Acts, chapter 5, verses 12 through 42. This is right after something we looked at a couple weeks ago, where a married couple named Ananias and Sapphira had decided to lie to God and they had an early burial because of that. You can read that story just before it now. Many miraculous signs and wonders came about among the people through the hands of the apostles. By common consent, they were all meeting together in Solomon's portico.

None of the rest dared to join them, but the people held them in high honor. More and more believers in the Lord were added to their number, crowds of both men and women. Thus they even carried the sick out into the streets and put them on cots and pallets, so that when Peter came by, at least his shadow would fall on some of them. A crowd of people came from the towns around Jerusalem, which also came together, bringing the sick and those troubled by unclean spirits. They were all being healed now.

The high priest rose up and all those with him, that is the religious party of the Sadducees. And they were filled with jealousy. Now, isn't that great when people in church get jealous of one another? They laid hands on the apostles and put them in a public jail. I promise, I've never been to a church service that ended like that.

That sounds exciting. People lay hands on one another. I've been to somewhere it got close to that. Never quite where. People ended up in jail.

But during the night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the prison, led them out and said, oh, thank you. Look at this. I got choices. Oh, my goodness. Thank you.

If somebody listens to this later on Spotify, my wife just brought me coffee and water. She never even was a waitress. During the night, the angel of the Lord opened the doors of the prison, led them out and said, go and stand in the temple courts and proclaim to all the people all the words of this life. When they heard this, they entered the temple courts at daybreak and began teaching. Now, when the high priest and those who were with him arrived, they summoned the Sanhedrin, that is the whole high council of the Israelites, and they sent to the jail to have the apostles brought before them.

And but the officers who came for them did not find them in prison. So they returned and reported, we found the jail locked and securely, or locked securely, and the guards standing at the doors. But when we opened them, we found no one inside. I've just got to pause there. Have you ever, like, felt that dumb at work?

The guards are standing there oblivious that the people, they think they're guarding aren't there anymore. God has led them out. The guards weren't able to even see that. And they're standing there like, okay, we're not gonna let anybody in or out. And they're like, guys, what exactly do you think you're doing here?

Like, we're guarding those guys in there. They're like, there's no one in there. Okay. Man, these people are bewildered about this. Now, when the commander of the temple guard and the chief priests heard this report, they were greatly puzzled concerning it, wondering what this could be.

But someone came and reported to them. Look, the men you put in prison are standing in the temple courts and they're teaching the people. Then the commander of the temple guard went with the officers, brought the apostles without the use of force because they were afraid of being stoned by the people. I just gotta say, I love that part when the corrupt leadership is now worried that the people will rise up and do something. Yeah, we gotta get to that place.

Sorry, I'm not trying to say something too much in this country, but I'm just saying, like, at some point we're gonna be like, you guys answer to us. Okay? Like, anyway, sorry. Okay. The revolutionary part of me.

I'll tamp that down. We'll get back to the word. When they had brought them, they stood before the council and the high priest questioned them, saying, we gave you strict orders not to teach in this name. Look, you filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you intend to bring this man's blood on us. But Peter and the apostles replied, we must obey God rather than people.

The God of our forefathers raised up Jesus, whom you seized and killed by hanging him on a tree or a cross. God exalted him to his right hand as leader and savior to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses of these events, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him. Now, when they heard this, they became furious and wanted to execute them. But a Pharisee whose name was Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, who was responsible by all the people, stood up in the council and ordered the men to be put outside for a short time.

Then he said to the council, men of Israel, pay close attention to what you are about to do to these men. For some time ago, theudas rose up claiming to be somebody, and about 400 men joined him. He was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed. And nothing came of it after him. Judas the Galilean arose in the days of the census and incited people to follow him in revolt.

He, too was killed, and all who followed him were scattered. So in this case, I say to you, stay away from these men and leave them alone. Because if this plan or this undertaking originates with people, it will come to nothing. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop them, or you may even be found fighting against God. He convinced them, and they summoned the apostles and had them beaten.

Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus and released them. So they left the council, rejoicing because they had been considered worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the Name. And every day, both in the temple courts and from house to house, they did not stop teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus was the Christ. Pray. Lord, we thank you for this word.

We thank you for your scriptures that you've given to us. We thank you, Holy Spirit, for preserving them down through the ages and now opening them up for us, that we might be able to learn what you have in store for us today. Speak to us. Speak to us, each individually. Give me the words to say so that what is what you want to be said gets said.

May we leave here ready to carry the hope of Jesus Christ to the world that needs it so much. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. So I mentioned Ananias and Sapphira, that telling of events that happened just before this in your scriptures, in the first part of Acts, chapter five. And we talked about this a couple weeks ago.

Great fear gripped the church. Not just the church, but anybody who heard it. The church was meeting in a place that was part of the Roman temple complex. Michel, I think I've got a picture. I think I put them in the right order, but it's a picture of, like, old buildings.

The temple complex. Let's see. Not that one. I didn't put it in the right order. That one.

I put them in the wrong order. So you've got the temple complex here. Now, right there in the middle was. Now, of course, this isn't still standing today, but this is in Jerusalem. And this is kind of a remodeling or remake of what the thing looked like.

That kind of flat area with the walls around it. That part is still there. Just none of the walls, none of the buildings are there. Just the vertical side walls. And you've got, of course, the eastern wall and the western wall, the wailing wall.

Those things are still there. And what we're looking at is we're coming from the east side, and this is looking out towards the Kidron Valley is kind of from our vantage point. And across the Kidron Valley you have the Mount of Olives where Jesus like went to the Garden of Gethsemane and things like that. And on the part that's, you can kind of see on the back side of it there, you see where all those columns are kind of around two sides on the side that's closest to us in the picture that you can't see the columns. That was what was called Solomon's colonnade or Solomon's porch or Solomon's portico, different words for it.

So they think it was about 60ft wide and, you know, a few hundred feet long and it was a covered area. And so this was a place where the disciples and the believers in Christ could all meet together and they could hang out there. And they're in view of everything that's going on in the temple, all of the sacrifices, all the teaching, all the things that were going on at the temple, they can be seen in view of all that. And the early Christians would still come to the temple for times of prayer. They would honor the Jewish culture and history, the religious gatherings.

They would still come and be part of all of those things. But as they would meet together as the church, they would meet together daily there. And Peter or the other apostles would teach and preach. And so there's people all around that are witnessing this, but they have kind of a fear of what's going on, like not scared of it, but they're holding it in high honor. And nobody would join in unless they were really certain that they wanted to commit and be part of this.

That they were really convinced that Jesus was the Christ and that there was something in it for them to be part of. I remember, oh goodness, over 20 years ago now when I moved to Tennessee, I got a job working at a car dealership. I never worked at a car dealer. I never sold anything really. And here I was, I'm supposed to be doing this.

And in 2000, I think was 2003, Chrysler, which is part of the dealership I was at, came out with a car called a Crossfire. Now they're all old and raggedy, unless somebody kept one in really nice shape. But the Chrysler Crossfire was a sleek little two seater, two door coupe that was modeled after a little Mercedes because they had been a merger at the time and it was modeled after this cute little Mercedes coupe. And Chrysler just kind of did a, they did a Chrysler version of it. It was really Underwhelming.

It looked fun. It looked cool. Had a little spoiler that would come out, like, at 63 miles an hour or something silly like that, you know, this did nothing but look cool. And they weren't selling very well. And so the car dealership said, hey, we'll pay an extra thousand dollars to any dealer who sells one of these.

I was like, I'm on it. Not really, but I found somebody that really wanted to drive one. This guy and his son come in, and he's like, yeah, I might want to buy one of these for my son. It's like, okay. So I take the father out for a test drive, and he says, okay, I want my son to drive it, see how he likes it.

Son goes for a drive, and they just want to see if they can do a burnout in it. And you couldn't. It was an underpowered V6. It wasn't enough power to really do it. The tires were too big.

It just wouldn't work. And it wasn't that impressive. And they didn't buy it. No, I wanted that thousand dollars. You know, I needed it.

I had bills, okay? They weren't serious. They knew they weren't serious when they came in. I knew that later. I'm like, they just wanted to have some fun.

They wanted to go drive. Drive a car that they knew they weren't gonna buy. And let's be honest. That could be a cheap date. You know?

You're like, hey, let's go test drive a car. You know, like, just dream what it would be like if we could actually afford this. That would be really cool thing to do, you know? And so I knew. Like, I knew at the moment, but I was just.

I had this, like, I want that. That spiff, they called it. I wanted that spiff, that thousand bucks, I think of that, and I think of these people that were around. They were probably looking in at the church, just like, these guys looking at that Chrysler crossfire, and they're looking at the church, and they're like, I don't know, man. There's something awesome about that, but I'm not ready to commit to it.

I'm not ready to fully be part of that. And so they would kind of stay on the periphery. They'd stay on the outside, and they wouldn't really join the church unless they were really, you know, convinced that this was what they were made for. And so people were joining the church constantly, though. It says every day, more men and women were joining the church.

And Peter and the other apostles they're healing people. They're driving out unclean spirits, demons out of people's lives. They're bringing healing and wholeness to them every day. And the scripture that we read says that people were coming from out of town. People were traveling to Jerusalem to come to the temple.

Not to hear the teachers of the law and the Pharisees teaching not to hear any of this stuff. They're coming to get healed. They were even hoping, if they couldn't have an audience with the apostles, that even if they would just stand where Peter's shadow would fall on them. Now, it doesn't say that Peter's shadow healed anybody. It just says that that's what people were doing.

I don't know which it is. I don't know if it happened or not. And so all this is going on, and the priests get alarmed by it. The high priests are in charge of all of the sacrificial system and all these things. And they don't like what they're seeing.

And then there's this group called the Sadducees. And the Sadducees were. They were very alarmed by this for a few reasons. One, it kind of stole some of their thunder. Nobody likes that.

But two, the Sadducees came from a. Like, historically, if we went way back to the first temple, See this temple that we've got, this is the one that King Herod built. And, well, it was already kind of built, but he added on to it. But the first temple that had been destroyed a long time ago. The first temple King Solomon had built, the son of King David.

And King David, during his priesthood, had a group of priests from a guy named Abiathar was the high priest. And Abiathar tried to set up this kind of mini coup almost after David died, tried to get one of David's other sons to be the king. But God had said Solomon would be the king. So Solomon banishes Abiathar, sends him home, says, you're not the priest anymore, and he puts a guy named Zadok in charge of the priesthood. Now, both these guys had a historical, like, familial right to the priesthood.

Abiathar had succeeded from a guy named Eli that was a priest when Samuel had had grown up. If you remember the story, if you know this, Samuel was a little boy that was raised up serving the Lord at the temple or at the tabernacle. And Eli was the priest then. But Eli's family was kind of corrupt. And God had said that he was going to put an end to the family line of Eli as priests.

And what ends up happening is Solomon puts Zadok in charge, puts him in his high priest, installs him, and he goes back to Aaron, the brother of Moses. And. And Aaron's family was supposed to be the continual line of priests. And his son Phinehas, we had talked about him a few weeks ago. He had great zeal for the Lord and had put the plague to rest.

And Phinehas family line continued down through this guy named Zadok. If you'll go to that next slide, Michelle, it shows us how the Zadokites was the family line of Zadok, the priestly line of his. And just kind of the evolution of the Hebrew language comes to this Hebrew word sadiq, and then the Greek transliteration of that turns into the Sadducees, essentially. So the Sadducees trace their lineage back to the Zadokites. And the Zadokites, they were intent on keeping the priesthood pure and clean.

They were intent on keeping it focused on God. And the Sadducees kept that lineage going. So much so that they were so religious about it that they closed their minds off to anything new that God might do. In fact, they believed that God had completed the. What would you call it, the revelation of himself with the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They only believed in the Torah and nothing else, nothing after that. So when the Torah was closed, they said, okay, that's it. We're done. No more.

And they didn't believe in supernatural things. They didn't believe in miracles. They didn't believe in angels and demons. And for one thing for sure, they did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. So now you have the Sadducees at the time here with the apostles.

The Sadducees keep hearing that the apostles are preaching about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and they're calling him the Messiah. The Sadducees didn't believe there would be a Messiah. They believed all they needed was the Torah. There are Jews today. There's all kinds of different factions of people that are Jewish by heritage.

And one of the things is there's some today that still believe that they only need the Torah, that the only thing they need is the first five books of the Bible. And so they're closed off to anything beyond that.

The Sadducees have this issue with the disciples. They've had them arrested. They're kind of in charge of what's called the sanhedrin, which is 70 leaders that are made up of teachers of law, Pharisees, chief priests and Sadducees. And so they had kind of taken action at this. Well, they threw him in jail.

As we read, God has a different plan. He breaks them out, says, go preach. They go preach. They get up early. They get an early start on the preaching.

They. The priests and everybody show up later. They show up and they're like, all right, let's get this guy out of jail. They're not there. And they say, didn't we tell you?

They bring him forward. They say, didn't we tell you not to preach in this name?

Wasn't popular then to preach Christ, and it's not popular now.

And I'm not one to blame Satan for everything bad that happens, but I really think he doesn't want this next thing said. And I'm going to push through it. It's getting said one way or the other.

See, in the name of Jesus, people are healed. We see that in the scripture. In the name of Jesus, demons are driven out of people that have lived in them. A couple of us were talking in the lobby just a few minutes ago. We see this.

You've seen it in people, you might think. I don't know if I buy into the whole demon thing and all that. Like, there's people just on the news talking about it. Tom, we were saying, he's like, there's people on the news talking about the Nephilim now. Like this.

It's like, you know, they're talking about giants and all this stuff that they're like, yeah, we know it's in the scripture. We've been talking about it. We've been reading it. They're talking about it on, like, secular, like, news stations now and all these things. It's like it's becoming recognized by a lot of people mainstream outside of the Christian faith.

But it's like, folks, we see this, we know there's a spiritual war that's going on, and there are evil forces that want to steal the children of God and corrupt them. People that haven't turned to Christ for salvation yet. They're saying, like, if we can get ahold of them now and get our claws in them, then we'll keep them from ever being what God wanted them to be. And they'll do everything to steal God's children away from him. But in the name of Jesus, people are relieved of demonic oppression or possession.

In the name of Jesus, people are healed. In the name of Jesus, the dead are Raised in the name of Jesus, people are given salvation both for life on this earth and for eternity in heaven. In the name of Jesus, people are freed from their addictions. In the name of Jesus, people are provided for, the sick are made well, and the lepers are cleansed. In the name of Jesus.

All these things happen. And it wasn't popular to preach then, and it's not popular now.

Peter responds to these leaders.

They said, we told you not to preach in this name. And he says, should we listen to you or listen to God? Now, that's a simple answer. Obviously, you should always listen to God over every leader, myself included.

Hopefully. Hopefully what I say does not disagree with what God says. However, in your little sermon Companion guide, there's a chance that I might have gotten something wrong because I'm human and I will get something wrong. And I even wrote that in there. It's a little bit of a reminder every week to myself, like, you might be wrong.

It's hard. I know it's hard for me as a man to admit that, but it's possible. It's possible that I could be wrong.

I even said that in front of my wife too many times. Even Christian leaders are willing to listen to men rather than God. I saw this most prominently displayed just a few years ago in our country and around the world when government leaders said, it's not safe. I mean, you can do protests, you can do these things and these things and these things. You just can't go to church together.

You should stay home. Many of us did. Many churches stopped having services. They said, well, we'll just put it online. That'll be good.

You know, we tried that for a couple weeks. It was the worst thing ever. I put a camera up on a tripod in my living room. It was the driest, most boring, unhelpful stuff ever. You know, what matters is when the people of God come together to declare that there's power in the name of Jesus.

I'm not saying be foolish. I'm not saying be stupid. I'm just saying when leadership of some kind says, no, you know, you need to obey us. Forget what the word of God says. Forget what common sense says.

Forget any of that. You need to listen to us. When the government says things like, oh, well, you know, we've gone through science, and we've decided that transgenderism is actually scientifically a thing. And so you guys, you churches, you need to start kind of promoting it. You know, there's churches that are actually, like, proclaiming that this is the way God created people rather than looking at the word of God and saying, no, God created you perfect.

He did not create confusion within you. That confusion comes from the world. I have created you to be the person I made you to be. And you find your identity in Christ, not in another gender, not in another species, not in another anything. And yet we've allowed.

I'm not saying in this church, but I'm saying in so many places, we've allowed that to filter into our language and the way we say things. And rather than loving people as God created them, we've played into the delusions that the world has planted in them. And we've said that that's okay. We'll go along with what the government says rather than what God says. We've decided that so many churches have gone along with this lie that says that abortion is health care rather than abortion is something that destroys a life that God created.

And there's churches that are promoting this within their ranks. We have government saying, well, this war is a good war. We were talking about this earlier, Elaine. I said I talk about this. Don't.

I don't think it stemmed out of our conversation, but this is a good war. We have to fight it. I don't even know which war I'm talking about. It's just any of them. They always try to convince us that, and they want us to get on board with it.

Listen, I'm thankful for our troops. We just had a great Memorial Day service where we paid tribute to those who have given all. And then I continue to be that way. But at the same time, you're not going to convince me that war is the way. There might be some times where we get dragged into it, and if so, we have overwhelming force that can respond in a way that puts it to rest.

But my goodness, it better be the last thing we do. God said, blessed are the peacemakers, and that's where I stand. And too many times the government says, no, this war is good. We need this. It's pretty bad when you get Republicans and Democrats agreeing on a war.

Makes you wonder if it's actually the right thing or not. They can't agree on anything else, but they can agree on that.

I'd be shocked if they got that one right. So many times, Christians, the church, they try to convince us that we need to listen to the leaders, to the government, to those above us, rather than listen to God. Folks, I'll tell you this. I've had two people tell me this week, you don't sound Very much like a Nazarene. I didn't even know what that meant.

I said, well, I'll tell you what. Here's where I get my authority. I get my authority from the Word of God, and that holds higher sway than any other book that exists. And so what I do is I yield my life to what the Spirit of God reveals to me from his Word, from his Scripture. And when that disagrees with whatever news outlet.

And I know some of you are like me, you don't watch anything on, you know, Newsmax or Fox or CNN or whatever. You still have TikTok, Facebook, YouTube. You get your news one way or the other. I'm glad I finally, like, I was trying to get away from so much of this. I was trying to unplug, to detox from all this poison that's going on in the world all around me.

And it's hard sometimes because some of you are still paying attention and you want to talk to me, and that's fine. I'm not trying to live under a rock, but it sure is peaceful. And somebody's like, hey, did you hear about this? Oh, I didn't hear about that. Oh, good, it's working.

I'm actually, like, succeeding and not like, digging into it. This is great. Then I find out about it. I'm like, well, I kind of want to do know about that. You know, I do want to know about that.

Like, what's, what's happening here. I'll dig into it, so I'll get myself informed on it. But I'm not going to just pay attention to everything that they tell me is important. I'm going to look around at the people that are nearby me, the people that I'm friends with, the people that I have ministry with, and say, what is it that the Word of God does to help them in the place of their life that they find themselves in right now? John Wesley is.

He was a guy that lived a long time ago, 1700s. And his kind of theology, his doctrine, his way of understanding the Scriptures informs a lot of the Nazarene theology that we have today. And John Wesley, they didn't have cars yet. He had a horse. He rode, they believe, a quarter million miles on horseback from town to town, mostly in England, a little bit in America.

And a lot of the people that he would minister to were just very common folks. Like, he would go to where they had the mines. He'd wait for the shift to change and the miners would come out and they're all filthy and covered in dirt, probably Want to go home and clean up. And he just starts preaching to them. You know, he would go from town, he preached in a cemetery because they wouldn't let him preach in the church there.

They kicked him out of the church. And the only place he had was the tombstone of his father. So he stood on that. He's like, they can't kick me off of this. And he preached from there.

Like that was his literal soapbox. You know, it was a headstone. He's like, this. This piece of ground I own, they can't kick me off of this. But what he did was he looked at the scripture as he's riding on his horse.

He would have this big leather bound Bible and he'd flop it open and it'd be laying there on the saddle in front of him. And as he would read the scripture and he would see the people in the field, see the people in the mines, and see the people going about their daily life, he said, if this scripture doesn't mean something to these people, then I've misunderstood it. So he would read the scripture and interpret it based on how it intersected the lives of common, everyday people. And I'd rather do that than look at the news and try to say, what does the word have to say about the news? I'm going to let the word of God have authority in my life, and it's going to inform me and it's going to lead me and guide me through, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, revealing it to me.

And as I do that, I'm going to say, okay, God, then how do you want me to minister to people? And it always comes back to Jesus Christ. And that's what Peter says. He says we can't help but share the testimony of what we have seen ourselves and what the Holy Spirit has given witness to us about. He says that God gives the Holy Spirit to those who are obedient to him.

Isn't that great? They hadn't received the Holy Spirit. The leaders hadn't received the Holy Spirit. And so Peter is saying, you guys are disobeying God because you haven't received the Holy Spirit like we have. And you know, that's your problem.

And you have to understand that we're going to obey God rather than you so that they're ready to murder them. They're ready to murder them. But fortunately, Gamaliel, the guy who had trained Saul, who becomes the Apostle Paul, that guy speaks up and he says, listen, guys, let's put them outside for a minute. Let's have a little private conversation. He says, remember there's a couple guys, they led a movement.

One of them was killed and his followers disbanded. Another one went out to the desert and we lost track of him. Like those were man made movements and they failed. If this movement is of human origins, it'll fail and you don't have anything to worry about. But if this is something from God, you'll never stop it.

Now you could say, well, Pastor Nick, look at the world religions. There's several of them, they've been going for a long time. Yes. Some of them with a whole lot of weaponization behind them. Some of them with a whole lot of things that would force you to take part in it.

Some of them because you've simply never heard of anything else. Because the whole culture is surrounded by the worship of whatever this deity is. And no missionaries have gotten in there to present Jesus Christ. That's why we have a need for missions work. That's why we have a need for global ministries.

But Christianity, this way of following Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, it doesn't exist without the power of God behind it. You and I aren't here because. Because I'm that great at speaking clearly. I'm having a rough time with that today, so that's not it. You could have chuckled at that.

That's okay. I feel alright. I'm not, not worried.

You're not here because we have the fanciest building or the best coffee in the lobby. But it's free. I mean, you didn't pay for it, so welcome. There's some church. We went to a church.

We visited one. It was a big church. They didn't have any coffee. You couldn't even buy coffee from them. I'm like, what, you think you're just supposed to be like, well rested and excited and stay awake, you know?

Anyway, we stayed awake, but it was. I just wanted coffee. It's like a ritual. I like coffee at church. So we're here because this is real.

This is the spirit of God. God has revealed something within you that he says, my son died for you. I've given you my Holy Spirit to accompany you through life, to bless you, to keep you, to reveal my will to you.

The words of Gamaliel calmed the leaders down and they settled for just giving a beating.

They're like, let's just beat these guys and send them on their way. What? What's that gonna do? I'll tell you if I have an unjust punishment from the government. Do you think I'm going to be more or less likely to fight against them more.

So what do the apostles do? They keep preaching. Not just keep preaching. They actually rejoiced. They were happy about it.

Whoo. How many of you have experienced some type of suffering? Anything? I mean, like, I had this a week ago. I had this horrible, like, swelling going on.

I'm not even sure if it was a bad tooth or just a lymph node or what it was, but I was on antibiotics, tons of painkillers because it was the worst pain I've had in my head ever. It was bad. Now that goes away. And as that's going away, I'm getting this cold, and I've been dealing with that for a week, and I'm like, okay, Lord, you know, use this somehow. I don't know how.

Just use this somehow. Like, I'll suffer through this if somehow it can be used for your glory. I don't know how that turned out. I don't know what he's using it for, but I'm willing to endure whatever it is. That's very minor compared to being beaten.

Okay. Like, that feels like it'd be a lot worse. We looked at Paul and Silas. Was it last week? I think, you know, they get beaten, they're thrown in jail, but they're singing hymns and they're praising God because they're grateful for the opportunity.

They were grateful for the opportunity. Why? They knew that they could turn that back over to God and say, lord, use this. He uses it to not only, I believe, preach freedom to all those that were in prison there with them, but also to bring salvation to the jailer and his entire family that was there running that jail.

The apostles are grateful for the opportunity to suffer. Why? A couple reasons. One, Jesus had said it would happen. And so they're like.

They're just. They're glad that the word of Christ has come to fruition. They're glad that Jesus spoke to them saying this would happen and that they were found worthy to suffer for his name's sake. So the second reason is it means they're on target. It means that if they were a target for persecution, then they're doing the very things that God has called them to do.

I almost worry. I'm not asking for it, but I almost worry that we don't have legitimate persecution of Christians in our country. Not because I want it to happen, but because I wonder if it means we've missed the point, missed the mark. I wonder if it means we've been just a little Too cozy, a little too casual. We've enjoyed, you know.

Well, we don't have. We have tax exempt status. We don't have to pay property taxes on the church. I know Governor DeSantis is trying to push his little thing through that probably won't ever happen. Happened.

It's a stunt or whatever. Like, good on him. It sounds great to not have to pay property taxes if your property is, I don't know, only worth so much. I have seen that much in the news somehow or another. But church is like, we don't have to pay, you know, income tax on the money that comes in.

We don't have to pay property tax. Isn't that great? And we celebrate that. I wonder sometimes if we're trading all that coziness, that niceness, saying, like, we're almost in league with the local governments, the state governments. We're in league with them so that we don't have to be responsible for those things.

Why aren't we at odds a little bit more with the powers that be? I'm not saying we should pick a fight. I'm just saying so many times it seems like we run from it because we don't want to get hurt. We don't want to get harmed. We don't want that persecution, that abuse.

These guys were thankful for it. We have the audacity to pray that God would keep us from it.

I put a note in the bottom of your page. There's a website, it's called persecution.com stories, stories of actual, real persecution that happens in the world today or throughout history. Some of you might be familiar with an old book, Fox's Book of Martyrs. There's some brutal stuff in there about the things not only that the people of God have suffered through and stood firm in the face of, but the way the church grew as it was being persecuted.

The disciples, they were grateful for being persecuted. And then they. They kept preaching every day at the temple. They didn't back down. Every day they went to the temple and preached.

And from house to house, I don't know if they were just knocking on random doors. I don't think they had glass, so you could just kind of talk through the windows. And people kind of have to hear you, you know, Like, I don't know how it really worked. It was funny to me, like, just going up to you, if you have a neighbor with an open window and you just start talking about Jesus to them, you're like, go away. You know, no, I don't have to.

What are you going to do Beat me Already happened. Don't care. You know. You know, we'll take it again. It's fine.

Seems like every time we get close to any type of friction, we just fold up, we back away.

Sorry, Jesus. Because in the name of Jesus that people are healed. It's by the power of the blood of Christ that people are made free, that they're made well, that salvation is given to them. We. We can't just carry.

We sing the song. Like as kids, we sing the song. This little light of mine I'm gonna let it shine what am I gonna do, hide it under a bushel? No. You know, I won't let Satan blow it out.

No, we'll just kind of. We'll just kind of get comfy, little cozy, little comfortable and just, you know, I won't push too hard. Why? What are we scared of? Jesus said, if you're following him, you'll get persecuted.

Now we think like, okay, what does that mean? What does persecution involve? I don't know. It could involve a lot of things. It could involve physical trials and pain.

It could involve something being taken from you, something being harmed against you. But the scripture tells us that no weapon formed against you will prosper. Okay. You have the power of the Holy Spirit of God blessing you as you carry the gospel out into the world. Why would we back down?

So I have one question, and then we'll close with this. What is it that keeps you from sharing your faith with others? What is it that keeps you from boldly proclaiming Jesus Christ to other people?

And I have some ideas what it could be. It could be you don't know how to. It could be that you're like, I don't even know how to share my faith in Christ with others. We can help with that.

It's hard to do that in about a 45 minute sermon on a Sunday morning. Like, you got to come to something else. You got to come to a class, you got to come to a group, you got to attend something. Show shape class. Third, third Sunday of every month.

One of those things. You got to come to something to get that discipling, that training. It might be that you're like, I don't know anybody that's not a Christian. That's what we were saying in the lobby. Tom, you're like, he goes to a business networking group and everybody there sharing their faith in Jesus.

He's like, first of all, when in history did we see that where like, everyone around the room, there's like 30 people in there 40 people, and they're all believers. It's like, who do I even share Christ with? Like, everybody I know is a Christian. Wouldn't that be great if we had done our job so well that there was nobody left to tell about Jesus because they all knew him as their Savior, praise God. And yet we're so far from that being the case that we have some work to do.

So if you're saying, well, I would, but I don't know anybody that's not a believer, I'll tell you what. First of all, you probably do. You probably do know somebody. You just haven't thought about that maybe you've been close to them for so long that you. You kind of, like, you missed out on.

Just like, you didn't really pay attention to just how far from Christ they were and how much they need him. But maybe you're right. Maybe your circle is all believers in Christ. All right? Insert yourself into a situation where there are unbelievers.

And I'm not saying go in there like anybody not know Jesus. All right, today's your lucky day. I'm gonna tell you. I'm not saying you got to do it like that, but, you know, you might be like, well, what if. What if I find some group?

What, you know, you enjoy. I don't know. Knitting. It sounds fun. It's peaceful and relaxing.

Anybody knit? Knitters? Needle crochet? I don't know. I'm a guy.

I don't do these things.

I can make a line with a crochet hook. That's it. I can't do two lines. That's it. So maybe you find a group and you go in there and you get to know them and you find out you want to be friends with these people, and it turns out some of them don't know Jesus.

I don't know. Maybe you just go to, you know, Hardee's. There's a bunch of guys that go there every day. I bet some of them need Jesus. I'm not sure.

I'm just saying, you find a group and you say, you know what? Maybe you're like, hey, you know what? Three nights a week we're serving meals and having showers for homeless people. And a lot of those folks, they've heard of Jesus, but they haven't really seen Christ in action. I'll go there and love on these people.

Maybe it's just going and cleaning up, wiping tables down, serving people, and they see Christ in you. There's going to be some way that you can find a place a setting a scenario where people don't know Jesus Christ, and you're saying I'm going to go show and share the love of Christ with these folks? What is it that is stopping you from boldly proclaiming Christ to others?