the truth of God's word.

That's what the apostles faced, and it's what we are seeing in a new way in the Western world.

But in God's providence, at least one man was present that day with maybe more of a reasoned, logical kind of belief.

We might even call it a kind of faith.

That's Gamalia.

Gamalia was a respected Pharisee who believed in the power and the work of God, but he was also quite shrewd.

Because he understood if they executed the apostles, they would face an uprising in Jerusalem, potentially losing all of their political clout.

So crushing the fledgling church by killing the twelve witnesses would be more dangerous than letting God deal with them.

Case you are not thinking ahead, one of Gamaliel's most promising disciples was a man by the name of Saul, who would later become Paul.

History and Jewish history had demonstrated that if God if God weren't behind something, it would run its course eventually and just fade away.

Gamaliel's thinking Rome is likely to execute these men for us at some point.

Let's just let them go.

You see, Gamaliel is politically astute.

But notice also how theologically astute he is.

He says if this plan or this undertaking is of man, is of human-centered nature, it will fail.

But if it's God, you will not be able to overthrow them.

You might even be found opposing God.

Literally, you might be a God fighter.

Based on his short Jewish history lesson, Gamaliel thought that these 12 uneducated men, these fishermen and tax collectors and whatever, were merely the latest form of Jewish nationalism.

Yeah, don't worry about them.

You don't need to bother with them.

Don't stir up the Romans.

Just let these fanatics go their way.

Besides, you know you can't fight God, and on the slight chance that God is in this, that God is behind this, and we are wrong.

Now we're not wrong, but there might be a small chance you don't want to fight God.

Why stir up the people?

And here's God's providence, my friends.

What does it say?

So they took his advice.

Unwittingly, Gamaliel was a servant of God on behalf of his 12 witnesses.

Gamaliel never believed in Jesus that we know of.

But he held to a very reasoned Jewish faith in the work of God.

He was sincere in his faith.

But when it came to Jesus, he was sincerely wrong.

And we can gain a truth from that.

When we stand on the truth of God's word, we can expect the unexpected.

God may even, like Gamaliel, use his enemies to further his purpose.

We shouldn't be surprised.

That's found all throughout scripture, right?

God used Joseph's mistreatment by the Egyptians to prepare to care for his people during times of immense famine.

God used Daniel in a lion's den to bring praise to his name through a Persian king.

One of Luke's themes in the book of Acts is God's plan, God's purposeful, intentional plan.

He's saying God is working and he's bringing all things to his determined end.

Do you think a human leader is going to interrupt that?

Yet, no.

Not going to happen.

God has called us to follow him.

Jesus has called us to take up our cross and to testify to the word of God and the Lord Jesus wherever we might be, no matter what it might bring.

Because it's part of his plan.

What takes place at the end of this account is what we might call a precedent-setting response.

We encounter here a description of the council's response to the apostles.

It says they charged them yet again to stop preaching, to stop speaking of Jesus and the Word of God, and then they had them whipped.

What happens in verse 42?

Yeah, we're gonna keep on.

We're just gonna keep doing the same thing in the temple, house to house, wherever we are.

The typical procedure for whipping, which is what this refers to, the typical procedure for whipping was to bind the hands and the feet.

While a flogger whipped the person with a three-stranded leather whip.

Standard was 39 lashes, alternating one lash on the chest and two lashes on the back.

They stopped at 39 because God had ordered in the Old Testament that the maximum was 40, and they just wanted to be careful that they didn't miscount.

How gracious and generous they were.

Now this is descriptive, right?

It describes for us what the twelve endured for the sake of Jesus.

But in many ways, it serves as a precedent for the church, no matter the age.

And there are two aspects of this precedent that are both supported by other scriptures.

And the first is that following Jesus may be a painful trust.

My friends, the Lord Jesus calls us to follow in his footsteps.

And his footsteps included some excruciating things.

But Jesus himself trusted in the Father's plan.

The apostles trusted in God's purpose and plan.

And as he trusted in the Father's plan, as the disciples trusted in God's plan, we are called to be obedient witnesses, even if it involves a painful kind of trusting.

The second precedent-setting element is a praiseworthy dishonor.

Most Americans don't live within a what's come to be called a shame culture.

A shame culture is where people conform to a certain standard, a certain way of living, a certain way of acting, a certain way of functioning because they fear dishonor.

They fear public dishonor.

And most of us don't experience that as a culture.

Nevertheless, none of us enjoys being shamed, do we?

We don't like being embarrassed.

We shun dishonor.

We gravitate instead towards those who appreciate us, who encourage us, who strengthen us, who praise us, and we avoid anyone who doesn't treat us well.

The strange paradox to our modern ears is that suffering dishonor for the name of Christ and the Word of God is somehow, in some way, praise worthy.

To be dishonored in this life for the logos, for the incarnate word, and for the written word is worthy of all praise.

Staggering and bleeding, they rejoiced.

Because it was a praiseworthy honor to follow in the steps of Jesus.

My friends, I invite you to resolve, even if you are alone in doing so, to pursue eternal praise by standing for the truth of God's word, even if it brings pain and dishonor.

Charles Spurgeon once said, Oh, count ye then the cost.

And if any of you have taken up a religion which costs you nothing, put it down and flee from it, for it will be your curse and your ruin.

So with trust in Christ and hope in God's power and his purpose and his plan, we join in heart, mind, and soul with our spiritual family under spiritual distress.

Today, especially today, we join in solidarity with our Canadian brothers and sisters who are ready to suffer praiseworthy dishonor for the name of Christ.

They may indeed join multitudes of others who have been fined and imprisoned for standing firm on the Word of God.

May they have the strength to say, with John Bunyan sitting in his prison cell, I will stay in prison until the moss grows on my eyelids rather than disobey my God.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus motivate us to pray for the boldness of his spirit, to prepare us to stand firm in his truth as the day approaches.

Would you bow with me?

Lord Jesus, we give you thanks for the powerful work that you've done in and through your people throughout the ages.

We don't know what you are intending.

For us, for America, for North Dakota, for Minnesota, for Grand Forks, for Faith Evangelical Free Church, for each of us as individuals.

You know that.

You have a plan.

But we trust you.

And we trust your purpose and your plan, and we trust that you are powerful to deliver if that is your choice.

Most of all, we bow in submission to you.

And we ask that you would enable us, whenever it is needed, to stand in your grace and the power of your spirit, and to say, whenever called upon, let me tell you about Jesus.

May we be a church that is bold.

Not bold because we are somehow strong and courageous in our own strength, but because of the work of your spirit, motivating, encouraging, and strengthening us to stand on your word.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.