Counted Worthy To Suffer

And so the captain of the guard comes and they come in verse 26 and they arrest the apostles. They didn't take them by force, though, because they feared the people, feared that the people would stone them. These are guys that were well trained. They were trained by the Roman army. They were well equipped, well armed, and yet they were afraid of the people.

So they carefully, gently bring the apostles in. And really, it just goes to show you that the apostles realized God was doing something because they could have just said, no, we're not going. But they submitted and went with the authorities back into the Sanhedrin, come before the Sanhedrin again. It's amazing. The Bible says that God will even make your enemies to be at peace with you as you're

submitted to him. They come before the Sanhedrin and look at the first question the Sanhedrin asks in verse 28. We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name. They were afraid to say the name of Jesus. Too much had been happening in the name of Jesus, so they didn't want to say Jesus. We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet you have filled Jerusalem with

your teaching and you are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. That's their first statement to these guys after bringing them back in from the Temple Mount, which just goes to show you how much jealousy messes with your mind. What's the first logical question you'd want to ask these guys after bringing them back in from the Temple area? How'd you get out?

We were in a locked jail. How did all you guys get out of jail? I mean, I'd love to have asked that question, but they were so blinded with jealousy and so into themselves that they said, we warned you guys not to do this, not to say anything or teach anymore in the name, this name, and you're going around and filling Jerusalem with your doctrine, with your teaching, and you are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. Well, and they more or less tell him that you are guilty of this man's blood.

It was you that hanged him on a tree. Remember back in Matthew 27, verse 25, when they brought Jesus before Pilate and Pilate said, I find no fault in him. And he says, he's your king. And they cried out, we have no king but Caesar. And he says, well, I can free somebody who you want me to free. And they say, give us Barabbas. And what do you want me to do with him?

Well, crucify him. Well, he couldn't come to crucify him. He couldn't find anything wrong with him. So he goes and he has him flogged and he brings him back out after having him beaten. And he puts him before the people and he says, behold, your king. And they again say, we have no king but Caesar. And he says, well, what do you want me to do with this man?

I find no fault in him. And they say, crucify him. And he says, bring me a pan of water. And he washes his hands and says, I'm washing my hands of this. This man's blood is not on my hands. And they cried out, let his blood be on our heads and on the heads of our children. And now they're saying, you're trying to make it look like his blood's on us. Well, it is.

They denied him. And they cried out that that happened. And it has. And it's the consequences of sin. And so often when sin entices us, we look at it and we see it. And it's enticing. And, oh, it'd be so nice to, but we, yeah, I know. But then it tries to lure you in. And you finally come to that point of submitting no matter what it is. And you just say, well, let the consequences be on my head.

And you indulge in that area of sin. And then you wake up and you're facing the consequences. And you cry out to God, why? And God's saying what it was. I mean, you know, I thought they're not. It's too bad that we can't realize that before we step off into the sin. God's given us his word to show us that. But we usually just blindly reject it. Verses 30 and 31.

You killed him, but God raised him from the dead and has exalted him to his own right hand as prince and savior, that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. Again, the disciples seek to cause these leaders to own their own sin that, yes, they did. Yes, they did. They are guilty of that sin. And then wonderful repentance and forgiveness would be given to them.

Now, I don't know if you've noticed that before or not, but usually we just think about God giving us forgiveness. In verse 31, it says that he gives us repentance and forgiveness. You thought about that? You ever thought about what that is? See, God so loves you and desires to be in a relationship with you and knows that sin interrupts that relationship and wants to remove that sin so bad that not only has he

provided a way to do that through the cross of Christ, but he he gives you repentance. He says, this is what I've done to cover that sin. Now, please, here's repentance. I give that to you. Just accept it and come. And the forgiveness then is there as well. Now, what that means is when we stumble, when we go into sin and fall and we're there and we realize God's offer now to help cleanse us from that sin and we reach out and take

his hand and we repent, we own the sin. Lord, I am guilty. I have done that sin. Please forgive me and cleanse me. He does it immediately. And on you go with him. You see, right before that, it says that he is the prince and savior. And that word prince can also mean captain or guardian or guide. It's used again in the book of Hebrews as Jesus is the captain of our salvation.

It means that the Lord is guiding us. Here's here's us dead in sin. Here's salvation that God's accomplished for us in Christ and the perfection of that. And he's guiding us to that. He's bringing us from the point where you accepted Jesus as your savior to that point where you finally put off this flesh and get the immortal body and no more sin. He's guiding us to that point.

That's the fact that he's our prince and savior. Now, along the way, we stumble and fall along the way. We sidetrack ourselves. And he's waiting for us. And we finally repent. And he doesn't go. Now, I told you so. I told you that's what you should have done. And you did it anyhow. Pretty stupid of you to do that. And I've told you, I don't know how many times and yet you went ahead and did.

He doesn't do that. That's he gives us repentance and he gives us forgiveness so that when we repent, Lord, forgive me, save me, Lord, bring me out of this. He goes, OK, let's go. And we're back on track. We're going. He wants to get you there. He wants to get you to the completeness of your salvation. You have been saved because Jesus died for you on the cross.

You are progressively receiving and understanding what that salvation is all about as you walk with him, but you are coming to a point where you will be completely freed from the bondage of sin. We're looking for that time when God puts the flesh off and we receive our immortal bodies. I'm longing for that. I'm sick of this one. I'm sick of the times I screw up.

I'm sick of the times I willingly and knowingly after having taught this song before the Lord, you know, why? Why did you do this? What are you doing, Lord? And what do you want me to do? Takes me time to learn that, too. And I hate myself when I don't. I'm longing for that time to put this flesh off and put on the immortality. And Jesus says he's taken us there.

He's bringing us to that point. Well, finally, Gamaliel stands up and asks that the apostles be taken out, that they be set outside for a minute. And he addresses the council and in verses 33 to 39 urges them to think about their actions, urges them to think about what they're doing because of the things that have happened previously and they've come to nothing. So if this is of human origin, it's going to fall.

If it's of the Lord, though, you're going to find yourself fighting against God. And that's a lose-lose situation. Now, in this group of people, hearing Gamaliel is probably Saul of Tarsus. He is a member of the Sanhedrin. And he's watching what's coming down. He's seeing these disciples and the activity of the disciples and wondering what in the world is happening.

He's developed an animosity towards them. But in the midst of this, God is moving. God has a schedule for Saul's life. God has a schedule to bring Saul to the point of faith in a short time. And these words will have made an impact on his life by the time God brings him to faith on the road to Damascus shortly. But Gamaliel has some important things to say there.

If it's of man's origin, it'll come to nothing. If it's from God, though, you can't fight it. God will provide. God will take care. That's always been a philosophy of ministry we've had here is if God's guiding, God's going to provide. If God's raising it up, God will sustain it. We don't build boxes and try and shove people in it to keep something going. If God's raising up a particular area of ministry, then go, man.

Lord bless you as you seek to reach out in this particular area. But if it's time to shut it down, it's time to shut it down. God's if God's in it, it's going to fly. If God's wanting to do something different, it's time to close it down. Gamaliel says that to them. So they decide to bring the disciples back in and they warn them again not to say anymore and in this name, not to speak anymore or teach anymore in the name of Jesus.

And then they had them flogged. Now, a flogging is a flogging. That's just the same wherever. It was 40 lashes minus one for mercy. The one lash that they didn't give you was their mercy. But 39 lashes with a cat and nine tails with the little pieces of bone and rock attached to them that would cut into the flesh and rip open your back. And they gave them that each of those disciples, they gave them the 39 lashes.

And I would imagine that as with any criminal that is flogged, they seek to gain a confession from them as they flogged them. And so the intensity of the lash gets more and more, the more you give. So it's harder and harder by the time you get to 39. Now, in that, I'm assuming that they probably were telling them, no longer will you speak in this name of Jesus.

No longer will you teach anymore. You're going to get more of this. And it would be really easy to say, no, I'm not going to teach anymore. You're going to get more of this whack. And it would be really easy to get discouraged. And yet it says that they left rejoicing because they've been counted worthy to suffer disgrace for the name. And I'm assuming that's just an assumption

that at the time they were going through this, they were realizing God's sovereign schedule, that God was in control of this. And this is what we're moving into now is his selected suffering, that God had selected them to go through this. He'd selected the suffering that they were enduring. And it was the same type of suffering that their Lord had endured. And I'm assuming it could have possibly been like a like a football team.

You know, hey, Peter, remember, this is what happened to Jesus. You know, yeah, that's right. He endured this for me. Lord, give me the strength to endure it for you. Like that story we read about the Filipino girl, that Jesus had bled for her and now she wanted him to know that she was bleeding for him. And they were strengthened through their suffering, strengthened by the breaking that God was delivering to them

because they realized it was part of his schedule and they realized that he had selected the suffering for them to endure. Now, that's not a foreign concept. That's not just something I'm pulling into the text. You can go clear through the word and find the areas where God selected the different suffering. You can go back to Joseph and find out how God moved Joseph

and selected the different sufferings that he had to endure to raise him up, to save his people. You find the sufferings that Daniel had to endure, that David had to endure. Job, it's spelled out for us. Satan had nothing on Job. God's the one that dangled Job in front of Satan. Said, hey, have you seen my servant Job? Job said, yeah, we got all our stuff. Take the stuff away.

That's OK. Take the stuff. Don't touch him. Takes all his stuff, his family. Seen my servant Job. There's none like him, righteous. You have a flesh for flesh, you know. If you touch his flesh, he'll curse you. That's OK, you can touch his flesh, but don't take his life. Gives him blood. Selected, measured suffering for Job. God was doing something, manifesting his glory through a servant that was surrendered to him.

When Paul, Saul of Tarsus is finally called, as he's on the road to Damascus, he's blinded and he's led to Damascus. And God calls a man named Ananias and says, Ananias, I want you to go and lay your hands on Paul. And he's going to see and then I want you to baptize him. And Ananias says, this is the guy that's been arresting Christians like us and hauling them to Jerusalem to be killed.

And God says, I know. But I want you to go because this is my chosen vessel, who I've chosen to be the apostle to the Gentiles. I must show him what he has to suffer for my name's sake. And so he showed Paul what Paul's going to have to suffer, the things that Paul's going to have to suffer. And in 2 Corinthians chapter 11, Paul gives us kind of a recount of some of those things.

But he knew going in, there was going to be some suffering. There was going to be some areas where God was going to need to bring him through selected times of suffering in order for his glory to be manifested. And these disciples understood that in these last couple of verses. And I believe God wants us to understand that. You see, if you understand that God's supernatural signature is on your life,

he's moving in your life. And if you're spending time with him, you see that you're understanding that and realizing that he has a sovereign schedule for your life. And that even though your particular schedule has certain interruptions, you can rest in the fact that God's sovereignly got a schedule mapped out and he's going to complete the schedule. And you can rest in that.

You can trust him with it. Then when you come through these times of suffering, and you may say, well, wait a minute, I'm not a missionary anywhere. I haven't. Yes, you are. You're a missionary, right? God's called you to be light and salt right here. You are his missionary. And maybe you have a cancer diagnosis or some debilitating thing that you're facing right now,

some injury that you've received, some crushing blow that you've gone through in your home life, maybe a divorce, maybe a death of a loved one. It's a time of suffering. It's a time of crushing. It's a time of breaking that you're in the midst of. And it wasn't a part of your schedule. You can realize that it's in the midst of God's sovereign schedule, that he is breaking you,

that his strength, that his glory might be made manifest. And he has selected this supplement for you to go through. He selected this particular time for you to go through that you might trust him as he brings you through this time. Lord, may we learn to rejoice that you counted us worthy. You suffered this grace, and you know I'm saying, Father, help us. It's tough, Lord, and you knew it would be tough.

You told us it was going to be tough, but you made all the provisions for our lives where this is concerned. And God, you've given us your spirit, which is your signature on our lives. Which is your down payment, your endowment that you've given to us.

How do you enable us to walk as you want us to walk? And Lord, there's a schedule that you have already laid out. You know our days. You know the ending of them. They're not only numbered, but planned by you to accomplish the things you want to accomplish as you work the sin out of our lives and work righteousness into. And a lot of those involve selected suffering.

Father, may we trust the Prince and Savior of our lives. May we trust the captain of our salvation. May we too rejoice in being counted worthy to suffer disgrace for the name. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. And Lord, maybe there's some here that have never taken that step. Maybe they've been the people on the outside looking. I'm afraid to come in

and get drawn by your word, drawn by your love, drawn by the power of your word. Lord, may they just take that step inside. May they just come on in and surrender their hearts to you and ask you to fill them and cleanse them from unrighteousness. The blood of your son will be applied to their lives and they'll be clean. Maybe some of us have just been fighting

with our own schedules. Our eyes are on us instead of on you. Our eyes are on our problems instead of on what you want us to be doing. So Lord, we confess that right now and ask that you cleanse us from that.