Training: Being a Godly Troublemaker

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You can open your Bibles to Acts chapter 19. Actually, we're going to be in there a minute.

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Go to Philippians chapter 4. Let's start reading there. Philippians chapter 4. We're going to finish this chapter, but I was praying about what to teach this week and what would be most beneficial for us for the moment.

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And thinking about the gospel in the early church and thinking about where we're at today,

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I thought it'd be important for us to listen to the Apostle Paul's words about his life and imitating him in Acts chapter 4.

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And then to move and to look at the early church and the conflict they were involved in with the gospel.

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So, Acts chapter 4, starting in verse 8.

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Hear now the words of the living and the true God. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

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What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the

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God of peace will be with you. Thus far is the reading of God's holy and inspired word.

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Let's pray together. Father, I pray you would bless your church today. Bless us.

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Convict us, challenge us by your spirit, teach us through your word. Help us to see,

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Lord, our own love of comfort. Help us to cast aside the idol of comfort.

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Help us, Lord, to abandon our friendship with the world and our grip on this life as most valuable.

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Help us, God, to see your truth to be changed by it. Use us as your people,

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God, to bring the good news of your kingdom to the world in a way that glorifies you and draws your elect to yourself.

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I pray that you'd bless today. I know that myself, I'm not worthy of holding this beautiful and holy word, but I do pray,

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God, that you, by your spirit, would teach your saints today, speak through the preacher.

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Allow everyone to forget my name and remember yours. In Jesus' name, amen. So it's important here is to look at the

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Apostle Paul and Philippians. We've been in this letter for a little while now talking a lot about authentic joy, authentic joy, authentic joy, not the sort of veneer of joy and Christian, sort of the

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Christian plastic smile. We don't want that. We want the authentic joy. So we've been looking at the Apostle Paul. What's he say about joy?

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Because he keeps telling us to rejoice in the Lord always. Joy, joy, joy is at the heart of this very short letter that the

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Apostle Paul writes, as we've been saying, in chains. So here you have a man telling everyone to be joyful, to rejoice in the

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Lord always, who has a pretty rough life. It's difficult. It's hard. He's being persecuted. He's lowered out of windows.

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There's riots breaking out. He's taking beatings. So many, he forgets how many. We know the story.

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But yet he's telling us not to be worried about anything and to rejoice in the Lord always. And then in this portion of the letter, as he's wrapping up this very short letter, he tells the believers to focus in upon the things that are honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, things that are of any excellence, anything worthy of praise.

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Think about these things. Put your mind on these things. But then he says this, and I think it's powerful because I think it is something we have to contend with when we think about the world today and the church today in concert with the world.

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The Apostle Paul says, what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the

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God of peace will be with you. Tough thing, because we know what

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Paul taught. We have it in these letters. This is the divine revelation given by the Spirit of God through the apostles, right?

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Peter says, holy men of God spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. This divine revelation right here, it is from the mouth of God.

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This is theonoustos, it's God -breathed revelation. It's also Paul's words.

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It's also Peter's words. It's also John's words. You know, we have the words of these inspired apostles and men, and we also have their lives.

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We have the record of their lives through divine inspiration. We know what they look like, what they accomplished, what they taught.

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And the Apostle Paul was a giant, but he started off as an antagonist. He says in Galatians, that epic, short little letter of Galatians, probably one of the first ones, if not the first one that he wrote and was expected to be circulated, he says that he persecuted the church of God, that he tried to destroy it.

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If you want to know how serious he was about his convictions, he actually went about with murderous threats.

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He went about trying to destroy and stamp out this little messianic movement of, quote, the way.

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That's who he was. And then he flips, his heart is changed, he's saved by Jesus Christ, and immediately he gets involved into some nasty conflict.

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I mean, coming to Jesus was truly coming to do the death march for Paul, because remember, at one point, he actually has a lot of respect.

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He has the respect of his peers. He's been trained under Gamaliel, who's a very famous first century teacher.

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He's a Pharisee, highest class of Jew, right? Most respected. They know the law. They're highly trained. I mean, this guy knows the word, he thinks.

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He's respected by his peers. He's actually on the team that's the winning team at the time in terms of the people who are persecuting

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Christians. And yet he meets Jesus and immediately, from a human perspective, his life goes into a downward spiral.

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Think about that and hang on to it for a second. From a human perspective, the apostle

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Paul's life goes into an utter spiral downward. Now, we know the truth about Paul, what he taught in his life, so we know that this is

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God's hand all over this. And the man who had his head cut off for his faith in Jesus and was beaten so many times without number, we know that his life was in God for the purposes of God's glory.

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But that's how you're thinking as a Christian. Look at it from the outside. Hunger, poverty, beatings, riots, hatred, court cases, slander, lies, gossip.

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He says he's in danger constantly. He's in danger from his own countrymen, so he's not friends with them anymore, apparently.

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He's got false brethren in the church. He's constantly on the run. He's been shipwrecked afloat at sea.

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I mean, this man's life in terms of looking at it in terms of your best life now, he didn't have it.

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It's a hard life. It's a difficult life. But that's what Paul had. We know what his teaching was, what we can see that was heard from him and what was seen in him.

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But I want to talk just about the apostle Paul, his life. We know the outcome post -first century revelation of God.

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You're sitting here as the result of his life and labor. His ministry, his sacrifice, his suffering is ultimately the means as to how you and I are here today believing in Jesus Christ.

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So we on this side of history go, I know the outcome, I know what is happening, I think it was glorious.

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But put yourself in the first century and ask yourself the question, was this just amazing and everyone just loving the

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Christians? And it was just like, oh, this sounds like such a wonderful message and please tell us more sort of a thing.

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There was persecution and difficulty and death and beheadings and crucifixions and people being flayed.

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That's where they cut the skin off your body while you're still alive. People are burned. People are set on fire and wrapped around steaks and Nero's riding his chariots through their bodies sort of thing.

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I mean, the Christian church came out of a lot of hatred. People hated the early

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Christians and they wanted them dead. And what's amazing is that we think as 21st century evangelical

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Christians in the West that what we need to do is put on a good face, have a good reputation, make as many friends as possible and that is the ground from which gospel success comes.

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Right? It's an amazing thing. Christians that say, well, we need to focus on friendship evangelism.

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Right? Well, what's that look like? Well, you know, you want to gain the respect of people. You want to receive the love of God in you.

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And you want to make friends with them first. And then here it is, and every time I say it,

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I have to choke back vomit. Earn the right to preach the gospel to them.

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Ever heard that? You've got to earn the right to preach the gospel to people. Hogwash.

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Lies. Dangerous to the life of the church. Isn't it amazing? These same Christians that say, earn the right to preach the gospel to people are carrying this record, this divine record of the book of Acts where the early church did not live life like that.

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They did not preach the gospel in the first century and go into towns and cities in such a way as they said, first, let's gain the respect of our community.

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Let's make sure we have a really good reputation with everybody. And I know what we'll do. We'll start barbecues.

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And we'll see if we can earn the right to preach the gospel to this city. No, what they do, they went into these cities, they preached the gospel, riots would break out, they'd get thrown into jail, people would take pacts not to eat anything until you're dead.

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And we say, well, maybe that was just a first century anomaly. But you see, in the 21st century

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West, what we really need to do is have big buildings and big productions and big programs.

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I'm going to get myself in lots of trouble with this one. And we need to really have such a good reputation with the area around us that people only think well of us.

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And that is the ground from which gospel success comes. That is a complete betrayal of what the

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Bible teaches us about, A, the nature of man and our sin, and B, how a person is saved.

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People don't get saved because you're nice to them. Nobody has ever gotten saved in the history of the

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Christian church because you're nice to them. Nobody. People get saved because of the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Please hear that. The Bible says in Romans chapter 1, the gospel is the power of God for salvation.

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The good news, the message of the good news is the power of God for salvation.

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That word there for power, dunamis, that word's the same word used for dynamite. Think about it.

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Explosion, right? Dunamis, power. That word, the gospel, is the power of God for salvation.

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You want dead people to come to life? You've got to tell them the message of the gospel. And we've been betraying that for so long.

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In the whole history of the Christian church, when people would go into places that were hostile, idolatrous pagans, they went in ready to lose their lives and everything else.

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And what'd they go in with? The message of the gospel that that foreign culture did not naturally accept.

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Please understand that. They didn't naturally accept it because natural man does not accept the things of God.

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So how did whole nations in the past in all of Christian history, how did all these nations turn to Jesus Christ?

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Sometimes whole people groups would come to Jesus Christ and within a generation come under the feet of Jesus.

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How'd they do it? Was it through making friends with them and earning the right to preach the gospel? Or was it through the bold proclamation of the good news in that culture?

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That's what God uses to save. You see, we want to be respected today in modern

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Christianity in the West. We want to be liked, perhaps, even loved. We don't want to lose anything.

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We want comfort. We want to make friends with the world.

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We want to be friends with them. We want them to like us and, like I said, perhaps love us.

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Remember what the apostle James says in James 4 .4? Friendship with the world is hostility with God.

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Make a choice. If you want to be a friend of the world, you're going to be hostile to God because what you give up in being a friend of the world is a commitment to God.

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What you get when you become friends with the world is compromise. Why? Because friendship with the world will demand compromise.

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It always does. Please hear that. When you want friendship with the world, that's going to demand a relationship of compromise.

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They will not compromise because they're fallen and they're dead. There is no neutrality.

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Jesus says you're either with me or you are against me. There is no neutrality with Jesus.

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So we cannot have one foot in the world and a desire to be friends with the world and one foot in God's kingdom with a desire to be friends with Jesus.

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I have to make a decision as to whether or not I have an ultimate commitment to Christ and his authority and lordship or not.

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The early church understood that commitment. They understood it to the degree that they went into the culture and to the world around them.

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And please understand the context. Just read the book of Acts. The church did not go into the world to a wide and happy reception.

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The church went into the world with a lot of hostility, a lot of persecution, a lot of hatred.

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You might be saying, why are you so amped up about this today, Pastor Jeff? What's going on around the world that got you like this?

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Well, you look at the world as it is today, you look at a culture that was so affected by the biblical worldview, so affected by solid giants of the faith and their preaching.

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I mentioned a couple of weeks ago the sermons from the founding of our nation.

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We have books of the sermons preached in the era of the founding of this particular nation. You had pastors speaking directly to the magistrates, prophetically, with the word of God.

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These are the words of God. This is what you must do. You must obey Jesus. Do you know that? Like early on in American history,

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Congress would gather for a sermon from a pastor who knew the word that would actually challenge them and call them out on what?

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Their sin, saying this is justice, here's what God's law says, this is what you're supposed to do. That's what we come out of.

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We come out of a position where in the West in particular, we have

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Christians who have labored to be salt and light, to bring the gospel to the degree that we obey

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Jesus. Matthew 28, 18 -20, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, go therefore and make disciples of nations.

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Christians in history understood that. We're trying to win the nations to Jesus, baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the

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Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey Jesus. That's the ultimate goal. That's where history is going.

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And here we have today, in the West, Christians everywhere. Christians, the recipients of so much light and labor behind us in history.

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Not perfect people, but people who love Jesus and labored hard for the blessings that we have today.

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And you look at where we're at today, and what do you have? Rooting, I keep saying rooting, rioting, those two words,

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I'm going to make it a thing. That's rooting, rioting and looting. Rioting, looting, the hatred of the

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Christian worldview to the degree that on the popular social media platforms, if you dare call homosexuality an abomination, you'd get your account shut down, temporarily suspended for saying what is historic, orthodox teaching on sexual ethics.

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You're not allowed to believe it anymore, and if you say something like that, you could lose your job.

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What do we have going on right now? Pride parades all over the place, right? How'd you get this kind of perversion in the streets of the

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United States of America? Can you imagine our forebearers, if they understood that this would be in our streets, they would be absolutely, undeniably horrified, and you know where the finger would go?

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It would go to you. And it would go to me. What did you do? What did you not do?

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Why didn't you fight? How come you didn't say something? You see, it really falls upon the church.

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We can make no excuses and simply say, well, you know, it's just the way it is. I guess we can't do anything about it.

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No, you can, but you won't. We won't be courageous enough, we won't be bold enough to say what is necessary to bring the light of the gospel, which is the power of God for salvation.

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We consign ourselves to defeat. We say, well, just give it over to the devil. Why bother polishing brass on a sinking ship?

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I would say, well, because Jesus commanded you to go win the nations to disciple them and teach them to obey.

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I don't care what your eschatology is. Can we at least agree on that? That's the command. I don't care what you think is going to happen.

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What are you commanded to do? Win the nations to Jesus. Baptize them. Teach them to obey

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Jesus. That's the goal. So you can't say, well, you see, the difference is the first century culture, they weren't dealing with what we're dealing with today.

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Really? Really? Paganism wasn't a thing in the first century? Idolatry wasn't a thing in the first century?

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Sexual perversion wasn't a thing in the first century? You know they had in the first century temples just hanging out around town.

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You could go to and engage in temple prostitution and pay money where there was all manner of sin going on.

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Homosexuality, orgies, and all the rest. It's in the text of the Bible. I'm just quoting scripture now.

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So what's going on with us today? Is it that the gospel is no longer the power of God for salvation?

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Is the spirit of God unable in the 21st century in America to bring people to life?

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Is that what's wrong? The spirit of God can't do it? The gospel is no longer the power of God? Or is it us?

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Is it in our lack of courage? Is it in our lack of boldness?

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I've been trying to challenge for all these years I've been given the privilege and honor to be the pastor of Apologia Church.

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I've been trying to challenge us to be godly troublemakers. Godly troublemakers.

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I got that from the book of Acts. Because they were acting godly. They were honoring

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Jesus. They weren't being pompous. They weren't being arrogant.

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They weren't being prideful. They weren't hating people. They were humble, bold people.

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But they were causing trouble. It's not that they wanted to cause trouble. It's not like they had a perverse love of trouble.

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It's that a love for God and a love for neighbor demands that when you see people in need of the truth you tell it to them for God's sake and for their sake.

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And that will cause, listen, trouble. If you desire to live a life of comfort if you desire to save your life and preserve it now, can

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I challenge you with something? You may not know Jesus. Now if that hurts, please don't kill the messenger.

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But Jesus said to a crowd of people lots of them great opportunity for a megachurch

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He says, if anyone comes to me and does not hate and he names your favorite people and even your own life, you're not worthy to be my disciple.

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Count the cost or don't come. And he says very, very clearly you've got to take up the cross to come and die.

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So if we love this life if we love our own comfort if we love the respect of our peers more than Jesus and His cause than have we counted the cost and have we truly died?

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Can I just challenge you with this? Because I want to tell you, it's something that I'm constantly asking myself. I mean that before God.

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Truth before God. I am constantly challenging myself with this. Are you afraid to die?

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Are you afraid to die? Are you afraid to lose everything? And if you really contemplate those questions

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Are you afraid to die? And are you afraid to lose everything? Then you need to reassess where you're at with Jesus.

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Constantly probe. Constantly think about it. Because when Jesus called people to come to Him He would tell them things like, sell everything you own and then come follow me.

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Now that wasn't a universal command to everybody. He was dealing with the heart of the rich man, of course. He knows where his idols are.

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He knows what he's not going to give up. And so he says, sell everything you own. You come to me naked. Right?

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Because you love that more than me. And then he says to everybody, you've got to come and die.

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And I see the world the way that it is knowing the Spirit of God and His effectual grace and knowing that the

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Gospel does bring people to life and I look around my world and I see so much darkness and so little light.

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But you're the light bearers. You're the ones that bring it into the culture. You're the ones that are supposed to dispel the darkness.

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So where is it? Where's our light? Is it perhaps that we have a methodology that is bootleg and anti -Christian?

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We've decided to gut the power of the bold proclamation of the Gospel for some substandard bootleg methodology that saves nobody.

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Nobody. People criticize even Apologia Church. We've got a bad reputation in some places.

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We do. People say, oh, Apologia Church? Isn't that that church that goes to preach the

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Gospel on the beach with an amplifier? It's recently said, by the way.

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Oh, I don't know if I want to be associated with a church that goes to preach the Gospel on a beach with an amplifier.

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My first response to that is I'd like to show you a video where I was preaching the

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Gospel at that beach with the amplifier. By the way, the ocean, if you didn't know, is loud. So we amplify the voice so people can hear it.

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But there's a 45 -minute video online of us preaching the Gospel on the beach with an amplifier and a man listening the whole time and then turning to Christ right there on the video, repenting of his sin and trusting in Jesus right there.

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So should we have not done it? Should we have not done it? Should we not do it? What about him?

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What about people like him? What about the elect of God like him that need the Gospel and some of them are on the beach?

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People have said, oh, you're from Apologia Church. Isn't that church the one that goes out and yells at women in front of the abortion clinic?

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That's how it's always spun, right? You guys are the ones that go yell at women at the abortion clinic. Oh, you mean the church that goes out humbly to preach the

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Gospel to mothers and fathers in the Arizona heat, soaked in sweat, hot, hurting to plead for the lives of their children?

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The church that has saved hundreds of children from death and through end abortion now thousands of children from death?

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Should we not go out to, quote, yell at women at the abortion mills? What about all those babies?

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What about all those women that turn to Christ as a result of hearing the Gospel at the abortion mill? People say, oh,

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Apologia Church, you're the church that goes to the Mormon temples. You go out and you debate with Mormons in front of the

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Mormon temple. I just think there's a better way to do that. Okay, I'm all ears.

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But that work has led to, hear me on this, thousands of Latter -day

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Saints coming to turn to Jesus Christ and being saved in Jesus Christ. If you've got a better way to reach them and you know where they're at besides the temple and the wards, let me know.

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I'll show up there too. But I'm sure that all those people that have come to Christ as a result of us being at the temple or watching the videos, they are grateful to Jesus that we were there on location to preach the

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Gospel to them. You see, people don't like that kind of ministry in the public square, let's be honest, because it's not comfortable and it will not give you a good reputation.

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This isn't about your pastor. But just know, when you decide to preach the truth and to lay your life down, there's going to be consequences.

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You could be slandered, you're going to be gossiped about, people won't like you, you could be hated, all the rest.

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If you look on the Internet, there's all kinds of stories about your pastor on the Internet. He's a demon -possessed, homosexual, there's all kinds of strange things online about me.

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By the way, both are untrue, just in case you were worried there. People have weird pictures of me on the

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Internet, Jeff Durbin wants to execute women who have abortions, just all kinds of crazy stuff online, and that's the consequence.

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And if you ask me, how do you handle slander like that? How do you handle the false accusations and people hating on you and all the rest?

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How come? One, my love for God. Two, I see what it did.

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Just this last week, I was at a rally, and I'm walking down the hill, leaving the rally.

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As I'm walking down the hill, leaving the rally, actually I ran into three people who are newer to our church, and they're standing there, and I'm noticing there's people with riot shields.

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I'm really tired. By the way, I went to said rally, and I hadn't eaten since 5 o 'clock the night before.

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I had to leave super early in the morning to get to it, and I thought they were going to have food there. Major disaster.

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Someone forgot to actually handle food for thousands of people there. So everyone's locked into this place with, what do you call them, the secret service everywhere.

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You can't get out, and I'm fading fast. People are talking to me, and I was just looking somewhere else.

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At a certain point, I had to go home to get something to eat, so I leave. It's still happening, but as I'm walking down this hill, there's riot police everywhere.

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They've got the shields going. I'm like, oh, what's going on here? I'm walking down. I see the three new people from our church, and they're like, hey, our car's down there, but there's all these people down there,

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Antifa, and we can't go down there. I said, why can't you go down there? Because they're going to attack us.

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And I was like, well, my car's down there. I've got to go. Let's go together. So we start going down the hill together, and as we're getting close to these people in the crowd, wearing all black, covering their faces, cowards, they're yelling, oh, you're what's wrong with this country!

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You're what's wrong with this country! And then all of a sudden, they recognize me! Right? Am I telling the truth?

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Yes. They're back there right now. You're my people. That's right. We did it together.

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They recognized me, and they said, they were like, it's him! So now they're yelling nasty stuff to me.

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I mean, foul things. I was walking through going, what? Like, weird accusations, but it was like, it's him!

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Like, get him! Sort of a thing. And thankfully, they're cowards, so we just kept walking through, and then they sort of fizzled out.

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But in a situation like that, sometimes if you are standing up for the truth, you may not want trouble.

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You may not like being yelled at, but there might be consequences, like you're walking through a random crowd, and they go, it's her!

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Get her! Right? It could happen. But let me just tell you, it's worth the sacrifice for the glory of God.

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It is worth it. And I wanted to remind you of something in John 10. Go there,

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John 10. John 10. I've given you now as a church what

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God says about the gospel. It's the power of God for salvation. But I want to show you what

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Jesus says. This is a beautiful chapter. I've told you it's one of my favorites in the whole Bible. In John 10,

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Jesus, I'll summarize it. He says that he's the good shepherd, and he says he lays his life down for the sheep. And he says, the other sheep

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I have, which are not of this fold, them I must also bring. There's a plan in Jesus' mind about the atonement.

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He knows who his sheep are. He knows he's going to get them. He's talking about Jews and Gentiles, other sheep.

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They're not of this fold, but them I must also bring. They're going to become one flock with one shepherd.

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And now he's been telling everyone the whole time, the whole time, he's the Christ, he's the Messiah, he's the

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Messiah. He's telling them who he is. In John 8, he calls himself the ego, a me. He says,

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I am. They want to pick up stones to kill him. He says, many good works have I shown you from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?

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For your good works we stone you not, but for blasphemy. And you being a man, make yourself God. He was clear about who he was.

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And in this case, in John 10, it says in verse 24,

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So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, How long will you keep us in suspense?

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If you're the Messiah, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you. It was not that he didn't.

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Like, say it plainly to us. He says, I told you. I did.

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And you do not believe the works that I do in my Father's name. Bear witness about me.

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But you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. So here's how Jesus handles the situation where he's preaching the truth and somehow people are hostile and somehow people just can't hear it.

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They don't perceive the truth of it and understand it and change. He says,

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I told you. He says, the reason you can't hear me is because you're not of my sheep.

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Here's what he says. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

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I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hands.

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So he says, you can't hear me because you're not my sheep. He says, my sheep hear my voice and they come. How does

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Jesus handle the problem of little numbers? Right? How does he handle the problem of persecution and conflict?

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He says, you're not of my sheep. My sheep are going to hear and they're going to come. I'm never going to lose them. So when we think about going into a hostile context where there is conflict and persecution and difficulty, we need to have that same trust and peace that Jesus had about the sovereign will of God and salvation and drawing

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God's sheep to himself. Sometimes you're going to preach the gospel and you're like, why can't you understand what

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I'm saying? Sometimes you're going to preach the gospel and you feel like it's falling on hard ground.

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Sometimes you preach the gospel and all of a sudden, surprisingly, this person goes, oh my goodness, I want

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Jesus. I love him. I trust in him. All of that. God's effectual grace.

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All to his glory. All because of his power. So that's how Jesus handled those who heard the message and couldn't hear it.

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I want to show you a couple of examples because I want you to go and spend time in this book.

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Read these verses. Go to these passages. I wanted to just direct you to them so you could see that this mythology of effective evangelism as friendship evangelism and earning the right to preach the gospel to people and gaining people's respect in order to influence them for Jesus is, in fact, a mythology.

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It doesn't work. God saves through the proclamation of the gospel and I want to show it to you in the book of Acts. So go to Acts 5 first.

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Acts chapter 5. In the book of Acts, this is the beautiful story of the early church of the spirit of God was poured out.

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You see our heroes in conflict with the world. In Acts 5 17,

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I want to highlight this point. One, they did not want to hear it.

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So we think, okay, if we could just get a context where everyone wants to hear us, then we'll be successful.

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Well, Acts 5 17. Here it is. But the high priest rose up and all who were with him, that is, the party of the

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Sadducees, and filled with jealousy, they arrested the apostles and put them in the public prison.

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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.

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And when they heard this, they entered the temple a day break and began to teach. Now, when the high priest came and those who are with him, they called together the council, all the

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Senate of the people of Israel and sent to the prison to have them brought. But when the officers came, they did not find them in the prison.

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So they returned and reported. We found the prison securely locked and a guard standing at the doors. But when we opened them, we found no one inside.

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And 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.

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And someone came and told them, look, the men to be put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people.

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

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And when they had brought them, they set them before the council and the high priest questioned them, saying,

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We strictly charged you not to teach in this name. Yet here you have filled

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Jerusalem with your teaching and you intend to bring this man's blood upon us.

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Now stop there for a second. Were they all receptive to the teaching of Jesus? No. They said, we told you to stop.

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We told you to stop teaching. So they were walking into a community where they weren't well received completely by everybody.

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They're saying, stop to the degree that you're going to jail. I think today many would actually look at what happened here and say, guys, got to work on a different strategy.

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You got to work on a different strategy where the community likes you and they start to welcome you and you get a good enough reputation where they're receptive to your message.

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They're walking into a context where people are filled with jealousy and rage and they throw them in jail and they say, we strictly charge you to stop preaching his name and you intend to bring his blood upon us.

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So, so much for dancing around the truth. They heard the message and here's what's said. But Peter and the apostles, verse 29, answered, we must obey

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

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Ouch. God exalted him in his right hand as leader and savior to give, here's the message, repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.

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And we're witnesses to these things. And so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.

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Now stop for a second. You're thinking like Christians. You know the message is true. You hear

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Peter saying it and you're like, get him, Peter. But did you get what he just said? He said, this is

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Jesus. He's the one we're expecting. You killed him. You killed him.

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And he's the one that God has given for repentance and forgiveness of sins. And just to know, just so we know how they received that word, verse 33, when they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them.

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Again, we look at popular evangelism methodologies today, friendship evangelism, making friends, getting respect from others, right?

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That whole mindset methodology. You might look at this and say, maybe change the message.

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Enraged and wanting to kill you is maybe not what you were shooting for. So let's figure out if there's some way, maybe, here's the thing, maybe we'll go door to door in the neighborhood and we'll knock on doors with all the pagans and we'll ask them, what would you like to see in a church experience?

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How would you like to see a worship service? How has the church hurt you and how would you personally change the nature of worship or teaching?

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What would you like to see in the church? You see, if you do that, you're so well received by the community because you're asking pagans how they would like the church to worship

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God. And that's how we'll really be successful. They're preaching the gospel and these people are saying, stop preaching and they're enraged and they want to kill them.

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Now, as the story goes, as you keep reading chapter five, you'll see the story. It's one of my favorites. You've heard me talk about a lot of times.

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Basically, what happens is they charge him again, stop preaching in his name, and then they take a beating, a beating for Jesus.

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And here it is. Verse 40. And when they had called on the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus and let them go.

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

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And here's what they did as their practice. And every day in the temple where they were told not to do it and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the

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Messiah is Jesus. Stop for a second. Would you or I respond like that?

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I'd like to think I would. I hope that God by his grace would give me that kind of power to respond exactly like that.

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But they take a beating for Jesus. And I don't know. Do you think maybe, do you think maybe that if it happened to us, we'd say,

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OK, I did my thing. I'm going to take a little break, right? I'll take a little rest for Jesus' sake.

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Right? But no, what's happened? They actually leave the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for Jesus' sake.

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So many of us want to avoid that dishonor, a reputation of dishonor, right?

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They thought, praise God, for the sake of Jesus and his truth, I got a beating for Jesus.

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God saw me as worthy to suffer like this for Jesus. And then what's happened?

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They don't even cease. They don't stop. They go back to the same place they were told not to. And now they're going house to house to house, right?

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And they just keep teaching and they keep preaching in Jesus' name after taking a beating for Jesus. How would you and I respond to that?

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Or do we love our honor above all? Do we love our honor above all?

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I'll be honest. I'll be transparent. I'm not a superhero. I'm not a celebrity.

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I'm just someone who loves Jesus and wants to preach the truth. This last couple of weeks, standing in front of legislators, it's intense.

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Stellar came with me yesterday as we drove to this meeting with legislators who could criminalize abortion.

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We pull up to this place and I go, you ready? Now, he's not speaking.

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I am. I'm the keynote speaker with like a congressman. There's a senator and there's house representatives and there's mayors there and sheriff and all that stuff.

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I look over at him and he's like, faces like he's white. He's already white, but it's like white.

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And I'm like, you alright? What's up? He goes, I'm really nervous. I was like, why?

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He said, because we're meeting with some very important people to talk about something very important. I said, yes.

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I said, I'm really glad that you see it that way. I said, but before I walk in, I want to remind you of something. God, before the world began, prepared this very moment and he wanted me and you to be here to give this message of his truth to these people.

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This message is from God and he's carrying our feet into here and there's not a thing we have to be worried about.

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We just have to be present and be faithful. And he was like, okay. So we go inside and I just want to be honest, standing in front of the people that are on television, who are the leaders of the state and going back and forth to Washington, D .C.,

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to the White House and communication with the president, there's an intense intensity about it and there is actually the moments where you're thinking about, maybe

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I don't have to be so heavy handed. Maybe I can ease my way into the conversation in a way where it won't be so hard and then

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I repent of my sin. And so yesterday, preaching to this room of legislators,

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I just told the truth. I said, this is murder. This is a problem of sin.

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We all know that it's evil. God demands justice. He says you're to rescue them and if you don't and you say you didn't know, he's the judge and he knows your heart and he knows that you did know.

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And I said, we need to repent of our sin. We need to come back to God. This is called murder. We need it to immediately end.

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We need to not regulate it. You need to classify it as murder. Be courageous. Stop worrying about what people are going to think of you.

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Stop compromising. Do it and do it right before God. It's a room full of Latter -day Saints, Roman Catholics, Christians.

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And after I finish, I'm like, Lord, it's all yours. A senator gets up after me and she says, right after me, here's the first step, everyone.

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We all need to repent of our sin. That was not because of me.

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It was because the truth penetrates and does what it's supposed to do.

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Compromise and softening it doesn't accomplish anything. It doesn't bring life.

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It won't. And you see in Acts over and over and over, they had a consistent message.

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If you look, they talked about judgment. We're afraid to talk about the judgment to come. We don't want to do it.

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We don't want to tell people there's a day of judgment. Your sin is going to be accounted for by God. He's going to hold you accountable to it.

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We don't want to talk about judgment as Christians today. We don't want to bring it up. We want the happy, healthy message of Jesus that just tells people

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God loves them and He wants the best for them and their best life and all the rest. We want to sugarcoat what the apostles never would have.

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They talked about the judgment to come. If you see in Acts 6, just move over one page.

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Acts 6, verse 7. Look what it says. It says...

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That's awesome. Persecution, difficulty, beatings, don't preach, stop doing what you're doing.

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And what's Luke constantly remind you of? The church is growing and growing and growing. And then it says this...

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They know Him, they know His reputation, but look what it says. In verse 13, it says this...

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He told them about the judgment that was about to fall on them. Clearly. He's saying that Jesus is going to come back and destroy this place.

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Because that's what Jesus taught in Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21. The judgment was going to fall on that generation.

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The temple was going to be destroyed. That they were about to be judged. What was Stephen doing? He's coming in and reminding them.

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Jesus said, He's going to destroy this before you all die. This temple is going down. You're all about to be judged.

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You better repent in a hurry. Stephen was preaching a message of repenting your sin. You're about to be judged.

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They heard it and they were enraged about the message and they hated Stephen. And of course you know the ultimate end of this is it led to his death.

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In Acts 7, 47. Look at the message. This is what

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Stephen says. What is the place of my rest?

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Did not my hand make all these things? And here's Stephen, our first recorded martyr.

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It says, You stiff -necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears.

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You always resist the Holy Spirit as your fathers did. So do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?

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And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one whom you have now betrayed and murdered.

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You who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it. I think that was rather less cordial of you,

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Stephen. Right? You're guilty. You're the descendants of those who killed the prophets.

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And now you killed Jesus. You murdered him. And it says this. Now when they heard these things, they said, Thank you,

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Stephen. Thank you for coming to be God's messenger for us. We respect you so much.

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We love you. Can we join you for worship? It says when they heard these things, they were enraged and they ground their teeth at him.

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That's when you know they're mad. You know what I'm saying? There's like levels of anger. There's like...

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There's fists. And then there's where you grind your teeth. Rarely do you see somebody so angry that they're grinding their teeth.

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Right? They're angry. So he cut and then they kill him.

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But notice that they're not in a context where people want to hear it. They say, Stop preaching his name. The early church is preaching the truth to the degree that they're talking about judgment.

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And what's it result in? Here it is. It results in persecution. Acts chapter 8, verse 1.

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Right after he's killed, it says this. And Saul approved of his execution.

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And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem. And they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles.

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Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church.

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And entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.

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The early church was not making friends with the world. The result of faithful gospel proclamation was people were enraged.

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They took beatings. They went to jail. They were scattered. They were persecuted. And the church grew.

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And it was multiplied. And they experienced peace. You're here today because of Stephen's faithfulness.

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You're here today because of the early church and their faithfulness and not ceasing to teach when they were told to stop.

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Everybody wanted, like you and I, to be comfortable. But the early church chose

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Christ, His glory, and His people over comfort. They didn't love their lives more than God and the other.

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And so they suffered for it. Another example, Paul, look, it's in Acts 8, right?

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Paul's there, breathing threats, throwing him in jail, house to house, and then you turn the page and then

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Paul comes to Jesus. And in Acts 9, as soon as Paul becomes a believer, it's not like his peers were like,

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I understand. It's just another way of looking at things. Here's what happens in Acts 9.

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Paul is breathing threats against the church. And in Acts 9, even he is persecuted for his faith.

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Acts 9, he comes to Jesus. And here's what it says in verse 22. But Saul increased all the more in strength and confounded the

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Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Messiah. So he's in the context of the synagogue debating with them and arguing, proving that Jesus is the

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Messiah, and here's the result. This is what happened. When many days had passed, the

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Jews plotted to kill him. But their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the gates day and night in order to kill him.

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But his disciples took him by night, led him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket. Here it is again, verse 27.

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But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord who spoke to him and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus.

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So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem. Here it is again, preaching boldly in the name of the

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Lord. And he spoke and disputed against the Hellenists, but they were seeking to kill him.

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And here's the result. So the church throughout all Judea, verse 31, and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up, and walking in the fear of the

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Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. So, did you see it?

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Speaking boldly, disputing, defending the faith, preaching the truth leads to the church experiencing peace, being built up, and the church multiplying.

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But what bed did it grow out of? Reception? What bed did it grow out of?

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It grew out of a context of persecution, resistance, hatred, animosity.

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And they continued to preach boldly. They didn't change the message, soften the message, or make a new evangelistic methodology to reach people who hated them and hated the truth.

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They just preached the truth. Even when Paul is converted, his result is persecution and people wanting him dead.

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We have had so many opportunities, ourselves in our church, to soften the message, to dumb it down, to not be bold, to not be faithful.

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But by God's grace, we have always kept our hearts and our minds and our eyes on the truth, saying this has to be our cause.

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This has to be what we stand on, no matter the cost. There are times, even as a pastor, where people will come to you with very soft words and all kinds of promises.

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If you would just stop saying this, I'll give you this. If you would just start doing this, I'll help you have this.

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And you have to make a decision, even as a minister of the gospel, am I willing to die with a faithful church of 10 disciples who know

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Jesus, love Jesus, they're bold, they know his word? Am I willing to die as that, as the measure of success over a church with 5 ,000 people who barely know

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Jesus? My answer has always been this. I'd rather die with a church of 10 faithful disciples who know the word than a mega church with 5 ,000 disciples and most of them are false professors.

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I'll take the faithful disciples because they carry the message to the next generation. All of these mega churches around here that refuse to preach the truth boldly, when persecution arises, they become museums of the

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Christian faith. Because false professors have nothing to stand on, nothing to carry them through, through difficulty and trial and persecution.

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The truth will set you free and the truth will keep you grounded. Acts 10 .34

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-43 What's the result of all of this? It results in conversion.

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That example, of course, in Acts 10 is Peter preaching the gospel to the Gentiles. Peter preaches the same message.

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Jesus, he dies, he rises again on the third day and if you look in verse 42 it says this.

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He commanded us to preach to the people and testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead.

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There's the promise of judgment again in the message of the apostles. And it says here, to him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

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It's who Jesus is, it's what he did, he died and rose again and it's the judgment is coming and then he says what?

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You can receive forgiveness by believing in him. And what's the result here? Verse 44. While Peter was still saying these things the

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Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. There's the result. Here's the message of Jesus.

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Here's the judgment to come. Believe in Jesus. There's forgiveness and salvation. Acts 13, another example of persecution.

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Acts 17, Paul of the Areopagus confronting their idolatry. Acts 19,

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Paul starts a riot preaching the gospel. A riot breaks out because of the proclamation of the truth in the public square.

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Acts chapter 18, I'll end with this one. Just go here because it's one of my favorite moments. We know so little about this man but he's one of my favorites just because it's this one section and I love it.

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Acts 18 -24 it says this. Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria came to Ephesus.

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He was an eloquent man competent in the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the

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Lord and being fervent in spirit he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus though he knew only the baptism of John.

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He began to speak boldly in the synagogue but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

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I love that, very gracious. Hey, let me help you a little bit. And it says this.

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And when he wished to cross to Achaia that his brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him, when he arrived he greatly helped those who through grace had believed.

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He greatly helped those who through grace had believed for he powerfully refuted the

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Jews in public showing by the Scriptures that Christ that the

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Christ was Jesus, the Messiah was Jesus. I want to end on that to show this pattern in the book of Acts.

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I want to end on that. Here's an example of somebody bringing the

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Scriptures, refuting people in the public square showing that the

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Messiah is Jesus. That was the practice of the early church. They went to where people were they boldly proclaimed the truth no matter the consequences and it was out of that bed that grew the garden of God's kingdom.

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Persecution, hostility, they did it boldly and they did it in the public square. When we remove the gospel from the public square, you remove the light that dispels the darkness and if it is the good news that brings people to life that's what we have to bring into the public square.

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Did you notice what Luke puts there? Luke wrote this. I love how he adds that.

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Go to it again. It's at the very end of verse 27.

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It says when he arrived he greatly helped those who through grace had believed. There's his reformed theology coming out.

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He could easily have said he greatly helped those who believed. He greatly helped those who through grace had believed.

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Did you catch this? Behind it all the whole time is those who come to know Jesus are those that God is glorifying himself and bringing to Jesus.

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You even have in the book of Acts gospel goes out and it says that the ones who came were those who were predestined to come for ordained to come.

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So we go out, we preach the truth trusting in the effectual grace of God to bring people to life but we don't change the message in order to get conversions.

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We tell the truth and we do it boldly and we do it sacrificing.

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Listen, some parting words Godly troublemakers want peace. Godly troublemakers want peace.

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If you hear me saying as your brother and as a pastor be a godly troublemaker that that gives you a right to be abusive or argumentative or be the kind of person who's always looking for a fight, you're not hearing me.

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Christians are supposed to be peacemakers but being a godly troublemaker is a necessary thing in a fallen world because when the truth comes into the world a world that is hostile to God's truth there's going to be trouble and if you're avoiding that trouble, the only way to avoid it is to hide the truth.

01:00:06

So you have to tell the truth and be a godly troublemaker. Romans 12 18 the apostle Paul who started all this trouble, he says as far as it depends upon you, be at peace with everybody.

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As far as it depends on you, be at peace with everybody but we know the kind of troublemaker

01:00:23

Paul was. Right? So two categories. One, you should have a desire to be at peace with everybody, work for it but also know you've got to sacrifice for the cause of truth to the degree that you cause trouble and you're seen as a troublemaker.

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Next, being a godly troublemaker demands of us that we have humble boldness.

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Humble because you only through grace believed and they will only through grace believe but you need to be bold with the truth because Jesus says,

01:00:55

I am the way and the truth and the life no man comes to the father but by me. The truth will set you free.

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Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin but if the son sets you free, you'll be free indeed.

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My sheep will hear my voice and they will come. So we give them the voice of the shepherd because he never fails to bring his sheep.

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You can't bring the sheep, get it, without the voice of the shepherd. If they don't hear the voice of their shepherd, the sheep are not coming.

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So you are the ones to herald that voice of the shepherd so that the sheep come out of the world.

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Godly troublemakers love God and love neighbor enough to tell the truth.

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They love God and love neighbor enough to tell the truth. You and I are going to get constant opportunities in this life and this world to compromise.

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When it comes, despise it. When it comes, repent.

01:02:01

When it comes, immediately set your sights on God. Jesus, he had a temptation, a trial to compromise.

01:02:10

It's in the wilderness. It's that last one in Matthew, waits till the end.

01:02:16

Jesus is probably exhausted. And Satan says this, here's all the kingdoms.

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Look, there it is. You came to have the world. It's all supposed to be yours.

01:02:30

I got them all right now. I'll give it to you. No cross work. No suffering.

01:02:35

No death. No resurrection. All you need to do is just one simple thing. You can avoid the beating, the thorny crown.

01:02:45

You can avoid the cat of nine tails. You can avoid having your beard pulled from your face.

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You can avoid the bleeding and the piercing. You can avoid the suffocation of the cross. It's very simple.

01:02:58

Just a little compromise. Just bow. Just bow.

01:03:04

You avoid all that pain. Just a little compromise. And you get what you came for. Go ahead, Jesus.

01:03:10

What's Jesus say? Here's the truth. You shall worship the

01:03:15

Lord your God and him only shall you serve. Here's the opportunity for compromise.

01:03:21

And our Savior says, this is the truth. No compromise. Many times it's a hard thing to wrap your mind around and to receive, so please don't take it as an attack.

01:03:37

Many times Christians will cloak compromise in piety.

01:03:48

They'll cloak compromise in piety. They'll say things like, well,

01:03:54

I don't want to do that or I don't want to say that or I don't want to get engaged in that fight because, you know, I really want my neighbors to know that I love them.

01:04:02

I really want my community to know that I'm for them and not against them. Doesn't that sound pious?

01:04:10

It sounds so righteous. It sounds so righteous and so pious.

01:04:16

But what's underneath the fear of bringing the truth to a community so we don't and we code it in Christian language is compromise.

01:04:26

Christians will cloak compromise in pious language.

01:04:33

And here's what we need to remember. The all -knowing, all -powerful God sees through the false piety and knows about the compromise.

01:04:46

And here's the deal. We may be able to impress other human beings with our false piety, but we will never escape the gaze of the one who knows all things.

01:04:56

And he knows when we're compromising and when we're lying. We can love comfort and compromise and cloak it all in pious language.

01:05:10

I'm just trying to love my neighbors. I'm just trying to make sure I have a good reputation. I'm just making sure they don't misunderstand my intentions.

01:05:18

All of those things. All of those things. You see the book of Acts.

01:05:24

The early Christians had to deal with. Are we afraid to tell the truth because we're worried somebody may misunderstand our hearts?

01:05:35

Are we afraid to tell the truth because we want our community to think well of us?

01:05:41

Are we afraid to tell the truth because we want to be comfortable?

01:05:48

Those are the questions we need to ask ourselves. And my hope is this.

01:05:54

Is in the context we're in right now, the Lord has providentially put before us. I pray that God would raise up apology at church with the strength of his spirit to love him and love our neighbor enough to always tell the truth.

01:06:11

Code it in grace and love and compassion, but do it with boldness.

01:06:17

Tell the truth. We have a dying world around us that can only come to life through the message of the gospel.

01:06:26

You have to tell it to them. I pray that we do that together. Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would take the words that were said today, you would use them for your purposes and your glory, that you would challenge your people to preach the truth, to do it in love, but to do it boldly with no compromise.

01:06:50

I pray that you'd allow us to be the salt that you call us to be and the light that you call us to be.

01:06:55

I know, Lord, that it's going to take work in me and us. And so please by your spirit, do in us what we could never do for ourselves.

01:07:06

Give us the courage that can only come from your spirit. And I pray that you'd use us in this generation to bring glory to Christ and to win this place to yourself.