Sermon Given by Peter (This Is at Least the 3Rd That We Know Of), and They All Saw Previously Jesus in the ﬂesh

Title: Strengthening Your “Suﬀering Muscle.” Text: Acts 5:12-42 (Overview)

Good morning church. Today we continue in the book of Acts chapter 5. We will ﬁnish this chapter today. Though it is a large passage, it’s all connected to one singular story, so I think we can plan to be in Acts 6 next week.

Let me also give a brief plug - if you are a follower of Jesus, but have never been baptized by immersion as a symbol of your faith in Christ - you have that opportunity here in a couple of weeks. We are still working on the exact date of whether it will be the 17th or the 24th of November, but we will have a couple of baptisms this month. So there is time for you to pray about whether you will follow Jesus in obedience in this public way. Kids, there is time to meet with me so that I can evaluate whether you understand what baptism is. So please pray about that. If you haven’t been baptized and you are a Christian, that is your next step in the faith. It’s the ﬁrst step of obedience in the life of a Christian.

Do you one thing I can’t do right now? Run a mile in under 6 minutes. Who thinks they could do that today? I did it in high school when I was trying out for a team - because I had to do it. But now, my life doesn’t require the ability to do that, so I don’t. It’s not a pressing reality to me. It’s not likely that I will have to ever do that again.

Jesus said in John 16 - In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

In this world, you will have tribulation, troubles, diﬃculty, struggle, pain, suﬀering. You will. Jesus didn’t say - you might. He said, you will. Jesus didn’t say, if you have faith me I will make all your dreams come true and your bank account full. He didn’t say, if you believe in me I will prevent you from cancer and Alzheimers. He didn’t say that following Jesus would make your life easier. He said the opposite. You will have tribulation.

This is not the message we hear from most TV preachers. In fact, the verse that we are going to focus upon today in the book of Acts should be on a milk carton or a wanted poster next to a missing criminal because you can’t ﬁnd it in many of the leading churches in our country.

1 But the reason that I want it to be the focus of our time today is not because I revel in being the faithful outlaw - it’s that I know that suﬀering comes to the life of every person in one way or another - and only the true gospel will prepare you for that moment. Only a biblical understanding of trials will prepare you.

You see, there’s a muscle that we all have in our body that I’ll call “the suﬀering muscle.” This is the muscle that gets you through those moments in life when you get the bad health report, or when you lose a loved one unexpectedly, or your faith is shaken - or anything that causes pain in your life. And whether or not that muscle has been built up and strengthened with biblical truth will determine whether you can handle the trial or whether you crumble.

If you took me outside and said - “run a mile in under 6 minutes or you’re going to die” - I’d have to call it. There’s just no way, right now, that I could pull that oﬀ. My cardio is not there. As much as I’d want to will myself over the ﬁnish line - the muscles necessary for the task are not prepared for the trial.

And just as with cardio or with weight lifting - the preparation can’t be done in a day. I would need months to prepare for that trial. There’s no cardio quick fix. The time to prepare is not as you’re at the starting line staring at the track - it’s too late to prepare. And that’s similar to dealing with suffering in your life - the time to prepare is not when you get the bad news, the bad report, the traumatic event…. that’s the moment when you need a suffering muscle that’s already built up and strong. So how do you do that?

I believe that our passage has answers today. We are going to see the Apostles rejoicing while being persecuted for their faith. They were beaten but they rejoiced. So I want us to examine our view of suﬀering today. Let’s prepare now for those moments that will come. We are looking at three ways that you can build strength to rejoice in suﬀering when the time comes.

God’s Word stands ready to equip. So let’s trust Him and go to Him in prayer before we open His Word.

(pray)

I want to tell you that I was really planning to skip on ahead to Chapter 6 in the discussion of the ﬁrst deacons in the life of the early church.

2 I approached the text planning for chapter 6 unless something else in chapter 5 really just gripped me and I sensed God had one more lesson for our church. So I’d like to begin by reading the short couple of verses that stopped me dead in my tracks as I was studying - and then we can work backward to see how the story arrived there.

Look with me to Acts 5:40-42. 40 and when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. 41 Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. 42 And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus.

I just want you to know that when I read those words - after they were beaten - “they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name,” I just stopped and said - Lord, how do we get a church full of people with that mindset?

How does a person get to that spiritual place in their life? When suffering and trials come - how do we actually have the ability to rejoice and thank Jesus that we were counted worthy to suffer? That’s somebody whose “suffering muscle” is well conditioned.

Now, allow me to cover a lot of verses by telling you the summary that got the Apostles to this point…

We left last week talking about Ananias and Sapphira - and following this - Luke gives another summary passage of the early church. Listen to Acts 5:12-16

12 Now many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon’s Portico. 13 None of the rest dared join them, but the people held them in high esteem. 14 And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women, 15 so that they even carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them. 16 The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those afﬂicted with unclean spirits, and they were all healed.

In other words, they were blowing and going. The Apostles were doing the things that Jesus used to do. It was an explosive time in the church. People were being saved. The Spirit of God was manifesting His work in obvious healings left and right.

3 V17 begins the next passage - essentially the Jewish leadership become enraged and throw the Apostles in jail again. In the night, an angel opens their prison doors and commands them to go proclaim Christ in the temple again - so they do.

Obviously the Jewish leaders are shocked to ﬁnd them broken out of jail and preaching in the temple courtyard. They summon the Apostles behind closed doors again and say - “Hey I thought we told you not to proclaim Jesus anymore!” And Peter says, “Yea and we said we had to obey God rather than men.”

Within the similar formula we have seen in Acts so far - Peter preaches again to these Jewish leaders. We know the message by now - You killed Jesus by hanging Him on a cross, God raised Him from the dead - now repent of your sins and believe in Jesus as the Messiah.

Also in formulaic fashion, the Jews respond with more anger - except this time it’s worse and they contemplate killing the Apostles right there (this is new to Acts). Then one reputable Pharisee named Gamaliel stands up and tries to dial back the anger. He gives advice to “wait and see.” The other Jewish leaders reluctantly agree, but they do give the Apostles the customary Jewish beating - 39 lashes with the rod per Apostle. They warn them again no longer to preach Jesus.

This is where we read earlier that they left rejoicing that they were worthy to suffer - and that they kept on preaching in the temple and in houses.

As I look at this lengthy passage - I think that to really get the meaning - you have to see Luke’s summary of the healing ministry of the Apostles as the test case. Luke records this summary of the Spirit working - and then shows in several ironic ways that the Jews would not receive the obviously miraculous as works of the Spirit. And the contrast is that the Apostles and the other believers did receive the works as from The Spirit.

And so I think that as we analyze these contrasting responses from the Jewish leaders and the Apostles to the Spirit of God - we will see three ways that you can build up strength to rejoice in your time of suffering. The ﬁrst way that you can build your “suffering muscle” is…

1. DEFER GLORY TO JESUS.

4 If you can get into a life pattern of deferring glory and honor to Jesus, you will receive strength to suffer. Remember that this entire passage is in response to the regular miraculous healing ministry of the Spirit of Jesus. Now look with me to v17 to see the immediate response by the Jews..

17 But the high priest rose up, and all who were with him (that is, the party of the Sadducees), and ﬁlled with jealousy 18 they arrested the apostles and put them in the public prison

I really ﬁnd it so interesting that the motive for the Jewish Leaders throwing the Apostles into prison was that they were jealous. They didn’t like that there was a crowd amassing around the Apostles. They did’t like that this Jesus fellow was still getting a hearing, even in their temple.

There were people who were being healed from issues they had all their life, being freed from pain and sickness in a miraculous act - and instead of being happy - they were jealous at all the crowds the Apostles and Jesus were getting. It was all about them.

They saw the writing on the wall; the Apostles were becoming the new Rabbis. Christianity was becoming the new Judaism. Jesus was becoming the High Priest in the eyes of the people. And their response was jealousy, protection of their own position.

One question that I think you would naturally ask after reading the account from v12-16 is “how could anyone look at those obvious works of Jesus’ power in the face and oppose them? How can you see such obvious spirit-led activity and reject it?” And we see here that at the root of man’s rejection of God is jealousy at seeing Jesus get the glory, and not us.

There’s only room for one sheriff in this universe, and it’s Jesus. But if that rubs you the wrong way, if you become jealous over your own life - the only option is to reject Christ like the Jews did. The only option is to stare at crippled legs becoming straight and blind eyes seeing and leprous skin becoming normal - and say - “I don’t see anything here.”

And so the Jews threw the Apostles in prison just so that they wouldn’t have to share the stage with them anymore. It wasn’t because people don’t like a good show. It’s that Jesus was stealing their show.

5 But the Apostles, in their heart, were happy to defer all glory to Jesus. And that’s exactly why they could rejoice in their suffering. Here’s why that’s true - The life that is lived for the glory of self will crumble when the self fails to be gloriﬁed. If you live your life for the purpose of prosperity and accolades and happiness - then you will be utterly confused when suffering comes - because it will not ﬁt your paradigm for the purpose of life.

The message of the world and the culture is that difﬁcult things only occur because its someone’s else’s fault or you’ve done something wrong or you didn’t have enough faith - but these Apostles were absolutely working inside the paradigm of God’s will, that Jesus be gloriﬁed in their lives, no matter the cost.

And actually there is another lesson here in this story. In Acts 5:19, the prison doors are broken open by an angel and they are released. In Acts 5:40, they were beaten. Two opposite outcomes in one story. What’s the lesson? - Following Jesus doesn’t guarantee any particular worldly outcome. Sometimes the prison doors will open and you keep preaching. Sometimes you get beaten. Sometimes like with Daniel, the lion’s mouth is closed and you walk away safely as a testament to God’s glory. But like thousands of early Christians in the Roman empire, you’re thrown into the Colosseum and the lions don’t spare you, to the glory of God.

If we, like the false teachers, peddle this idea that following Jesus will exempt you from any suffering, we are setting people up to feel betrayed by God at the ﬁrst sign of trouble. Let me be clear, when you decide to follow Jesus, you are attaching yourself to the Man of Sorrows who was acquainted with grief. Your Savior was not a wealthy man with many comforts. Your Lord was not a rockstar, surrounded by adoring fans. Your King was rejected and cruciﬁed. And yes, there was a victory in the resurrection and ascension - but that came after death.

And in our lives, there is no promise of prosperity in this world on this side of heaven. When we defer our glory to Jesus in this life, we are most satisﬁed when He is exalted. And even episodes of pain and confusion in our life can serve as testimonies to the grace and power of God. The one who lives for the glory of Jesus will see even their hardships as a way to honor Christ, and their suffering muscle will be strengthened.

The Apostles were happy to see Jesus glorified, and they were filled with joy. The Jewish leaders were worried about their own position, and they were filled with anger.

6 You can build strength for suffering by deferring glory to Jesus. Another way that you can build strength for suffering…

2. RESPOND WHEN THE SPIRIT IS AT WORK.

Read Acts 5:27-33 with me.

27 And when they had brought them [the Apostles], they set them before the council. And the high priest questioned them, 28 saying, “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have ﬁlled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.” 29 But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men. 30 The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. 31 God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. 32 And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.” 33 When they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them.

A couple of notes here - These Jewish leaders were exposed to the constant miraculous works of the Spirit, and then they hear another Spirit-ﬁlled sermon given by Peter (this is at least the 3rd that we know of), and they all saw previously Jesus in the ﬂesh. And their response?

V33 says that they were enraged. This is such a powerful Greek word. It's root literally means “to be sawn in two.” They were beside themselves in anger. They were cut to the quick. Full of rage.

I alluded to this last week and I get to reinforce it today. The most dangerous place for a person to be (spiritually speaking) is when they make a habit of non-response to the Spirit of God. When you see God at work and you don’t join Him, when you go under conviction to stop a certain sin in your life and you don’t stop, when you sense God leading you to step out and do xyz and you don’t do it (routinely) - you are in danger of spiritual blindness, spiritual callousness that might take you too far to recover.

What you’ll see in the book of Acts is that the Apostle’s message doesn’t change, but the response from the Jews gets more and more hostile every time? Why is that? Because they are falling deeper and deeper into a pattern of non-response to the gospel and to the Spirit of God.

I have three simple desires for this church in the immediate future that I am calling our vision - it’s what we need to do in order to be able to accomplish the mission.

7 We need to treasure the Word of God - we need to be training as many people as possible for ministry - and lastly we need to be a church that trusts and responds to the Spirit of God when He is speaking and moving among us.

The death-knell of a church is when the Spirit of God ﬁnds that He no longer has an audience because no one is listening to what He is saying and no one is responding to what He is asking. That’s called “quenching the Spirit” and Paul commands us not to do it.

A vibrant, living church comes to worship with a blank check and says - Spirit of God whatever you tell me to do I am ready to sign my name, whatever the amount. You can call me out for my sin and I will stop. You can tell me that I must make this relationship right and I will. You can tell me to go on a mission trip and I will go. You can tell me that I need to be a permanent missionary and I will take practical steps toward that. You can show our church that we need to shut down anything and start anything and we will listen to you God because this is Your church. And the living church responds with “have thine own way Lord, have thine own way.”

Romans 1:21 tells us that a person can suppress the truth, they can suppress response to the gospel over and over to a point where God actually darkens their hearts to be unable to receive the truth anymore. Nonresponse creates a callous to respond.

I’m reminded that in the Exodus when the Pharaoh of Egypt continued to see the works of God over and over - meeting after meeting with Moses - amazing plague after plague - and we hear the refrain - “But God hardened Pharaoh’s heart,” and “Pharaoh hardened his own heart.” He couldn’t respond to God’s work any longer because he had become so used to saying NO to the miraculous power of God. He couldn’t even see the miraculous plagues happening under his nose and worship God.

Now here’s how this will strengthen you for suffering…

When you routinely respond to the Spirit with “yes,” you live with an overwhelming sense that you are living out God’s will in your life. You have a sense that you are living with no regrets, because you have said “yes” when God called. And Christians that sense that they are living within the will of God are very spiritually hardy people. They don’t crumble easily. If you believe God is on your side and ﬁghting your battles and that you have nothing left on the table - you can be content in any situation. That’s what Paul said from inside a jail cell…

8 I don’t understand all the reasons that God called us to go to Colorado for 4 years. It’s beautiful, but it’s a really really difﬁcult place to start a church. We went through a lot of discouragement there. But guess what, I know that when I was sitting in Memphis Tennessee praying that God would send me somewhere and He pointed us to Colorado - I can say “we said yes.” And If I didn’t say yes, I might be haunted by that for the rest of my life because I knew that He was calling us to go into the unknown. And so when difﬁculties came, I could lean on the fact that this was God’s will because He called us there.

When you respond to the Spirit at work in your heart, you get stronger every time. You learn the heart of God. Romans 12:2 says that you will be able to discern the will of God as you say “Yes” to Him. And a heart that is yielded to the Spirit will see God at work even in suffering.

In order to build strength to rejoice in suffering, you can defer glory to Jesus, you can respond when the Spirit is working, and lastly…

3. TRUST JESUS RATHER THAN WORLDLY COUNSEL.

Look at Acts 5:34-39. 34 But a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law held in honor by all the people, stood up and gave orders to put the men outside for a little while. 35 And he said to them, “Men of Israel, take care what you are about to do with these men. 36 For before these days Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him. He was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. 37 After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered. 38 So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; 39 but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!” So they took his advice.

There’s a lot going on in this passage, so I’m going to pack a lot into the next few minutes.

First of all we are introduced to Gamaliel, a noted Jewish scholar. You can ﬁnd his name outside the Bible, he was an actual respectable Jewish Rabbi. We learn later in the book of Acts that the Apostle Paul studied under Gamaliel the Pharisee. It’s possible, though we can’t prove it, that Paul was not far off at this moment in the temple area - but on the side of the Pharisees (his conversion had not yet happened).

9 The other leaders were ready to kill the Apostles but Gamaliel suggests a more moderate approach. He says - “Hey guys lets think about this. We have seen rebellions come and go before. (He even gives two examples) They rise and they fall because they aren’t really from God. So let’s just wait and see what this movement is about and if it succeeds - it was from God - but if they ﬁzzle out like the rest - then they weren’t from God and it was no trouble for us.”

He obviously had an inﬂuential voice, because they listen and let the Apostles go with a good beating.

Now, one might look at the counsel of Gamaliel and praise him for his wisdom. He certainly sounds reasonable. He takes an approach that beneﬁts the Apostles and spares their lives. But I’m actually not impressed with Gamaliel’s advice. Here’s why..

Reason 1 - He says “Let’s wait and see if they are from God.” What on earth MORE do you need to determine that this is from God. People are being healed left and right, demons are being cast out, Jesus was resurrected and seen by eyewitnesses within the year. God gave them all the conﬁrming information they would need to determine that this was a legitimate movement. There comes a point where “wait and see” is ridiculous.

Reason 2 - He espouses a view that is ﬂawed in my view, called pragmatism. Pragmatism essentially means - you determine the worth of something by whether it works. So for example, if you were a pragmatist pastor, you might say - what will grow this church? And the answer of “whatever works best” becomes the best answer. Pragmatism says - if it works - it’s good, and let’s do it.

Gamaliel says - “we don’t know right now that God is in this movement - but if it grows more - we will know that God was behind it.” Is that always correct? Is it true that if something grows, it is from God?

Some of the fastest growing churches in the country certainly aren’t faithful to God or the Bible, but they grow. At one point, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormonism grew very quickly - is God with them? The only other world religion to rival Christianity in terms of rapid expansion from its founding is Islam - they grew extremely quickly. Would Gamaliel say that they are “from God?”

I will say this - yes - ultimately in the end God will win out. And I’ll say this - we appreciate Gamaliel allowing our Apostles to escape death here.

10 But I would not counsel you to live your life based upon his advice. His advice will set you up to be confused when suffering comes. If you believe that anything that God is involved in will succeed and grow and exhibit signs of prosperity - what will failure signal to you? What will difﬁculty and trial signal to you? You’ll be like so many Christians that experience suffering and utter those words - “Where were you God?” “Why did you allow this to happen?” “I thought you loved me.”

But what I’m telling you is that Christians don’t operate on pragmatism. We don’t take Gamaliel’s counsel that we know whether something is from God if it’s prosperous and good and it works out for us.

I’ve known people that took a pay raise and said it was the worst decision they ever made for their family. Just because it looks like prosperity doesn’t mean that it’s from God.

Christians operate on the promises of God as our foundation for what is good and right. We take our counsel from Jesus. We cling to truth rather than pragmatism. And that is a way to protect us from falling apart when suffering comes.

When suffering comes to your life, you need to fall back on what you know to be true. Who is God? Who does the Bible say that I am? What does the Bible say about sin and its effects on my life? What does the Bible say about the gospel and how it applies to my life? What am I promised in this life, and what am I not promised in this life?

The world gives some terrible counsel - “Follow your heart?” That’s garbage advice. “God will never give you more than you can handle?” Yes He will. “If you have enough faith, things will work out?” What if they don’t though? “Time heals all wounds?” What about an infection? So we are just supposed to ignore our problems and they get better? “Do what makes you happy?” Why not do what makes you holy?

There are 100 little false catchphrases that Christians parrot all the time, but those don’t help you when real life struggle comes. Only the actual word of God can do that. Only the gospel can do that. Only knowing Jesus can do that. Don’t follow worldly counsel - it will only make you susceptible to pain when the advice doesn’t work.

As we look at these Apostles rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name of Jesus - we get a glimpse of what life is really about.

11 Even when we encounter suffering, we can rejoice when we are living for the glory of God - and when our sufferings can reveal the gospel to the world.

And we prepare our suffering muscle by deferring all glory to Jesus and seeking to honor Him with our lives. We get into patterns of responding to the Spirit when He is working in our lives. And we trust Jesus and Scriptural truth rather than worldly counsel that crumbles under the weight of suffering.

I don’t know if or when a struggle is coming your way, but I know that if we do these three things, we can be prepared when the time comes. And by God’s grace we can join the Apostles and rejoice that we were counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus.

(pray)