Acts: Bold Witnesses (28:16-32)

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Reading from the Book of Acts, chapter 28, 16 to 31.

Acts 28 · chapter mention

And when we came into Rome, Paul was allowed to stay by himself with a soldier who guarded him.

After three days, he called together the local leaders of the Jews.

And when they gathered, he said to them, Brothers, though I had done nothing against our people or the customs of our fathers, yet I was delivered as a prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans.

When they had examined me, they wished to set me at liberty because there was no reason for the death penalty in my case.

But because the Jews objected, I was compelled to appeal to Caesar, though I had no charge to bring against my nation.

For this reason, therefore, I have asked to see you and speak with you, since it is because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain.

And they said to him, We have received no letters from Judea about you.

And none of the brothers coming here has reported or spoken any evil about you.

But we desire to hear from you what your views are.

For with regard to this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against.

When they had appointed a day for him, they came to him at his lodging in greater numbers.

From morning till evening, he expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus, both from the law of Moses and from the prophets.

And some were convinced by what he said, but others disbelieved.

And disagreeing among themselves, they departed after Paul had made one statement.

The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet, go to this people and say, You will indeed hear, but never understand.

And you will indeed see, but never perceive.

For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed.

Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.

Therefore, let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles.

They will listen.

He lived there two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

And so we're told that Paul welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.

So let's pray.

Almighty God, on this day, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, you revealed the way of eternal life to every race and nation.

Pour out this gift anew, that by the preaching of the gospel your salvation may reach to the ends of the earth through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Be seated.

Well, if you reach this point in the movie, you're about an hour and a half, well, well over an hour and a half in at uh at this point.

We're reaching the climax, we're reaching the final scene that we've been waiting for this whole time.

King Arthur and his brave knights make his way across the hill, and they're ready to lay siege to that final castle, one last battle to secure the prize of the Holy Grail.

And just as King Arthur rallies his troops to charge, a couple of police cruisers pull right up and throw King Arthur in for some bad behavior earlier in the movie.

And the movie ends with one of the police officers turning to the cameraman and saying, That's enough.

And it cuts and it goes black.

If you're familiar with the movie, it's Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail.

I'm sorry to just give away my really cultured and you know highbrow taste in film there.

But it is an infamously abrupt ending.

It just cuts right when you think it's gonna get good.

And that's part of the joke, right?

This is just an absurd and silly movie.

It has been the whole time, and now you reach the end, and of course it's gonna end on an absurd and silly note, but it leaves you as the audience going, Well, I wanted to see what's next.

Now, some movies do that a little bit more purposefully.

Maybe it lands a little bit more heavy.

It's a historical movie, and just as you're waiting for the big moment, it cuts and the screen goes black.

And maybe if you're watching it at home, you even see your reflection and the black of the screen, and you're left thinking, well, whatever comes next has something to do with what I do with it.

The book of Acts has an abrupt ending, doesn't it?

We just read the last section of the book of Acts together, and we are concluding our series on Acts together today.

It's not just been a series on Acts, right?

It's been a series on Luke and Acts together, and this whole saga, this whole narrative has been building to a climactic point.

We started in Luke last fall, didn't we?

And we met Jesus and we read about his nativity in the beginning of his ministry, his journey to Jerusalem, we read about his passion and his death, his cross, his resurrection.

And then as we began our journey into Acts, we we pivoted into, well, what do we do with what we've seen about Jesus?

And we've seen this earliest church given a commission by the risen Lord Jesus just before his ascension.

And what was that commission?

You will be my witnesses.

That's the commission.

That's the mission that the church is carrying forward.

You'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in this city in which you live, in Judea, in the surrounding area, in Samaria, you're gonna cross cultural boundaries and taboos to bring the good news with you to the very ends of the earth.

There's gonna be no barrier or boundary great enough to prevent the spread of the gospel.

That's the commission for the church.

That's the commission the church carries forward to this day.

And it's that commission that is called Paul into Christ's service.

We met Paul pretty early on in the book of Acts, didn't we?

And he was a pretty different guy when we first met him.

He was a zealous persecutor of the church.

His day job was killing Christians, and he was good at it, and he was convinced he was doing God a favor by doing it.

And yet, Paul has a powerful encounter with the risen Lord Jesus, doesn't he?

Knocks him off his feet, changes his life forever, and the great persecutor of the church becomes the great proclaimer of the good news.

And this proclaimer of the good news is willing to go to the very ends of the earth to bring the gospel with him.

That's what we're seeing in our chapter today, aren't we?

Paul has finally arrived in Rome.

He's being passed off, arrested, and passed off from one Roman official to another, going, cycling his way through the Roman judicial system.

He has finally arrived in Rome, having appealed to Caesar.

And we are ready to see Paul make his passionate case for the gospel before the Roman emperor himself.

But when he arrives in Rome, he has a simple encounter with his fellow Jewish people that doesn't go particularly well.

And then the screen cuts, it goes black, and we're left asking, What's next?

This is not an accident.

Luke didn't run out of paper, he didn't run out of time.

I've had those assignments in high school where you basically end mid-sentence because you got to hand something in.

That's not Luke's problem here.

Luke is doing this very much by design.

Some have suggested that Luke has written these accounts, his two-part work of his gospel and the book of Acts, to be used as kind of evidence or kind of credibility for Paul's upcoming trial.

Maybe Paul or Luke spent these two years in Rome preparing these documents for Paul's use at his trial.

Maybe that's the case.

But either way, Luke has designed this ending very purposefully.

It's meant to end with an exclamation mark.

It's meant for us to see our reflection and say, where do we go from here?

Here's what Luke wants us to see.

He's been wanting us to see this through the whole arc of his book of Acts.

Having come to see who Jesus is in Luke, we now go and tell with the book of Acts.

And this is the commission.

This is the point Luke wants us to see as he concludes this book.

As Christians, our mission is to be bold witnesses.

As Christians, as a church, our mission, the commission, the job description, the go and get busy doing this is to be bold witnesses.

That's not an option.

That's not something for, you know, the elite Christians who've gone off and done their seminary work.

That is the commission for us, the church, to do together.

And here's at least three things that I think Luke has wanted us to see this whole time that he draws out in the conclusion of his book of Acts.

Three things that Luke wants us to see about what it means to be a bold witness.

If you asked Luke, if you asked Paul, what does it mean to be a bold witness?

I think they would tell you these three things.

Number one, bold witnesses find their hope in Jesus.

Number one.

Number two, bold witnesses face rejection.

And number three, bold witnesses forge ahead.

Bold witnesses find their hope in Jesus, they face rejection, and they forge ahead.

And this is nothing new.

This is not a news flash if you've been tracking through the book of Acts.

And again, that's very intentional.

Luke wants to land exactly at the terrain we've been exploring this whole time.

He wants us to carry these threads, these themes forward into our mission.

Because what we see exemplified here in the life of Paul is meant to exemplify our approach to the mission that we share with him.

And we endeavor to be a gospel-centered church, don't we, new song?

So we've got to understand this mission.

And we've got to understand what it means to be bold witnesses.

So let's dive in together.

Luke, or pardon me, Acts chapter 28.

Acts 28 · chapter mention

We're going to look at verses 16 to 31.

Paul has arrived in Rome, verses 16 to 19.

He is under house arrest.

He's got a Roman centurion, you know, one of these kind of elite policemen, so to speak, who was keeping him under watch and under guard.

And Paul has arranged for a meeting between himself and some of the local Jewish leaders, probably elders in the local synagogue.

And we've sort of seen Paul's pattern of evangelism so far, haven't we?

The first place he goes in a given city he arrives at is the synagogue.

Well, now Paul's under arrest, isn't he?

So he's not going to be doing much traveling around Rome.

He's going to be staying put.

But he's calling the leaders of the synagogue to come and meet with him.

So that's what they do.

Let's pick it up at verse 20 here.

Paul is kind of explaining what's brought him to this point.

And what we're going to see is we're going to see Paul, the bold witness, finds his hope in Jesus.

Verse 20.

Paul says, For this reason, therefore, I've asked to see you and speak with you, since it is because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain.

And maybe he's clattering his chains in front of them as he says it.

It's because of Israel's hope that I'm in these chains, that I'm in the situation that I'm in.

What does Paul mean with that by that?

Well, by Israel, I know we're very troubled by what's coming out of Israel in our day, but we need to be mindful of what Paul means when he talks about Israel.

When Paul uses this word Israel, he has in mind God's covenant people, the people who God has made his covenant promises to, the people who are meant to be a blessing to the world, a kingdom of priests to spread the good news of who God is to all the world.

This is what we read about in the whole Old Testament, and it anticipates the fulfillment in Jesus.

So when Paul is talking about Israel, he's talking about God's covenant people, the people God has called to himself for the sake of the world.

And he's asked to meet with these elders to describe the hope of Israel.

It's because of the hope of Israel that I am in these chains.

And by hope of Israel, Paul means to signal that all of God's promises, everything he's made to our people so far, have come to pass.

They have been fulfilled, they have been completed, and they've been completed in the person of Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah.

Acts 17, 3, Paul is in Thessalonica, and he opens the scriptures with them and he explains and proves that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and rise from the dead.

And he said this to them: This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ, which is the Greek word for Messiah.

Paul is saying, All of our hope, everything God has been doing with and for and through our nation has come to fulfillment in Jesus.

He is the hope at the center of everything.

And so Paul spends his time with them explaining about the kingdom of God, which he says in his letter to the Romans, he would have written this a couple of years previous.

Paul says this the kingdom of God is a matter of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

What better theme could we have on Pentecost Sunday than to reflect on the kingdom of God, joy in the Holy Spirit?

It is God's renewing and creative work being brought to fulfillment through Jesus.

That's what Paul has in mind.

Everything he's promised to us in the law of Moses and in the prophets, which is shorthand for the whole Old Testament, has been brought to pass in Jesus.

He is the hope at the center of everything.

And because he has found his hope in Jesus, Paul can be a bold witness exactly where he's at.

Paul's hope is centered completely in Jesus, the one who fulfills God's promises.

So a little while ago, Rachel took a pottery class.

And out of this pottery class, we have a number of lovely mugs that we now get to use for pens, which is great.

So proud of you.

For a first time, it's wonderful.

I couldn't do any better.

Who am I kidding?

But one of the things I was really interested to learn about, I mean, pottery is a difficult thing.

If you've done pottery, you know that it is a challenging hobby to take up.

So I admire you very much, Rachel, for that.

I'm going to hear about that later.

It's okay.

But I was really interested to hear about the pottery wheel.

If you've used a pottery wheel, you know how challenging these things are.

It's not just a matter of kind of throwing your clay down and just hacking it up.

You've got to take your time to center it, don't you?

You've got to have a time to sort of figure a balance.

Otherwise, when you start the pottery wheel, the whole thing is going to get warped and out of shape so quickly.

You're not going to have anything like the design you had in mind when you began, right?

Am I saying that accurately?

Okay, I've not done it myself.

I don't have the guts.

So, unless you found your center, the whole thing is going to be warped and out of whack.

And that's the idea that we see here.

That's why Paul spends all his time expounding the Old Testament to find Jesus in the middle of it, because unless we find Jesus, unless he is the center of this wheel, the whole shape of Scripture and God's promises are going to seem out of whack and contorted.

Does that make sense?

Find your center, Paul says, and everything else will follow.

And Jesus is at the center of it all.

Having found the center of our hope in Jesus, we cannot but be bold witnesses.

Because we've seen God's promises come to pass.

We've seen God's promises fulfilled in this person.

And so what else can we do but turn around and go and tell?

This is our motivation to be witnesses, isn't it?

Unless we have our hope centered in Jesus, this commission to be witnesses, to go and tell, will only ever seem like a burden.

It'll only ever seem like another thing I gotta get around to do or that I'm not doing.

Another way I'm just disappointing the Lord by not fulfilling something.

But if we find our hope in Jesus, if we realize that the good news has far less to do with what we need to do for God and far, far, far more to do with what God has done for us in Jesus, if we find that hope that all of God's promises to us and to renewing the world we live in find their fulfillment in Jesus, the game suddenly changes, doesn't it?

Suddenly that hope animates us from the inside out.

And being animated on the inside, we can then take that hope in every opportunity God provides for us to share that good news.

It will not be a burden, it will be a joy.

Why?

Because that hope animates us from the inside out.

Does that make sense?

Are we tracking with that?

If being a bold witness seems burdensome to you, then the thing I would, the best recommendation I could have for you is begin by evangelizing yourself.

Begin by familiarizing yourself with all the promises of God in Scripture.

Come and see who Jesus is.

Take another journey through Luke or any number of biographies we have in the Bible.

You know, Matthew and Mark and John.

Come and see who Jesus is.

Come and see his invitation to you and to me.

And if we see Jesus for who he is and how he fulfills God's plan and purposes and promises, we'll start to discover hope.

We'll start to discover a hope that satisfies, and we'll start to discover a hope that causes us to be bold witnesses.

Take the time to come and see who Jesus is, and you cannot but go and tell.

That's the first thing we want to see here.

Bold witnesses find their hope in Jesus.

Here's the second thing Luke wants us to see: bold witnesses face rejection.

It's not a question of if, it's a question of when.

So, verse 24.

Some were convinced by what Paul had to say, but others disbelieved.

This is sort of the pattern of Acts so far, hasn't it?

Paul proclaims the gospel, and some respond to it.

Some want to hear more, and others say, Yeah, that's not for me.

Or others, like Agrippa, say, Paul, I think you're out of your flipping mind.

What are you talking about?

This is the pattern so far.

This is not extraordinary.

In fact, it seems to be something that doesn't phase or surprise Paul at all.

It's almost as though Paul knows for a fact that he will face rejection.

Now, folks are debating, disagreeing, disbelieving, whatever, but they leave after Paul makes one biblical statement, and he quotes from Isaiah chapter 6.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

Isaiah 6, by the way, is the is the passage that is most often included in ordination services.

So Matt's going to be ordained in a couple of weeks, right?

And I think we'll be reading from Isaiah chapter 6.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

Isaiah chapter 6 is Isaiah's commission, where Isaiah says to the Lord, Here I am, send me, and that sounds wonderful and triumphant, and here we go.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

And then the next three verses we seem to leave out for some reason, and these are the three verses.

Isaiah has been sent off to do his ministry, to proclaim.

God's word, and then God says this to Isaiah, go to this people, my people, and say, You will indeed hear, but you'll never understand.

You will indeed see, but you'll never perceive.

And going on, uh, it'll say, You see what we're talking about here?

Boy, that's a hard commission for Isaiah.

That is a hard ministry to take up.

What's going on in this moment?

The Lord has sent Isaiah on a mission to proclaim the good news, proclaim the gospel, proclaim what he's doing, and he's saying, Isaiah, let's have no illusions here.

Folks are going to find this hard.

There are going to be folks who cannot accept this good news.

And you are to persevere, to keep going, to keep proclaiming, because you're doing my work, not your work.

And this is what Paul understands.

What was true for Isaiah is true for bold witnesses today.

We will face rejection.

If we are being faithful to the mission, if we are forging ahead, if we are persevering, we will have folks who say, I just can't accept that.

And so the question is, well, what do we do with that?

Paul is not left without hope, though.

Did you notice verse 28?

Therefore, let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles.

They will listen.

Isn't that interesting?

Gentiles, we learned, are non-Jewish folks and folks who are kind of elites within the covenant community, sort of had a way of looking down at Gentiles like they were outsiders.

But we've seen in our journey through Acts that God has a way of inviting the outsiders to himself, doesn't he?

We saw that in Acts chapter 10 with the Roman centurion Cornelius meeting Peter.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

We saw that God has this incredible heart for outsiders.

He wants to invite them in to be insiders.

And so we see that heart here.

Even if God's covenant people who ought in every way to receive the fullness of the good news, even if they reject it, we will be surprised, we will be delighted to see outsiders accept it.

We might be surprised by the work that God has to do when we are bold witnesses.

It might look nothing like what we thought, but we will see fruit from it if we persevere.

You know, the history of the church is full of examples of missionaries who went off to share the good news, the gospel of Jesus in any given part of the world and discovered really hard soil.

They discovered that it is harder to spread the good news than we would have thought, and experienced far less success than they would have wanted when they set out.

A couple of names are Adeniram and Anne Judson, which Adeniram is an incredible name.

They went off to Burma and spent six years before seeing a single person put their trust in Jesus.

Six years of labor and hard work and spreading the gospel.

But because they persevered, they laid the foundation for a vibrant and vital Christian community that exists to this day in Burma.

Imagine six long years of work.

I would have quit after two tops, right?

But because they persevered, because they knew they were going to face rejection, but they forged ahead, these folks, by God's grace, laid a foundation that exists today.

So the question is this if we're going to face rejection, if it's not a matter of if it's when, then where do we find our confidence?

Here's what I want to say.

We do not find our confidence in ourselves.

We do not find our confidence in our ability to articulate or to offer profound thoughts or our own personal.

Whatever it is we have to offer, that's not where our confidence is to be found.

I know that I do not have what it takes to change someone's heart, to communicate Jesus adequately.

But our confidence is found not in ourselves, but in the message, isn't it?

The confidence is in the good news which has changed our own heart.

And our confidence is in the God who speaks through this message by his Holy Spirit, even today, to draw hearts to himself.

If our confidence is not in our work but in God's, then we can face rejection with hope, can't we?

Because we will expect to be surprised to see the folks that God draws to himself through that.

And by the way, just because we face an immediate rejection does not mean that we will only face rejection, right?

Does not even mean that person who rejected the message the first time will only ever come to reject it, right?

I can't think of a single example of someone who converted to Jesus in their adulthood who said, you know, the first time I heard the gospel, that made perfect sense to me.

I'm in.

Generally seems to be that there is a long journey, and there are Christians who are patient with them in that journey, who are walking with them, who are available when they have questions or inquiries, who are the first on the doorstep with a hot meal when that person has just encountered some personal tragedy.

Christians who persevere, who are there, who know that, yes, we'll face rejection, but we expect to see God at work.

So we show up.

Here's one of my favorite quotes from Mother Teresa.

She's talking about her own ministry here, but boy, I think it's the uh it describes so well the ministry of what it means to be a bold witness.

Mother Teresa says this God has not called me to be successful, he has called me to be faithful.

What if our paradigm of what successful gospel sharing looks like?

What if it changed from success, number of folks who come to put their trust in Jesus to, Lord, was I faithful?

Was I faithful to bear witness to your compassion through my compassion?

Was I faithful to bear witness to your word through my words?

In whatever opportunity we have, what if the measure of success was faithfulness and not just numbers?

Bold witnesses find their hope in Jesus, and that animates their witness, their witnessing.

Bold witnesses know they'll face rejection, but bold witnesses forge ahead for faithfulness' sake.

So, verses thirty to thirty-one here.

Paul lived there in Rome two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.

Two whole years Paul spends under house arrest, at his own expense, welcoming every single person, Jew and Gentile, who comes through the door.

That's an amazing place to start, I think, in our gospel sharing, by the way.

Let's not underestimate the importance of hospitality, of extending invitation and welcome and presence.

That's the first thing God does for us.

Why wouldn't that be the first thing we do for those we're witnessing to?

An amazing book is called The Gospel Comes with a House Key by Rosaria Butterfield, who's describing the importance of hospitality and gospel sharing.

Rosaria Butterfield writes this: those who live out radically ordinary hospitality, that is just inviting folks over and being present and journeying through life with folks, they see their homes not so much as theirs at all, but as God's gift to use for the furtherance of his kingdom.

They open doors, they seek out the underprivileged, they know the gospel comes with a house key.

See the importance of hospitality here is representing something that is true of God's compassion and character towards us, and we have the opportunity to share that with others.

Hospitality is an amazing place to start with our gospel sharing.

It's not forced, it's engaging in genuine relationship with folks that we care about, folks that we know could only stand to benefit to come to know Jesus for themselves.

So Paul welcomes them all, and he spends his time proclaiming the kingdom and teaching about the Lord Jesus.

Here's all the work that God is doing in the world through his kingdom, renewing and restoring and remaking it through Christ.

And here's Jesus, the hope at the center of it all.

That's what Paul spends his time proclaiming.

Now, not all of us have Paul's teaching gift.

You know, even myself, who uh is a Bible teacher by profession, you know, I gotta think I don't have Paul's gift to teach or to proclaim, but God has given us gifts, hasn't he?

He has entrusted us with unique skills or temperaments or whatever it is that can be used to show something of his character into the world.

Maybe some of us are gifted in prayer, maybe other of us are gifted in compassion, works of mercy.

We are gifted in making casseroles, and we want to be the first at the doorstep when someone needs one.

Whatever it is, God can use that to his glory, into the furtherance of his kingdom, can't he?

So it's about discerning what are my gifts.

For Paul, his gifts are proclaiming and teaching.

What are your gifts?

What are my gifts?

How can God show forth his kingdom, his good news through them?

If we are fulfilling the mission, we will encounter hindrances.

He does this all with boldness and without hindrance, which is a weird phrase to me.

Because isn't Paul under house arrest?

That's kind of what I want to say to Luke.

Isn't being under arrest kind of the definition of hindrance?

You know, you're being hindered from like doing anything you want to do.

Again, I don't think this is a mistake.

I think Luke is making a very important point and he's landing on this point.

It's the conclusion of his two-volume saga here.

Paul is not just sharing the gospel, he's doing it with courage, with boldness, with confidence in the message, but he's doing it with perseverance, acting as though there's no hindrance to his ministry.

He's in welcoming everyone who comes with him, but for Paul, he doesn't see his arrest as something that limits his ministry.

He sees these obstacles that he's facing as something that characterize ministry.

These obstacles can become opportunities if we hand them over to God.

We will never not have obstacles or hindrances in our Christian life, will we?

We will always have them.

Maybe we won't have Paul's hindrances, maybe we won't be under house arrest, but we will always have those things that we can point to and say, well, I would share the gospel, except for this is really complicated, or this is really hard, or I can't quite get around that.

We would always have hindrances we could point to and say, Well, I would, but I just can't.

Paul looks at his circumstances and he says, these are opportunities I have.

God can use them, maybe not in the way that I had in mind, but he can use them in the way that he has in mind if I hand them over to him.

Our hindrances can be opportunities if we hand them over to the Lord.

Let me just share one uh example from church history that I just I just delight in this.

I think it's I think it's wonderful.

So several centuries ago, when uh the ecclesiastical authorities were very tight-handed around who had access to the scriptures, because you know, certain ecclesiastical authorities felt it was important for the church to have the one and only true interpretation of scripture and worried about normal lay people reading scriptures for themselves, when that was a concern for an increasingly misguided church, let's put it that way.

There were certain reformers that God worked through, like William Tyndale, to translate the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into uh into readable English.

So Tyndale did that in the 1520s.

But at the same time as he translated, the Bible was the Bible in the vernacular in English was um illegal to translate.

And it was illegal to sell or whatever that is, uh to transmit that.

So the church maintained strict control over biblical text to ensure theological conformity.

I'm just reading here.

Tyndale's translation was viewed as a threat by the church and the state because it allowed lay people to interpret the scriptures for themselves, undermining clerical authority.

So, in the early 1530s, Tyndale's English Bibles were smuggled into England and began to circulate clandestinely.

The authorities, especially the Catholic Church, were determined to confiscate and destroy these Bibles to prevent their spread.

So Bishop Tunstall of London and Sir Thomas More, they were integral parts of seeing these Bibles confiscated and dealt with.

But here's the twist.

As Sir Thomas More and as Bishop Tunstall were uh, as staunch opponents as they were, and as they were ordering the confiscation and burning of these Bibles, the funds from the sale of these Bibles, they were buying these Bibles off the shelves to confiscate them, all of those funds were then forwarded to the continent and put directly towards Bible translation and circulation.

So as, you know, misguided, to put it lightly, clerical authorities were confiscating these Bibles and paying for it, they were only furthering the spread of the good news.

Really.

God can use amazing, just just insurmountable, it seemed to be insurmountable obstacles and turn them right around into opportunities to see the good news proclaimed.

We just have to hang in there and forge ahead to see it happen.

So, dear friends, here's our mission to be bold witnesses who find their hope in Jesus, who face rejection, and who forge ahead.

And the screen goes black, and we're wondering what happens next.

For Paul, um, early sources like Clement and Eusebius testify, Paul was eventually released from his house arrest, and he seemed to have gone on further missionary journeys, perhaps even as far west as Spain.

But he was arrested another time, and this time his arrest ended up in his martyrdom.

He gave his life for the sake of the gospel, which is an amazing thought to think, that the man who spent his early career putting Christians to death for the gospel is himself now willing to go to death proclaiming the gospel.

This is God's work, surely.

That's what happens for Paul, or at least so we can surmise.

But that's not really the question that Luke would have us ask.

The question Luke would have us ask is what are we supposed to do next?

You and I.

This is our mission, isn't it?

You will be my witnesses, is the mission for you and I, to come and see who Jesus is, the Messiah, the one in whom all of God's promises are fulfilled, and to go and make known the good news of what God has done in and through him and will do through him when his kingdom comes in glory.

Our mission is to be bold witnesses for Christ's sake, who find their hope in him, who will face rejection, but who forge ahead with confidence in the message.

So, dear friends, sisters, brothers, may New Song be a place where we welcome all who come through the doors, where we together proclaim the kingdom of God and teach about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.

Let's do that together.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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God bless you and keep you today and every day.