Eagles are fascinating birds. Did you know a mother eagle constructs her nest with thorns and jagged rocks? These are the first things she lays down. Then she covers that prickly nest with wool, feathers, and the fur of animals she has killed. That makes the nest soft and comfortable, a nice home for the new birds that are about to hatch.
They enjoy that home for a while. They have their food delivered and dropped right into their mouths, and they are living in the lap of luxury.
But not for long. The time comes when the mother eagle stirs up the nest. She picks at the soft, downy material and casts it to the wind. The young eagles begin to feel the sharp thorns and jagged rocks, and after a while they become so miserable and unhappy, they fly away. (Ruby Miller, #6904)
It seems that God is stirring up our nest a little these days. The American evangelical church had gotten comfortable, almost complacent. But now, all of a sudden, we’re beginning to feel some sharp thorns and jagged rocks. The Judeo-Christian world view is no longer the dominant world view in our culture, with the result that some of us are being arrested or fined simply for taking a biblical stand. At the very least, we’re viewed as intolerant bigots, and accused of “hate speech”.
So what are we to do with the increasing persecution we are experiencing these days? What are we to do with God stirring up our nest? What are we to do with those sharp thorns and jagged rocks? And how can we turn those thorns into opportunities to soar like an eagle? How can we turn our persecution and pain into greater progress for the spread of the gospel?
Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Acts 8, Acts 8, where we see how the First Church handled their persecution and pain.
Acts 8:1b A great wave of persecution began that day ( i.e. the day of Stephen’s stoning), sweeping over the church in Jerusalem; and all the believers except the apostles were scattered through the regions of Judea and Samaria. (ESV)
The place just got too uncomfortable. They were feeling the sharp thorns and jagged rocks, so they all flew the nest, all, that is, except the apostles.
Acts 8:2-3 (Some devout men came and buried Stephen with great mourning.) But Saul was going everywhere to destroy the church. He went from house to house, dragging out both men and women to throw them into prison. (ESV)
Saul is like a wild boar, trampling, uprooting, and destroying everything in his path. Saul is an animal, ready to maul any Christian in his clutches.
Acts 8:4 But the believers who were scattered preached the Good News about Jesus wherever they went. (ESV)
The word for “scattered” is an agricultural term, which describes the sowing of seed. Saul tried to obliterate Christianity, but God used him to scatter it like seed.
It took Acts 8:1 to accomplish Acts 1:8. In Acts 1:8, Jesus told the First Church to be “witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, AND to the end of the earth.” But those first believers got stuck in Jerusalem. It was home. It was familiar. It was comfortable. So God had to make them very uncomfortable. God had to “stir up the nest,” so to speak.
Acts 8:1 – “There arose a great persecution against the church,” and the believers scattered into Judea and Samaria, never to be heard from again. Is that what your Bible says? NO! “Those who were scattered went about preaching the Word” verse 4 says.
GOD USES SUFFERING TO SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT HIS SON.
God uses pain to bring about the greater progress of the Gospel. God uses persecution to spread the Good News about Jesus Christ. It’s the Law of Spiritual Thermodynamics: The greater the heat, the greater the expansion.
In 1928, SIM missionaries entered Ethiopia. In those first few years they worked hard but saw few results. After seven years, they could count only 17 baptized believers.
Then Mussolini’s Italian army invaded the country. The missionaries were urged to leave, but they stayed on for two more years. Then in the spring of 1937, they were forcibly evacuated, leaving behind 48 believers.
One of the missionaries writes, “As we turned the last corner around the mountain and saw in the distance the wave of their hands in farewell, we wondered what would happen to the little flickering flame of gospel light that had been lit in the midst of so much darkness. Would these young Christians…be able to stand under the persecution that would inevitably come?”
And persecution did come. Believers were imprisoned and beaten. Many died, but the church grew. In 1941, the war in Ethiopia was over. In 1942, the missionaries were allowed to return, and what they found was absolutely amazing.
The 48 Christians they had left 5 years before had become 10,000 Christians. And instead of one fledgling church, there were nearly 100 congregations. (From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, pp.298-299)
God accomplished more through 5 years of persecution than 19 missionaries were able to accomplish in 9 years of perspiration. God uses suffering the spread the word about His Son. God uses pain to bring about the greater progress of the Gospel, but only if we’re willing to speak out for Christ wherever we go.
If we’re going to benefit from suffering, if we’re going to benefit from pain, if we’re going to benefit from persecution, then we must continue to…
PREACH THE WORD.
We must continue to proclaim Christ. We must continue to talk about him wherever we are, even if it is far out of our comfort zones. That’s what Philip did.
Acts 8:5-8 Philip, for example, went to the city of Samaria and told the people there about the Messiah. Crowds listened intently to Philip because they were eager to hear his message and see the miraculous signs he did. Many evil spirits were cast out, screaming as they left their victims. And many who had been paralyzed or lame were healed. So there was great joy in that city. (ESV)
People all over the city were coming to know Jesus, and they were praising Him! God had turned Philip’s pain into great joy and praise. God had turned opposition into a greater opportunity for service. But only because he was willing to continue proclaiming Christ. He didn’t let the persecution shut him up.
Instead, he let it open him up to greater possibilities, and that’s exactly what we must do today. Don’t let your pain shut you up. Instead, let it open you up to greater opportunities to share Christ.
Elizabeth Dole spoke of her grandmother who she said “practiced what she preached and lived her life for others. When it became necessary for her, in her nineties, to go into a nursing home, she welcomed the opportunity. ‘There might be some people there who don't know the Lord and I can read the Bible to them.’” (Elizabeth Dole, Christian Reader, Vol. 34; www.Preaching Today.com)
I like that woman’s attitude. She didn’t complain about her situation. Instead, she took it as an opportunity to share Christ.
In parts of Iraq, with ISIS on the rampage, Muslims are coming to faith in Christ. That’s because Christians who, while in danger themselves, are reaching out to Muslims as they all flee ISIS in other parts of Iraq.
Even more amazing is what is happening in Iran, now considered to have the fastest growth of Christian believers in the world! According to a recent news release from Elam Ministries, at the time of the Islamic revolution in 1979, there were no more than 500 Christians from a Muslim background in the country. Now “a very conservative estimate puts the number of Christians in Iran at 100,000,” said David Yeghnazar of Elam Ministries, speaking in the news release.
He continued, “The generally-accepted estimate is 370,000. Some believe there are 700,000, some over a million. Operation World puts the annual growth rate at 19.7 per cent. If that is the case, Iran will very soon have one million Christian believers.”
Yeghnazar believes there are a number of reasons why the church has grown so rapidly.
“The Iranian identity is not rooted in Islam and there is real disillusionment with the religion,” he said in the release. “The house church movement has emerged, allowing Iranians to go to Christian meetings easily and not risk all by going to a public church. New Christians have zealously shared the Gospel and Scriptures and there has been on-going prayer for Iran around the world.” (Jeremy Reynalds, Assist News Service, September 22, 2014; www.assistnews.net/Stories/2014/s14090117.htm)
Some of us are worried about the growing opposition to Biblical Christianity in this country, but we have it nowhere near as bad as they do in Iraq and Iran. Besides, God can turn that opposition into opportunities to share Christ just like he is doing and has done all over the world. God can turn our pain into greater progress for the Gospel, but only if we continue to proclaim Christ in the midst of that opposition, only if we continue to speak of Him wherever we find ourselves, even if it is far out of our comfort zones.
If we’re going to thrive and grow in an increasingly hostile culture, we must we must continue to preach the word. And we must…
PREACH THE WORD TO ALL WITHOUT PREJUDICE.
We must proclaim Christ to everyone without showing favoritism, without excluding anyone.
That’s what Philip did. He is in Samaria, a place hated by most of his friends. Jews despised Samaritans, but Philip is there preaching to them, casting out demons, and healing them. Philip even preaches Christ to some pretty weird people.
Acts 8:9-11 A man named Simon had been a sorcerer there for many years, amazing the people of Samaria and claiming to be someone great. Everyone, from the least to the greatest, often spoke of him as “the Great One—the Power of God.” They listened closely to him because for a long time he had astounded them with his magic. (ESV)
He had the people fooled by his trickery.
Acts 8:12-13 But now the people believed Philip’s message of Good News concerning the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ. As a result, many men and women were baptized. Then Simon himself believed and was baptized. He began following Philip wherever he went, and he was amazed by the signs and great miracles Philip performed. (ESV)
Simon comes face to face with real power and is astonished.
Acts 8:14-17 When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that the people of Samaria had accepted God’s message, they sent Peter and John there. As soon as they arrived, they prayed for these new believers to receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them, for they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John laid their hands upon these believers, and they received the Holy Spirit. (ESV)
Now, the Bible makes it very clear that every believer receives the Holy Spirit the moment they put their faith in Christ. In fact, Romans 8:9 says, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.”
So why then did these Samaritan believers not receive the Holy Spirit when they believed in Christ, like the rest of us? Why did they have to wait for the apostles to come and lay hands on them?
Well, it might help you to know that this was the first time since the birth of the church that the Gospel spread beyond the Jewish people. Up until now, only Jews were hearing the Gospel and responding. Now, the despised Samaritans were responding to the Gospel, and there was a huge potential for Jewish Believers to continue despising these new Samaritan Believers. Unfortunately, our prejudices are not automatically eliminated when we trust Christ.
So God has to demonstrate to the Jewish Believers that these new Samaritan Believers are just as much a part of the church as they are. God wanted the Samaritans to receive the Holy Spirit in a dramatic way similar to the way the original 120 Jewish Believers did at Pentecost. That way, no one could say, “They’re different than us. They’re second class Christians, because they didn’t have the same experience with the Spirit that we had.”
So Peter and John come down from Jerusalem. They lay hands on the Samaritan Believers, and those new Believers receive the Holy Spirit in the same way the original Jewish Believers did. They receive the Holy Spirit with a great demonstration of power. And by this, God makes it very clear that there is no distinction between Jew and Samaritan.
The same kind of thing will happen in Acts 11, when the Gospel first goes to the Gentiles. The original Gentile believers will receive the Holy Spirit with a great demonstration of power, and God will make it very clear that there is also no distinction between Jew and Gentile.
There are no second class citizens in God’s Kingdom. All are equal in value and worth before Him, and He wants them all to come to faith in His Son and receive the same Holy Spirit.
(Show the video clip: For the Birds)
For the Birds is a short film included as part of the Monsters, Inc. DVD. In the clip, several small birds fly onto a telephone wire and begin to squabble—chirping and pecking at each other. All of a sudden, they hear a loud squawk. Looking over, they see a giant, funny-looking bird perched on top of a nearby telephone pole. When the big bird sees that it has attracted their attention, it smiles and waves.
The little birds respond by mimicking its funny look and chirping quiet jokes to each other. Once they have had a good laugh, they walk along the telephone line to regain their privacy. But the big bird is in a friendly mood. It flies toward the group and settles on the line directly in the middle of the little birds, causing the phone line to bend down. The little birds slide down with it until they are all crammed together beside the big bird.
This does not make them happy, and they begin to chirp and complain loudly. The big bird misinterprets their protests, and begins to sing along with them. In frustration, one of the little birds pecks the big bird on its toe, causing it to swing down so that it is hanging onto the line upside-down.
Thinking that they have found a way to be rid of their burdensome intruder, other little birds begin to peck at the big bird's grasping toes, which begin to let go of the line one by one. The little birds too far away to peck began to chirp in a unified chant, egging on their comrades.
Soon, the big bird has stretched the wire almost to the ground and is hanging on with only one toe. As the little birds continue pecking away, one of them realizes their precarious position—not to mention what will happen if the big bird lets go completely. The little bird gets the attention of the other birds, and frantically signals for them to stop pecking. But he is too late.
The big bird's last toe gives way, and the phone wire springs violently upward, like a slingshot. All that remains of the little birds is a shower of feathers. The big bird falls to the ground, then climbs to its feet. About that time, one of the little birds falls next to him—now completely naked. After letting out an embarrassed squeak, it grabs one of the big bird's feathers and hides itself. The big bird laughs uncontrollably at this development.
In other moment, the rest of the birds plop down into the picture. Surprised and humiliated, they all run behind the big bird, who seems happy to have finally made some friends. (For the Birds, Pixar, 2001, directed by Ralph Eggleston; www.PreachingToday.com)
Sometimes God brings some “strange birds” into our world: People who are different than we, People with a different skin color, People with a different income level, or just people with different preferences and priorities.
Don’t reject them. Instead reach out to them, because God wants them to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. God wants to give them His Holy Spirit as they come to faith in Christ, so that together we can demonstrate the grace of God to a world in such desperate need of that grace.
If we’re going to turn our pain into praise, if we’re going to turn opposition into opportunity for the spread of the Gospel, then we must preach the Word to all without prejudice. And finally, we must…
PREACH THE WORD TO ALL WITHOUT PRICE.
Never ever put a price tag on the Gospel. Rather, Share Christ without expecting anything in return. That’s what Peter and John did.
Acts 8:18-24 When Simon saw that the Spirit was given when the apostles laid their hands on people, he offered them money to buy this power. “Let me have this power, too,” he exclaimed, “so that when I lay my hands on people, they will receive the Holy Spirit!” But Peter replied, “May your money be destroyed with you for thinking God’s gift can be bought! You can have no part in this, for your heart is not right with God. Repent of your wickedness and pray to the Lord. Perhaps he will forgive your evil thoughts, for I can see that you are full of bitter jealousy and are held captive by sin.” “Pray to the Lord for me,” Simon exclaimed, “that these terrible things you’ve said won’t happen to me!” (ESV)
Simon tried to buy the power of God, but he learned very quickly that God’s power is not for sale. He learned very quickly that those who try to buy it face the judgment of God instead.
It’s a dangerous thing to link the gospel with wealth, and yet many do it today. You have the health and wealth preachers on TV – People like Joel Olsteen, Kenneth Copland, and Joyce Meyers. They promise wealth, or whatever you want, if you just confess it. “Name it and claim it,” they say. “Blab it and grab it.” They have tied wealth to the Gospel, and some of them even promise extra blessing if you send them money.
Oh, I know they’re entertaining, inspiring speakers, but their message is nothing but new-age, Hindu religion, dressed up in Christian terminology, with some Bible verses thrown in to make it sound good.
Peter would say to these people, as he said to Simon, “May your money perish with you.” Peter and John were adamant. The power of God is not for sale. They preached the word without price, and so should we.
My dear friends, I don’t care how much money you put in the offering plate. I don’t care how much money you give to charity. I don’t care how much money you donate to good causes. You do not have enough money to buy one square inch of real estate in heaven.
All the money in the world couldn’t buy it – it’s too valuable; and besides, Jesus already bought you a mansion in heaven. He paid the price of His own shed blood on the cross. So all you need to do is A – Admit your sin. B – Believe that Christ died for you and rose again. And C – Call upon the Lord and ask Him to save you.
The Bible says, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). Won’t you do it today? Admit your sin. Believe that Christ died for your sins and rose again, and call upon the Lord.
If you will, then you will have the assurance of heaven. You will have God’s Holy Spirit dwelling within. You will have an eternal, personal relationship with the Living Lord Jesus Christ Himself. It’s all free of charge. All you need to do is ask.
Now, that doesn’t mean you’ll never have any problems. That doesn’t mean you’ll never experience pain or opposition in this life. The Bible makes it very clear, “Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12)
But when you DO know the Lord, He turns your pain into praise. He turns opposition into opportunity for the spread of the Gospel if you will take that opportunity to preach the Word to all without prejudice and without price.
According to new research from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity one out of five non-Christians in North America do not “personally know” a single follower of Christ. That's over 13 million people (13,447,000) who don't have a Christian friend or even acquaintance.
The percentages get higher for certain religious groups. For instance, 65 percent of Buddhists, 75 percent of Chinese people, 78 percent of Hindus, and 43 percent of Muslims in America do not personally know a follower of Christ. (Abby Stocker, “The Craziest Statistic You'll Read About North American Missions,” Christianity Today, 8-19-13; www.PreachingToday.com)
Think of what could be done for the spread of the Gospel if each of us who followed Christ made a special effort to become acquainted with someone who doesn’t know Him yet.
Todd M. Johnson, one of the researchers for the study, said that “relatively small gestures – like inviting families into your home for Thanksgiving dinner – can have a bigger impact than huge mission campaigns.” And he’s absolutely right.
I urge you, as our culture becomes more diversified and increasingly hostile to our Christian values, don’t retreat. Instead, like the early church, reach out with God’s love and the good news of Jesus Christ especially to those who don’t share our values, and let God use you to bring others to Himself.
