So this morning I woke up, I took my nice long hot shower, like many of you, and I got dressed up and I got made my coffee and protein shake like every single morning, and I drove the very long four blocks to get here.
And I did all of this, I did all of this without ever, ever fearing at all that I might have some harm done to me because of any of that or coming here or any harm for my family.
And yet, this morning there are hundreds of millions of people doing exactly what we're doing right now, and they do it out of the courage that harm might be done to them or to their families.
So, according to open door research, every month 322 Christians are killed because of what they believe.
772 people are beaten or kidnapped or arrested or forced into marriages simply because what they believe about Jesus.
This happens every single month.
And this happens because what they believe is perceived by those in power to be a threat to them that are in power.
And that's what persecution is.
Persecution is always the ones in power holding hostility toward the powerless because of race or political or religious belief.
That's what persecution is.
Now, I know none of you walked in with persecution on your mind this morning.
Most of us don't walk around.
We don't live with the idea of persecution dominant in our thoughts.
But I do wonder, have you ever felt, perhaps ever felt sidelined because of your belief?
Some belief?
Have you ever felt uh belittled because of your belief?
Have you ever been made to feel intellectually inferior because of something you believe?
Well, maybe you remember the story from last week, this Acts chapter 4 story.
We read the whole passage of Acts chapter 4 last week, and we talked about what Peter and John said when they were arrested.
This morning, we're just going to talk about the fact that they were arrested, because this is the first time that the church, the Christian church, was persecuted.
So here's the text.
The text is Acts chapter 4, verses 1 through 4.
And as they were speaking to the people, the priest and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed, because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.
And they arrested them, and they put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening, but many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand.
So we talked about last week that these Sadducees were the people in control.
These guys, these were the elitists.
They controlled power in society, they controlled power, religious thought, the courts, the police.
These guys held all the power.
And they did not care about what Peter and John were saying, nor did they care about what actually had happened in terms of Jesus' death and resurrection.
That didn't matter.
All they cared about is that this was a threat to the system that benefited them.
They only cared to maintain the system that benefited them and their friends and their family.
And the grace of Jesus threatened that system.
Last Thursday, Chrissy and I went on a date to see the movie The Post.
So we we pulled in.
We pulled in, and right when we pulled in, and it's not, you know, not a heavy movie-going night, Thursday night, Friday night or Saturday night.
So, you know, it's kind of a sparse parking lot.
I mean, there's not a lot of people in there.
As soon as we park, though, tons of cars start to pour into this parking lot.
A lot of cars at the same time.
And enough that Christy and I kind of look at each other like, like, what had like a flood of cars?
And all of the cars were nice, and pretty much everybody getting out of the cars were dressed very nice, and pretty much everybody was over the age of 55.
And so Christy and I started to notice this.
We're like, what happened?
What is this?
And we think, well, maybe it's like senior discount night, is what we figured.
We just kind of figured that.
I'm not making fun of that.
I can't wait for that to begin in my life.
I can't wait.
It's a discount.
It's fantastic.
But then there were some people who weren't over 55.
There were some people in their 40s.
And we're like, well, so it's not senior discount night.
We're like, it's got to be like a movie club.
There's like a movie club.
And we're like, that's awesome.
Because they all know each other too.
They're getting out of their cars and they're like shaking hands and they're hugging, they're talking, and they're in line, they're talking to us.
So they all know each other.
And we're like, this is a movie club.
And we're like, well, we get we need to know what movie they're going to see.
And so we all we get in the theater and we watch them.
Our theater was right up front, there on the left.
They went down this hallway to the very end and turned left.
And so we follow them down there to see what movie they're going into.
And so the the name of the movie was called Alien Intrusion.
And so I figure, well, this is some science fiction movie I just hadn't heard about yet.
And so we get back to our theater, and Chris C.
Googles Alien Intrusion.
And so it's not a science fiction movie.
It's not a well, maybe, maybe it is.
That's up for debate.
What it is is a one-night only documentary about UFOs with interviews with people who have had spiritual and alien-like encounters.
And I'm not making fun of this because I actually have a serious point coming out of this.
But I'm assuming most of you don't know that there's a community of people around us that all know each other, and they apparently gather on some regular basis to talk about UFOs and alien-like encounters.
And not only that, but then there's a guy who has enough of audience base to make a film and financing to make a film and distribution to get the film into theaters, and all of these people are coming together and gathering happily to watch this movie together.
That's amazing.
Right?
Isn't it amazing?
These people have this right to do all of that without any hostility or persecution toward them.
Okay?
That's just a side note.
Because then we go into our movie.
And we see our movie, and it's a the movie about the Washington Post that's uncovering sort of the way that politicians during the Vietnam War kept the war going for political reasons when they knew that the war was an unwinnable war, and I loved it.
I loved it.
Which was a little odd to me because I know very little about the Vietnam War.
I'm not like a huge history buff.
I'm definitely not a Vietnam War history buff.
And I'm not like a big into politics, but I love this movie.
So why would I love this movie?
And so I started thinking about that.
Like, why would I love this movie so much when it's about a topic that I don't really love the topic that much?
Because what I do love is I love truth spoken to power.
I eat that up.
That's my thing.
And journalism, the right of free press, exists to uncover and speak truth to falsehood, especially to the abuse of power.
And see, this is what Peter and John are doing in this moment.
They're speaking truth into falsehood.
They're speaking truth to power.
They're speaking, risking up against the system of belief.
And what they're saying to them is they're saying, hey, your system of belief is now completed.
That's what they're saying.
They're saying Christ is salvation.
We talked about last week.
We fleshed that out over 20 minutes.
Salvation, wholeness.
Christ is your wholeness.
You don't have to keep up the sacrificial system anymore, relying on your own purity and your sacrifice and doing it over and over and over.
You are accepted and absolved and loved fully because your sin is put upon the final sacrifice.
God's grace to you, known in Jesus, and his righteousness is put upon you, and it is over.
It's over.
There's nothing left for you to add.
And while that news to some of those in power was bad news, because it risked their power to those who were powerless, thousands and thousands of people, that was like streams in a desert.
Now, a few points about persecution in general.
Number one, point number one, persecution is the painful gift that can grow that which really matters in your life.
Persecution is the painful gift that can grow that which really matters in your life.
Persecution is always hard.
It's always going to be painful.
We wouldn't choose it.
But it has the ability to not just be painful.
2 Corinthians 12, verse 10.
For the sake of Christ, then I am content.
This is Paul who knew lots of persecution and hardships.
I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.
For when I am weak, then I am strong.
So Paul is saying, when I see that I'm weak, because of whatever hardship it is that reveals this, I see a truth about myself, and in that process, sort of a sifting occurs, right?
And all the dirt of life that just doesn't matter that much falls away, and the gold of what truly matters in life remains.
This is why that time when you got really, really sick, and you're lying in bed and you're aching and just you feel horrible.
The only things you start to think about is the few people in life that really love you, the few people in life you really love, and the fact that you know what?
God loves me.
Like it just boils down to the few essentials when you're hurting hardships, persecutions, insults, it just has a way of sifting down to the gold of what really matters in life.
And all of a sudden, the next pair of jeans from J.
Crew just doesn't seem to matter as much.
You're just like, I mean, why was I obsessing about that the day before?
That new truck doesn't seem like I don't, all of a sudden you don't need a new truck.
I mean, the the nest egg doesn't matter if it hits a certain number, if it's a little under that number.
All of a sudden, all of this doesn't matter.
Now you're strong.
For when you're weak, you are strong because you begin to see, even in hardship, even in hardship, our lives are rooted into what will always remain.
And that's Christ's love for us.
That is unending.
Point number two, persecution is the painful gift that wages against the myths that you are not enough and you always need more.
Persecution is the painful gift that wages against the myths that you are not enough and you always need more.
Last year, Christy and myself and all the adults on her side of the family, we went to an escape room.
So, an escape room, maybe you've been to these, these are these like facilities that you go with a group of friends and they lock you in a room.
You pay.
You pay to be locked into a room.
And then you have an hour to work your way out of the room.
And so I think maybe there's 10 or 12 of us, all the adults on her side of the family, and we're all locked in this little room, and it was the casino room.
So we're doing all these math problems.
I think at one point we had like a laser and a mirror, and we're doing, and all the personalities are coming out, the control freaks are controlling, the followers, the pleasers, those who don't mind conflict, the ones that don't want conflict at all.
All of that's playing out within about a minute and a half in our family.
And we're solving these problems, and the clock's on the wall, and it's working its way down.
There's a door on the sidewall, and finally, like at like 45 minutes into this thing, that we solve a problem, a big problem, and the door opens, and you think, this is it.
You think this is gonna be the way out.
And you walk through the door, and it's another room with more problems.
And you get in there and you gotta solve more problems, and you end up having to go back to the first room to get some stuff to come to the second room.
And it's just another room and another room.
I mean, you know, right, you know that.
This is our world.
And you know those doors, right?
The door that says more.
And you go, that's what I that's what I need.
I need some of that.
And so I'm gonna go through that door, and you think it's gonna get you, and I think it's gonna get me into a room of contentment, and then you get into that room, and that room's called lacking.
But the next door says more because you see it on the other side, and you go, okay, so that's where I need a head, and then you're gonna walk through that doorway, and on the other side of that doorway, that's gonna be, and then you get in that room, and that room's lacking, and then you go, oh, but there's another door, and it says more, and you just keep going room after room, door after door after door, and persecution and hardship in general has a way to destroy the doors that are lying to us.
We begin to just see them for what they are.
And this is what Peter and John are saying.
When they come to these guys and they risk all this hardship and persecution, they come up against the system and they say, Christ is salvation.
They're saying, Christ is your wholeness.
Christ is your wholeness.
You don't need anything else.
There's nothing else for you to add to be whole other than God's love for you.
Point number three, and this is a tough pill to swallow persecution comes at Christians, and persecution comes from Christians.
So the early Jewish Christians held hostility toward the Gentile Christians.
And then if you look into history, the Christian church existed in a persecuted state as they were an illegal religion until the 300s, and then the Christian church became legalized, and as soon as they become legalized, they make a move to begin to make other belief systems illegal.
Now, isn't that interesting?
A group of people, a group of people whose community began in persecution, gains power, and then as soon as they get power, they turn to persecute others.
On an individual level, uh perhaps we say, when we become the power holders of the PTA or the neighborhood association or the friend group or the school or the town, I would never hold hostility, I would never exclude anybody, I wouldn't, and then you get there and then you find yourself doing the thing you hate.
On a societal level, when our politicians attempt in any way, to any degree, to take away any of our freedoms to speak or to gather because of what we believe, that's a form of persecution.
And just as much, to be clear, on like current culture of the last year, when a person is arrested or killed because of the color of their skin and nothing else, that's a form of persecution.
When our leaders use belittling language of somebody or a group of people because of their race or because of their religion, that is persecution.
It is hostility by those in power toward the powerless.
And when we shrug our shoulders to any of this silently, because it sort of doesn't affect us that much.
And all of this is us living out of ignorance and fear.
It's us wanting to feel more important than someone else, which creates bias, which then creates hostility, and in that a process of persecution, racism, becomes a societal norm.
Listen, peace and compassion toward anybody else only comes when we realize I too am the enemy.
We have to understand our propensity to persecute in order to the moment that we have power that we will not persecute.
But if we don't face the fact that we have the ability and that we will and we can persecute, then we'll never, in the moment when we hold power, choose to not persecute and be peaceful and compassionate toward people.
This week I read 2 John verses 6 and 7, and this is a writer who wrote for me the most profound sentence in the Bible, which is God is love.
And he writes in 2 John, and this is love, that we walk according to his commandments.
This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it, for many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.
Okay, so he says, walk in love, be this love in front of people, for hostility exists.
Because the hostility exists, be love toward people.
See, we are called to be a community that speaks truth to power, confesses we too are the enemy, and in the great grace of God known to us in Jesus, we are fully and accepted and loved and absolved and redeemed children.
Therefore, we love those in power, and we love those who hold no power, and we even love our enemy.
So, my brothers and sisters, may you live lives of love, learning to receive grace from God and give grace to your neighbor.
Let's pray together.
God, thank you for the great call to love those in power and to love the powerless and to love our enemies.
Forgive us for the way, for all the ways that we are insecure.
And in that we hold bias, hostility, persecution, and even shrug our shoulders toward the ways that those around us are persecuted.
Forgive us for this.
We too are the enemy.
And we confess that this morning, and we ask that in your great grace would you begin to soften our hearts, to love people, to see people.
God give us the courage to speak truth to power, to stand up for what is true and right, and to love those around us.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.