Analog Church 09: Opposition

Acts chapter 4, verses 1 through 22.

Acts 4:1–22

And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed, because they were teaching the people and proclaim proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.

And they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening.

But many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand.

On the next day, their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, with Anas, the high priest, and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high priestly family.

And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, By what power or by what name did you do this?

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man is standing before you well.

This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished, and they recognized that they had been with Jesus.

But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition.

But when they had commanded them to leave the council, they conferred with one another, saying, What shall we do with these men?

For that a notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it.

But in order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name.

So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

But Peter and John answered them Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge.

For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.

And when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way to punish them because of the people, for all were praising God for what had happened.

For the man on whom the sign of healing was performed was more than forty years old.

This is the word of the Lord.

Okay, can we find for a listener?

Can you just read the whole book of acts for this morning?

Um I um yeah.

Um okay.

So if you're watching the live stream, I just said something hilarious.

Uh welcome to church this morning.

Uh my name is James Rathman.

I'm the lead pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Thank you for joining us.

Uh at Redemption Church, we have two ways really of participating, uh and only two.

So we gather large, which is this on Sunday mornings, and we gather small throughout the week in redemption groups, which gather in people's homes and follow the same sermon text that we are moving through in our large gathering.

So if you'd like to participate in one of those, you can sign up downstairs at the welcome table.

Uh, there'll be someone there with an iPad that you can sign up on.

Uh, or you can sign up on the website, redemptiondenver.com.

Also, uh on the website you can give.

Uh we don't pass the plate here, but we have a box downstairs that you can write a check and slip it in.

Or uh to make giving a part of your worship, you can uh go to redemptiondenver.com and click on give and give online.

Um so welcome to church this morning.

Um I love the snow, um, but I know some of you don't, so I'm sorry.

Um we are in the midst of our series called Analog Church, and we've been moving through this for about nine weeks.

I believe this is our ninth sermon in this series.

And what we've been looking at is how the early church acts as a sort of analog or an analogy for the way that our church can be today.

How can we look at the church in its earliest days when they had this day one sense of clarity for what their mission was?

And how can we live with that same sense of day one clarity today?

So that's what we've been looking at and moving through.

And uh, we've seen a lot happen so far in our series to the early church.

We've seen the Holy Spirit fall and Peter stand up and explain what happened with the coming of the Holy Spirit.

And we've seen Peter and John then in the normal rhythms of their life encounter a lame beggar who they were able to heal in the name of Jesus.

And that causes quite a commotion.

And so the people have gathered around and they're listening to Peter explain just how it is this man that they knew who from birth was unable to walk.

Um, that's kind of a strange way of saying that.

It's true of all of us, but even following that.

And from then, uh this man that they knew for over 40 years was somehow walking and leaping and praising God.

And so it gathers this crowd.

And that's where our story sort of picks back up.

Last week we saw Peter explain this sermon, excuse me, explain in a sermon this miracle that had taken place.

And we learned that uh we're always interpreting the events of our lives, and that the scripture provides us the lens to where we can clearly understand the events in our lives and what they truly mean in the big redemptive narrative that we find ourselves in.

And that explanation that this man who couldn't walk is now healed by the name of Jesus, by the power of the resurrected Christ, uh it immediately starts to offend.

And that's where our text picks up today.

The gospel sort of goes public in a way where it's not just sort of this grassroots type of movement in a corner anymore, but it becomes recognized by the authorities of the day and it starts to offend.

As the gospel goes public, it seems to carry with it this sort of offense.

So that's what we're going to look at.

Today we're going to see in Peter and John before the council, as they're arrested and tried, we're going to see the provocation of the gospel, which is what it is that the gospel provokes in the world.

And then we're going to see the power of the gospel, and finally we're going to see the protection of the gospel.

So, how does the gospel provoke?

How does the gospel demonstrate its power?

And then how does the gospel protect those that are called to bear witness to it?

So, uh, with that, we can go ahead and jump in.

So we often have this concept of religion in our culture that religion is something that should be relegated to the private sphere, which is it's good that it's working for you, but please don't tell me uh what you think.

Uh a great way for me to end a conversation is by saying uh when someone asks, what do you do?

and I say, Oh, I'm a pastor of a church, and then people make uh a look on their face, that's like, oh, please uh don't tell me any more about that.

Please, I would love to not hear about that, if we could.

Um and then I just try and ask more questions about their job.

Um after I after I share a gospel tract with them.

Um but what we've seen in this text is that the gospel, when it moves forward, creates a personal transformation.

And that sort of personal transformation can't be hidden.

The man was not going to all of a sudden uh go back to before the gate he would go and beg before every day and lie down on his mat again and pretend that he couldn't walk.

His life had been changed.

And that changed life moves forward into the world.

And when it moves forward into the world, it necessarily goes public.

And when it goes public, it starts to interact with and upset the normal rhythms that had been established.

So you see someone who becomes a Christian, and all of a sudden the normal rhythms that they went through with their friends, they can no longer go through anymore.

They're looking at their boyfriend or girlfriend, and they're saying, you know, we we may need to move out.

They're looking at the rhythms of their group of friends, and they're saying, you know, I think like I just can't go out another night.

This this isn't a healthy rhythm for me.

And all of a sudden, their transformation goes public and it starts to interrupt.

And with that interruption, it brings with it this sort of offense.

This means that evangelism, uh, even when we're thinking of it in terms of, look, this is just like me sharing the my private life, and we can have this relationship, and so I'll just be speaking into your private life.

Even something that we try and narrow that much, it can't be narrowed that much.

Because if it works, if the gospel takes hold of our lives, it will push out into every area of our lives.

So the gospel is personally provocative because it it shifts the nature of the relationships that we otherwise just normally went through.

And then the gospel is publicly provocative because the thing that has changed us is not just a singular event that targets at our lives, but it's a grand narrative that incorp in encapsulates all of history.

And it shows us where we're heading into the future as well.

And so we see that just the way that Peter interpreted the healing of the man, he says, look, he doesn't say, oh yeah, the man was healed and that's it, end of the story.

He says the man was healed, but his healing has implications for the whole world.

His healing means that Jesus' redemption is actually working, and that this force of redemption is actually moving into all of creation.

And he says that our only hope of experiencing real redemption in the world is in the Christ who healed that lame beggar.

And so this personal event has these cosmic implications that matter for everyone.

They matter for all of us.

And so that's why even an attempt at a private sharing of our faith must necessarily be public.

What we are proclaiming is a public truth.

Which means this is something that we think isn't just true for us.

This isn't just true because it happens to resonate with us weird born-agains.

You know, this is a fact of history that we all must reckon with.

Leslie Nubigan, one of my favorite theologians, uh, he's the guy who basically coined the phrase missional church.

And he says this at the beginning of one of his books, uh, which is called Truth to Tell.

He says a serious commitment to evangelism, to the telling of the story, which the church is set to tell, means a radical questioning of the reigning assumptions of public life.

It is to affirm the gospel not only as an invitation to a private and personal decision, but as a public truth, which ought to be acknowledged as true for the whole of the life of society.

When my wife wants to get on my nerves, she says, Well, that's my truth.

Because she knows that I have this like like visceral repulsion to that sentence.

That's true for you, but uh it's not true for me.

And it when we when we make statements like that, we're we're talking about something different than truth had been traditionally understood to be, or then truth has been traditionally understood to be.

When we say that something is true for you and not true for me, that means that truth is no longer the thing that we encounter when we're wrong.

When we are the center of what truth is, when you as an individual are the center of what truth is, you're the barometer that gauges whether something is true or not, then then you can never encounter anything external to you.

You don't encounter things that that contradict you.

And so what that means is there's there's no exploration, there's no discovery, there's no adventure of life, there's no growth.

But when truth is something that we share, that we're all humbled before, then we have something outside of ourselves that does contradict us, that can expose wrongs, and all of a sudden we're constantly surrounded by opportunities for growth and adventure.

And so what the gospel is, and what Leslie Nubigan is saying, is the gospel is that type of public truth, something that you encounter in the world that can contradict you and can expose things in you, can demonstrate areas of growth.

Now, what it is that uh when when we're proposing something into the world that questions the fundamental assumptions that we hold.

Even something like that, that truth is something outside of us, that means we're always going to be facing counter-arguments.

We're always going to be facing opposition.

The gospel was born in a sort of opposition.

It it takes place, any sort of truth claim saying this is the matter of fact that we have to deal with is going to be met with a counter-argument.

And so what we often try and do in our evangelism and in our lives as Christians is I think we try and consider a lot.

Okay, how can I?

Uh, well, I'll say what we should be trying to do first.

What we should be trying to do is consider how can I most deeply empathize with the person who is offering me this counter-argument?

And then how can I present what I'm trying to describe as something that's really true, true for me and true for them?

How can I present it to them in a way that that is so deeply winsome and is so understandable to them that they'll actually be able to hear it and they'll actually be able to see it.

That's what we should be trying to do.

But I think what we often try and do when we consider our evangelism, when we consider sharing uh the gospel, like Peter and John have done and like they will do before the council, what we're often considering is okay, how can I make this seem so similar to what they already think that they won't even notice a difference?

And so instead of encountering the contradictions that we're bringing, we find a way to just kind of slip past them.

And then we gauge the success of our evangelism by the amount of conflict that we minimize.

I think most of us confuse those two options.

One says, How can I make this the most understandable, although I'm bringing a contradiction?

And the other one says, How can I pretend like I'm just not saying anything contradictory?

And that's pretty slippery.

That second one.

What we see here is that Peter and John lay out the contradictory nature of the gospel in a way that is both precisely clear.

There's uh no questioning whether or not they are bringing new information that will expose a wrong.

There's no questioning it.

But they do so in a way that is deeply winsome and it doesn't put themselves in a position of power while they communicate the truth, but instead exposes an incredible vulnerability.

They explain the healing of the man, and our passage begins in uh Acts 4, verses 1 through 3.

Acts 4:1–3

It says this, and as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed, because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.

And they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening.

So look at what the particular offense of the gospel is.

First, plot-wise, uh the the leaders, uh the religious leaders of the day, they see Peter and John uh speaking about how the man was healed, and they're proclaiming that he was healed by the power of the resurrection of Jesus.

And they are annoyed.

I love the word choice.

Uh they they they were greatly annoyed.

It just seems so petty.

Um because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.

What is it that caused them to arrest them?

It wasn't that the man was healed.

That was undeniable.

It's that they were saying the healing took place in connection with the resurrection of Jesus, which means there's such a thing as the resurrection.

When I was on my first pass-through in the sermon, I wrote out, like, okay, look at all these things that are offensive about the gospel.

And you can pull them out of the text.

They're sort of evident because Peter and John hit on just about all of them.

They they disrupt authority.

It is uh uh they make these exclusive truth claims.

Though the way that they frame the gospel is initially humiliating to the people who they're proclaiming it to.

But the clearest uh I decided to not do any of those.

Because the clearest, most offensive claim, the reason that they actually get arrested is for proclaiming the resurrection.

You see, it all hinges on this idea of whether or not Jesus really came back from the dead.

And all of those other things flow from that.

If Jesus really came back from the dead, then of course it disrupts authority.

Because uh that then becomes the ultimate test of authority.

Sure, this is great.

You're you're uh you know, chief priests, scribes, you're doing some great teaching, but the guy who's contradicting you died and came back from the dead.

So I'm I'm gonna go with him.

Is.

The exclusive claims.

Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and then he died and came back from the dead.

If you find me another guy who did that, then we can have an apples to apples comparison.

But if not, then we're talking about two different categories.

All of these things flow from whether or not Jesus really came back from the dead.

And if he didn't, then sure, we can have an apples and apples comparison between him and Gandhi.

Or between him and Muhammad.

But he said, I'll die and come back from the dead, and then he did.

So we have a different category now.

If that really happened, we have a fact of history that we must contend with.

The Sadducees denied, the Sadducees are the it's a group of people who, to be honest, we don't know very much about.

A lot of people make a lot of claims about what we know about first century Judaism and how that should affect our interpretations of the text.

But the original sources that we have on first century Judaism would fill like this much of a bookshelf, which means that we could read them all.

And most people don't offer footnotes, but the Sadducees, they had aligned themselves with the authority of the Roman Empire.

So they had made some compromise there.

And one thing that we do know about them theologically, because this is recounted later in Acts 23, verse 8, is that they denied that resurrection was possible.

Acts 23:8

They denied that resurrection was an event that would ever happen or that it was ever possible.

And so in that regard, they're a lot like us.

They have a sort of modern sensibility in that regard.

Because for us, the resurrection is offensive on this sort of immediate level, which is look, miracles.

Like, can't you give me something that you can prove to me, and then I'll be able to follow it?

They had that same sort of reaction to resurrection, which is just this claim look, it just doesn't happen.

Now it's a tough claim because, in one sense, it feels deeply grounded in like the scientific method, and it is deeply grounded in this naturalist worldview, which is the world is what you see is what you get.

And there's a denial of the supernatural in that, and one that we sort of take for granted in our culture.

A lot of times we can't we can't even notice because it feels so self-evident that there is no real supernatural.

The problem is disproving the supernatural is just about as hard as proving it.

A small minority of Western educated, enlightenment-influenced, wealthy people.

And so we should at least consider, at least from the position of cultural empathy, so that we don't find ourselves becoming cultural imperialists, that perhaps we are wrong with regards to our assumptions about the supernatural.

And then once we've suspended that belief, I think we what starts to be exposed is the good reasons to believe that the resurrection actually took place.

Reasons that if they were to attest to any other historical event, we would say, well, that most certainly happened.

But because they attest to something like the resurrection, we say, well, it just couldn't be.

So here's one example.

Um well, one example, and then the second example is kind of going to be built into the rest of the sermon.

But one example is uh this is a quote from um one of Tim Keller's recent books that's called Making Sense of God.

And at the end he offers this sort of defense of the resurrection, and he references these two contemporary theologians, and he says, their names are N.

T.

Wright and Richard Bakham.

He says, N.

T.

Wright and Richard Bakham point out that there were several other messianic pretenders, such as Barr Kokhba.

Uh, raise your hand if you've heard of Bar Kokhba.

One person in the back.

Okay, weird.

You're blowing it.

I was really hoping no one would raise their hand.

Who also died in their attempt to establish themselves.

In each case, their movements withered immediately on the argument that their death proved that they could not have been the Messiah.

So, why did all of you, except for one who ruined it, why have none of you heard of Bar Kokhba?

It's because when he died, he stayed dead.

For someone to claim that they were the Messiah, this was not an uncommon event in first century Judaism.

There were a lot of messianic pretenders.

But then there's this one who sets off the spark that over the course of just a few centuries becomes the most powerful force in the Roman Empire.

How did that happen?

If there were other sort of contemporaries with this that we could compare them to.

And if Jesus really is who he says he was, then that means that I don't get to decide whether or not I agree with him anymore.

He's no longer my sort of interlocutor where we're working out together what the moral framework of the world should be.

He's no longer just an influence on my life.

Instead, he is the Lord in Christ, who what he says goes, and then I need to be submitted to him.

All of what Christ says sort of flows from this fact of the resurrection.

That the resurrection took place in history means that Christianity is not just a nice story that maps well onto our psychology.

But it means that it's a fact of the world, a public truth that we all then have to deal with.

Think back on your evangelism.

Think back on your sharing of Christianity.

This is something that has impacted your life, then it's likely that you've shared it with someone.

What role did the resurrection play in your sharing it?

I'm confident all day long in going.

I learned literally, it was my junior year, and it sat down in another philosophy class, and I had this background anxiety all the time that this was going to be the class where I finally heard the argument that dismantled all of Christianity.

And then by about junior year, I was like, oh, okay, there isn't one.

I've heard them.

I say that to say that like I'm confident in engaging with those philosophical arguments.

I get nervous, I get uncomfortable, I feel vulnerable when I say, you know what it really comes down to is whether or not Jesus came back from the dead.

And I think Jesus came back from the dead.

I think he was dead, and then God miraculously raised him from the dead because he could not be held by death because he was sinless.

Ultimately, the reason that I trust in Christianity, the reason that I put my hope in this, is not because of some philosophical argument.

It's not because of something I reasoned to, as much as I would like that to be the case.

Because if that were the case, I could, my belief could be not something I was accountable for.

It would just be something I'd, well, of course, I have to hold this because look at how logically it flows.

But no, what holds it all together is that Jesus really came back from the dead.

And so we stand in that vulnerably but confidently.

So with this proclaiming of the resurrection, we see that our faith is pushed into the public sphere, so that it doesn't really matter what we think in relation to Christ.

We must submit to him if the resurrection really happened.

And in this, in this public truth, we see the power of the gospel move forward for Peter and John.

So we see it in two ways.

We see the power of the gospel move forward as an external power and as an internal power.

So those are going to be the two ways we look at it.

Now, one way to follow this passage is to just sort of move through, and you look at each time Luke uses the word but.

So he says, like, look, the Sadducees tried to arrest them, but then this happened.

And then they tried to corner them here, but this happened.

And we're able to see that the gospel has this incredible power to kind of move through anything that's trying to stamp it out.

So the first one of those comes right after they get arrested.

And it says they arrest Peter and John.

It was evening time, so they didn't have time to try them, and so they were just arrested for the night.

Acts 4.4.

But many of those who had heard the word believed.

And the number of the men came to about 5,000.

This is the external power of the gospel.

Peter and John could be arrested.

They could be silenced, they could be thrown in jail, kept away from the crowds for a night.

The gospel, this public truth, this event in reality, can't be arrested.

It can't be stopped.

Once the gospel is really out there as a public truth that we all then have to deal with, it doesn't matter who you take out of the game, it doesn't matter how many times you try and chop the head off the snake, it's going to keep crawling.

It's going to keep moving.

There's this built-in resilience to the gospel message.

And that built-in resilience to the way that it publicly spreads, excuse me, is connected to that very offense that we've been talking about.

It's connected to the hope of resurrection.

What are they going to threaten the crowds with?

Death?

The very hope of this gospel is that even death won't stop it.

The offense and the power are the same thing.

They're connected in this resurrection of Christ.

And then perhaps even more incredible than this group of 3,000, one man's healed, Peter and John give like a six-paragraph sermon, and then boom, 2,000 more people believe in Christ.

What perhaps is even more incredible than that, that external power of the gospel to move forward, is this internal power of the gospel that we see taking place in the hearts of Peter and John.

See, Peter and John are brought before the very same council.

Not like the same entity, the same people that saw to it that Jesus was crucified.

The same ones.

And so it's worth remembering that this is the same council that both Peter and John, Peter in a more public way, fled from.

That months earlier, these same people had no courage whatsoever before this very same council.

And what they've seen since then is that what they were afraid that council could do, they did to Jesus.

But now they stand before them confidently, proclaiming power in the name of the one that this council killed.

This is our second piece of evidence for the truth of the resurrection.

Some people say that it was a hoax.

The empty tomb was empty because the apostles snuck in and hid the body somewhere.

But you don't die for a hoax.

You don't all of a sudden have courage before the very thing that frightened you to death.

What had changed them, what had created this internal power, was the resurrection.

And when they're brought before the council, they testify clearly to the power of the man's healing being in the name of Jesus.

And what we're able to see is that this power, this internal power of the gospel, is precisely what Jesus had promised to the apostles during his earthly ministry.

He said this to them in Luke 21, verse 12 through 15.

Luke 21:12–15

He says, But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name's sake.

And then look at how Jesus describes these moments.

This will be your opportunity to bear witness.

Settle it, therefore, in your minds, not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.

Jesus had told them, this type of adversity is coming.

You will be in conflict when you are being my witnesses.

But that conflict is not a threat to the stamping out of the gospel.

That conflict is the very opportunity for it to move forward.

Think of how we learn.

We learn by encountering wrong.

When you're bringing the conflict of the gospel into the world, you're giving the opportunity to encounter reality, which exposes wrong.

Of course, the conflict is the opportunity for the gospel to move forward.

That's the way truth always moves forward.

And so Peter and John have this incredible boldness in them.

But it's a boldness that doesn't come from having spent all night studying and preparing exactly how they were going to explain the gospel to the Sadducees the next day.

It doesn't come from them saying, okay, look, we're in a bit of a tight spot here.

And I think we can still win these guys over.

So I've come up with a way to kind of explain Jesus that won't really make things look too bad.

You know, maybe we can maybe we can kind of drop the resurrection language for now.

I know that was the thing that got under their skin.

No, they they had, it seems as though they were likely perfectly faithful to what Jesus had commanded them to do.

What does Jesus command for our witness to work in those moments of conflict?

Dependence.

My spirit will provide you the words that you need.

You're going to have to move forward with a message that, look, it's going to look ridiculous because you're going to say, Well, the reason that I'm so compelled to speak about this is because I think he really came back from the dead.

And it changed in my life.

And so can we talk about that?

I would like to not hear about that anymore.

A position that puts us in this really risky spot.

It's not calculated, but it says, look, the reason I think this is Jesus came back from the dead.

The council recognizes that type of boldness and it sort of silences them.

They say this in Acts 4.13, which is one of my favorite verses.

End of sentence.

Acts 4.13.

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, this is the council, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished.

And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.

What a wonderful phrase to be said.

What an incredible witness their vulnerable boldness demonstrated.

Why were they astonished?

Because how could this type of insight come from someone so ordinary?

It was their ordinariness that was shocking.

They recognized that they had been with Jesus.

Okay, let's get really simple for a second.

What's it like to be with Jesus?

This is something that ties right back to the resurrection because we can think look, they had a pretty unique opportunity.

They were walking around talking to the man for two years.

They knew what it was like to be with Jesus.

But in the truth of the resurrection, with the sending of the Holy Spirit, we have this same opportunity.

Is there space in your day where you are with?

Jesus.

Such that it would be evident to people around you.

Wow, the patience he handled that with.

You know, that that guy took a lot of hits.

I I think he's been with Jesus.

I don't think we have a high priority on being with Jesus.

I think we have a high priority on doing things for Jesus.

But I think a lot of us approach those moments of conflict and we aren't able to move through them because we haven't been with Jesus.

Our hearts haven't been changed by him in his presence.

There's another reason why they would have recognized that they had been with Jesus.

In Peter's response before the council, he quotes from Psalm 118.

And he quotes saying, look, this Jesus was uh the stone that the builders rejected, and it's now become the cornerstone.

And that's a quote that Peter says from Psalm 118.

But the same group of people of uh these uh scribes and elders who were gathered together, they would have heard Jesus make that same reference to themselves, which Luke also recounts in Luke 20, verses 16 through 19.

Luke 20:16–19

Jesus had just told a parable before the same group of people, and the parable uh is of a man who buys a vineyard, and he leases it out to some people to care for it.

And then when it becomes time for him to go collect his profits from the vineyard, he sends a uh servant, and they say, No, we're not going to respect your servant and give you the profits that are yours.

And so he sends another servant and equally ignored.

And then finally, he sends his son and he says, Surely they will listen to my son.

And uh the builders see the son and they kill him and say, Let's let's kill him.

This is the son, and we'll take his inheritance.

Jesus was making an analogy between God's and his relationship with the people of Israel, saying, Look, I've sent you my servants, I've sent you these people to call you back to me.

And finally I'm going to send my son, and you're going to kill him too.

Jesus, of course, was speaking about himself.

And this story was offensive to the council that he was speaking to.

So says in Luke 20, 16 and 19, when they heard this, they said, Surely not.

Exclamation point.

But he looked directly at them and said, What then is this that is written?

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.

So that was his response, saying, You've misunderstood this psalm.

It's about you.

You're the ones who reject me, the cornerstone, that which brings shape and meaning to the whole architecture of the universe.

So the scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people.

See, in that interaction that Jesus had, it's it like perfectly parallels the interaction that Peter and John have.

And what we see demonstrated is this strange sort of protection of the gospel.

And we can see that right here in this last verse.

They sought to lay hands on Jesus, but they didn't, at least not then.

Why?

Because they feared the people.

And the people were being transformed by Jesus' teaching.

We see that sort of external power of the gospel moving in the world.

So we see this same sort of protection of the gospel take place for Peter and John.

It says in Acts 4, 13 through 16, right after it says that they recognized that they had been with Jesus, they're starting to piece things together, like, oh, these are those Jesus guys, remember?

I thought we got rid of that.

So let's just do that same thing we did with Jesus.

Then it says, but seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition.

But when they had commanded them to leave the council, they conferred with one another, saying, What shall we do with these men?

For that a notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it.

Here's what I want us to see.

The same power that makes the gospel so provocative, that made the gospel provoke this violence towards Peter and John, which was the man that was healed.

It's this same power that acts as this sort of protection that makes the gospel move forward.

You see, they had nothing to say to Peter and John because there was a man standing next to them who just had their life utterly changed by this gospel.

And all of everyone in Jerusalem knew it.

The man was 40 years old.

They all knew him.

Jerusalem was a big city for the time.

It was a small town by our standards.

They would have recognized him.

And so they they so desperately want to lay their hands on them, they want to stamp this out, but there's just this evidence of a life that's been changed by the gospel.

That God uses this sort of shield of protection for Peter and John.

The man who was healed can't be argued against.

A life that's been changed by the gospel, there's just no argument against.

I wonder.

If so few of us are willing to be vulnerable in our evangelism.

Because we aren't confident that our lives have really been changed.

If pressed, we wouldn't really have a story to share of what Jesus has done to rescue us.

We haven't sat with Jesus and been with him to the point where, you know, just his presence has changed us and shaped our hearts.

And so we don't step out vulnerably, carrying with us the story of our own changed lives, boldly proclaiming, moving forward in the protection that, look, Jesus saved me.

Instead, we just say nothing.

And so we're in the break room, and people ask, well, you know, what did you do this weekend?

And well, you know, because uh here's here's the way it'll go.

This is this will happen on Monday.

You'll be in the break room, picture your break room, and you'll be drinking a Keurig, which will be terrible.

You know, I love waking up and seeing the snow.

I just slept in all morning and uh we were able to binge watch a show.

You guys know about shows.

And then you'll think, do I recount my Sunday morning?

Do I say that I we actually got up and we went, we actually go to church?

Because I know what they'll think.

Like when they hear, when they hear church, they're gonna think, oh, like I'm being judgmental and I'm judging all these things.

Really, you know, and so you maybe you say nothing, and then you know what you're being then?

You're not being accommodating, you're being a bad friend.

They're willing to share their life with you, you're unwilling to share your life with them.

Could you step out into that vulnerability of the life you actually live and think, you know what?

Uh the reason this happens is because I think he really came back from the dead.

And because of that, I'm gonna share with you this changed life of mine.

You know, you you were once a really angry person, and then you see, look, Jesus died to save his enemies.

How can I live in this anger anymore?

And so all of a sudden you're going to shock people by being patient with them when you previously never had been before.

And it's gonna be strange and disruptive, and you're gonna feel a little out of control for a while.

Can you bear that type of vulnerability?

You've uh adopted this position where you feel like you have to be the peacemaker in every situation, and so you you can't bring any sort of conflict into any moment.

And yet you see, look, Christ was able to stand and in a loving way speak the truth.

So no longer am I just gonna put this face on anymore.

I'm gonna say what I think really needs to be said.

And that's gonna be disruptive.

Because in your world, you've been expected to just keep the peace.

But are you willing to stand in that vulnerability of what Christ is calling you to, knowing that look, the resurrection really happened, and he's changed my life so that I can really be protected as I'm exposed.

The council goes away and they convene together, and they're like, okay, here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna bring them back together.

We can't tell them uh we can't punish them any further because look, the guy's standing right there.

So what can we do?

But we can threaten them to no longer speak in Jesus' name.

And so they call them back together to no longer speak in Jesus' name.

Uh and they say, Don't speak in Jesus' name.

And uh we get another one of those, but then in Acts 4, 19, 23 it says, but 22, but Peter and John answered them, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge.

For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.

And when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way to punish them because of the people, for all were praising God for what had happened.

For the man on whom this sign of healing was performed was more than 40 years old.

The resurrection is public news.

It's public news because it changes our lives.

Jesus makes us into the people that he had originally created us to be, untainted by sin.

And that type of change is disruptive in the public sphere.

And it's it's public truth in another way because the resurrection actually happened, which means this is a real thing we need to bring people into to contend with.

But that very same resurrection that is disruptive is the very same resurrection that well, let me put it this way.

This is the connection I want us to see.

The resurrection that changes our lives is the thing that disrupts.

And those changed lives are the things that give us the boldness to witness.

And those disruptions are the opportunity for that witness to actually happen.

And so you need to consider has your evangelism been disruptive?

When you've shared the good news, has there been conflict?

And have you retreated from it or have you stepped into it?

Have you seen that it's your job to remove yourself from?

Have you tried to position your evangelism so that you don't have to experience any of the personal vulnerability?

Or were you able to stand in your own story knowing that Christ has changed you?

Your evangelism isn't going to get better by preparedness.

May sound strange, but that's just not what Jesus tells us.

He doesn't say, like, look, eventually you're just gonna get really good at being so clever in your communication of this that it's gonna be irresistible.

So hit the books, pal.

He says, These times of opposition will come.

And those will be your opportunity.

I want you to be settled in your mind.

Not to stew over what precisely am I gonna say here?

But depend on Jesus.

Depend on him for your arguments.

He's the good news that we're sharing.

If you have no confidence to share it, consider have you been with him?

That he might have changed your life.

I think that's where the heart of our evangelism really takes place.

And whether or not we've been with him.

So uh with that, before communion, we'll take one question.

We'll see if we have one for the day.

Okay.

Besides the Keller quote and C.S.

Lewis's miracles, what other sources of evidence can we use to support the resurrection in a conversation or dialogue?

Um, yes, there's a couple of good ones offhand.

Uh the oh I'll tell them to later.

I'm just kidding.

I just like the idea of completely blanking and bailing.

Um so uh one of which is the concept of resurrection was uh uh such a rare thing in Jewish thought, uh, that for it to spring from this group of people at that time is just incredibly unlikely.

Uh another is the way that it's recounted is with uh it is discovered, the empty tomb is discovered by women, which is an incredible attestation to the authenticity of the story, because this is a time in history where a uh a woman's uh testimony wasn't even valid in a court of law.

And so if I am cooking up a story, I'm not going to have women be the first people who attest to its accuracy.

Uh another, as we've seen, is the lives of the disciples.

They all die for this message, except for one.

Uh and it you you just don't die for something that you think is fake.

Another is the um recency with which the scriptures were written to the events as they took place.

So critical scholarship had assumed for a long time that these were legendary writings that were vastly removed from the times and places that the events were actually claimed to have taken place in.

And then as our scholarship has gotten better, we've actually seen that these are likely written within 20 years of the events having actually taken place.

Which means that when they say, go and ask the people who saw it happen, the contemporary readers could have done that.

And so the Bible isn't saying, like, look, this is like, look, I'm just saying it, so just trust me, but it's providing evidence.

The gospel exposes itself in sort of the same way that like the scientific method exposes itself.

You know, as DNA evidence got better, we learned the past better.

And as our study of history has gotten better, we've learned the past better.

And what it continues to attest to is that if the resurrection didn't happen, then we need to come up with some event that is at least as extreme as a resurrection to account for this incredible spark of the movement that was Christianity in Jerusalem in the first century.

If it isn't the resurrection, we have to come up with something else.

And so what we're left with is these two leaps of faith that we have to make.

One is the resurrection, which the claims itself, which the movement itself attests to.

And another is we have to invent something else, which isn't the resurrection, which isn't attested to anywhere, to explain this radical movement.

Both are leaps of faith, but one is much more a leap of faith than the other.

So we have good reason to hope in the resurrection.

But I'm still asking you to believe someone came back from the dead.

So I don't want to downplay the faith that it takes.

Okay.

That's our one question.

I'll be down front and we can discuss those things further.

As you take communion while the music is playing before you walk down, take a moment.

Consider that because of the resurrection, because the Holy Spirit has been sent, you have an opportunity now to be with Jesus.

When we're with him, he changes us.

He is truth in grace.

And so he will bring to bear truth on your life that will expose areas that need to be changed.

And with that, he brings this incredible salve of the grace of the gospel so that we aren't crushed by his truth, we're healed by it.

Allow your life to be changed by his presence.

Come into it frequently.

That's what moves the gospel forward.

So be prepared to witness then.

So with that, let's pray.

Holy Father, we don't trust in our cleverness.

We don't trust in having our arguments tight enough.

We don't trust in being winsome enough.

Those are not the things that move your gospel forward.

This message of hope that we have for the whole world, which seems so good, it can feel burdensome.

Lord, I pray that we would rest in you so deeply that we would identify with you so completely that when we move out into the world, we're still identified with you.

We're willing to identify with you publicly.

Lord, and when that brings conflict into our lives, let us not be surprised.

But let us see that this is the opportunity that you've paved for us to move forward on that we might experience firsthand the power and the protection of your gospel.

Lord, make us a people that hope so deeply in the resurrection that your gospel is able to move.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.