[Machine transcription]
I have said these things to you, to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues; indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. But I have said these things to you that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you.”
“Christ has risen! He has risen indeed!”
“Hallelujah! You may be seated.”
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Dear saints, I wonder how it was on this Maundy Thursday when Jesus is talking to the disciples and telling them, I’m ascending and for a while you’re not coming with me and there’s going to be some trouble. In fact, I’m sending you the Helper. You’re going to need him because you’re going to be persecuted. You’re going to be afflicted. The days are coming, Jesus says, then they’re going to kick you out of the synagogue. In fact, the days are coming when they’re going to kill you. And when they kill you, they’re going to think that they’re doing God a good work, a service. I just wonder what the disciples thought about that. Here they’re listening to Jesus who’s saying, I’m going to go and don’t worry, I’m sending the Spirit, but you also are going to die because of me.
I was thinking through the sort of process of maybe like St. Peter thinking about that. We know that they must have been thinking about it. On Easter Sunday. Remember, they were locked in the upper room for fear of the Jews. They just saw Jesus be arrested, whipped, stripped, beaten, crucified, buried, and they thought, we don’t want that to happen to us. A week later, they’re still in the upper room for fear, locked up. But then the Holy Spirit comes. We’re going to celebrate it next week on Pentecost. And now all of a sudden, those words, the courage that Jesus wants to give to them are starting to work in the heart of the apostles.
So they leave the upper room, they go out in public, they start preaching no matter what it costs. I think these words and some of the other words that Jesus spoke must have been in Peter’s mind when he saw St. Stephen arrested and stoned to death for what he was saying, or when he heard about James being arrested and having his head cut off. We know that they must have been thinking about this, Peter and John, when they were arrested by the Sanhedrin. And remember the Sanhedrin said, hey, stop preaching about Jesus! And their response was, well look, you guys can decide if it’s good for us to obey God rather than man, but we’re going to keep preaching.
And so they beat him. I mean, that couldn’t have been very nice. They beat these guys.”
“And those who were beating Peter and John the text says that they left the Sanhedrin rejoicing for having been counted worthy to suffer for the name.”
Now we start to see these words of Jesus starting to have their effect. This idea that they need not be afraid even of affliction, even of rejection, even of persecution, even of martyrdom. In fact, there were martyrs in there in the text. It’s hard to see it. But the Greek word is just the word that we translate as witness. So Jesus says, I’m going to send you the Holy Spirit who will witness about me. And then you will be my witnesses, my martyrs. So James and Peter and John and the other disciples are able to go out freely unconcerned about their own life.
Peter goes all over until he ends up in prison, and probably Rome with Nero is there. And I think it’s there in the year 64-66 AD that these words that Jesus speaks to Peter or the night before his crucifixion finally have their fullness when Peter is condemned to die and they’re going to crucify him and Peter asks to be crucified upside down because he dare not share the same kind of death that his Lord had.
It’s a pretty amazing thing. And here we see that when Jesus, and I want to think about this together, when Jesus is telling us that hey, the day’s going to come when they’re going to kill you and think that they’re doing a service. He’s not telling us that so that we would be afraid. He’s not telling us that so that we should run and hide. He’s not telling us that so we should all like have kevlar jackets underneath our clothes when we walk around or that we should he, he’s telling us that so that with the Holy Spirit we can be, we can live so free that we are not afraid to die.
Now, I think because one of the questions we have to ask is why? Why does the world hate the preaching of the gospel so much that it wants to silence it and put it to death? I mean, we know one of the reasons. We know that our own sinful flesh wants to silence the voice of God ’cause the flesh wants to do what the flesh wants to do and doesn’t want anyone to tell it what to do, so it’ll try to silence that voice of God. Okay, we understand that.
And we understand how the devil wants to silence the voice of God ’cause he’s the enemy of everything good and everything holy and everything wonderful. He is the enemy of God and all goodness. Aggressive against the preaching of the gospel. I mean, what the gospel itself says that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever would believe in him wouldn’t perish but have eternal life. And yet the world also stands up against the good news of the gospel and doesn’t hear it as good news, but rather as the worst possible news, the worst thing that it could hear.
Why? One of the reasons that the world hates the gospel is because the gospel sets us free. And especially those who would be King and a lord and a tyrant, and would rule people and have them under their own dominion. It simply has to be frustrated that the Christians are so free, even to die, free from the coercion of death.
I don’t, we’re working on it this morning. I’m still working on this idea, so I hope you’ll help me. You can send me emails today and say, Pastor, you should have said it this way better, but it’s something like this. Remember how in the time of the martyrs, this is like the old Roman martyrs, what they would say? They would call the Christians in and they would say, hey, you have to say Lord Caesar. And you have to offer this incense to Caesar. And then you can do whatever you want. And the Romans were pretty bold about that.
It wasn’t, they didn’t care what the Christians were doing at home. If you want to worship Jesus on your own time, it’s fine, they would say. If you want to gather every week, it’s fine. We don’t even need you to really believe that Caesar is Lord. We just need you to say it. And it’s no big deal. Just say it and just give the pinch of incense, and then go your way and do whatever you want.”
And the Christians can you believe it? They said: “No! We have one Lord, Jesus Christ; no other. He is King of kings and Lord of lords. We serve Him alone, and we’ll give you all the obedience that you deserve, Caesar. That’s what Jesus told us to give to Caesar what’s Caesar’s. But we will not give you what belongs to the Lord. We won’t worship you!”
And Rome, I think this is what happens. Rome, the tyrannical Romans said, okay, it’s no problem. We know just what to do with people who are resistant like this. Just threaten to kill them. That’s all you need to do. Just threaten to kill them and that’ll get them in line because everybody’s afraid to die.
So they said, okay, look, Christians, here’s the deal. We don’t want to kill you, but we’re going to have to if you don’t worship the Caesar and say, you know, offer this incense and say Lord Caesar, if you just would do that, everything will be fine. But if you don’t, we’re going to have to kill you. So you’re going to do it right? And the Christians said, can you believe it? No. We worship the Lord, and we will do nothing else. And even if it means that it costs us our life, even if it means we have to die for confessing Jesus, we’ll do it, we’ll confess Jesus.
This is the gift that Jesus gives to you and me and to all the baptized. He by his death and resurrection, by his forgiving blood, he sets us free from the fear of death. He tells each and every one of us that this life is only the beginning, and when you die it gets better. He tells you that this life of suffering, that he’s with you in the midst of it. And that because He’s claimed you as His own and because He’s destroyed the power of sin, death and the devil for you to live is Christ and to die is gain so that we long to be with the Lord, to see Him face to face so that death now no longer hovers over us as this intimidating fearful thing like it does apart from Christ but now it stands in fact as a gift
The very worst, so it’s like this. The very worst thing that can happen to you is that you die. And in fact it turns out that that’s the very best thing that can happen to you. So everything between now and then is also not that bad.
And the problem that the world has, and I suppose the devil has with that freedom that the Lord Jesus has given you both to live and also to die, is that it means that you can’t be coerced. You can’t be ruled over. Christians are an unruly bunch. Now, not really.
Because Jesus says, you know, honor those who have who are who rule and that I’ve given the sword to those on purpose so you can honor them as long as they’re doing what’s right but as soon as they don’t we must follow God rather than man and boy, oh boy do men hate that! Boy, oh boy, do tyrants hate it when you cannot be coerced. Boy, oh boy does the devil hate it when you cannot be intimidated.
So Jesus says the day is coming when they will kill you and think that they offer God a service. And that is the gift that He gives. This freedom to live and die. And look, I think the more ready we are to die, the more ready we also are to live.
To serve, to bless, to suffer in the Lord’s name with joy and hope and peace because God has received the offering of our Lord Jesus Christ; and because of His death you belong to Him, so that death nor life nor anything else in all of creation can separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.
Tells us these things so that we won’t fall away. He tells us these things so that we can remember that they’re going to happen. You might not be called upon to confess Christ in the face of extreme affliction and persecution. And I could die peacefully in my bed as an old man. This could be what the Lord has appointed for us.
But there could be days when we’re thrown out, arrested and beaten for the name, and no matter what, we rejoice for being considered worthy. To suffer for the name of Jesus. We belong to Him, and He belongs to us in life, in death, and even to life eternal.
So dear saints we rejoice that Jesus has sent us His Holy Spirit to give us this confidence, this bravery, this peace, may God grant it for Christ Whose risen, He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Now may the Peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Thank you.