[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m. if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, you can find us
[email protected] dot. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast Madison Church of Christ sermons thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: I'm excited this evening to introduce someone I've known for a long time, Jason Biby, who is. He's a preacher at Mayfair. And his wife Sunny, is a teacher at Madison Academy. So you, your children may know her. She's wonderful. She's the better half, probably. You would admit that.
[00:00:57] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure, sure.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: But they have three children who are awesome, who have, who are a reflection of their parents. But I am just excited to have you here tonight. He's certainly a top 15 speaker we're going to have this summer, so.
Yeah, we're setting the bar, right? No, Jason is. Jason's fantastic. He's a fantastic speaker. He knows the word and he loves the word and he loves the people. And he's a very humble person. And I'm excited to have him here tonight. So I'll say a little prayer, and then Jason, I mean, Chris, I think you're gonna lead us on, so let's all pray.
Dear God, we thank you for this day. We thank you for the beautiful weather you have sent our way. We thank you for this time that we have together in the middle of the week to recharge our batteries, to be around your children. We're so thankful for all that you do for us. We thank you for the work that you have going on in our lives. Father, help us to be light in the world. Help us to love one another so that people may be able to see you living in us. So thankful for bringing Jason here tonight. Pray that you'd be with him as he's giving us our message. We pray that our worship will be in spirit and in truth and will be pleasing in your sight. We love you so much. We thank you for your son, Jesus. It's his name. We pray. Amen.
[00:02:22] Speaker C: Well, good evening. It is really good to see all of you here tonight.
Appreciate that introduction from Cam. For the most part, I think I appreciate almost everything that he had to say. I don't think I've ever been introduced as one of the top 15 speakers you'll hear all summer long. That one's kind of new, especially because Jason told me this is only a twelve week series. So I'm not sure who those other three guys are who dropped out. But I'm always grateful to come and spend time with you all.
I feel like we have a shared passion in our congregations to try and reach out and to share the good news of Jesus. The Lord has positioned this congregation in such a way to really make a kingdom impact. And I'm grateful just to hear all the good things that you all are doing and the ways that you're trying to reach out and share the gospel. With so many people who have moved in here to this area. I guess you know some of them probably know the Lord, but I know many of them don't. So to take that call seriously, I just commend you. And I'm so grateful that we can share in that burden together as we serve in the Lord's vineyard. So tonight we're spending time reflecting on this theme throughout the summer. The idea, the key word here, is resilience. And tonight, what I'd really like to focus in on the topic that I've been given is the topic of adversity and how it goes a long way toward building up our resilience and our resistance.
I don't know about you, but I think we have entered into a time, especially in this country, when we're facing greater adversity, it seems like as we try to live out our faith, as we try to not just share the gospel with others, but as we try to live according to the scriptures, as we try to live a life of faithfulness and obedience to what God has said in the scriptures, I think we're in a time of greater adversity than any time I can remember in my lifetime. Maybe you could say the same thing.
A couple of years ago, I had an opportunity to go to Scotland with one of our elders at Mayfair. And we went to go encourage some of our brothers and sisters there. Mayfair's been supporting some work in the Cumbernauld, Scotland area for about 35 or 40 years, since the late 1980s. And so we went to go visit and encourage these brethren. And every Sunday morning, the preacher there, Adam bar is his name, and he gets in the church van and drives around and picks up some of the members who don't have transportation. And then we go to the church building. So this one Sunday morning where we're visiting, we're joining Adam. We're picking up brothers and sisters around town and bringing them to the church building. At that time, the church was meeting in a little. I would call it here in the states. We'd say it's like a little strip mall area. There's three or four other things. They're renting out some space where the church will meet. Right next to the church building is like a pizza place. And then beside the pizza place is this. Whatever the scottish version of 711 would be. Just this convenience store. And so we're having a big time. We're, you know, talking and everything. We pull in, and I'm in the back of the van. So I'm one of the last people to get out. We let everybody out of the van. I shut the door. I'm the last one walking out of the parking lot from the van.
And there's this couple walking out from the 711.
It's 830 in the morning, Sunday morning, you know, Scotland, not quite as churched as, you know, the deep south, where we're from. But this guy and his girlfriend are walking out, and he's got the leather jacket, and, you know, they're walking to their car. He can tell I'm going to church because, one, I got out of the church van, two, I'm holding the Bible, three, I've got a coat and tie on, you know, the whole nine yards. And so as I'm approaching, this gentleman walk into his car, I'm just doing what I naturally do on Sunday morning. I was going to say hello and good morning, and how are y'all? Cause I'm from the south, and that's what you do on Sunday. You see somebody, you say hello.
And before I could even get the words out of my mouth, this man took a look at me, looked at the church van, looked back at me, cursed me just right there to my face.
He doesn't know me.
I didn't go knock on his door.
I didn't give him a pamphlet, I didn't invite him to VBS, you know, I didn't do any of these things. Just getting out of the church van. And the fact that I was headed toward the building to go worship, that was all it took to ignite his hostility.
And I'll tell you, I struggle with that. I've never, as far as I can recall, had a time where I've been cursed just for being a follower of Jesus.
I've spent my whole life in the Bible belt, same as many of you. I grew up in middle Tennessee. It's a lot like north Alabama. Pretty much everybody I knew was one flavor of believer or another, you know, but I really struggled with that. And later that day, we were talking with some of the brethren, and I just brought that up. I said, does that happen to you all very often? Because that's never happened to me. And they said, yeah, we hate to tell you that happens all the time.
I think it's been happening there in Europe for a long time. It makes me wonder what it will be like for us in this country as we move forward.
Many of us grew up in a time when almost everyone did hold that same view, that same general. We call it a Judeo christian worldview. There was a time probably for almost all of you, especially those of us who are older. You can probably remember this, a time when, if you were talking to someone and you were trying to convince them about the validity of the gospel or to teach them about some. Some moral principle. There was a time when, if you could just show them the book, chapter and verse, you know, the Bible says so and so. Here it is. Look at it with me and study. There was a time when that was enough, right? There was a time when that would convince people, because everybody, even if they had their different beliefs about this, that or the other, everyone had a general, agreed upon, generally agreed upon position, a view that, okay, the Bible is the word of God and it's true. And if you can show me something that's in the Bible, then I'll believe it.
It doesn't seem to be the case as much anymore that that's all it takes just to show somebody something from the scriptures to convince them of the truth. Some have started referring to this as a post christian culture. Have you heard that?
Some people have called it that, a post christian, like we're past the christian age. I don't know. That may be overplaying the hand a little bit. I think that's taken it a little too far. But the point is still the same, that some things have changed in our culture. You've probably felt that. You've probably experienced that not only are people not as convinced about the validity of the scriptures, but increasingly more and more, it seems as if there's a bit of hostility toward the christian faith in general.
Somebody has said Christianity is no longer the home team here in the United States.
I don't know how that strikes you, but I think many of us have been sensing something has changed for quite some time. I want to read you something from a book that I've read recently, and then after this, we'll get into some scriptures and study God's word together on this topic. This is a book written by a man named David Young. He is the preacher at the North Boulevard congregation in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He wrote a book called Resilient, and I read it recently, and when I realized this is my topic, I kind of went back to it and looked through it. And just in his opening paragraph of the book, he says this. Six months ago, the mother of one of the teens in my church sent me an email describing the difficulties her daughter faces in her public high school in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. And then the email begins. Various organizations and online groups at our high school aggressively promote an LGBTQ agenda. And when my daughter has said no to these groups, she was labeled a hater and a bigot by many. She's even lost several friends over her views. All over the halls of her school are fliers and bulletins promoting LGBTQ propaganda. Her friends pressure her to attend the pride marches at her school. Some of her teachers talk frequently about their LGBTQ heroes. One of her teachers has even undergone a gender transition from male to female and insists that the students now call the teacher miss instead of mister.
School trips for females must now accommodate males who identify as females, including rooming assignments for overnight trips. One of her friends started an online pro life club, and she was viciously attacked online and in the hallways at school for her position. Students who are christians face unending intimidation and marginalization, and it goes on and on from there.
And I just read a portion of that because that letter kind of highlights, I think, some of the challenges that we face as christians in the world today.
Some of these things aren't really new. Some of them seem like they just popped up in the last five minutes, but they're still challenges, right? Challenges to our faith. And our world is changing, and so many pretty rapidly, and so many of those changes really do impact the way our faith is understood. So the question with all this is, how should we respond to that level of adversity?
And this is kind of what I'd like for us to focus on here in our time together tonight. We need to be bold in our resilience.
I'm kind of taking this theme and this idea of resilience and how the adversity kind of builds that up for us. And I want to lay alongside of that, that word boldness, because there's one thing to be resilient and just sort of say, well, we're just going to kind of white knuckle it. You know, let's just sort of hang on here and, you know, someday the Lord's going to come, he's going to take us home and get us out of this mess and, you know, praise the Lord. That is the promise, right? And although that is true, I don't think that's the most faithful response. When we see a culture that is increasingly moving further and further into progressive secularism, I think the response requires us to, yes, be resilient, but to also be bold.
And in particular tonight I just want to focus on three areas that I think the scriptures call us to three places where it's important for us to be bold in our resilience. And you see those three on the screen, we need to be boldly resilient when we're dealing with our enemies.
Maybe I should put quotation marks around that. You know what I mean by that, and we'll get into it, is those who would view us as their enemies because we hold the positions that we hold.
You know what Ephesians six says, the battle is not against flesh and blood. So these aren't really our adversaries and our enemies. I don't mean to imply that, but there are those. You experience it, I'm sure.
Maybe in your place of work, maybe in your neighborhood, maybe the conversations you have there are those who will consider a biblical position to be something to be opposed. You will become an adversary to them simply by upholding the orthodox faith that believers have held now for 2000 years.
We also need to be boldly resilient in standing on the authority of God's word.
And finally, we need to be boldly resilient in proclaiming the name of Jesus.
So I'd like to spend a little bit of time with you tonight kind of talking through, thinking through some of these things. So we'll just take them one at a time here. Bold resilience when dealing with our enemies in quotation marks, one of my favorite passages on this kind of thought, Galatians, chapter four, verse 16. I hadn't read this until the last year or so, and just going through God's word and reading and I came across this statement just sort of jumped off the page at me. You ever done that? You think, okay, when did the Lord add that? Because I've read this passage a lot and then I didn't see it. But this is one of those for me. Galatians 416. Paul says, have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?
Just real quick, dive into Galatians just so we understand the context of what he's saying here. Paul's really worried about these believers because he shared the gospel with them in the beginning, and now they've picked up some other ideas along the way that are pretty dangerous. Some ideas. There's some things that have been added to the gospel in their minds. So as you read through and study the writings of Paul, I think it's always important to know the lay of the land. It's always important to know the problem that Paul is addressing.
So if you read anything that Paul writes to the Corinthians, you've read through those letters before. You see some of the things that that church is dealing with. Anytime you read anything in Corinthians, the problem that Paul, I think, is addressing there is permissiveness.
They kind of have a real lax attitude. You know, their thing is like, oh, you know, we're so spiritual that sexual sin doesn't even bother us. We've reached a place where we're so enlightened in our faith that they can brag about all of this immorality, and they think that that makes them spiritual. And Paul says, absolutely not. You kind of missed the boat here. So he's addressing this really permissive kind of attitude, and he's trying to bring them in line with the truth when he's writing to the Corinthians, to the Galatians, the problem is kind of like at the other end of the spectrum. Their problem has basically become legalism.
Their problem is that someone has come along and taken all of what Paul has said, the foundation of the gospel being the work of Jesus Christ. And if you trust in what Jesus has done, you put your faith in him, in going into the water, having your sins washed away, and being raised back up to walk in new life, just as Jesus went down into the grave and was raised back up to walk into eternal life. Once we've done that, that's the gospel message. We're justified by that act of faith, Paul says. But some have come along to the galatian believers, and they've said, yeah, all that's well and good, but you need to, you know, Jesus isn't exactly enough to save you. You need to add a little bit of Moses back in there, too. And so their big thing is circumcision. Adding that into the gospel equation and Paul says, no. So that's sort of the lay of the land. That's what Paul's kind of addressing here. He has to correct that view. And so he confronts these believers. He confronts them by saying, basically, have I become your enemy? Because I'm here telling you the truth. The truth is what brought us together in the first place. The truth about Jesus, the gospel message that saves our souls. That's what's united us in the first place. So now he says, how have I become your enemy? Because I'm telling you the truth.
And I bring that up today because contextually, we're kind of making a little pivot here, okay?
But the idea still holds. In our world, there will be some who will view us as enemies, like we said, simply because we stand on the truth of God's word, because we want to cling to biblical definitions of things like marriage and life and gender and reality.
I consider abortion to be murdered. I believe marriage is a covenant relationship between a husband and a wife and the Lord, and that makes homosexuality a sin.
That gender is a category of creation. It's assigned by God. It's not chosen by man.
I feel like calling someone by their preferred pronouns is a very unloving thing to do because it's incompatible with speaking the truth in love.
So that's the same reason I can't support someone's delusion when they say that they identify as something other than a human being, to say things like that today.
Those things are not, in and of themselves controversial. They wouldn't have been controversial 50 years ago, 100 years ago, throughout the entirety of human history.
And yet, to hold those kinds of views today is to run the risk of making enemies culturally simply by telling the truth in the way that Paul describes here.
And so I think for us, as we examine where the Lord has positioned us, I think we have entered this time where it will require us to do exactly what Jesus said in Matthew chapter ten, where he tells us to be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.
Jesus is the only one that can make a snake an example for us. So the snake is understood in ancient culture as this shrewd animal, as an animal who is cunning, an animal who understands how to achieve his purposes. You see a little bit of that wiliness in the genesis three story. Satan takes the form there of that serpent, but he doesn't say to just be shrewd as serpents, because without this other piece, we might get out of balance. He says shrewd as serpents, but also innocent as doves, maintaining godly motivation, remembering that people who disagree with us are not our enemies, you know? And so I think the church is positioned in this place where we're going to have to be a school to teach others, to teach ourselves, to learn how to be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.
We think of the church that way as school for snakes and doves.
Seems like what Jesus would want us to do. So the question, I think, for us here is, are we willing to become someone's enemy for the sake of the truth? And that's really tough, because everybody wants to be liked, everybody wants to be accepted. And ultimately, though, that's not what is most important. We have to be willing to stand.
Sometimes that means standing alone. Sometimes that means standing out. But we have to be willing to stand on the authority of what God has said. We'll get into that here in just a moment to be a contrast to the way of the world.
Second Timothy 312 says, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
So the world will always hold that kind of position. Will we be boldly resilient?
Number two, I think we need to be boldly resilient when it comes to standing on the authority of God's word.
To me, this is interesting. The word bold or boldness, it's found in the book of acts more than any other place in the Bible.
I didn't know that until recently. I spent some time studying this and going through.
So I try to think about that. What can I learn from that? And I think, well, it's pretty obvious.
I mean, when you get to the Book of Acts, the tomb has been found empty.
And these disciples, they know it. They've been eyewitnesses to it. They have seen the empty tomb. They've seen the risen Jesus.
And so it's just natural.
There's a boldness that comes upon these believers when they realize that Jesus has conquered sin and death and Satan himself.
There's naturally a boldness. So where else in the scriptures would we expect there to be this testimony about boldness?
There is a real boldness that comes from that belief that the tomb was found empty.
A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to go and visit Israel, go to the holy lands there, and it was a life changing thing. I really hope.
I hope things change over there, not just for tourism, but just for, you know, the preservation of life and everything. But I do hope if you haven't had a chance to do that before and you're interested that you would have that chance because for me it just really opened up.
It opened up my eyes to the things that I've read about my whole life. You know, you get to see the sea of Galilee and the Mount of Beatitudes and the, the western wall of the temple, all of these great, wonderful sites and they're all really, really incredible. But for me, the best location of all was the site where we believe Jesus was buried.
And you go into this little garden tomb area and there's no body, the tomb is empty.
And you might think, you know, okay, you can go through that and tour it just like a tourist. You know, go and get your photos and, you know, come in, come out and, you know, big deal. And you can't say for sure this is the exact spot. You know, there's, there's a couple of locations and every, every one of them has, like, their claim to being the place. Right, I got it. Sure, I understand.
But for me just, I can't tell you the power of being in that space and the recognition that on the other side of the world right there where we were standing, you know, 2000 years ago, he lost his life willingly laid down his life. He said, father, it is finished. There's a relinquishment I'm talking about. You know, Jesus was murdered. No, he wasn't. He gave up his own life. He laid it down and willingly went to the cross.
And then they laid him in that tomb. And on that resurrection Sunday, he came walking out of there with the power of new life coursing through his veins.
And I don't think his heart has stopped beating.
And he lives to this very day. And there's something about seeing that, that for me just reinforced everything that I've ever read in God's word.
And it made me realize that there were probably ways in which I just had failed to really put enough weight into the authority of God's word. If you asked me before that trip if I believed in the Bible, I would have said absolutely, of course.
But there was something about being there and seeing that spot that confirmed for me the power of our God to raise a dead man back to life.
And if he can do that to save us from our sins, if he can do that to promise us eternal, everlasting life, then what can't he do, you know?
And if you believe that, then you come back to the things that he has said here and it just grounds all of that with a certain weight, you know, with authority, with power, that when God says something then he means that when God says something, things change. The Bible begins with him just saying, let there be. And it's so and so. There's power. When God says something, when he speaks, creation happens, whether it's in the very beginning or the new creation, all these things.
And so the authority of God's word came kind of flooding back over me, a real deep conviction in the power of his word. And if you believe in that word to that degree, then I think you start to fear God more than you fear man.
I think you begin to really treat his word with a certain sacredness because of the authority that is found there.
One of the things Jesus says in the book of acts, acts, chapter one, verse eight, he tells those apostles that they are to go be his witnesses.
And that greek word that forms that word witness, it's the same word from which we get our english word martyr.
I kind of struggled with that for a while, and I thought, okay, so Jesus saying he wants us to just go out and be martyrs, just go out and lose your life. And I think the answer is, well, yes and no. He's not just saying, go out and get yourself killed, you know, I don't think that's what he's saying. But he is telling us to bear witness to what God has done. He's telling those apostles that their job is to go out and bear witness to what God has done here in the resurrection and the empty tomb. And that message becomes dangerous. And that's what makes you a martyr. You're not a martyr simply because you get yourself killed. You're a martyr whenever your message is deemed so dangerous by the prevailing powers that the only way to silence you is to kill you, to take you off the board.
Have you ever noticed that for the apostles, the disciples, throughout the book of acts, over and over, every time you turn around, it's like they're going to jail. You know, they're being thrown in jail. They're being brought before the authorities. They're being questioned. They're having their wrists slapped all the time because that message was considered dangerous by those powers that held sway.
You think about, I was reading the other day, acts 16, Paul and Silas, they're in Philippi, and they're preaching the gospel, and they're sharing, and they've got this girl who's following them around. You remember this? And she's possessed. She has the spirit of divination and evil spirit. I don't know what your translation says, but she's following them around. She's kind of aggravating Paul so much that she just won't be quiet. And she's just carrying on, carrying on, and he's trying to preach the gospel and carry on, and finally he turns around, he's like, will you be quiet?
He casts out this demon from this girl, and then she's, like, back in her right mind. And you'd think everybody would see that as, like, the power of God on display, you know? But instead they don't, because she was the cash cow for somebody. And her owners take issue with the fact that now she can't prophesy or do whatever it was she was doing. And so they have Paul and Barnabas or Paul and Silas locked up, and that's what leads to the conversion of the jailer and the earth. All of that whole story. That's what leads up to it, because that message was dangerous, because that message had the power to change lives.
And a changed life begins with a change of heart. But then it comes out here into fruit that makes a difference. You remember what John the Baptist said? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.
Repentance isn't just saying, hey, I'm sorry. Right? Yeah, it's, I'm sorry, and the Lord has forgiven me, and then there's fruit that comes out of that, because the Holy Spirit is at work in me, continuing to keep my heart soft, but to make those actions reflective of the goodness of God and what it looks like to be forgiven and to walk in his mercies, all of that, it's powerful.
Jesus is saying, I think, to us to bear witness to him to that degree, to testify to the truth, to testify to his authority. And so that means faithfully upholding the things that God has said.
We live in a time when obedience, for many, has become like a four letter word.
I feel like nobody wants to hear about obedience, and everybody wants to kind of do their own thing. And, you know, don't. Don't fence me in. Don't tell me about, you know, the law of God or this or that.
I read a book recently. The author, she said something I thought was really, really powerful. She said, you cannot separate God's love from God's law.
You cannot separate God's law from God's love.
They're one and the same.
God only gives his law because of his love.
A lot of times we think, you know, if you love me, you just let me do whatever I want to do. You'll get out of my face. You won't, like, try to stop me. You'll affirm every bad decision that I want to make, and you won't make me feel guilty about it. And a lot of times people today will think, well, that's love. And if you don't do that to the nth degree, then you hate people.
That's kind of where we are in our culture and our definitions of, like, love and hate and all of this.
But you cannot separate the love of God from the law of God. Anytime he gives a law, anytime he gives a command, there is goodness behind it. He's not trying to restrict us. He's not trying to keep us from having fun. He's not trying to be a stick in the mud. He only wants what's best for us because he is good.
And as our creator, he knows what is best for us.
So you fall back on the authority of his word because you can trust his character. I'm telling you, that is just the best feeling in the world, to be able to fall back on the authority of God's word, to know you can trust that you can take it to the bank.
You don't have to be God.
You don't have to be judge and jury on everything.
You don't have to trust your judgment all the time.
That you can trust in the authority of his word.
That takes some resilience and it takes some boldness.
Last one here.
We need to be boldly resilient when it comes to proclaiming the name of Jesus.
It's really important that we demonstrate the lordship of Jesus through those bold actions, through bold love. I think a lot of christians think they are comfortable with that. Let me go serve in the name of the Lord and do that.
I want to go and be the hands and feet of Jesus. We hear that quite a bit, and that's all well and good, but there's times when serving in the name of the Lord means there are times when we do have to clear our throat and actually say to people, the reason we do this is because of Jesus and because of what he's done for us.
And that final move sometimes is tricky. There are a lot of times we don't want to do that.
2011, you remember when the tornadoes came through and, you know, north of us here, there's a lot of families that were really impacted by that. And I know a lot of congregations were out in the area trying to help out and do a lot of different things. We were doing that. I remember being with some of our members before. We had an elder at the time. His name is Paul Kelly.
Since gone to be with the Lord. But I was in a group with Paul, and we were going around and taking food to people, food and water, knocking on doors and giving out, you know, things. And as it came up, I was with a group of younger people. It came up like, okay, so what are we supposed to say when we knock on the door?
And some of them are saying, I don't really want to, you know, make a big deal out of being from the church. I'd like to just, you know, ring the doorbell and, hey, here's some water, and leave, you know, and Jesus said, if you give a cup of cold water, you know, then that's enough, or whatever. And I remember Paul in his really sweet, gentle way, kind of shot that down and said, now, wait a minute. Tell me again, why would we not take advantage of a chance to tell people about our Lord?
What's the thought process on that again?
And everybody was like, good point.
So there comes a point in time where we have to be bold in saying the name.
We have to be bold in telling people about Jesus.
And that's going to be. And that's the, that's the real moment. You know, I keep talking and my time's going up, so I need to. I'm gonna show you three scriptures here from acts where we see Paul doing this. The first one here you see on the screen, acts nine.
Barnabas took him, of course, Paul, and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord. This is not long after the road to Damascus. Jesus spoke to him and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. Paul wasn't waiting around.
Jesus saved him, brought him to his knees, gave him a second chance, and he immediately got out there and started telling people about Jesus. You know, it's been proven the time in life when you're the most evangelistic, the first six months after your baptism, what they say.
Not everybody. I know there's people out there, you know, knocking every door. And I know there, you know, God has really gifted some people with that. But there is a zeal and a passion that comes when you've just come out of the water and you remember what that old life was like and you got such gratitude in your heart, you know, like, that's what he does. And he goes out and he preaches boldly in the name of Jesus after this encounter with him.
One of my favorite passages here, acts 19. I want to share it with you. That's the first bell, right. I got five more minutes. Good so Paul entered. Was that the second bell?
That was fast, man. I've got five more minutes, okay? Acts 19. Look at this. Paul entered the synagogue. Can you see it? He spoke boldly there. That's his pattern when he goes to a new city. Okay. People become obstinate. They publicly malign the way. So Paul left them, took the disciples with him. They had daily discussions that went on for two years. And I want you to see this. And all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia, this is when Paul's in Ephesus. They all heard the word of the Lord.
Okay.
I read that a couple years ago, and I kind of had to stop.
I said, okay. Is that. Am I reading that right?
I know. Somebody might want to explain it away and say, well, you know, by all, it means most.
I'm just saying, like, what it says in black and white. All the people in the area heard the word of the Lord, right?
You read the same words I'm reading. They all heard the word of the Lord. It doesn't say they all obeyed the gospel.
That probably won't happen.
Although if you read Jonah, it has happened before. Jonah goes and preaches, and the whole city of Nineveh repents. You know, even their cattle wear ashes and sackcloth. That's crazy, you know, so who knows what God can do? All right? But all the people there, they heard the word of the Lord.
My question is, do you believe that can still happen today?
Is it with the same lord at work? Is it possible that everybody in Madison county could hear the word of the Lord?
400,000 something people living in this area now.
It's, you know, big business here. I mean, the chamber of commerce is loving it. People are moving here all the time. It's great. They're moving dirt all over this town building thing, you know, another dollar general. That's all we need. They're building things everywhere.
How many of those folks don't know the Lord?
And are we burdened by that because we've got a job to be bold in proclaiming the word of the Lord?
I went to see Nate Bargotzi the other night at the BBC. He's a comedian. He's very clean, very funny. Some of you might have been there. It's a great show. We were there, and he comes out. He has these guys come out who kind of like the warm up act, you know, it's kind of funny. A comedian comes out and tells jokes, and then the other comedian comes out. It's sort of weird, but that's what they do. So the warm up act comes out and he's like ten minutes into his set, he's telling jokes, getting everybody laughing. And kind of people are still kind of filtering in. And about ten minutes in, you know, the lights are down. They got the spotlight down on the stage. At the ten minute mark, all the house lights come back up and the fire alarm starts going off, sirens blaring and, like, I mean, just kept blaring, didn't stop, you know, and we all sat there.
VBC totally sold out. It holds 10,000 people. Do you know that? And not a one of them moved, me included. We just sat there. And the comedian, he kind of looked around. He was like. He told some joke about a fire alarm, and everybody laughed. And we just kept sitting there for ten minutes pretending like the fire alarm wasn't going off.
I thought, what if the building had actually been on fire? We. We'd be toast.
Sometimes we don't share the good news of Jesus, I think, because we don't want to be like that fire alarm, you know, we don't want to just be ignored because a lot of us, as we're sitting there, we were kind of like, eh, it's no big deal. That's probably nothing. Probably some guy leaned up against the fire alarm, it'll be okay. You know, so that locks us in. We don't want to share the good news because of that.
Do you know? We're not really responsible for controlling the outcomes, are we?
Not what Paul says. You know, I planted apollos watered who gave the increase. He did, right?
And the last verse. And I know I got to stop. Acts 28, he preached the word. This is the last verse in the entirety of the book of acts.
He preached the word with all boldness and without hindrance.
And my prayer would be that for us, as we take up this responsibility, to proclaim the name of Jesus with boldness and being resilient and all of that, that nothing would hinder us from that work.
It's too important.
Let me pray for you, and then whenever the third bell rings, we'll wrap up. Okay? Now let's pray. Father in heaven, Lord God, you're good. Your love endures forever. And for that we give thanks. Lord God, I'm grateful again for this congregation, for the gracious invitation to just be here tonight. Lord, I pray you continue to keep your hand on this church and all the good things that happen here. Father, I pray that you would put a burden on all of our hearts, every member of your kingdom. Here in Huntsville, in Madison, in Madison county. Lord, I pray that we could be united, Father, in a spirit of boldness and a spirit of resilience, as we seek to make much of the name of Jesus, as we seek to share the good news with those who are around us. Lord God, strengthen us and give us resolve, even for those who might consider us to be their enemies. Lord, help us to stand faithfully on the authority of your word. Father, help us to fear you more than anything else.
Help us to love you more than anything else. Lord God, I pray that the reading of your word tonight would just continue to grow in our hearts. Most of all, tonight, we thank you for Jesus. We pray this in his name. Amen.
