Sunday Morning Sermon Series - Pastor Jeff Shipley (Date:07/11/2021)

Now, I want you to pay attention. It wasn't anything in Israel, it wasn't their military size, it wasn't the type of people, it was their identity.

Acts chapter 11, and this is the segue into that sermon series that I've been talking to you about, about image and identity.

And we're going to start that, hopefully, in a couple of weeks. But this is a segue into it.

Because it seems to me, in our culture today, most of the image that is projected is no longer one of viability or strength.

The image that is projected today to get the most attention is one of victimhood and distress.

It seems, and I could be wrong, it seems that the more victim you are, the more you get attention.

Is that just me, or do y 'all recognize that as well? It's sad. It really is sad. I mean,

I posted it on my Facebook.

I posted it on there. Only in America could a kid holding a $1 ,000 phone, wearing $200 tennis shoes, talk about how capitalism in America is oppressing them.

Have you ever been to the mountains of Nicaragua? I have. You ever seen how those people live?

Let me tell y 'all something. There is no such thing as a poor person in the

United States of America. I lived in government housing. I get it.

I don't care how bad off we were. I'd walk into my apartment, the cockroaches would roll me from my wallet.

I get it, okay? But I was not poor in comparison. It's unbelievable.

But it helps to be a victim. It helps because it gives you plausible deniability for obedience and success.

Guys, how do we overcome real things in the world today? Perspective of what you're dealing with matters a lot.

Now, here's how you change your perspective. Stop looking at where you're at and start looking at where God's calling you to be.

I'm telling you, if you stop and you really look at what

God is calling you to, there is no depths of despair in which you exist that God cannot deliver you from.

Let's look at Acts chapter 11. The church is brand new. Brand spanking new.

Now, I'm talking about 2 ,000 year history here. Brand spanking new.

They're just getting off the ground, man. God had been promising for 4 ,000 years, hey, there's something coming.

Hey, there's something coming. The Messiah is coming. Man, Jesus showed up.

Jesus died and ascended back into heaven. And the Holy Spirit came down and started working through people, bringing them together.

But the power of the church is he brought them together in the midst of trials and convictions.

How do we deal with this? Well, I'm going to show you three areas in which you really need to focus on overcoming.

Stop worrying about Republicans and Democrats. I'm going to let you in on a secret. They're all idiots, okay?

They're all idiots, all right? Stop worrying about religion because they're all stupid.

Acts chapter 11, verse 1 through 3.

The apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the

Gentiles had welcomed God's message also. When Peter went up to Jerusalem, those who stressed circumcision argued with him saying, you visited uncircumcised men and ate with them.

You know what we really have got to overcome? You don't have to overcome that guy that got shot because the chicken sandwich wasn't right at Popeye's.

Or the other stupid stuff that goes on in this world today. Guys, what you really have to start overcoming is you've got to overcome some stupid.

If you're going to live in this culture, if you're going to live in the United States of America or Europe or some other developed country, you might think you're blessed, but you're going to have to deal with a stupid on a whole other level of idiocy.

Well, that's nothing new. Remember Solomon said there is nothing new under the sun.

The church had just got started and most of the converts were Jewish people who came to believe

Jesus Christ as Messiah. And then a few short years later, all of a sudden,

Gentiles started getting saved. And this freaked the Jews out.

Do you understand the concept here? I mean, in other words, us white,

Protestant, Anglo -Saxon Americans, we can be Christians, but we cannot accept...

Now, black folks are okay. Mexicans, okay. But the Irish have got to go, right?

Get them Irish out of here or get... Sorry, man, you drink too much. Or get...

No Puerto Ricans. No Puerto Ricans. Guys, if you want to keep your hubcaps, you cannot have

Puerto Ricans in your church, right? Guys, y 'all are all sitting there going, well, that sounds stupid, that sounds racist, that sounds...

Yeah, the same stupid we're dealing with today, mankind has been dealing with since the beginning of time.

There is not one group has been more afflicted than the others. Every culture in the history of the world has had slavery and oppression.

You know why? Because there is a universal indictment of God against the total depravity of man and it manifests in every single person.

You've got to overcome that. Guys, the thing that you have to overcome is some stupid culture.

How many of y 'all get fired up, more angry, you get more mad over them taking some stupid

Christmas thing out of the town hall... Or some Ten Commandments out of the courtroom and you lose your mind.

But you'll go to church, sit next to a person who is dying in their sin and you'll keep your mouth shut.

You'll take up the banner of the will -baby Jesus in the manger. You will absolutely light

Facebook up. You'll be one of those people, if you don't share this, you don't believe in God.

Stop spending your time on cultural issues and start spending your time on Christian things.

Now, I'm going to be honest with you. We need to understand social justice not as our culture defines it, but as God's Word defines it.

Because let me tell you something, church. If we as God's people ignore that, we do it at our own peril.

Because Israel and Judah, if you go read all of the minor prophets,

God took them to task. Why are you people living in paneled houses and these people are dying and starving?

And he called the Christians to account on that. You got to overcome some stupid culture stuff.

But here's the second most important thing. You've got to overcome religion.

Guys, please, I beg everyone in here, by the mercies of God. If you don't remember anything else, remember this.

You believing that there's a God, you having a system of morals does not make you a regenerated believer.

If you're in this room and you have more allegiance to a silly religious denomination than you do to the gospel of Jesus Christ, that is called idolatry.

And that didn't work out well for people in Scripture. Guys, whether you're Catholic, you know this is called

Witten Baptist Church. You know the minority of people in this room are Baptists? It's crazy.

The smallest demographic we have, most people grew up heathen in this place. Most of you guys grew up as godless heathens.

Baptists are very small. You know why? Who cares? One day we're going to make this the

Josiah church. Well, no, that'd be heretical. We're going to make this, I want to name this church, the church across the street from Walgreens.

Because everybody will know it. Everybody will know it. Guys, a religious creed cannot bring you peace.

That's why people get so frustrated. Because they come to a church building.

Ecclesia is this. We come to a building, a religion, trying to find peace.

But the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our Lord.

Not the peace of a church. You know why these Jews were so fired up? Look at what they told

Peter. I can't believe you, dude. You fellowshiped and ate with non -Jews.

Oh my gosh. Lost their minds. But as stupid as those religious

Christians were, we got to give them this. Now watch. Keep reading a little bit here.

Keep reading and it says in verse 17, Peter answers these guys and says this.

If God gave them the same gift that He also gave to us when we believed on the

Lord Jesus Christ, how could I possibly hinder God? Now listen. Verse 18.

When they heard this, they became silent. Then they glorified

God. So God has granted repentance resulting in life, even to the

Gentiles. Right there you see the difference between religious people and Christian people.

You know what the difference is? Repentance. In fact, it's the difference between those who will spend eternity in hell and those who will spend eternity with God.

You see that word repentance? If you look real closely at that verse, there's three things that happened.

Number one, they became silent. Now wait a minute. The Bible just said they just said something.

Right. In other words, something happened in their heart which then transferred to their mind, which then transferred to their body.

That is repentance. How many of you people have had an experience with God where you walked down an aisle and accepted

Jesus Christ, your heart Lord and Savior, but nothing ever changed in your life? How many of you were listening to the preacher on TV and he said, just pray this prayer?

And you prayed that prayer, and you probably prayed it 42 times. But yet you still understand that something is still not right.

The thing that you're missing is repentance. You see, Jesus Christ is your

Savior, but notice what Peter said. He said, we have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ.

You keep focusing on the little guy in the manger or the dead guy hanging on the cross.

Let me tell you something. According to Scripture, Jesus is not on the cross. He sits at the right hand of God waiting for his enemies to be made his footstool.

He is victorious, i .e., he is Lord. Philippians tells us that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess

Jesus Christ as Savior, good guy, moral standard, philosophical understanding, or they will confess him as Lord, God, Kurios, Master.

You submit to a cultural and moral standard faster than you submit to the

God who created the universe. Guys, you've got to overcome some stupid in your life.

Well, pastor, this doesn't have anything to do with the struggles I'm facing. Yet, you're the stupid

I'm talking about. Okay? You're it. You're thinking that if situations or other people change, you'll be better.

What you need to focus on is not changing the world. Don't change everybody else.

Repent and humble yourself and let God change you. That's how you're going to overcome.

Oh, you persecuted. We're going to be an advocate and fight and blah, blah, blah.

You're trying to clean the snake cage, people. Screw that. Let God deliver you out of it.

That's what you need to overcome. Second thing is look at this. If you look at these believers, they absolutely demonstrated a heart soft enough to be guided and corrected by God.

So we've come to a place where we see that repentance, but I want to ask you this just real quick before I leave this point.

When's the last time you repented? Now, some of you all are saying every day. If you want to be a real

Christian, you know what the standard is? The pastor read it earlier. Love God and obey

His commands. It's that simple. That simple. How does that look on a daily life, though?

It's called daily repentance. We're told in Luke, if anyone wishes,

Jesus said, if anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me daily.

Your Sunday morning Christianity is not true repentance. Oh, but I sing in the choir.

I preach. I do this and pretend like it's some sort of necessity in life.

Where'd Andrew go? Oh, there you go. Like, the whole world's going to fall apart if we don't have a guy up here doing this.

Andrew does so much more than that. Guys, preachers who think their preaching is ministry are self -serving, arrogant liars.

Okay? If you think you having your rear end in a chair or a pew is your ministry, you have lost your ever -loving mind.

Guys, you want to minister something. It doesn't have where you attend. It has to do with who you attend to.

Serve something and someone other than yourself. I need to move on. Guys, overcoming true persecution is this.

Look at verse 19. Those who had been scattered as a result of the persecution that started because of Stephen made their way as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, Antioch, speaking the message to no one except Jews.

As I said to you earlier, I used to live in what was called Section 8 housing.

I used to live in this really, really cool upscale neighborhood. It was awesome. And one day they decided, hey, we're going to help these people out.

We're going to spray the units. We're going to spray because the roaches,

I'm not kidding you, to open the door and walk in and turn the light on and they would like run behind the pictures.

And there would be these black dots all over the house, which was, you know, it was nasty.

I remember my mom would leave Taco Bell in the microwave for us to eat and we'd warm it up and you would hear tick, tick, tick.

And then with the cockroaches that had gotten in the bag exploding. I mean, it was nasty, okay? Yes, I ate cockroaches, all right?

It was nasty, right? But here's what was funny. The government or whoever those people were decided they were going to get rid of the cockroaches.

So they went to apartment 1 and they sprayed all this insecticide.

Guess what happened? They went right next door. They were like, we're out of here.

They went next door. Then they sprayed that one. They went back to apartment 1. It was like that.

You could tell when they were spraying because you would be sitting there watching TV and all of a sudden you'd feel something crawling across your leg.

Or you would look up in the ceiling. They'd be walking on the ceiling. You'd open the cabinet door. They would fall down.

Guess what? We're cockroaches. This is what persecution is all about. Every time the church was persecuted, the

Word of God spread. When they killed Stephen and the leaders in Jerusalem and then eventually

Diocletian and Nero and all these other Roman emperors, when they said, wipe out the

Christians, they'd come in and arrest and kill everybody. And it was like pouring water on an oil fire. The Holy Spirit of God just used the people moving and running to spread the

Word of God. 2 ,000 years later, we're in Memphis, Tennessee, in the United States of America, hearing the

Word of God because it's spread by persecution. Christian, here's the other thing about overcoming things.

You need to toughen up a little bit. My gosh, Christian.

How many of y 'all are sitting in here and you're like looking at the watch, waiting for this to be over. It's not light enough.

The sound ain't right. Air conditioning ain't right. Oh my gosh, the pastor's not wearing a suit and tie.

Look, I got flip -flops on. You've never seen a man with four toes. Guys, you've got everything in the world to worry about.

But you know what you don't have to worry about in the United States of America? Dudes coming through those doors shooting you because you're a

Christian. I tell you there's a day coming when God is going to purify

His church not by the revival of the preaching of men, but by persecution of Satan and his minions.

The church of God is going to be purified, tried with fire because before every true revival,

God's people have been persecuted. You have to understand that persecution is a form and a way of life with a believer.

I know the rich guys on TV preaching to you wanting a $32 million jet won't tell you this, but suffering is a normal way of life for the believer.

You're told totally different. If you're not successful and rich and fat and happy, you're not living right.

I'm here to tell you according to the Word of God, if you are not in a place of toil and work and persecution, you are not doing what

God has called you to do because there is a world out there that Jesus said will hate you for this reason, for my name's sake.

How many of you have ever heard someone say, I'm being attacked by the devil? Oh yeah.

Last night I got drunk and man, I couldn't help it. The devil just attacked me and that demon of alcoholism got up in my soul.

Dude, you were drunk. You were drunk. That's all there is to it. Ain't no demon of alcoholism.

And find out how self -centered this is for you. You're doing nothing to further the kingdom of God.

You are no threat to Satan at all. But he's going to devote all his attention towards you and attack you because...

Why? You're already his. You already belong to him. You can't overcome anything because you don't realize that the real problem in your life has more to do with your arrogance and inability or unwillingness to humble yourself before Almighty God.

If you want to overcome true persecution, understand where a lot of it comes from and understand the purpose for it.

It's to make us bigger, better, stronger, and faster. This last analogy,

I remember when Pastor Josiah was fighting. He was fighting. And I remember...

I know some of y 'all have heard this analogy before, but bear with me. I remember I was training him to get in that ring.

And what I did is I would let him eat a pizza and then

I would make him lay on the couch and do this because he was going to fight.

And then I'd turn the TV on. And I'd turn the air conditioner on. And I would feed him sundaes and ice cream.

And I'd talk real gentle to him like, Nope. I took a backpack, tied a rope to it, tied it to my motorcycle and made him drag me around the neighborhood, sometimes putting the brakes on.

What are you doing, you Nancy? Go harder! I was a sadist to him.

I made him practice in rooms with no air conditioning. I made him practice in the dirt.

When he was hurt and tired, I'd kick him and knock him down again. I would make fun of him.

I would smack him. I would hit him hard. I know that sounds like abuse.

It is. But see, the difference is I love him. And I know how much he can take.

I love him. And I know that I'm doing him a service and making him stronger because there's a persecution that's coming that doesn't love him.

That's why I spanked my children. That's why I disciplined them. Because I love them to know that in this world they're growing up with, they're going to have to have a mental discipline and toughness and a trusting

God big enough to handle the persecution of this world. Are you with me? Alright, last thing, we're done.

Listen to me. You're going to have to overcome stupid. You're going to have to overcome persecution. But guys, you're going to have to overcome some real problems.

Look at this in verse 27 of chapter 11 again. Then he went on to Tarsus to search for Saul.

When he found him, he brought him to Antioch. And for a whole year they met with the church and taught large numbers.

The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch. Now guys, this city of Antioch, it was started in 300

B .C. I don't want to get too carried away, but I'm nerding out. One of the descendants of Alexander the

Great, this is a city he started. He named it for his father. By the way, if you look up in Wikipedia or whatever you nerds use on the

Google thing, it's still there today. It's really small though. It's more like a neighborhood than anything else, but it's still there.

Guys, I love this verse for a couple of reasons. Once again, my history nerding goes absolutely nuts.

Because when you read this, you understand that it's real life.

If you go to verse 27, it says this, In those days some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch.

Then one of them named Agabus stood up and predicted by the Spirit that there would be a great severe famine throughout the

Roman world. This took place during the time of Claudius. What's really cool about that is you have two historical time stamps that are validated by history, by other works of history.

We know at this time Claudius was the emperor of Rome. But we also have five different Roman non -Christian historical testaments to this severe famine.

Of course, that could be all a big fake thing because the Bible was written by the government to control you or whatever you black helicopter idiots think.

But guys, in real life, overcoming persecution means you have to overcome some real problems.

This was real. Now, this famine that came and hit the church, not only were,

I mean the church was living in that area, they were affected by it too. But I want you to notice how the church responded to these persecutions.

Look what it says right here. And I'm going to focus in verse 29. So each disciple, according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brothers who lived in Judea.