A Trouble-Making Message

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Acts chapter 4 this morning. Acts chapter 4. I used to get in, well, no, I won’t say I got in trouble all the time.

My mother doesn’t like it when she’s here and I say things like that. And it’s not true anyway. I almost said I got in trouble all the time growing up.

It’s not that I got in trouble. I got told this all the time growing up. Don’t tell everything you know.

And when I run over on Sunday mornings, I think y’all probably wish I wouldn’t feel the need to tell everything I know either. But I was told, don’t tell everything you know, because I had this habit of I’d like to tell stories. I’d like to tell what happened.

And, you know, not everything needs to be told. And sometimes you can stir up trouble if you tell the wrong thing. And especially as a kid, you know, probably Madeline’s age, I remember five years old, being told when you go to church, don’t tell everything you know.

And it’s not that my family had anything to hide. It’s just, you know, as a five-year-old, I might misinterpret things or leave out details, and suddenly the people at church are wondering what’s going on in my home and family. So I was told don’t tell everything you know, because sometimes news gets out, especially if it’s not all the details, or sometimes if it is all the details, it gets out and it can really shake things up.

It can really cause controversy. We see this in our country’s history all the time. They tried to cover up the details of Watergate because they knew if this gets out what we did, that we burgled this building, then there’s going to be an uproar.

And sure enough, there was. It was enough to bring down Nixon. For whatever reason, whether you think there’s aliens there, I don’t personally believe that.

But if you think there’s aliens there or you think there’s top secret military aircraft at Area 51, we know that there’s something in the Nevada desert that they’re keeping under wraps because they don’t want us to know. It could cause an uproar. Either that or they don’t want the Russians and the Chinese to know what kind of planes we’ve got.

They have to keep that news under wraps. A few years ago, whether you think he’s a traitor or whether you think he’s a patriot, Edward Snowden revealed some of the stuff the NSA was doing, and it caused an uproar. They tried to keep that under wraps because they knew once that got out, it was not going to, it was not going, the people were not going to react well.

And so we see throughout our, even our recent history, fairly recent history, news gets out. If it’s big enough news, it can turn everything upside down. It can really cause an uproar, but good news can cause an uproar too.

Good news can cause an uproar too. You know, when all three of my children have been C-section, only Charlie was scheduled C-section though. The other two were, okay, we need to take them now.

So I called my parents, hey, we’re on our way to the hospital. They’re going to take Benjamin. They’re going to take Madeline. That’s been good news.

And you know what? Everybody in the extended family drops everything and rushes to the hospital because there’s about to be a baby. Good news can cause an uproar too.

Well, the best news in history caused an uproar, and rightly so, and it should still cause an uproar today. The resurrection of Jesus is the very heart of the Christian message. It really is what everything is based on.

It really is what everything is about. It’s the whole reason for our faith. It’s the whole reason why we do any of this.

If it weren’t for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, what you and I are doing right now is meaningless. I mean, go home, take your Sunday morning and sleep in and get up with a cup of coffee and the paper, you know, go watch golf or play golf, whatever you want to do. You know, there’s other things you could be doing.

If the resurrection of Jesus Christ didn’t happen, none of this means anything. And yet a lot of times we have treated the resurrection like it’s, I won’t say we treat it like it’s a fairy tale, but there are people out there even who profess to be Christians who treat the resurrection like a fairy tale. There are churches that don’t believe in the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, and I think, why are you even doing church?

Why are you even getting together? There’s no point to it. Or we’ll treat it like a Bible story.

Okay, growing up, I believed it. Okay, I was taught it, and I believed it, but it was a Bible story. And what I mean by that is not Bible story on par with a fairy tale, but you know, we were taught all the Bible stories.

David and Goliath, Daniel in the lion’s den, Moses leading the people across the Red Sea. They were all in a string of Bible stories, and they were all just about equally important. They’re all important, but they’re not all equally important.

It was when I got to college that I realized the importance of the resurrection. We also treat it like a theological position. You know, I want to know, especially if it’s a preacher that I listen to or a church that I’m going to go to, I want to know, do they believe in the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ?

Don’t just tell me you believe in the resurrection because for a paper I’m writing, I’ve spent the week reading old copies of the Watchtower. Aye, aye, aye. And you dig into it and you realize they say they believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but what they believe is that God disintegrated the old body, raised his spirit up, and that he took on various physical forms in the next 40 days when he appeared to people.

That is not what I believe, and that is not what the Bible teaches. You have to do violence to the biblical text to get that idea. I want to know, do they believe in the literal, physical resurrection of Jesus Christ?

The body that he died in, did it come back to life or not? And so it’s an important theological position. But as I said, I was in college when I really began to realize the importance of the resurrection.

I always knew it was a Bible story that was vital to understanding the plan of salvation. But I began to understand how everything hinges on it. When I was in college, I’d get into it with my professors at OU.

And they would challenge, if they knew you were a Christian, some of them would challenge you. And so many of the kids were like, I’m not raising my hand saying I’m a Christian. They would challenge you, well, how do you know God is real?

And every reason I had, they had a counter argument for that I would go, I hadn’t thought about that before. Okay, that’s not a good argument. Well, that’s not a good argument.

And certainly you don’t want to believe in Christianity just because that’s what your parents told you. As much as I trust my parents and love my parents, they weren’t there when Christianity was founded. No matter how we may joke about my dad, he wasn’t born until a few years after.

I’m just teasing. One of these days my kids will say the same thing about me. They weren’t there.

They didn’t see it for themselves. how do I know that this is true? And finally, I hit on the issue of the resurrection.

If you can disprove the resurrection, then there is no argument for Christianity as far as I’m concerned. But if you can demonstrate within a reasonable doubt that the resurrection happened the way the Bible claims, there’s no way to my mind to disprove Christianity. I mean, everything comes down to this message of the resurrection.

Did they find the tomb empty or not? Did Jesus rise from the dead or not? And I submit to you that they did.

And I submit that it changed everything in their world. It changed everything in their lives. The fact that they found the tomb empty turned everything upside down for Peter and James and John, all the rest of them.

It turned everything upside down that day when they found the tomb empty. Because honestly, if there had been some kind of conspiracy for them to steal the body, they were the only ones with the motive to do that. They were the only ones with the motive to fake the resurrection.

And I can guarantee you, I can guarantee you that if they had faked the resurrection, with the things that those men went through, the 11 remaining disciples, with the things that those men went through between that day and their deaths, if there had been any falsehood to the story of the resurrection, they would not have died clinging to that story. Somebody would have broken. Somebody would have broken.

I’ve heard interviews with people who were in the CIA or special forces and talk about how everybody eventually has a breaking point. Even these well-trained agents, they eventually have a breaking point under torture. The things that these disciples went through, these were not well-trained agents.

These were, you know, covert assassins who went through years and years of government training. These were fishermen and tax collectors. And some of them were crucified.

Some of them were beheaded. Some of them were flayed alive. Folks, somebody would have broken.

And yet nobody broke because they said, no, we saw it. He was dead, then he was buried, and the tomb was empty. And if the tomb hadn’t been empty, if somebody had moved the body, if it was just a mass hallucination, just an illusion, the authorities could have taken him there and said, no, there’s the body.

They could have stamped out the rumor right as it got started. Folks, the more I’ve studied into it, I believe it takes more faith to believe the resurrection didn’t happen than to believe that it does. There is enough evidence to convince me that the resurrection happened.

And I don’t have time this morning to go into all of the evidence. If you’ll recall, I think it was last year, it might have been the year before. I did a presentation for you on four facts about the resurrection.

And it took four or five weeks to go through all of the material and all of the evidence that I had to present to you. And so there’s no way that I could tell you this morning all of the evidence that I have for the resurrection. It would take four or five Sunday mornings.

But what I can tell you is there are four facts, I believe, if you make the case for the resurrection, I’ve printed them in your bulletin for you. And that if all these things are true, then we have to conclude the resurrection happened. Number one, Jesus’ existence and death are historically verifiable.

We have as many people from around his time writing about Jesus’ existence, and I’m not talking about just the Christians writing the Gospels. I’m talking about Romans and Jews and Greeks who did not believe he was the Son of God, but they wrote that he existed. They wrote down how he developed a following.

They wrote down how he taught. They wrote down how they hated him in some cases. And they wrote down how he was crucified.

And if we’re to take those and say, oh, Jesus, you know, he was a myth. He never existed. He wasn’t real. Then we have to throw aside those historians and we have to throw aside most of the historical facts that we know about ancient history because they’re no better supported.

Jesus was a historical figure and his death and his existence and his death are historically verifiable. Number two, Jesus was buried, but his tomb was empty after three days. Again, there’s a lot of evidence.

There’s a lot of reasons to believe this. I go back to the fact that there’s no reason the Christians would have made up the story of his burial because it makes them look bad. It makes the gospel writers look bad.

If I’m going to totally make up a story out of whole cloth, I’m going to make myself look good. All right? As a matter of fact, that happens a lot in religion.

Beware of any preacher you hear who not only is the subject of all of his stories and examples, but he’s the hero in all of them. I hear this. I think there’s no way all these things happen to you.

Usually I’m the, hey, don’t do this example in my stories. But if I’m going to make it up, I’m going to make myself look good. And what happens during the burial?

What happens at that point? The disciples have already run and hid. They are doubting, disbelieving.

They’re in fear. And it was a Jew. It was a member of the Sanhedrin who came and asked for Jesus’ body and gave him a proper burial. If the disciples were going to make up the story of the burial, they would have made themselves look a lot better.

They wouldn’t have been cowering in fear while one of the people from the group that crucified him gave him the burial he deserved. Third of all, Jesus was seen alive again by numerous eyewitnesses. I know that eyewitnesses can be unreliable.

I’ve watched enough crime shows to realize that. I watched a man on forensic files just this week. He said, I’d rather have a shred of DNA evidence than an eyewitness any day of the week.

Eyewitnesses can be unreliable, but they’re not necessarily because most people are not pathological liars. And when you have written in the gospel accounts, these people say, I saw Jesus with my own eyes risen from the dead. And you have them collecting the accounts of other people.

Matthew was one of Jesus’ disciples, saw him back alive again. Luke was a follower of Jesus who saw him alive again and collected the stories of other people who saw him alive again. Mark wrote down the Gospels from Peter’s account, and Peter saw Jesus resurrected from the dead.

John was one of the followers and saw Jesus come back from the dead. Then in the book of Acts, it talks about hundreds of eyewitnesses who saw Jesus back from the dead and names them by name. And I know nowadays we’d say, well, who cares?

Anybody could make that up. We know the Gospels were written within a generation of the time of Jesus’ death, and many of those people were still alive. And if Luke in the book of Acts is naming names and saying, he saw him and he saw him and she saw him, they saw him, they got together and they saw him here, you could very easily go to those people and say, did it happen?

And if it didn’t, they’d say no and put an end to the rumor right there. But that didn’t happen. Those people, many of them went to their deaths saying, no, we saw him alive again.

And for our purposes today, forth the resurrection of Jesus led to changes that cannot be otherwise explained. These men who were cowering in fear on the day of the crucifixion are suddenly emboldened to go and share the gospel. They’re preaching.

Peter denied that he knew who Jesus was just a few days before this. And then after the resurrection and the ascension, you see Peter taking on the entire establishment of Jerusalem, saying, I don’t care what you put me through. I don’t care if you arrest me.

I don’t care if you torture me. I don’t care if you kill me. I’m going to tell you what I saw.

and that’s that he died and he rose again and he’s alive today. It’s hard to account for a change like that other than they saw something incredible. And to think that these men grew up in the Jewish religion and all the rituals and there’s one God and one person of God.

It’s just the Father. And suddenly they’ve completely done a 180. And it’s not the rules and the rituals.

It’s faith in Jesus Christ. And it’s not just the Father. It’s the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Three persons, one God, the Trinity.

They’ve completely changed their views about everything. You cannot account for such a drastic change among so many people in such a short amount of time unless they’d seen something completely miraculous. And again, I don’t have time to go into all the evidence for these four facts, but that gives you some kind of idea.

If these four facts are true, then I have no choice but to conclude that the resurrection actually happened the way the Bible says. And it was because they were able to look at these facts, the first three of them anyway, that the fourth one happened. And we’re going to look at what happened this morning when the change took place.

His earliest disciples believed on the basis of the first three facts that Jesus rose from the dead and their lives were completely changed because of it. And so rather than hide in defeat because their teacher had been murdered, we see them traveling all over the known world, spreading the message at great cost to themselves that Jesus was alive again. And folks, everywhere that this message was preached, it caused an uproar.

Everywhere it was preached, things got turned upside down. Their lives got flipped upside down. Entire communities were transformed, were changed by this most amazing message.

And some people loved this. Some people believed and some people dedicated their lives to Jesus Christ and their lives were changed. Some people hated this and reacted against it.

We see in the book of Acts that they’re claiming, oh great, the people who turned the world upside down and come here too. That’s what the Christians were known as. That’s one of the names that they were called.

That’s one of the nicer names that the early Christians were called. It was great, the people who turned the world upside down. And it’s because of the message that Jesus Christ actually came back from the dead.

Because this message presents you with a choice. You look at the evidence and you have to either say, I believe it or I don’t believe it. But you don’t really get to stand on the sidelines about it.

And so faced with this choice, some people said, yeah, I absolutely believe it. And some said, no, I don’t believe it. But either way, things were never the same again after this news.

And as we look at this example in Acts chapter 4 this morning, we’re going to see one of the first times, not the absolute first time, but one of the first times the Bible records this message being preached and the uproar that it caused. Peter and John went to preach the gospel and the resurrection of Jesus Christ at the temple. They went to the temple to worship and to preach to the people that Jesus Christ died for their sins and rose again the third day so that God could forgive them if they would just put their trust in Jesus Christ. And chaos ensued after this.

We pick it up at Acts chapter 4 verse 1. And it says, and as they spake unto the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. The leaders are upset.

You have multiple groups of Jews in power at this time. The Pharisees wouldn’t have been happy about them preaching the resurrection of Jesus because they didn’t believe in Jesus. I mean, they didn’t believe he was the son of God or anything he claimed to be.

The Sadducees were sort of the liberal branch of Judaism at that time, and they didn’t believe any kind of resurrection at all. They didn’t believe in really life after death. They didn’t believe in angels.

They were ones who said, you know, we’re the educated elite. Let’s kind of cut all the supernatural stuff out of Judaism, and we’ll be much smarter than everybody else. So they’re upset that they’re preaching the resurrection.

The leaders of the temple were upset that they’re getting the people stirred up. And it says, being grieved that they taught the people and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. Verse 3, and they laid hands on them and put them in hold unto the next day, for it was now eventide.

So it’s evening, so they said, we can’t do anything about you right now. We can’t try you right now. so we’re just going to throw you in jail.

And I realize that this happens in some other parts of the world even still today. But I want to ask you a question that I’ve asked myself a few times in reading this story. When’s the last time that your faith in Jesus caused so much trouble that it cost you that much?

When’s the last time that your faith in Jesus was so evident that it caused this much of an uproar? Maybe even a better question for us is when’s the last time our faith in Jesus was this evident? And so he says in verse 4, Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed, and the number of men was about 5,000.

Imagine that. 5,000 people in one day believed. This is just on the heels of what happened in Acts chapter 2, where they preached the gospel at the day of Pentecost, and 3,000 people came to Christ. So this church at Jerusalem, and the message of the gospel that it preached, it’s like a snowball rolling downhill.

It just gets bigger and bigger. And as the gospel is preached, people are believing and it’s changing their lives. But it starts with the message that Jesus, hey, y’all remember Jesus just a few months ago?

Y’all killed him? He’s alive again. Boy, that got everybody’s attention.

For better or for worse, that got everybody’s attention. And it says here the number of men was about 5,000. Now the Bible does this a few times.

We see the feeding of 5,000. It’s actually more than that. It talks about 5,000 men and their families.

So we know that there were 5,000 men in the temple. We don’t know how many women or children might have been there in the other courts of the temple. But this was a massive moving of the Holy Spirit as people responded to the gospel.

And it came to pass on the morrow, verse 5, that their rulers and the elders and the scribes and Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest were gathered together at Jerusalem. Basically, all the really important people got together and said, we’re going to have a trial. And when they had set them in the midst, they asked, by what power or by what name have you done this? So they get all their big muckety-mucks together, and they put them in a circle.

And then they bring in the apostles. They bring in Peter and John. And they sit them down in the middle, surrounded by everybody on all sides, and try to intimidate them and say, who gives you the right to say the things that you’ve said?

What gives you the right to do this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost. Uh-oh. When you see then Peter filled with the Holy Ghost anywhere in the New Testament, you realize these people are about to get an earful.

Because Peter’s kind of long-winded anyway, and then the Holy Ghost just really sets it off. Peter filled with the Holy Ghost said unto them, Ye rulers of the people and elders of Israel, 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, whom God raised from the dead, even by him does this man stand here before you whole. So they went into the temple to preach the gospel, and they talked about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And while they were there, there was a man on the way into the temple who was crippled and sat by the gate, and he was begging for money.

And they said, we don’t have any money, but we can give you something better. In the name of Jesus, rise up and walk. And the man rose up and walked.

And the people at the temple knew this man. He hadn’t walked in years. And they’d seen him sitting there by the temple gate day by day.

And they were astonished. This is part of what drew the crowd so that then they could preach about the resurrection. And this guy, you know, is blown away too by the fact that they’ve commanded him in Jesus’ name to rise up and walk.

And finally he can do it. And everybody is astonished. And so everybody wants to hear what they have to say.

And that’s where all this began. And so he says, if you want to know about this good deed that was done and how he has been healed, He said, I want to tell you, and I want to make sure that all the people of Israel know. And he points to Jesus.

And he says, it’s by Jesus. You remember Jesus, don’t you? Don’t you?

You remember Jesus? He’s the one you crucified just a little while ago. He said, but by the way, while you were busy crucifying Jesus, while you thought you were going to put an end to Jesus, he said, that same Jesus who you crucified, God said, I don’t think so.

And God raised him up from the dead. And he said, that Jesus, the one you crucified, the one God said, no, I’m raising him from the dead. It’s by that Jesus that that man stands before you whole.

Because here we have something else that they cannot deny. They could not deny that the tomb was empty, and they also could not deny that by the power of the name of Jesus, that man who had been crippled out in front of the temple could now stand up and walk. They couldn’t deny it.

And he says in verse 11, This is the stone which was set at naught of you builders, which has become the head of the corner. If you’re building something, sometimes some of the materials that you wind up with aren’t that good, and you just throw them out. I do this when I use pallets for projects.

Sometimes I’ll cut off pieces and the wood’s just not good. You throw it aside. And he’s talking to them as though they’re stonemasons.

He uses this example. He says, this is a stone that you looked at Jesus. He said, you said it wasn’t good enough.

God wanted to really build something here and you said this piece wasn’t good enough and you cast it aside and now God made him the cornerstone. And that’s an example to them of saying, you looked at Jesus and you rejected him, but God said it doesn’t matter what you think. because he says in verse 12, this is 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.

They had rejected Jesus because they were looking for their salvation through themselves and their efforts. They were looking for salvation following the law of Abraham. They were looking to Abraham for their salvation.

They were looking to Moses, I’m sorry, the law of Moses they were looking for. They were looking at their genealogy, their lineage based back to Abraham and the fact that they were the chosen people. And they said, you know, this will save us.

They were counting in everything but Jesus. And Peter said, there is no other name. There is no other name to call on that is going to get you to heaven.

There’s no other name to call on that is going to get you right with God other than the name of Jesus. There’s no salvation in any other. For there’s none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.

I think that’s an important point for us today as well. Ladies and gentlemen, your salvation is not found today in the name Trinity Baptist Church. I love that you’re here.

I’m glad you’re part of this church, but being a member of this church doesn’t save you. Your salvation is not found in the name you’ve built for yourself. Oh, I have a good reputation.

I’m a good person. No, there’s no salvation in that name. Well, you know, God, I’ve done a lot for God.

I’ve given a lot of money for God. Now, I’m sorry, your salvation is not found in the name of Benjamin Franklin or Abraham Lincoln or whoever’s on your money. There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved but the name of Jesus.

So they’ve preached here that the resurrection of Jesus proves that he is exactly who he claimed to be, that while they rejected him, God raised him up and that he is the only way of salvation. Now, as you can imagine, this message didn’t sit well with them. So it says in verse 13, now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and they perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled.

Just what a preacher wants to hear after they get done with the message. I perceive that you’re an unlearned and ignorant man. But you know what?

They were amazed by the message because they knew these weren’t well-educated guys. These were fishermen, which is not to insult you if you’re a fisherman. I like to fish too.

But I’m saying they gone to school. They’d been spending all their life learning how to how to sail boats on the Sea of Galilee and throw nets over the side and where the fish were. That was their education.

And for him to get up and preach so boldly and demonstrate such an understanding of theology and of the scriptures and to put such a challenge to them was amazing. It said they marveled, which by the way, it’s amazing what the Holy Spirit can do, as we’ve talked about the last few weeks, how the Holy Spirit gives us words at just the right time. And so they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus.

They said, how is it that these men preach so eloquently when they don’t know anything and they realized they’ve been with Jesus? Jesus has changed them. These are non-believers saying that the change is because of Jesus.

And beholding the man which was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it. They didn’t want to admit that he’d been healed in the name of Jesus, but they couldn’t very well deny it either. But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they conferred among themselves.

They told the guys, all right, that’s enough. That’s enough. Go outside.

We’re going to talk about you. They conferred among themselves, verse 16, saying, What shall we do to these men? For that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all that dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it.

They said, what are we supposed to do here? We can’t deny that this, you know, we can’t deny reality. They couldn’t just look at the healing, the man who was walking, and say it was fake news.

All right? Everybody had seen it. but that it spread no further among the people.

Let us straightly threaten them that they speak henceforth no more in this name. They said, ah, we’ve got an idea. We just won’t deal with it.

We’ll sidestep the issue. We won’t say, yes, he was healed. No, he wasn’t.

We’re going to threaten them that they better not do any more preaching in Jesus’ name. They better not talk about this anymore. So they’re being told to cover up and keep it under wraps because, again, it’s causing an uproar.

This message is causing an uproar. They don’t want the news to spread any further. Verse 18.

And they called them and commanded them not to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus. Peter, John, you know, go do your little ministry. That’s great.

But don’t talk about Jes