Persecution
From the Series: Sabotage
Speaker: Mark Batterson
Date: May 30, 2010
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Transcript
How are we doing? Good! I want to offer a special welcome because I have a hunch, this is the time of year when a lot of our students head home for the summer and we wave goodbye to a couple hundred students. We know we will see them back in the fall, but this is also the season when a lot of summer interns make their way to D.C. and I’m guessing we’ve got some of you here this weekend. Everybody else is gone for Memorial Day but you are just coming, so can we just do a collectively welcome? We would love to be your church home away from church home this summer for you.
Before our ushers come, let me take a moment on the special offering that we took last weekend. We wrapped up our ‘Miracles’ series with a Miracle offering, and it was so appropriate because it was Pentecost Sunday last weekend, the birthday of the church, and we are getting ready to birth our sixth location, so we all brought a birthday gift. Are you ready to celebrate? Last weekend, that gift was $79,396.67! I don’t even know what to say! That is so far and beyond the largest single offering we’ve ever taken here at National Community Church. I want to say a huge thank you. I don’t need to thank you because I know why we give around here, we give because it is one way that we worship God. We are shareholders in his kingdom and we believe in the kingdom of God, but I would be remiss if I didn’t say thank you for your investment. It costs about $100,000 to launch a new location and we are going to get there in a couple of minutes because some of you were gone last weekend and some of you needed another week to pray about it. So as we prepare to worship God with our giving, I just wanted to share that and say thank you for being a shareholder in this vision, and if today, you want to give a special gift toward that launch, all you need to do is on an offering envelope or on a check, just designate it and we will make sure it gets designated for that.
I also want to update you on timeline. We are going to have an informational meeting in the month of June as we prepare for that launch. A lot of people are already very excited. In July, we will form that launch team and we will begin to prepare to get that location off the ground. At the end of August, we will begin doing pre-launch services at Potomac Yard, and then D-Day is September 12. On September 12, we will go public with our sixth location. This summer is going to fly by and I think what these couple of months do is give us an opportunity to pray and plan and pull this thing off in a way that is going to expand God’s kingdom. I know you are as excited as I am. So let me pray and we will worship God with our giving then we will jump right into this weekend’s message.
Father, thank You for your provision. When You give a vision, you make provisions and You do it through the generosity of your people. So Lord I thank You right now for every single shareholder that got in on the IPO as we go public with this location. I thank You for those who have made an investment in it and I pray that You would bless those who give. We know that You are faithful and that when we give, You give back a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over. We cannot out-give God, so we thank You for the opportunity to invest in your kingdom. We give with cheerful hearts. May You bless these gifts to further your purposes. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Last weekend, Lora and I were in Chicago celebrating our anniversary and it was a long walk down memory lane. We went by my old house, which seems much smaller than I remember it. We went by my old school, and this was cool, we got into my old junior high and the first place I went was the track and field record board. It’s been 25 years and I still hold 3 track and field records at Madison Junior High School. Thank you. It made my day! What a blast from the past. We went by the old church. We went to the cemetery where Lora’s dad is buried and then we went by the church that planted and pastored for 30 years and that Lora grew up in and I attended as a kid. At the end of a long day, we had a thousand flashbacks. Have you ever had that? Where you go back to someplace where you used to live and a thousand flashbacks and everything would trigger memories. Here was the dominant feeling at the end of the day, unspeakable gratitude for the faithfulness of God. As I went back to a place where I grew up and I could see the hand of God and appreciate the way God had ordered my footsteps, I was literally overwhelmed. I’m a forward-looking person. I don’t know what kind of person you are, but I’m a forward-looking person. I’m always thinking about what is next, but there are moments when you need to look back. Isn’t this a weekend where that’s what we do collectively as a nation. It’s called Memorial Day. A day when we look back and we remember those who have made sacrifices for the freedoms that we enjoy. This is a weekend where it is appropriate that we collectively take a look back.
We are reading through the Book of Acts right now and we are reading through the epistles that correspond to those stories that we are reading about. In case you are new, let me let you in on what we are doing as a church. We are reading through the Bible together. If you go to www.fromgardentocity.com you will find a Bible reading plan, a daily blog and as we read through the Bible together, our message reflect back on what we are reading. So, we are reading through Acts and what you find in Acts is the birth of the church. Here’s the deal, some of you, NCC is the first church that you’ve ever gone to. I guess the first thing I’d want to say is that we are not normal! But that means that your perception of the church is based on NCC for better or for worse, and I want you to understand this weekend that NCC is a church with a lower case ‘c’ but we are a part of the Church with a capital ‘C’ the Church that is graphically and chronologically so much bigger than this one little expression of God’s kingdom in a place called Washington D.C. through a church called National Community Church. I think if you really want to appreciate this story that you are part of, then you need to understand the 2,000-year back-story that precedes it.
Here’s something that you may not know about me. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a lot of different things. First of all, I wanted to play professional football. It didn’t happen. Then I was a pre-law major at the University of Chicago and I thought maybe that’s what I would do, but here’s what you might not know, when I was a sophomore in high school, I was pretty sure that I knew what I wanted to do, I wanted to teach History. I love history and I know some people who walk into a History class and it’s like catatonic, but for me, few things are as exciting as discovering some historical antidote that really puts the present into context. I’m concerned that maybe we are a generation that doesn’t understand it’s history and in terms of Memorial Day, with 32,000 Veterans that die every month, what’s happening is an entire generation that earned the freedoms we enjoy, if we lose that memory, we are in trouble. And spiritually, the same thing can happen, so I’m concerned that maybe we don’t understand Church history like we could or should, and so we don’t really appreciate what we are a part of.
So I’m going to take a risk this weekend. The ‘Miracle’ series was so motivational, wasn’t it? It was like a course in miracles. But now we are walking into History class, but I’m believing that you are going to be inspired this weekend and that you are going to walk away with a paradigm shift and a greater appreciation of what you are a part of. I think if we can accomplish that on this Memorial Day weekend, I think the Lord would be well pleased and we would be well served.
Turn over to Acts Chapter 8, verse 1. I’m cheating a little bit because this is a reading from the previous week, but it sets the stage for everything that begins to unfold in the Book of Acts. Acts 8:1
1On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. 4Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.
A turning point in the history of the church right here. Stephen is stoned to death, the year is 34 A.D. and somehow, that one martyrdom sets off a chain reaction of persecutions against the Church. And in the 2,000 years since, 70 million martyrs have lost their lives because of their faith in Jesus Christ and most of us don’t know any of them. It’s sort of like walking past the Vietnam Memorial. It’s one of my favorites. When we first moved here, I remember walking by it and you can feel an emotional change in the atmosphere as you walk by these countless names that are engraved into the wall. But here’s the deal, it is very different if you don’t know any of those names, but when you see someone who knows one of those names and they lay flowers or they write a letter or something is left at that memorial, it is something that is far more profound. So, some of us know who these apostles were. For some of you, you were a gold star in Sunday School because you learned all of their names and recited them from memory, but the truth is, most of you can only remember maybe Peter, James and John. So they are just names to us and we don’t really appreciate who they were or what they did.
What I’m about to share is going to shock some of you and some of these details are a little gruesome and it might seem a little morbid but I want to tell you how each of these 12 apostles died. James, the brother of John, was killed with a sword during a persecution initiated by King Herod in A.D. 44. Andrew was hung on an olive tree around 70 A.D. Doubting Thomas became a missionary to India. He was thrust through with pine spears, tortured with red-hot plates and burned alive around 70 A.D. Philip was tortured and crucified in 54 A.D. Matthew was beheaded sometime after 60 A.D. Bartholomew was flayed after he refused to recant, and after the removal of his skin, he was crucified in 70 A.D. James was taken to the top of the temple and when he refused to recant, he was thrown off the temple and he survived the fall, so he was beaten to death with clubs in 63 A.D. Simon the Zealot was crucified by the governor of Syria in 74 A.D. Judas Thaddeus, minister to Mesopotamia where he was beaten to death with sticks in 72 A.D. Mathias, who replaced Judas Iscariot, went to Ethiopia and was stoned to death while hanging on a cross in 70 A.D. This particular story impacted me and I’ll tell you why. Because as we begin to read through the Book of Acts, the very first verse that I underlined was Acts 1:26. I don’t know if you noticed this verse but it says that they cast lots to replace Judas and they cast lots to determine who would be that 12th and last apostle. Scripture says that the lot fell to Mathias and he was numbered among the 11 apostles. I’m going to tell you what I wrote in the margin of my Bible, I wrote the word ‘lucky.’ That doesn’t seem very spiritual does it? But I wrote it because that was the image that came to mind. The casting of lots was like the rolling of dice, almost like Lucky Sevens that fell to Mathias and I’m thinking to myself that that had to be the greatest day of his life. The day when he gets grafted in as the 12th apostle, luckiest day of his life. I would say that my paradigm shift as I began to study and see the way his life ended. I would still say that Mathias would say that that was still the luckiest day of his life, in non-spiritual terms, ok, even though he was martyred for his faith.
Peter was crucified, but according to a 3rd Century church historian, Peter thought himself unworthy to die in the manner in which Jesus was crucified, so he requested to be crucified upside down. Last but not least, John the Beloved, John is the only disciple that died a natural death. He lived the longest, until 95 A.D. But that doesn’t mean he was exempt from persecution. He was exiled to the island of Patmos where he had a revelation and we call it the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. What you might not know is that before that, John was dropped into a cauldron of boiling oil and survived, despite the injuries and the scarring, he went on to die a natural death.
I’m not sure what that does to you. But it does something to me. I think of the picture of Jesus and his disciples around that Last Supper table, for example. The only person I’ve ever really noticed is Jesus, then you notice Judas because he is going to betray Him, but I don’t know, now I look around that table and I’m thinking, wow, these were men who gave their lives for Christ just as Christ had given his life for them. It makes you appreciate how the Church was established. Part of the reason why I share those stories is because I think it changes the way we read the Bible. I’m not sure we are all reading the Bible the way it was meant to be read. Here’s what I mean by that. I think it is very easy to read portions of the Bible in vary figurative ways when they are actually literal; or to read them with a 21st Century, American affluent perspective and not really appreciate the true essence of what these writers were talking about. Let me give you an example.
Paul says, ‘For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.’ Oh how we love to cite that verse, but I’m pretty sure that if we drilled down, most of us, when we say to die is gain, here’s what we are thinking about, we are thinking about a natural death hopefully in our sleep when we are very old. If you think that is the picture that was painted by Paul as he wrote this book, well, what was going through his mind? My guess is he was having a flashback to Stephen whose martyrdom he stood over and approved, a memory that was certainly never erased from his visual cortex. He was there, he held the cloak as Stephen was stoned to death. He had a picture that was right here. See, it’s not a natural death, I think it’s death by crucifixion or by beheading or by stoning, that’s how these disciples died. And I think we tend to sanitize and sterilize what this verse means, but when Paul says to die is gain, and he is talking about these kinds of death, does it not change that verse a little bit? We read the text but we don’t understand the context, so we don’t fully appreciate what’s happening here.
I Thessalonians, we read it this week. Be joyful always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances. We think about our circumstances, don’t we? Then for most of us, and I’m not trying to be hard on your this week, but I love you enough to speak some straight up truth, most of us are feeling like we are nailing this verse, like if someone says something unkind about us or we are making minimum wage or we had a bad day, I’m rejoicing in all circumstances, like my life is so bad right now. Seriously? I’m not going to minimize the challenges and trials that many of you are going through, but I think for the vast majority of us, there is a level of suffering that we know nothing about, and there is a deeper level that we need to come to terms with and maybe we would have a little more appreciation if we understood what these apostles went through to enable us to, 2,000 years later, to be part of the Church and to hear the gospel and come to faith in Jesus Christ.
I think this was made real to me a couple years ago, I wrote about it in Primal, I may have shared this with you. Lora and I celebrated an anniversary in Rome a couple of years ago, and we hit all the spots, but the highlight for us was this weather-beaten, out of the way church called the Church of San Clemente. Not coincidentally named after Clemente the 4th Pope, who was martyred for his faith. Anchors were tied around his ankles and he was thrown into the Black Sea. I remember walking into the church and it was a 14th Century church but as was the case in Rome, many things built onto of things, so there are layers of history. It was built over a 4th Century church, then we found out that it was built over ancient catacombs and for 5 euros we could take this underground tour. I’ll never forget walking down that staircase, it was like the wardrobe in the Chronicles of Narnia where you are in a whole different world, like going back 2,000 years in time in an instant. The air got damp and it got really claustrophobic and we lost some of the light, so physically the environment was intense. I remember standing in that catacomb thinking to myself that I’m standing in a place where 2,000 years ago some early Christians, hundreds of years before Constantine legalized Christianity, where they knew that they were worshipping God at risk of their lives and yet they would go into these catacombs to worship God. I’ll tell you what happens when you are in a catacomb, some of you may have been in a catacomb, but for me it was a profound mixture of gratitude and conviction. That’s the only way I can describe it. The comfort that you enjoy make you a little uncomfortable. The things that you complain about are a little bit convicting, and honestly, many of the sacrifices we make wouldn’t even count by a 2nd Century definition. I think it was in that catacombs I came to the terms that someone has paid the price for me to be able to be where I am and do what I do, and I think it gave me a more profound gratitude and appreciation for those who have gone before us.
Let’s switch gears a little bit. I want to take you over to a verse that I think you are going to read in a different context now. Hebrews 12:1
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.
It’s one of the most motivational verses of the Bible. It is even about running a race so it has that athletic metaphor so many of us can relate to the competitive piece of it, like you can do this thing, run this race, finish this thing out, lay aside every weight, but here is the key, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses… I wonder if some of us have been trying to run this race but we are mavericks or lone dogs and we really don’t know who is around us or what’s happening. By the way, it is one reason why there is so much intentionality with small groups around here, because we’ve got to be in relationship with one another. But I think there is something here. Here’s where the paradigm shift comes in, we hear the word ‘witness’ and what do we think of? For me, it’s a flashback to Evangelism Explosion. I went to a church as a kid where we learned the two questions then you’d go knock on people’s doors and that qualified you as a witness because you were sharing your faith. So we think of the word ‘witness’ as someone who is sharing their faith, but check this out, the Greek word is martyrs. Since you are surrounded by such a great cloud of martyrs. It is the very same word that Jesus used in the Great Commission when He said, ‘You will be my witnesses.’ That’s not what it says, it says, ‘You will be my martyrs.’ We are talking about a level of commitment, a level of sacrifice that for many of us has never even entered the equation.
In the context of Hebrews, who is the cloud of witnesses? It’s the people that the writer of Hebrews writes about in the previous chapter, and we have their stories and some of them are as gruesome as the stories I just shared with you, but here it is, Hebrews 11:32
32And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, 33who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 35Women received back their dead, raised to life again.
And we wish the chapter ended there because all of those stories are happily ever after, but that’s not where it ends.
Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. 36Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.
Do you see what I’m getting at today? This is where we read it figuratively and it is not, it is literal. When it says they lived in caves and holes in the ground, did you know that in the 1st Century, many, many Christians lived in copper mines and in caves because it was the only place they could go that maybe had an element of safety to it. So we read that and we want to interpret that with my life. In a couple of weeks, I’m hiking the Inca Trail and so a couple of weeks ago, I went to REI because I need some stuff, and I’m going to be perfectly honest and I don’t really care if it affects your opinion of me or not but I’m getting a blow-up mattress! You may think less of me, but I like sleep. I need sleep, personally. And I’m not embarrassed to tell you that we are going to hire a porter to carry that mattress for me, because that’s the kind of guy I am, I want to give someone a job! So, here’s the deal, we are going to have our tent and our battery operated lanterns and our sub-zero sleeping bags and our Northface raingear and a portable stove and we are going to be roughing it! No we are not. Can you imagine living with no comforts and no amenities, just survival day by day? That’s how these early believers lived.
Let’s take one more stab at this. I’m like, ‘Lord, what do You want to do this weekend?’ I wasn’t sure but maybe this is it. Maybe it’s just about how we are reading the Bible. Are we really appreciating what we are reading? The Book of Hebrews was written before 70 A.D. because of some of the illusions in the temple, we are pretty sure it was before 70 A.D., so let me put this into context. On July 19th, 64 A.D., a fire broke out in Rome and destroyed 75% of the city. Here is what’s interesting, Nero himself was suspected to have maybe set that fire and to divert attention, he blamed it on the Christians and it began this persecution that Nero was infamous for. Nero would entertain people by dressing Christians up in furs and watching them be eaten alive by wild animals. When it says that they went around in goatskins and sheepskins, I’m not sure if that’s a reference to this, but it could be. Nero used Christians as human torches; he set them on fire to illuminate his garden for evening parties. He killed 977 Christians himself.
I think maybe here’s what I’m getting at - do we need some perspective? I wonder if we don’t need some perspective. I want to say that I love America, I love this country and I’m so grateful for the freedoms we enjoy. Are we a perfect people? No, but I believe God’s hand of favor has blessed us and we better appreciate that and we better make sure we live in a way that God continues to bless that and honor it. I'm grateful for the sacrifices spiritually that have been made for us. I wanted to personalize it. That’s what I wanted to do this weekend. You can know the names of these twelve apostles but that doesn’t mean much if you don’t know how they died and the ways they suffered and how much they believed in the cause that they started. And we are the recipients of it. Tertullian, an early church father, said, “The blood of the martyred is the seed of the Church.”
This weekend, we are going to celebrate communion in just a moment, and in a sense, maybe you’ve never thought about it this way, but we talked about Stephen being the first martyr but is that really accurate? The Church was started by Jesus Christ who, Himself, was killed on a cross and it was really his blood that was shed that is the seed of the Church. Then over the years, many have been martyred for their faith in a way that has continued the cause.
It’s Memorial Day weekend and here is my prayer as we prepare to celebrate communion. Thousands of people make a pilgrimage to D.C. all the time, this weekend, more than normal because of the holiday, but you can tell the difference between a tourist and someone who has a loved one who died in one of those wars. You can tell the difference in a heartbeat. I wonder if some of us maybe have approach communion as a tourist, and I wonder if we don’t need to come to terms with the fact that there has been a lot of blood shed and that as we take that cup, it is the blood of the martyrs and precisely and specifically, the blood of the sinless Son of God that was shed for us on Calvary that is the salvation of our souls and the forgiveness of our sins and that, my friends, is what it’s all about.
I think the significance of communion is that it is a pilgrimage back to the foot of the cross, to the place where what really matters is what matters and that is what Christ did for us. So as God has given us a renewed appreciation this weekend for the thing called the Church and for those witnesses or martyrs that have gone before us, maybe given us a little more perspective, I pray that we would have a renewed appreciation as we prepare to approach communion. Maybe as we take the bread and the cup, we would do it with a little deeper appreciation for what Christ has done for us. So I want to pray for us, then our ushers will come, at all of our locations, and our bands will come and we will worship the Lord. If you did not get a communion bag on the way in, slip up your hand and we will make sure, as we worship in that first song, that you get a communion bag so you can celebrate. If you are a guest or a new to NCC, or maybe today, God has done something in your heart and the Holy Spirit has confirmed something in your life that Jesus Christ is who He said He was and maybe today, you want to celebrate communion for the first time, I can’t think of a better way to begin to follow Jesus than to celebrate communion and we invite you to do that. Let me pray for us and let’s prepare our hearts, then we will worship the Lord and celebrate communion together.
Father, we love You and we thank You and we give You praise. We thank You today for the sacrifices that have been made. God I pray that we would connect the dots between those sacrifices and the freedoms we enjoy; between those who gave their lives so that the truth that has transformed our lives could actually hit our eardrums and get into our auditory cortex and change our hearts. God I pray that as we prepare to celebrate communion, maybe it would be with a deeper appreciation than we’ve ever had before. Lord, above and beyond everything else today, we thank You Lord Jesus for what You have done for us, that You have saved us and You have made us a part of this thing called the Church and part of this church and for that, we are grateful. God I pray that You would continue to help us as we are surrounded by this cloud of witnesses to run the race, corporately as a church and individually in our own faith. God, there are people here today who walked in so discouraged and right now that discouragement has dissipated, not because the circumstances changed but because some perspective has been brought to it and I thank You for that. Lord there are some people today who were ready to throw in the towel, but they’ve seen that there is this cloud of witnesses that endured to the very end, and somehow their spirits have been inflated to keep on keeping on. And God I thank You for that today. Lord, there are those today who will celebrate communion for the first time and put their faith in Christ and begin to follow You, and for that, all of us celebrate. Lord for all of us today, we come back to the foot of the cross, the place where we find hope and love and joy and peace and forgiveness and grace and mercy and we give You thanks today. Prepare our hearts as we worship You and as we prepare to celebrate communion. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
606-706-5006
margaretsalyers@gmail.com
