A Message that Cannot Be Silenced

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Transcript:

I love telling stories, and by that I don’t mean like when your grandmother asks you, are you telling stories again? Like lying. I mean telling things that actually happen.

When I was in college, I used to substitute teach, not because I needed money, but because I enjoyed coming home with the stories. And there are some stories that we share and we forget, and there are some other stories that stick with us because of the impact that they made. My cousins and I will sit around and tell stories of things that happened 20 years ago when we were little kids.

We’ll talk about the, I won’t tell the story, but we’ll talk about dad and the manager at the Denny’s in New Mexico. And we’ll talk about, and complain about the service. We’ll talk about the time we were trying to film a video and we dropped my cousin down a well.

Some of these stories we remember and tell over and over because of the impact they made on us. One of my favorite stories, and I’m going to apologize in advance because you have to hear it again. Charlie gets irritated because one of my favorite stories, I found out shortly after we started dating this story, and I’ve told it ever since because, you know, you get around people who are judgmental sometimes, and they say, well, how long have you known her?

Did any of you ever hear that when you started dating? How long have you known her? So I love to tell the story that when I was two years old, I went and saw her when she was a day old in the hospital. So is that long enough for you?

I love that story. And she gets, she doesn’t really complain, but I’m sure she gets tired of hearing it. We all have stories that have made an impact on our lives.

And the more impact they’ve made, the more of an impression they’ve made, the harder they are to forget about and the harder they are to stop talking about. I mean, for a week after the tornado, I couldn’t shut up about the stuff that had gone on because it made that big of an impact. And I’m sure you can look over your own lives and see instances where things have happened to you and it’s made an impact on your life.

And you tell the story to people even today, unless you’re just a shy person, then I don’t know how to relate. But we all have stories that have made an impact and they’re the ones we remember. They’re the ones we talk about.

They’re the ones we can’t seem to stop talking about. What we’re going to talk about this morning is the most incredible story that has ever happened in human history. And again, I don’t use the term story in the sense that, oh, it’s a fabrication.

It’s something that never happened. I didn’t do this this year because y’all just heard it last year, but we went through the whole, my whole hour-long spiel. We were late getting out of church that night.

My whole hour-long spiel on the historical, scientific, and medical evidence, not only for the crucifixion, but for the resurrection. And I’m not saying there aren’t people who try to argue against the resurrection today. There are people who try to argue against it.

There were people in Jesus’ day who tried to argue against the resurrection. But I think I’ve given you the example before that when I was in college, I had philosophy professors who used to get me over a barrel about Christianity and, well, you can’t prove Christianity, and what about this, and what about this. It was hard for me to try to refute their arguments, but then when we got around to the resurrection, every objection I’ve ever heard to the resurrection is easily shot down.

The only way to explain this story and all the details around it and the endurance of it is the fact that it really happened. It is well attested in history that Jesus Christ is a real historical figure. Now, all of the historians don’t agree on exactly who he was.

Christians will tell you he’s the Son of God. But you know what? There were Jewish and Roman and Greek historians who say, yeah, we don’t believe he’s the son of God, but we know he was real, and we know other people believed he was the son of God.

It’s hard to argue with that without throwing out everything we know about ancient history. We know based on their accounts as well, as well as the eyewitness accounts we find in the Bible, that he was crucified. Non-believers said he was, historians said he was crucified and said he was buried.

And we get around to some of the historical and scientific evidence and the medical evidence where the account given in the Bible, and I’m not going to go into all the graphic detail of it today, but I was trying to explain this to the junior high classes on Thursday, about how this worked, and suffocation based on hanging the way you would on the cross, and hypovolemic shock from blood loss. And if any of you, those of you who are new here, if you’re thinking, how is he telling students about this? I teach at a Christian school.

And so we have the freedom to, thank goodness we have the freedom to talk about those things. But I was trying to explain to them that everything that the Bible describes can be medically validated. Every detail.

And so history tells us that he was real, that he was crucified, and that he was buried. And that the details of the Bible’s story are accurate to what would take place in that context. Then we get around to the story of the empty tomb.

And what everybody agrees on was the fact that the tomb was empty. Christians said the tomb was empty. The Jews said the tomb was empty.

They acknowledged the tomb was empty. The Romans acknowledged that the tomb was empty. Now the non-believers came up with this idea that maybe his body was stolen.

Wouldn’t you think one of the 11 remaining disciples would have, under pain of death, under pain of martyrdom, said, you’re right, we made it all up, just don’t kill me. Don’t torture me anymore. somebody’s going to talk.

I’ve heard interviews with Navy SEALs, and these guys are another special forces people. These guys are incredible in the things that they do and in the things that they can endure. But I’ve heard multiple special forces guys say that everybody has a breaking point.

It’s just a matter of how long you can hold out. That everybody has a breaking point. These were not special forces.

Okay, quite honestly, the disciples ran and hid like little girls. not to be offensive to little girls. But they ran and hid.

These were not big tough guys. They were scared to death after the crucifixion. And yet just a few days later, they came out boldly proclaiming that he rose again, the tomb was empty, and 10 of the 11 died as martyrs.

Somebody would have talked. Somebody would have talked. The disciples all died saying he was risen.

The women couldn’t have stolen the body. The women couldn’t have rolled the stone away. the Romans wouldn’t have stolen the body because they didn’t want disorder to break out in Jerusalem which is exactly what kind of happened the Jews had no motive to steal the body because they didn’t believe he they didn’t believe he was who he said he was and that he would rise again and the fact remains that if they’d gotten the tomb wrong well they just went to the wrong spot the Jews and Romans could have taken him there and said see he’s still dead in the tomb if the Jews or Romans had the body they could have said well here’s the body all anybody had to do was produce the body but the fact remains nobody could produce the body.

The tomb that everybody in Jerusalem knew he’d been buried in was empty and not only the disciples but over 500 people saw Jesus Christ alive again. He didn’t just pass out on the cross and come back to life. Really, that kind of torture, that kind of blood loss, that kind of fluid buildup in the lungs from the position he was put in for six hours on the cross.

Then he lays there in a dark, damp tomb for three days, throws that massive boulder back, overpowers the two guards. That takes more faith than believing that he was God and rose again. Hey, none of the stories hold up.

You cannot escape the fact of the resurrection. If we know anything about history at all, it’s the resurrection. And it’s an incredible story.

It is an incredible story that from beginning to end, but especially there at the end, that God would send His only begotten Son to put on human flesh and become one of us and walk among us and endure the things that we endure and suffer the things that we suffer and be tempted with the things that we’re tempted with and still be sinless. To live among us and do miracles and minister to us and serve even knowing what we were going to do to Him and knowing that what we were doing to Him was to the benefit of the people who were doing it. He was suffering at the hands of the very people he was suffering for.

And then after they killed him, you know what, I don’t care if it was under the orders of a court of law because they weren’t following their own laws when they did it. They murdered him. After human beings murdered him, he rose again from the dead after three days.

I don’t care what Hollywood comes up with. You’re not going to find a more incredible story than that. You won’t.

And if you think the resurrection story is not incredible, you need to study it more. Oh, yeah, it’s Easter heroes again. Big deal. It is a big deal. It’s an incredible story that people have laid down their lives for, not just now.

I know, I know we could say, well, yeah, people will die for their religion. People are dying every day in the Middle East because they’re blowing themselves up because a book told them to. But they weren’t there when the religion was founded to know whether these things are true or not.

They’re going off what somebody else told them. People will die for a lie. They won’t die for a lie they created.

And the disciples themselves, ten of them, died as martyrs. John lived until old age in exile, under threat of death all the time. It’s an incredible story that people would give their lives for, that they would die for, that people would still die for even today in some parts of the world.

We’re going to look at this story in Acts chapter 4. Not only the story of what happened in Acts chapter 4, but about them telling the story of what we’ve just been talking about, that Jesus Christ rose again. We start out in Acts chapter 4 verse 1 where they’re sort of getting in trouble, Peter and John, for some things they’ve done.

If you look back at chapter 3, they’re going into the temple. There’s a man who has been what the Bible calls lame. I don’t know what the term is you use today.

Anyway, he could not walk. They were going into the temple. He was sitting out there begging people for money to support himself.

And they looked at him and they said, Silver and gold have I none. I don’t have any money to give you. But such as I have, I give unto thee.

In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk. And folks, there is power in the name of Jesus. That doesn’t mean that we will always be healed of every disease that we ever have just by naming his name.

But make no mistake about it, there is power in the name of Jesus. And so they said, we have no money to give you. We have no wealth to give you.

But what we have, we can give to you. And we’re telling you in Jesus’ name, get up and walk. And the Bible says he stood up and he walked.

And they drew a crowd. I would think that would draw a crowd, wouldn’t you? They drew a crowd of people who said, wait a minute, we know this guy.

This is not an imposter, okay? This is not some of the televangelist scandals from back in the 80s where they had the earpieces and people were telling them or they’d pretend that cancer was healed or pretend somebody was in a wheelchair and it was really somebody that worked for the church. This was a man that they knew.

they saw him every day sitting there by the temple. Some of the people would have known him his entire life. This was not an actor, but he’d been crippled, unable to walk.

And suddenly they tell him in Jesus’ name, get up and walk, and he gets up and walks. And you better believe a crowd for him. Well, Peter and John, not to waste an opportunity, begin answering their questions.

And in answering some of the things they wanted to know, I’m sure what they wanted to know, how did you do that? Well, let me tell you how I did that. Let me tell you who did that through me.

And they began to talk about Jesus Christ. They began to talk about his miracles. They began to talk about his death and his resurrection. And we get to chapter four.

They had preached and they had preached and it was bothering some of the people. It was especially bothering the religious people. Religion without Christ is deadly.

It will turn you into the most sour, hateful person. And we see that with the Pharisees and Sadducees. Now, I’m not talking just about non-Christians.

I’m talking about people in churches who have religion without having Christ. They just make us miserable. And so it says in chapter 4, verse 1, And as they spake, the they as Peter and John, and as they spake unto the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them. Now we see a lot of times in the Bible that the Christians are running up against the Pharisees, that Jesus was running up against the Pharisees.

There were two groups of people at this time who were sort of in leadership, and they were competing against each other for leadership among the Jews. The Pharisees are what we would call the ultra-conservatives. They’re very legalistic.

You had to follow this rule. You had to look exactly like this, wear your hair like this, put on these clothes, and do exactly as I do or you won’t get into heaven. Then there were the Sadducees who were a little looser, but they’re what I’d call the ultra-liberals.

They’d say, well, there’s no such thing as angels. There’s not really a spiritual world. There’s no resurrection.

There’s no afterlife. This is just all there is. We see the same kind of things going on in Christianity today, incidentally.

We want to avoid both of those extremes. The Sadducees, funny how this works out. The Sadducees just happen to be the ones who don’t believe in a resurrection at the last day.

which is not only a Christian concept but a Jewish concept as well. They didn’t believe that was a literal resurrection and they didn’t believe in an afterlife really. And so the idea, they’re about to run smack into the idea of Jesus’ resurrection and it’s not going to sit well with them.

So they come out and came upon them. Came upon them means they fell on Peter and John. They captured them.

Being grieved that they taught the people and preached through Jesus the resurrection of the dead. Now the priests and the captain of the temple are going to be upset because you’re leading people to follow Jesus and away from our rituals and things. The Sadducees are upset because they could not abide the teaching of a resurrection.

And so everybody’s angry, so let’s just go shut them up. That is a dangerous, dangerous plan. And we see that going on in our country today.

If we don’t like what they say, let’s just silence them. I don’t want that done to us, and I don’t want us to do it to anybody else. Let everybody speak their mind whether it’s ignorant or not.

Trust people to make decisions for themselves. And the truth will come out in the end. So they did what bullies always do and they said let’s go silence them.

And they laid hands on them and put them in hold until the next day for it was now even time. Now this happened a lot with early Christians and it tended to backfire. We’re going to throw you in prison for preaching about Jesus.

Great, now I get to preach to a captive audience. So they threw them in jail and held them until the next day for it was evening. howbeit many of them which heard the word believed and the number of men was about 5,000.

They weren’t able to get there soon enough to prevent these 5,000 people from hearing the message of Jesus. And by the way, just like the feeding of the 5,000, this says 5,000 men. There were more than 5,000 people there.

And some of them believed. They couldn’t get there early enough to stop the message of the gospel from going forth. You got to get up pretty early to stop the Lord’s message and his work.

Verse five says, and it came to pass on the morrow that their rulers and elders and scribes and Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander and as many were of the kindred of the high priest were gathered together at Jerusalem. And when they had set them in the midst, they asked, by what power or by what name have ye done this? So they began to put Peter and John on trial. Who gave you the authority to heal this man and speak?

What? This is completely foreign to me as an American. You mean I have to have somebody else’s approval to do good things and share my ideas?

That’s exactly what they were saying. By whose authority do you do this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, here we go.

This is an old principle from politics, but it applies sometimes in real life too. Don’t answer the question they asked. Answer the question you wish they had asked.

So they said, by what authority do you do this? And Peter became filled with the Holy Spirit and he says, you rulers of the people and elders of Israel. He was not being disrespectful, but he’s going to be firm here and said, if we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he has made whole, be it known unto you all and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified.

Oh, that’s a convicting statement. Whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. He doesn’t say, Jesus, Jesus is the authority.

He doesn’t say, I have every right to stand out here and do good things if I want to. He says, if you want to know by what power, not just the authority, but by what power this is done, then it was done at the behest of Jesus, you know, the one you murdered and who God raised from the dead. He says, it’s by him that this man stands here before you healed.

This is the stone which was set at naught of you builders, which has become the head of the corner. This is the stone that, imagine yourself as a builder, this is the stone that you thought was worthless and threw away, but now it’s the cornerstone of the whole enterprise. And I love this verse, one of my favorite verses in all of Scripture.

Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. And I’m just narrow-minded enough to still believe that that’s true. Jesus Christ, who, let’s not just put it on the rulers of Israel, he died for our sins.

My sins and yours, put him on the cross. The Jesus Christ, whom God sent and who we killed, God raised from the dead. And now through him, there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.

There is not salvation in any other. Your salvation today is not found in a church. It’s not found in your nationality.

It’s not found in your ability to do good things and it’ll all even out in the end? Your salvation is found in Jesus Christ. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled. Wait a minute, this is an eloquent speech.

Peter is just an unlearned ignorant man. Almost said unlearned and eloquent. Unlearned and ignorant.

What was Peter doing when Jesus found him? He was fishing. He was out fishing.

He wasn’t down at the university. He wasn’t in the halls of government. He was out fishing.

And Jesus said, come follow me. I’ve always looked at it, even before the show was around, that Jesus picked the first century version of the Duck Dynasty, guys, to come and follow him. And so they were amazed that this man, with the background he had, was speaking as eloquently and as boldly as he was.

They marveled. And they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. When that says they took knowledge that they had been with Jesus, that meant they had to acknowledge because of the change that was made in them, it must be because they were with Jesus.

The only thing that could be responsible for the change that had taken place in these men was not only their relationship with Jesus Christ, but their experience seeing the risen Christ. Their witnessing of the risen, resurrected Christ changed these mice who scurried and hid after the crucifixion into lions. I wouldn’t want to get in a debate with Peter at this point. And beholding the man which was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it.

They’d been put in their place. They had nothing else they could say. Well, we can’t argue with it, so again, we’re going to try to just silence it, as bullies always do.

But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they conferred among themselves, saying, What shall we do to these men, for that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. He said, we can’t, the story’s out. People know, we can’t deny it.

How can we make this go away? I know, let’s make sure it doesn’t spread any further. Verse 17 says, but it spread, but that it spread no further among the people, let us straightly threaten them that they speak henceforth to no man in his name, in this name.

Okay, a lot of people already know the damage is done. Let’s try to control it. Have any of, you don’t have to raise your hand because you might be embarrassed to.

Have any of you ever seen the show Scandal? a few of you. I’ve tried to watch a few, I’ve tried to watch an episode or two, it’s way too intense for me, and makes me sad about, a lot of this stuff probably goes on.

Every episode is like, okay, the scandal is out, how do we keep the lid on it? How do we spin this so that we control the damage? That’s exactly what they’re doing here.

How do we keep this quiet? How do we have a cover-up? It’s like Nixon and Watergate.

How do we cover this up and keep it quiet, try to save our own skins. I know, let’s threaten them. We’re going to tell them, don’t you dare speak anymore in his name.

What’s done is done, but don’t you speak anymore in his name, or we’re going to make things very rough for you. And they called them and commanded them. They called them in back into the council meeting, verse 18, and commanded them not to speak at all or teach in the name of Jesus.

Sounds reasonable, right? Listen. You can go on about your business.

We’ll leave you alone. Just don’t talk about Jesus anymore. But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.

Now these were people who believed in God. I mean, they were wrong about most of what they believed about God, but they believed in God. So they answered the best way they possibly could have.

I don’t know, you tell me. Should we listen to you or should we listen to God? I’ll wait for your answer.

Sort of like you hear on talk shows. I’ll wait off the line for your answer. You want us to listen to you or listen to God?

What are they going to say? You should listen to God. Great, then we’ll be talking about Jesus.

You have a nice day. We think you should listen to us and not God. Oh, then the people are going to be very upset.

Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. We cannot do anything else. We cannot stop talking about what we’ve seen.

It is so incredible. It’s so life-changing, and on top of that, it’s true. We can’t stop talking about it.

Then what we see in the next few verses after that is just sort of the equivalent of the council throwing their hands up in the air and saying, I don’t know what we’re going to do about you, so we’re just going to threaten you one more time and send you out. But I want to end there on their statement. We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.

We don’t know what else to do. It’s so amazing we can’t keep quiet about it. It’s one of those stories you just can’t stop talking about because it has changed everything.

You think of the most incredible thing that’s ever happened in your life, that story that your family gets sick of hearing from you every time you tell it to a new person. This is more incredible than that. I mean, think about it again.

God sent his son to become a human being and to live with us and like us, but without sinning, so that he could die for us at our own hand. And then he rose again from the dead. He was dead, and then he was not dead.

I wasn’t alive back in the 70s, but I’ve heard the joke where Saturday Night Live used to do the skit and talk about General Franco, he’s still dead. On their news update, they break in and say, this just in, General Franco is still dead. The joke behind that is, if you’re dead, you’re just dead.

You don’t stop being dead. I don’t care what the walking dead tells you. You don’t stop being dead.

Jesus was dead, and then he wasn’t. That’s not something we see every day. It’s the most incredible thing that’s ever happened in history.

The message of the resurrection is a message that can’t be silenced. It shouldn’t be silenced and it can’t be. It’s one of the few things I think we have that.

. . Well, let me say it a different way.

It’s one of those things that we have that’s hard to argue with, but is also a fundamental truth that is non-negotiable. The Apostle Paul said, if Christ be not raised, then your faith is vain. You are yet dead in your sins.

There are some churches this morning that I don’t know what they’re even celebrating because they’ll tell you they don’t believe the resurrection literally happened. Excuse me, why do you go to that church? But Paul said there’s no point to Christianity.

If the resurrection is a lie, then you have my permission to go home and stop believing all of the rest of it. There’s no point to any of it. We’re still dead in our sins because Jesus wasn’t who he said he was.

He’s some guy who got himself crucified. But what makes the resurrection so powerful is that it is a true story. We have eyewitness accounts.

Who say it’s true? We have evidence to back it up. And we can get sidetracked as Christians talking about and debating a lot of things.

And we can talk about, well, what about Noah’s Ark? The kids in my class always want to know stuff about Noah’s Ark. Okay, that’s interesting.

And we can talk about it, but it doesn’t change anything about our doctrine and teaching. It doesn’t change anything about our lives. We can debate with people, well, did Noah’s Ark really happen?

We can debate creationism with people. Is it young earth? Is it old earth?

Personally, I believe young earth and y’all know that. But we can debate all sorts of things. This is something we really need to be talking about.

You know, there are people today who still have never heard the name of Jesus Christ. There are still people today who’ve never heard his story. We were talking about this on Wednesday. Many of you know my father-in-law, Mike Denton.

He’s working in Nicaragua right now. Just came back from a trip and I invited him to come speak in our chapel service on Wednesday. And he was talking to the kids about this island and they went off the coast and said, does anybody live on that island?

The people said, yeah, we think somebody lives out there, but we don’t know where they are or how to find them. Well, they found them sort of by accident. And they spent last summer, I think, and most of the year since then, building a church on that island and witnessing to people.

There are almost 40 people who live on this island. They had never heard of Jesus Christ before. Now, they’re not totally cut off from society.

They have boats, they speak Spanish, but they’d never heard of Jesus Christ before. And we were discussing how incredible that is in 2015, that there are people on a little island off the coast of Nicaragua who’ve never heard the name of Jesus Christ. But I remembered something that happened in high school, where I had a German exchange student. Keep in mind, this is the country that spawned Martin Luther and the Reformation and all that.

A German exchange student about 10 years ago who asked me, who is this God person you keep talking about? It’s incredible to me. There are other things we can talk about that are important.

You guys know how I feel about abortion. You know what I teach on abortion. And it’s important to talk about.

You know how, I shouldn’t say how I feel. You know what the Bible says about abortion. You know what the Bible says about same-sex marriage.

You know what the Bible says about any number of things in our society. And those things are important to talk about, but they are symptoms of a greater problem, which is a lack of knowledge and relationship with Jesus Christ. Why do we spend, I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about these things, But why do we as Christians spend the majority of our time where we won’t shut up about same-sex marriage, but we don’t talk to other people about the resurrection and how Jesus Christ rose again from the dead after paying for their sins? Tell you what, if the hearts of the people of this nation turn to Jesus Christ, all the other stuff will work its own self out.

I’m not saying it’s not important. I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about it. I’m not saying we shouldn’t stand for biblical values everywhere we go.

At the same time, we need to learn to focus most on what’s most important. What does the Bible say they couldn’t shut up about? I hope it’s okay to use that word.

Had a kid tell us a while back, he said the S word. Which one? The SH word.

We were about to get really upset at school. We found out it was shut up. What was it that they could not shut up about?

It was the resurrection. Were they complaining about slavery in the Roman Empire? Were they complaining about the treatment of women?

Were they complaining about the murder of children? Now all of those were horrible things. It was the resurrection they couldn’t stop talking about.

I’ve got all these points this morning. I’m not even going t

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