If It Is of God
Download MP3Well, good morning, everybody. Good morning. Thank you. My name is Jeff. I'm one of the pastors here at Redeemer, and we are continuing our study of the book of acts, the acts of the apostles.
Jeffrey Heine:This is our 12th, sermon in this series. If you are new, if this is your very first time, worshiping here, first off, welcome. We are glad that you are here, and we're glad that you found a seat and a parking spot and all of those things. We are we are so glad to have you. We are in Acts chapter 5 this morning.
Jeffrey Heine:And you can listen back through all of the sermons so far on our website, and you can kinda catch up and you'll be ready for next week. Right? Sound good? Acts chapter 5. We're gonna be in the last paragraph of chapter 5.
Jeffrey Heine:What we have seen in these past 5 chapters, we have seen these disciples witnessing in Jerusalem. These disciples, they have been on the move, fulfilling what Jesus commanded them to do, also promised would happen, when he said to them that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And very soon, persecution tipping point is coming. It's going to happen with the execution of Stephen. And there in chapter 6 and 7, we will see the mission of God begin to move outward, to expand outside of Jerusalem.
Jeffrey Heine:And in the book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles, we see the Great Commission beginning to be fulfilled by these first witnesses. And our passage today, at the end of chapter 5, this is where that the waters of persecution kind of begin to boil over. And we see for the first time that the leaders don't simply want to silence the apostles. They want to kill them. They don't just want to prevent them preaching and to restrict them from preaching in the name of Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:They don't just want to deter them through imprisonment. They want to kill them. And that's where we pick up in verse 33. Let us listen carefully, for this is God's word. When they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them.
Jeffrey Heine: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. And He said to them, men of Israel, take care what you are about to do with these men. For before these days, Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about 400, joined him. He was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After him, Judas, the Galilean, rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him.
Jeffrey Heine: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 this undertaking is of man, it will fail. But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God.
Jeffrey Heine: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 in for the name. And every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus. This is the word of the Lord.
Jeffrey Heine:Yes, sir. Let's pray. Almighty God, you know each and every one of us better than we know ourselves. You know us, and you have set your love on us in Christ. We know that you love us because of Jesus, because of his cross and his resurrection.
Jeffrey Heine:And so we come here today as your children, and we need to hear from you. No one here needs to hear from me, but we, each and every one of us, need to hear from you. And so we ask that you would speak, For, Lord, your servants are listening. We pray these things in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.
Jeffrey Heine:One thing that I have learned over the years as a pastor, and perhaps even more as a father, is that you don't get to tell someone else how to feel. You've likely encountered this lesson on your own in some respect. We don't get to say, you don't feel that way. We don't get to say, you need to feel differently. Telling my kids to feel differently than they are expressing themselves is impossible.
Jeffrey Heine:When I go to them and and think about, what do we say to a child when they fall down and they hurt they skin their knee? We say, don't cry. Right? We rush in, and we we try to tell someone how to feel. And when we do that, we're telling them to just bury it deep down and never bring it up again.
Jeffrey Heine:And so often, we try to do that in our relationships, that this desire, my desire to tell someone else how to feel is really built on my own misunderstanding of how emotions even work. And it should be no surprise that emotions, our emotions, one of the most delicate aspects of humanity, is one of the most profoundly affected areas from the fall, when sin and brokenness entered into humanity. And so often, we have bad and wrong thinking about our feelings and the feelings of others. We barely have functional jurisdiction over our own emotions, and we certainly do not have jurisdiction over someone else's. And this can lead to all kinds of confusion.
Jeffrey Heine:And it can create a lot of conflict, conflict between friends, between spouses, conflict even within our own selves, and ultimately conflict with god. Have you ever said, God, I don't wanna feel this way anymore? People go to great lengths to feel differently. That's why Vegas exists. Right?
Jeffrey Heine:This is why the Hallmark movie channel exists. This is why spring break happens every year. It's to redirect our feelings, to manipulate them in a direction that we would rather have them go. But there's a problem with that. Because the credits roll, The vacation ends.
Jeffrey Heine:The buzz wears off. You sober up. You wake up alone. The person breaks up with you. The distraction fades.
Jeffrey Heine:And in the end, to take a quote intentionally out of context from the masterpiece, Jurassic Park, life finds a way. Life. The parts that are difficult and painful and sad and heartbreaking, the feelings that we try to numb or forget or deny, they find a way back to us. And I can pretend that every day is a Friday, but I know inside it's always Monday morning. So what then?
Jeffrey Heine:What then? What do I do then? When the wounds of yesterday are slow to become the scars of today, when the wounds aren't healing fast enough, how do I tell myself to feel different? Where is that abundant life? So hear this.
Jeffrey Heine:Our passage today in Acts 5, it's not typically known as a passage about emotions. And that's because it really isn't, at least not primarily. There are bigger things going on in this text, and we're gonna walk through a number of those things in our time together. But one of the treasures one of the treasures of the many treasures within this text is a very helpful insight about how we feel and how we walk with Jesus in the light of joy, even in the dark of pain. And the big question that we ask with any text is, what's going on here?
Jeffrey Heine:So last week, we looked at the apostles. They they were arrested because they were again preaching the name of Jesus. And they were healing people in the name of Jesus again. And the high priest and the other rulers, they they became angry again. And the apostles were busted out of prison.
Jeffrey Heine:An angel of the Lord actually broke them out of prison, and they immediately went back to the temple where they had already been arrested, started preaching the gospel of Jesus again, and were once again confronted by these leaders. The leaders arrested them, and this time very carefully, because they were afraid that if they came in too aggressively, they themselves, they were going to get stoned. They would have been executed by the crowds. And so they bring the apostles to this council of leaders, and they are asking them, why didn't you listen to us? And Peter says this in chapter 5 verse 29.
Jeffrey Heine:We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus whom you killed by hanging 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. And when they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them.
Jeffrey Heine:The next time we see these leaders get enraged in this way, that's when Stephen will be stoned to death. So remember, in chapter 4, the apostles, they're they're preaching the good news of Jesus. They are arrested, threatened, and released. They immediately go and they pray for boldness. And then they return to the temple and preach.
Jeffrey Heine:They're arrested again. Threatened again. The angel of the Lord releases them from prison. They return to the temple. They go back to preaching the gospel.
Jeffrey Heine:They are arrested, and they are brought to this council. And these leaders don't understand why they keep doing this. And they've been very unsettled, these leaders, because there is this one particular incident that happened just a few chapters back. There was someone that was healed. Now, lots of people have been healed.
Jeffrey Heine:Lots of people have been healed in Jerusalem as they are witnessing, but one in particular stands out to these leaders, because this was someone they knew. Now there's so many people moving in and out of Jerusalem. It's a very busy city. And so they would see or hear stories of people being healed, and they're like, well, how how do I not know that that's some kind of a trick? Or maybe they weren't that sick to begin with.
Jeffrey Heine:But there was this one man that was healed at the temple. This one man that they had seen, he was over 40 years old. He had never walked before. And these leaders had passed him in the street as he was begging in the street. They passed him day after day, week after week, year after year.
Jeffrey Heine:And then they see that same guy walking around. And when they ask these apostles, how did you do this? They say that this man is walking because of Jesus. And these are the people that they they thought, I thought we addressed this. I thought that we already started to put an end to all this madness when we executed that Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:But here, these apostles are running around saying that they have seen Him, saying that He is alive, and he's still doing stuff. And so now they want to execute them. And as they're gathered together, an older, respected rabbi named Gamaliel stands up. We're we're later gonna read about one of his students. His name is Saul of Tarsus.
Jeffrey Heine:We'll get to that. It's a couple of chapters away, but it'll take us a while. Couple of months. Should be this year. Alright.
Jeffrey Heine:But he speaks to them. He he he says, take the apostles out of this room. And so they take them out, because he wants to speak privately with these leaders. And here, we get the wise counsel of Gamaliel, and this is going to these angry leaders of the council. Acts chapter 5 verse 35.
Jeffrey Heine:And he said to them, men of Israel, take care what you are about to do with these men. That's his primary recommendation. Be careful. And then he offers 2 case studies, 2 examples, 2 historical situations that should shape the way that these leaders think about and deal with these apostles. The first example, Theudas.
Jeffrey Heine:He claimed to be somebody, but in the end, he came to nothing. Then, Judas, the Galilean, he gathered a people up, but in the end, they were all scattered. And in light of those two examples, Gamaliel offers his advice. Keep away from these men and leave them alone. And the rationale that he's applying here is that if this plan, if this undertaking, if this work is from just people, it will self destruct.
Jeffrey Heine:But if it's from God, you won't be able to destroy it. Now, he's half right here, because in an earthly sense, you know, what we see is that godly people throughout the scriptures and even in our present day, godly people are destroyed. They are, they are put away, in in kind of this language, that they are destroyed and killed. They come to nothing. But in an ultimate sense in an ultimate sense, the things that are from god, eternally, God's people and God's plans will prevail.
Jeffrey Heine:And he ends his address with a closing thought. Again, be careful, because you might be found opposing God. And the leaders, they they take his advice, but not all of it. They did not just leave the apostles alone. They didn't dismiss them like they did in the previous arrests and interrogations.
Jeffrey Heine:Before these leaders let them go, they beat them. Do you all remember, those of you that were alive, in 1994, there was an American student in Singapore that was arrested because he was vandalizing some street signs, and they they thought that maybe vandalizing some cars. But he was arrested, and he was sentenced to caning. So it was an American citizen in Singapore who was going to face corporal punishment. And and it became such an international scandal that even the the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, weighed in on the situation, and they actually reduced the sentencing.
Jeffrey Heine:They couldn't do away with it at all, all of the sentencing, because they they felt like they had to stand their ground and prove their point. But he was caned. And when the sentencing came down and it was reduced, it was reduced from 6 Cainan's lashes to 4. The form of beating that these apostles likely faced was the standard corporal punishment of scourging. It was a whipping, and each lash would tear into and tear off flesh.
Jeffrey Heine:This standard sentencing was 39 lashings. It's a series of 2 whips across the back and one across the chest. That would have repeated 39 times. And these angry, enraged, murderous leaders, they were relenting from killing them. They took this advice that they were gonna let them go, but they did not leave them alone.
Jeffrey Heine:They beat them. Why? Because these leaders do not believe that there is any chance that these witnesses are of god. They don't believe there is any chance that they are going to be found opposing God. And so keeping in mind that these apostles would have been terribly injured, We come to one of the wildest things we've seen in acts so far, and we've seen a lot of wild things.
Jeffrey Heine:At the end of verse 40. 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 that the Christ is Jesus. Did you catch it?
Jeffrey Heine:They left the presence of the council where they had just been beaten, rejoicing. That's what's happening in our passage this morning. So what does it mean for us today? It means that when we are following Jesus, as the children of God, when we are obeying Jesus from our hearts, and are repenting and being transformed by the renewal of our mind, when we pick up our cross and follow Jesus, we are following a purpose and a person that cannot be destroyed. Gamaliel says, if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail, but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them.
Jeffrey Heine:If it is from man, he says, it will self destruct. But if it is from God, you won't be able to destroy it. And as the rescued and redeemed children of God, we are following a person and a purpose that cannot be destroyed. And that means that we can live a rejoicing life even when suffering, and pain, and sorrow, and depression, and loss, and every other challenge and emotion comes to us, we can rejoice. And when those experiences come, and they will, we who are in Christ don't simply have a happiness in the midst of our sorrow.
Jeffrey Heine:We are strengthened to experience that sorrow in the midst of joy. How is that possible? God given joy, and that joy expressed in rejoicing is eternally possible for the believer because you are eternally in Christ Jesus. We are in him, and he is our joy. So let's explore this further because joy is an unusual thing.
Jeffrey Heine:And first off, we have to get on the same page of what we even mean by joy. I, like you, remember the day in 2nd grade when I got my first thesaurus, and that thesaurus was so special to me. I wrote my name in it. I looked up words. But it can be tricky, because one word doesn't always mean the exact same thing as another word.
Jeffrey Heine:And if we all come in here with different understanding of what joy is, we're probably gonna get even more confused. So what do we mean when we say joy? In thinking about joy, it it's helpful to have this shared definition. And and for us to kind of arrive at that, I'm gonna offer 2 things, that I think might be helpful in understanding joy. First is a bit of language and then a quote.
Jeffrey Heine:So first, the Greek that's used here with joy, there is a connection in this word and the word for for joy and for grace. They share a root. Joy and grace rooted together, because a definition for rejoicing can be understood as the joy of grace. The joy of grace. It's a response to the grace of God.
Jeffrey Heine:Rejoicing is this expression of the joy of grace. The second helpful insight into understanding joy is a quote that I found from Kay Warren. She's an author and a cofounder of Saddleback Church, along with her husband, Rick. And her definition of joy is one that I have gone to many times over the years to find clarity. And she writes this, quote, joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life.
Jeffrey Heine:It's the quiet confidence that ultimately, everything is going to be alright, and it's the determined choice to praise God in every situation, end quote. Joy, like peace and hope, it's not simply a feeling. It's a context. It's a place, a situated place for the soul. And it's set for us in this person and hope, Jesus Christ.
Jeffrey Heine:It's the settled assurance, this gift of a settled assurance. It's the gift of quiet confidence, and it's this response of determined, chosen praise. And when we begin to see this, when we begin to realize that in Christ, we have a joy that's deeper than a feeling, that it's not determined by our circumstances, then we are liberated to live all the emotions of life in the presence of God. We are also able to understand that the gift of joy in Christ is something that cannot be taken away from us. Our circumstances cannot steal our joy from us.
Jeffrey Heine:That doesn't mean that our joy is not susceptible to circumstances. It can be forgotten, neglected, confused. But there is that choice that Kaye is talking about. The choice to praise. This choice confronted the apostles that night they were beaten.
Jeffrey Heine:Will you choose to experience your pain, to be honest with your hurt and your sorrow, and also choose at the same time to praise God in his grace? They chose rejoicing. And this means for us that we can be sorrowful in the midst of rejoicing. We can be happy in the midst of rejoicing. We can be angry in the midst of rejoicing.
Jeffrey Heine:We can be depressed in the midst of rejoicing. Because joy is not just a feeling, but a place, a rootedness in Jesus. And we have full permission to feel the things we are actually feeling, and to hold them before God with a confident hope that he is sovereign, that he will bring resolution and relief in his own time, and we can choose to praise him in every circumstance. And that's what the apostles are doing. They weren't pretending that the whips didn't hurt.
Jeffrey Heine:They were worshiping God in the fullness of his grace while they bled. They were suffering in the midst of their joy, and they were still choosing to rejoice in grace. There's often confusion about how we're supposed to process our emotions as Christians. Most of the time, we talk about emotions in this sense that they displace one another. A feeling displaces another.
Jeffrey Heine:Let me explain it like this. When I was joyful, and then something made me sad. The sadness displays it displaces that joy. Fear displaces hope. Anxiety displaces peace.
Jeffrey Heine:But when we consider our place in Jesus, that we are in him, and that the spirit is in us, that that Jesus himself is our joy and our hope and our peace, then the wide range of feelings in life don't displace us from where we are in him. It's the work of the Holy Spirit. He places us, fixes us in Christ Jesus, and no experience or emotion can thwart or undermine this work of the spirit. He has fixed us in place, rooted in Jesus. We shall not be moved.
Jeffrey Heine:Nothing, Paul says, can separate us from this love. If it is of God, Gamaliel says, you cannot destroy it. And unfortunately, this beautiful truth, that we are in Jesus, is so often misunderstood or even misused, and it results in this wrong thinking. Wrong thinking that says, since you are in Jesus, you should not be experiencing any negative emotions. No sadness, no anger, no fear.
Jeffrey Heine:And if you do, then something is wrong with your faith in Jesus. I I heard this nonsense this past week. Some of you might have seen it in the news that there was a pastor out in California that ended his life last week, 2 weeks after a mandatory sabbatical for his mental health. And I went back, and I watched his sermons. 30 years old.
Jeffrey Heine:I watched the sermon the week that he ended his own life, and I saw myself up there. And I heard people who claimed to be Christians this week say he must not have been a real believer. His depression was an evidence that he wasn't a real Christian. And I know that some of you, like me, went to public school, and so we know a couple of cuss words. And I and them you can apply them to this scenario of what garbage this is.
Jeffrey Heine:Because that has that has no place in the church. Have you ever experienced that kind of confusion before, though? This way of thinking that leads Christian men and women to question their place in Jesus when they experience something difficult or negative. Again, this is what I would call that displacement, that one thing is just supposed to replace the other. If you're feeling this, then you replace it, and you replace it with another feeling.
Jeffrey Heine:And it's this carousel of feelings and emotions just going round and around. And you start to think, maybe I don't have enough faith, that something's wrong with me, Or maybe I'm not even a real Christian. Have you experienced any of those thoughts before? Because I have. There's an amazing quote.
Jeffrey Heine:I don't have a citation, so I'll paraphrase it. It is not the quality of your faith that makes you a child of God. It is the object of your faith. Jesus makes you a child of God. Your faith does not make you a child of God.
Jeffrey Heine:Your faith is a gifted response to Jesus making you an adopted child of God. It is not the quality of your faith. It is the object of your faith. Because we will always find fault in the quality of our faith, but we will never find fault in the object of our faith, Jesus Christ. Instead of thinking that our negative emotions just move us out of the promises of god or that they should call into question the authenticity of me believing the promises of god.
Jeffrey Heine:We have to learn how these emotions and challenges and this suffering can occur in the midst of the promises that we have in Jesus. We have to learn how to experience the challenges of life in the midst of Jesus himself, and how we, like the apostles, can choose to rejoice. So how should we understand joy? And what's what difference does it make? This context, this place of joy, that assurance of God's grip on me, that confidence in his ultimate and indestructible plan, this chosen praise, it's given through grace by God in Jesus, confirmed and sealed by the holy spirit.
Jeffrey Heine:And it means that we can be rooted in this joy throughout our Christian life. The joy of grace that is given by the living Jesus strengthens us and gives us a place in which we can live out all of these different aspects of life before God, the happiness and the sorrows. That joy, that joy in action, that joy played out in our day to day is a resilient and hopeful rejoicing. These apostles, just beaten 39 lashes, they were not giddy. They were bloodied, pained, hurting, probably wondering if they might be killed next.
Jeffrey Heine:Most of them would be. But they were strengthened in their hearts to know the joy of grace from God. Joy of grace. That was their place in Jesus. Where all these realities of life would ebb and flow, pain, sorrow, sadness, happiness, anger, hurt, excitement, all of that in the midst of joy.
Jeffrey Heine:And to the person that says, I don't feel joyful. If we have a bad definition of joy, we can get confused as to whether or not we are joyful people. And when we break that unhelpful belief that joy is just a synonym for happiness, then we are better able to see that the joy that Jesus gives us is unshakable. We are if we're confused as to what joy is, then we we might not be realizing how joyful we really are. So to that person who doesn't feel joyful, consider your place in Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:Consider his constant grace in your life. Not how you are doing as a Christian, but what Christ has done to make you a child of God. Knowing that you are a child of God, believing that he really is in control, and then choosing to praise even during pain and suffering, that is the expression of joy. That is joy lived out. They beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and they let them go.
Jeffrey Heine: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 that the Christ is Jesus. Their spirit directed rejoicing. Their joy of grace now emboldens the apostles to go right back to where they have been arrested 3 times already, and to speak the name that they were commanded never to speak again. Their joy in Jesus made these disciples resilient saints, who do not have to pretend that their suffering doesn't matter, but they will choose to rejoice because they are living in Christ Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:They are living in the midst of Jesus and his great joy. And may we too find this strength to rest and rejoice in the midst of Jesus today. Let's pray. Spirit, we ask that you would speak to the depths of our hearts, the depths of our souls, that you would strengthen our minds, that we would think rightly of you, that we would follow after you with all that we are, that we would obey from the heart, Lord, that we would trust the things that you have said and the things that you have promised. That we would trust you.
Jeffrey Heine:And, Lord, that we would we would adore you. We would worship you. Lord, in this time, we ask that you would help us to see ourselves rightly and to hold ourselves before you, knowing that our only hope is Jesus and finding rest and joy for our souls. We pray these things in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.
