Hero
Download MP3Our scripture for tonight comes from acts 517 through 42. But the high priest rose up and all who were with him, that is the party of the sadducees and filled with jealousy. They arrested the apostles and put them in the public prison. But during the night, an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out and said, go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life. And when they heard this, they entered the temple at daybreak and began to teach.
Speaker 1:Now when the high priest came and those who were with him, they called together the council and all the senate of the people of Israel and sent to the prison to have them brought. But when the officers came, they did not find them in the prison, so they returned and reported, we found the prison securely locked and the guards standing at the doors, but when we opened them we found no one inside. Now when the captain of the temple and the chief priest heard these words, they were greatly perplexed about them wondering what this would would come to. And someone came and told them, look the men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people. Then the captain with the officers went and brought them but not by force for they were afraid of being stoned by the people.
Speaker 1:And when they had brought them, they set them before the council and the high priest questioned them 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. But Peter and the apostles answered, we must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.
Speaker 1:When they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them. 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 them in outside for a little while. And he said to them, men of Israel, take care what you are about to do with these men. For before these days, Thetis rose up claiming to be somebody and a number of people, a number of men about 400 joined him. He was killed and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing.
Speaker 1: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. So in the present case, I tell you. Keep away from these men and let them alone. For if this plan or if this undertaking is of man, it will fail.
Speaker 1: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 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. Then they left the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. And every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.
Speaker 1:This is the word of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:Thanks be to God. If you would pray with me. Father, we've come here tonight to meet with you, to be changed by you. Through the power of your spirit, I I pray that we'd be more like your son, Jesus. We're gathered here because of him, because of his work at Calvary, because at great sacrifice to himself, he has paid for our sins.
Joel Brooks:We don't come before you standing in our own righteousness because we have none. We come here claiming Jesus and trust and not be remembered anymore. But lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
Joel Brooks:As I've been reading through the book of acts, one of the things that has struck me is that the book feels really foreign to me. There's just parts as I'm going through it that I have a hard time relating to as, you know, 2000 years removed as an American who has everything provided for me and just a much different life. At first when I was reading through it, I thought, the reason it feels so odd to me is maybe it's because of all the miracles. I mean, there are so many miracles there. You know, we don't we don't have many of those miracles here at Redeemer.
Joel Brooks:We don't have, you know, tongues of fire coming and resting on people. The tongues, speaking in tongues, interpreting tongues. Right before this in Acts 5, it says that people laid out their sick just so the shadow of Peter might come across them. And they were healed. I mean, if you lied to these apostles, like we saw last week, you were struck dead.
Joel Brooks:So there was all these extraordinary things that were happening. But the more and more I read this book, I realized that's not what seems so foreign to me. It's not the miracles, that makes it hard for me to relate to these people. It's their mission. These were a people consumed by a mission.
Joel Brooks:They they were not, people just kinda strolled through life daily, dallying maybe in a little church work here and a little good works there. That's not what consumed these people. These people were focused. Consumed by a mission that makes me, when I look at my life and comparison, look somewhat reserved, somewhat unfocused, blurry. And I don't think I'm alone in this.
Joel Brooks:If I am, just just hear the soliloquy of me talking to myself. When I look around at the church at large, what I usually see is a busy, but bored people. Busy, but bored. People who, who will spend a great deal of time, energy, and money trying to entertain themselves. Every year, churches spend more and more time, more and more money on things that I would classify not as mission, but as entertainment.
Joel Brooks:And I'm dead serious. I think when I, when I look at many churches, I think they more closely resemble a country club than they do a training training ground. But enough about the church, you know, personally, what about me? I could say the same for me. As a parent, I have to ask myself questions like, am I more concerned about the the comforts of my child than instilling a mission in my children?
Joel Brooks:Is that is that what I'm as a father, do I see do I want to provide them every comfort comfort or do I want to provide deep within them this passionate mission and focus for their life? Last week, we saw how these early Christians, they were described as having one heart and one soul. One heart and one soul. Maybe you've heard that passage preached on a number of times. I've heard that passage preached several times and every time it's the theme or the thrust of it has been community.
Joel Brooks:That's, that's what that passage is about. And, community is a good thing. I'm, I'm not putting down community. I would, you know, love, for everybody to experience community, to go to a place where you're known and you're loved and everybody knows your name, where, you know, everybody hears your best friends. We all go and play Frisbee together.
Joel Brooks:We go on double dates together. You know, all this. I would love to have community like that. I'm not putting that down. I get that.
Joel Brooks:But when Luke describes the early churches having one heart and one soul, that's not what he is talking about. Community is never meant to be an end in itself. We don't have community just to have community. Like, that's our goal, it's just that we have community. That's that's not the purpose.
Joel Brooks:We have community in order to fulfill our mission. That's why we have community. The early church shared one heart and one soul because they shared one mission. They were focused on that one mission. They understood their purpose that God was forming, establishing this unique community in order to display or to declare the glory of God to the world.
Joel Brooks:That was their purpose. You know, God is always declaring his glory. He's always declaring it. He declares his glory through creation. I mean, you go outside in this weather and and you just want to rejoice and and cry out, you know, God, you're you're glorious.
Joel Brooks:If you go out at night, get away from the city, and you look up at the stars, and you realize that God created every star, God has named every star, you're realizing that God is displaying his glory. When you begin thinking, and for me, one of the things I love thinking about is just how the universe has no end. It's just ever expanding. There's there's no boundaries. It just goes on and on and on.
Joel Brooks:And our God is bigger than that. He created that, and my brain wants to explode. And the reason it does that is because God is saying, I did this in order to glorify myself, so that so that I might receive glory. And so we could think of all those things nature, miracles, the stars, the ever expanding universe, all these ways that God declares his glory. But the primary way that God displays his glory is through the formation of a people called the church.
Joel Brooks:That is the primary way. He wants to form a people that so erratically changed by him that they reflect him, that they begin looking like him. And then that's the church's mission. It is it is to display the glory of God through his son, Jesus Christ. We reflect that, we display that, we proclaim that.
Joel Brooks:And this mission has not changed in 2000 years. That is still our church's mission. Mission. You realize that if if you embrace that mission, if you really embrace it, then you cannot fail in it. You cannot.
Joel Brooks:I mean, if if happiness is your mission, you're going to fail. You will. If making money is your mission, there's going to be times where you're good at it, but there will be times when it will fail you or you will you will not make any of it. If living a healthy life is your mission, it will ultimately fail. But if glorifying God by declaring his lordship and his salvation, If if that is your mission, it cannot fail because that is what God created you to do.
Joel Brooks:He put it in your DNA and you're doing what you were supposed to do. And that mission is not dependent upon your wealth. It's not dependent upon your education. It's not dependent upon your social status or your job. It's not dependent upon your health.
Joel Brooks:That mission doesn't depend on any of those things. It it is completely dependent on the Holy Spirit at work in you wherever you're at. A matter of fact, I'd say God has uniquely gifted and qualified each one of you to achieve that mission, in a way that I can't. In a way that the person to your left or to your right can't. You have been given unique gifts, placed in a unique position, sit in a circle sphere of influence that no one else has.
Joel Brooks:Only you. And if you embrace your mission, you will not fail. You can see this in this early church that we've been studying for last few months in acts. They were made up of mostly poor, uneducated people, very few resources, no social status, but they embraced their mission and they exploded in growth. I know that there's, there's some people here that are somewhat skeptical of Christianity.
Joel Brooks:You might have a hard time reading some of the miracles we've looked at in the book of acts. That's fine. We'll talk about that later. One thing that is above any dispute though, is the explosive growth of Christianity. You cannot deny that.
Joel Brooks:Any secular historian is going to tell you that Christianity went from just a few people to overcoming half of the Roman empire in the early 4th century. Before, you know, Emperor Constantine became a believer, there was already over half of the population was Christians. That is an explosive growth. And the world has never seen a movement like that. Never before, never since.
Joel Brooks:What we see here in the book of Acts, and we know it, it's a fact. It's not just here in the Bible, it's in it's in any history history book you would read, that the church exploded like this from a few uneducated poor people with no social status. And we see this described in acts, in acts 2, we find 3,000 people converted just like that. In chapter 4, it says 5,000 more were converted. It's no so now we're at 8,000 people within just a few days, and they would only count men.
Joel Brooks:I don't know why, but they would just count men. So let's say, you know, if if you count their families, you're you're talking 16 to 20000 people at least who have come to know Jesus like that within days. And so this, this movement of God is unstoppable. This mission of God cannot be thwarted. It is moving forward.
Joel Brooks:And one of the main reasons that this mission went forward in such power is because the Christians never gave up on their mission even when they were persecuted. Severely persecuted. As a matter of fact, Christians were fearless when they were persecuted. The more they were persecuted, the more that they grew. Perhaps some of you have heard the famous quote from, one of the, old church fathers, Tertullian, in which he said this, the blood of the martyrs is seed.
Joel Brooks:The blood of the martyrs is seed. The church grew out of all of the Christian persecution. He rightly understood, I believe, that there is no better evangelistic tool we have been given than persecution. So so rather than trying to to flee from it or run from it, we we can embrace persecution when it comes to realizing that there's no greater tool that the church has to proclaim the glory of God than when persecution comes our way. So when the early Christians were brought before the lions to be killed, You have all these stories of them singing,
Jeffrey Heine:singing.
Joel Brooks:When they were about to be beheaded, they would pray for their executioner. And no one died like these Christians. No one faced death like the people the early church faced death. And so the world would look at that and they noticed. They said something is completely different about how these people face death.
Joel Brooks:They're talking about something real. And they listened and the church grew. And when you read through acts, I want you to see that. I want you to see the explosion of the church happen as we start moving in the chapters before as they are persecuted. Also, when reading through acts, I want you to try as much as possible to put yourself in the shoes of those early believers.
Joel Brooks:Try as much as possible to put yourself in their shoes. So so when you read about Peter and John being brought before the Sanhedrin on trial in chapter 3, put yourself in their shoes. What would you do? What would you say? Because they saw what happened to Jesus before, before the same group of people, before the Sanhedrin, before the high priest, Jesus was killed.
Joel Brooks:So Peter and John certainly expect to be killed, yet they don't stop speaking. Here in the chapter we just read, they're, they're arrested again. Once again, they're before the same council. They've got to be thinking, you know, put yourself in their shoes. What, what what's gonna happen?
Joel Brooks:They've got to be thinking, We're gonna be killed. We were spared once, not this time though. They killed Jesus. We disobeyed him last time. Certainly, they're gonna kill us.
Joel Brooks:Yet, they didn't stop speaking. A matter of fact, they say, we cannot stop speaking what we have seen and what we have heard. We have to testify to this. They say things like, we're gonna keep people tell, keep telling people about Jesus because we must obey God rather than men. They're fearless.
Joel Brooks:They're they're heroic in the face of that persecution. There there's a temptation, when you're reading through acts, especially if you're somewhat of a skeptic to just kind of think a lot of this stuff is made up because it kind of has this propaganda feel, You know, these disciples, apostles coming up there like, we will only obey God rather than men. You know, we cannot stop speaking what we have seen and what we have heard. You know, it almost has this kind of propaganda. Did they really say that?
Joel Brooks:I would say that the Bible is crystal clear at their failures as well. This isn't made up. I mean, Jesus calls Peter, Satan at some point. Peter denies Jesus at some point, and we we have all this written about their failures. One of my favorite little failures, a little nugget is at the very end of Matthew 28 when Jesus is ascending, and he is saying, all power and authority is given to me.
Joel Brooks:And here he is ascending into heaven, going to his throne, and it's all the believers looking at him. And it says this little line, it says, and some doubted. Some doubted. Look it up, Matthew 28. I mean, you're watching Jesus ascend in all glory.
Joel Brooks:And it says, and some doubted. Why would you write that? This isn't propaganda. It's saying that, hey, this is real people struggling with real faith, even in the signs of just enormous evidence. Their failures were huge, but here, they were bold.
Joel Brooks:They were heroic because God was working through them and they embraced their mission. We get a hint. At one of the reasons I think they were so fearless if we take a closer look at Peter's speech that he gives when he's on trial. Look at verse 29. It says, But Peter and the apostles answered, we must obey God rather than men.
Joel Brooks:The God of our fathers raised Jesus His name is, and his name is, and his name is, and his name is, and his name is, and his name is, and his name is, and his
Jeffrey Heine:name is, and his name is, and his name is, and his name is, and his name is, and his name is, and his name is, and his name is, and his name is, and his name is, and his name is,
Joel Brooks:and savior to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him. Peter calls Jesus a really interesting term here. He uses the word words, leader and savior and it's leaders, somewhat interesting word choice for Peter here. Matter of fact, our staff on Mondays, we get together and we usually just read through the story and just first impressions.
Joel Brooks:My first impression, I was like, leader, unusual word. Why in the world of all the terms that are at all the names at Peter's disposal, does he choose the word leader here? The word is archegos. If you want to impress people by, you know, saying you know a Greek word, it's archegos. And it's used 3 other times in the New Testament.
Joel Brooks:Let me just kind of walk through those real quickly. You have, in Acts 3, it's translated author. Very similar context. Peter stands up and goes, you killed the author of life. And that word author is the same word, archagos leader here.
Joel Brooks:It's translated as founder in Hebrews 2. Hebrews 2 10 says this, for it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist and bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. The King James version, for those of you who brought that, you'll have the it translated captain. He's the captain of their salvation. Finally, in Hebrews chapter 12, it is also translated founder.
Joel Brooks:It says looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame. And so you can, you can go through your Bible and you'll, you'll find that word, archagos, translated a number of different ways. It could be translated prince, captain, pioneer, leader, champion. And depending on what translation you have, it's going to be all over the board when you get to this one word. And the reason you have all of these different words used to describe this one word is because it is a very rich word.
Joel Brooks:That's just it's hard to say in one word. It's, it's full of meaning. It's just packed. Probably the best way to translate this, the best, I think modern word we have is hero. Hero.
Joel Brooks:Peter says that Jesus is our hero and our savior. If you do a word study on, on that word, archegos, you'll find that it's often used to describe if you had a trailblazer, if you went before everybody. He went and he would conquer a new city, rid it of its evil, and then sit and reign as king. So he was a trailblazer. He was a conqueror and he would sit and he would reign as king.
Joel Brooks:You wrap all those together in one person, you get archegos, you get this hero. Tremper Longman, who is a famous bible scholar, he, he cheesily translates this word as superhero. George Guthrie and his commentary, it's a good commentary on Hebrews, calls Jesus this, the real Superman. It's how he interprets that word. And I know that sounds somewhat ridiculous, and I'm not giving you license to go and, like, start writing really cheesy children's songs, out there.
Joel Brooks:And I know there's a bunch that use that, but I do think they're right on. Do you know where you will find that word used most in ancient literature? Used to describe Hercules. It's an interesting, that's, that's the word that's used to describe Hercules. The man who, who was half man, half God, the one who did all these heroic deeds.
Joel Brooks:We have inscriptions, we have coins, we have literature that all use this word to describe. And sometimes the two words are paired together in which it's hero and savior, Hercules. Peter here, I think the reason he is pulling this out is he's saying, hey, he's using a word they would identify with, a word that they would understand. He's saying, Jesus is our real hero. Earlier says they already recognized them as having been with Jesus.
Joel Brooks:So, well, the reason we're we're trying to be like Jesus is because Jesus is our hero, in a sense. He's the one that they look to for their deliverance. He is the one they look to for their strength and for their courage. They look to their hero. You know, I think the more and more I kind of dug into this word study, I started thinking, we all love stories of the heroic.
Joel Brooks:We do. You know, this is true. I don't think just of our culture. I think that's true of every culture, Every time we love hearing about people who overcome great obstacles, a great sacrifice to themselves to do some great deed, bring deliverance, go against the odds, come out victorious. I don't know if any of y'all watched, you know, when Dakota, Meyer was given the medal of honor.
Joel Brooks:I was listening to it on NPR as I was driving around, and I just, man, you're just drawn in when you hear about the heroic. Just wow. It makes it makes you in a way want to become a better person. It makes you want to make sacrifices when you just, when you hear of the heroic deeds of this man. Peter is saying, look to Jesus.
Joel Brooks:I believe that the reason we are so drawn to these heroic stories is because God has created in every human heart, a language that can understand the gospel. And so when we hear they're heroic, and we respond to what God is saying is, I've made you to understand and appreciate Jesus, the real hero. When your heart is stirred on these smaller heroes, what it's really doing is crying out, there is a true hero. It's written on every heart. We have this longing that one day, good will triumph over evil.
Joel Brooks:We have this longing that one day a real hero will come and rescue us and restore us. And ultimately that longing is for Jesus. And so the reason that I think Luke includes this here, is because Peter and the apostles of the early church, the only reason they could be brave, the only reason that that they could oppose or stand up so fearlessly in in the midst of this persecution is because they found their courage by looking at their real hero, Jesus. At the risk of being somewhat cheesy, you know, you you hear this in sports and in battles all the time, you know, win one for the Gipper. You know, for you, Tolkien nerds out there, all 5 of you, maybe.
Joel Brooks:I mean, you got to love it when Aragorn storms the dark towers. You know, and he holds up his sword and he says, for Frodo. You know, for Frodo. Little Frodo, who at great sacrifice to himself is bringing salvation. Let's do it for him.
Joel Brooks:Let's remember his sacrifice. Let's remember his courage. In a very similar way, Peter is calling Jesus that, our hero. Perhaps the best, or actually it is the best example of this is in Hebrews 11, known as the Hall of Faith, in which Hebrews 11 just goes through all of these heroes of the faith. And he just lists them out, the author of Hebrews does.
Joel Brooks:And so you have things like, we look at Abraham and how he offered up Isaac. We look at Moses and how, he he refused to be treated as the son of pharaoh. He he chose rather to be with the people of Israel. And he goes through all of these different examples. We we see these heroes who were burned by fire, heroes who endured the sword.
Joel Brooks:Some were sawn in 2, and just goes on and on and on in Hebrews 11 of all of these heroes we have of the faith. And then we get to Hebrews 12 which says this, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a crowd of witnesses, since we're surrounded by all of these heroes, let us put aside every weight in the sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus, the archagos. Looking to Jesus, our leader, our founder, our author, our true hero, the perfecter of our faith who for the joy set before him endured the cross. And so the reason we see that Peter is not faint hearted, Peter is not trembling here is because he is looking towards his hero. And he is enduring that race that is set before him.
Joel Brooks:But this this brings up a possible problem. When you look at how Jesus died, it seems anything but heroic when you look at how he died. I mean, we just talked about, you know, Christians going to the lions and they're singing. How did Jesus go to the cross? I mean, we worship a savior who is crying out on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Joel Brooks:That's that's that's what he cried. He seems like he died the exact opposite of all of our, Christian heroes. So you got to kind of ask when looking at how Jesus died and looking at how these other people died, like, how is Jesus the ultimate hero? We have to realize that a hero is not one who has no fear. A hero is one who feels fear, but overcomes it, and acts anyway for the salvation of others.
Joel Brooks:And if you define heroism as that, that is Jesus. Nobody feared death or the cross like Jesus did. No one. You go to the garden of Gethsemane. The man sweat drops of blood.
Joel Brooks:He is trembling saying, God, I don't want to go to that. Anything but that. Is there any other way? I know we've had this plan for all of eternity, but is there any other way? I don't want to go there.
Joel Brooks:He prays. Nope. You're supposed to go there. Alright. God, is there any other way?
Joel Brooks:Three times he prays and he is he is so stressed, anxiety has so gripped him as he is thinking about the cross. His capillaries are busting, and he is sweating blood. He's scared to death, and he's not scared of physical pain. That's not it. When when Jesus was on the cross, he doesn't cry out, my hands, my hands, how they hurt.
Joel Brooks:My head, my head. These crown of thorns are pressing in. My back, my back, they flogged me. He doesn't cry any of that because that is not the source of his pain. What he cries out is, My God, my God, you've left me.
Joel Brooks:It was it was the feeling of the being forsaken. My God, he dreaded that in a way that we can never comprehend. Because for all of eternity, Jesus has only known perfect communion with the father. Think about that. Endless, forever, perfect unity with the father.
Joel Brooks:Perfect unity with the father. And then for this one moment, saying, you're not going to feel any of that. My son, you will feel forsaken. You will cry out and you will not hear from me. Instead of feeling my love that you have always felt for all of eternity, you will only feel my wrath.
Joel Brooks:For all of eternity, yes. I've looked at you as if you were the the delight of my eyes because you were perfectly righteous because you are. But now I will look at you as if you were dressed in filthy rags, and I will pour my wrath on you. And when Jesus looks at what is coming, he is scared out of his mind. But he overcomes that fear and he goes to the cross.
Joel Brooks:And because he did that, and when we're persecuted, all we have to fear is, what? Physical suffering? We don't have to we don't have to fear separation from God. We don't have to fear judgment. There's nothing to fear.
Joel Brooks:And so we look at Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. We look at our archigos, our hero, and we get strength to endure whatever is laid before us. And we embrace our mission as the church. We fearlessly follow our hero who has given us his spirit. I pray I pray as a church, we would embrace that.
Joel Brooks:That God would allow us, stir us to embrace our calling and our mission to reflect his glory. Pray with me. God, we do worship our archigos, our hero. We're not gonna leave here just trying to be better, trying to do greater deeds because we're in a fail in our righteousness as filthy rags. We're going to leave here rejoicing in the work of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:And as we think of Jesus, and we think of of our hero going to the cross, and we think of everything that he has endured, that gives us strength to endure anything. It gives us strength to let go of money, strength to use our time, how you would have us use our time. It gives us strength to embrace our mission as a church. So I pray that to your spirit, that would be pressed in us. And I pray this in the power and the authority of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen.
