Taking the Witness Stand is one sermon in a series our church staff is preaching following the NBC series A.D. The Bible Continues.

If you missed either of the  first two parts of Taking the Witness Stand you can find them here:

Taking the Witness Stand Pt. 1

Taking the Witness Stand Pt. 2

Here is today’s portion:

Yesterday we concluded by saying…

We Have To Obey God in the midst of opposition

Taking the witness stand for Christ is not always easy. In America, right now, we have a right to declare our faith freely without fear of retribution. It is not that way in the rest of the world.

These headlines come from Voice of the Martyrs

March 2015-News has just come to hand from Vietnam sources of the Vietnamese Evangelical Mennonite Pastor Nguyen Hong Quang and his son Nguyen Quang Trieu being attacked by a group of seven young men while uniformed police sat back and did nothing to prevent the assault from happening.

April 1, 2015- A pastor’s daughter died, several people were injured and a Baptist church was torched during an attack on a village in the Rogo local government area of Kano State on the evening of 1 April.

We hear stories like this and cannot believe the ferocity of these attacks. We ask why. Jesus explained the reason in John 15 when He said,

There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. 16You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. 17This is my command: Love each other.

 18“If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. 19The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you. 20Do you remember what I told you? ‘A slave is not greater than the master.’ Since they persecuted me, naturally they will persecute you. And if they had listened to me, they would listen to you. 21They will do all this to you because of me, for they have rejected the one who sent me.

Still, why would we choose Peter and John’s road in Acts chapter 4? If what Jesus said is true,why would we choose to take the witness stand for Jesus?

We choose to do it because we understand that

Jesus is the foundation and because

  When we stand for Jesus, He shines through!

How is Jesus shining through your life right now?

Taking the Witness Stand is one sermon in a series our church staff is preaching following the NBC series A.D. The Bible Continues.

If you missed the first part of Taking the Witness Stand you can find it here:

Taking the Witness Stand Pt. 1

Now  on to today’s portion…

Yesterday we finished up by saying Jesus is our foundation.

I can remember a point many years into my Christian walk when things weren’t going so well for me. My career choices were in question. Financially things weren’t so good. The future looked grim and I can remember looking up to Heaven shaking my fist at God and saying, “You call this a plan? I can do better than this!”

I stopped praying. I stopped reading my Bible. I acted like there was no God. Fortunately, God never acted like there was no me. He dogged my steps. He haunted my dreams at night. He withdrew but stayed just on the edges of my life for weeks, waiting for me to realize the truth that He is the foundation of life. The good news is that in my moment of rejection He remained faithful and when I came back to Him I had learned that there is no such thing as real life without Jesus. He is the center of everything living. He is the foundation of order, and He is the way, the truth and the life.

Today I am with Peter and John. I get it. I cannot help but testify to it. I know that Jesus is the only sure foundation and everybody ought to know who Jesus is. He is why I do what I do. He is my reason. He is my goal. He is my beginning and end.

How about you?

Understanding that Jesus is the foundation of life and everything has caused Him to become my goal. That understanding drove Peter and John to give their lives for the cause of Christ. I am trying to do the same thing.

How about you?

I have a friend, Ben Nelson, who pastors in New Jersey. He writes a blog called Another Red Letter Day . In one of his recent posts he wrote,

In Matthew 20 Jesus gives us a parable that’s full of wonderful images. He paints a scenario from life on the land to teach principles of the kingdom of God.

In this parable He tells of a land owner who owned a vineyard, and needed laborers to work it. I’m guessing harvest was in full swing. He heads to town, to the market, where he knows those looking for work assemble, and five times throughout the day, he hires groups of laborers. He brings people back to his field starting “early in the morning” right up till “the eleventh hour,” with groups starting at the third, sixth, and ninth hours as well.

What can we learn about the kingdom of God from this parable?….

For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. – Matthew 20:1 NASB

The parable begins with a premise we have lost in our current day. The landowner (the Lord) went to the marketplace (the world) and looked for laborers (those entering the kingdom of God.)

It seems to me those entering the kingdom of God today, often look at it as an escape from work, a place of rest rather than labor. But Jesus speaks of entering into work.

I have learned that becoming a Christian is not really about having all your problems solved. Oh Jesus solves our problems: He heals; He delivers; He saves; He restores; He fixes broken lives  and we desperately need Him to do those things. In fact sometimes our brokenness is the starting point of our relationship. But it is not THE POINT. All of that is secondary.

At its heart becoming a Christian is about changing kingdoms. It is about declaring a new king over your life. It is about making Jesus Lord and master.  Romans 10:9 says

 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 

Jesus heals, delivers, saves, restores and fixes because that is the required state of everything in the Kingdom; But as you make your decision to serve Christ please understand that you are becoming a citizen in a Kingdom not a democracy. You leave your vote at the door and take up the decision to obey.

We are called to receive God’s gifts and to obey his commands and sometimes like Peter and John we are called to face opposition in this world for our obedience and yet because Jesus is our foundation.

 We Have To Obey God even in the midst of opposition

“Taking the Witness Stand”,  is one sermon in a series our church staff is launching off of the NBC telecast A.D. the Bible Continues.  The Scriptural reference is Acts 4:18-20

If you remember the story….

After the experience the disciples had in the upper room with the baptism in the Holy Spirit something inside of them changed. Before the baptism in the Holy Spirit the disciples were men and women filled with fear, not knowing what to do. Peter had denied Christ three times at the scene of Christ’s trial and all the others had been so afraid they had not even shown up at the hearing. But after the baptism in the Holy Spirit something was different about them! They had a new boldness. They had a new sense of passion, a new understanding of the mission. They began to preach and teach the message about Jesus every day in the Temple courts and from house to house.

In Acts chapter 3 a spectacular miracle of healing is recorded that causes the disciples and their message to be catapulted to new levels of fame among the Jewish people. In a very short span of time the church grows from 3,000 to 5,000 souls.

Wanting to quell the rising tide of revival the rulers of the Temple have Peter and John, the ringleaders of the Jesus circus, arrested. However, not having any valid charges to hold them on they prepare to release them And that is where our Scripture passage this morning picks up the story…

Acts 4: 18-20 New International Version (NIV)

18 Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. 19 But Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! 20 As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

I don’t know about you but if I had been Peter and John I think I could have come up with a better response than that.

I could have:

Abandoned the message and just gone back to fishing because this was not what I signed up for.

Just told the men what they wanted to hear. I could have said something like, “As you wish gentlemen. We’ll stop.” Then I would have gone out and done the exact opposite of what I promised.

Tried to negotiate the message. I could have said,“Well what if we include the Kadosh and some really strong teaching about the 10 commandments in all our lectures? How about if we share time? We can share our message but give you a platform during the service as well?”

I am sure that all of these responses presented themselves to the rational minds of Peter and John in those moments. They were after all men just like you and me. But in those moments they chose not to take any of these options. Instead they openly defied the Sanhedrin and said “We cannot help speaking about what we have seen or heard.”

You see they understood something about the life they were now living. Jesus was not just an addition to the 10 commandments. Jesus was not a new fad in the Jewish religion. They understood It was not Jesus and the Law. They realized when they were baptized in the Holy Spirit that Jesus was the Law. He was the One the prophets proclaimed. Everything in the Old Testament was pointing to Him. They understood that everything in history was His Story. Jesus was their foundation. They understood that without Jesus there was nothing to believe in because Jesus had become their foundation and today I would put to you that

Jesus is our foundation too!!!!