The Early Church Pattern for Evangelism, Part 3
Acts 5:33-42
We come this morning to the fifth Chapter and what is part three in our study of the early church pattern for evangelism. We've begun in Chapter 5:12 what is really one unit through verse 42, but it's taken us three parts to finish it. The story is told in ancient lore about a goddess who always came, but came unseen. She was known, therefore, by the blessings that were left in her pathway. Trees, for example, blackened by forest fires put forth new leaves as she passed by. In her footprints at the brook side violets sprang up. The stagnant pool became a spring of sparkling water. The parched hill blossomed like a rose and every hillside and every valley blushed with new life and beauty as she passed by.
The story is also told, by the ancients, of a particularly beautiful Indian princess. This Indian princess was given as a gift to a king. About her, the ancients tell us, was an atmosphere as sweet smelling as the garments of Aphrodite. She seemed as beautiful and pure as dew and her breath was as sweet as perfume. But strangely enough the atmosphere all about her was death. From her infancy she knew no food but poison and therefore it had permeated her. She would breathe into a swarm of insects and they would die. She would lay the loveliest flowers upon her breast and they would wither and crumble on contact. Into her presence came a hummingbird. It fluttered, poised in the air, and fell dead to the ground. Influence. That's what I'm talking about, influence.
Everybody exudes an influence, good influence, bad influence, an influence on the life or an influence on the death. Now we've been studying here in Acts about influence. We've been studying about a church that influenced the world. Webster defines influence this way: the power to affect others. That's influence. And we all have it. You affect other people some way. You don't exist in isolation. You just live your whole life affecting everybody. And you really need to evaluate what kind of an effect you're having.
Now the infant church in the book of Acts, as we have seen, had an influence, and it's influence was absolutely astonishing. If you just listen I'll chart its influence very briefly by just picking up phrases from our study previously just to kind of put us in mind in review.
In Chapter 2:41, we read this: "Then they that gladly received his word, were baptized and the same day there were added unto them 3,000 souls." That's influence. Verse 43, "Fear came upon every soul." That's influence. Verse 47, "Having favor with all the people." That's influence. Chapter 3:10, "And they knew that it was he who sat for alms at the beautiful gate of the temple and they were filled with wonder and amazement." That's influence. Verse 11, "As the lame man who was healed held Peter and John, all the people ran together unto them in the porch that is called Solomon's, greatly wondering." Influence. Chapter 4:4, "Many of them who heard the word believed." Verse 31, same Chapter, "When they had prayed the place was shaken where they were assembled together. They were filled with the Holy Spirit, they spake the word of God with boldness and the multitude of those that believed." They affected people so that they believed. Influence.
Chapter 5:11, "Great fear came upon all the church and upon as many as heard these things." Influence. Chapter 13, "The rest dared no man join himself to them, but the people magnified them and believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes of men and women." Influence. The early church affected its world. You see it had become the issue. The early church had become the topic of conversation. The issue in that day was not politics. The issue was not economics. The issue was not sports. The issue was Christianity. And the comment of the leaders in seeing all this at the end of Chapter 5:28, is "You have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine." This thing has become the issue. That's influence. And that's the kind of influence that I believe God intends His church always to have. But so much of the time the church is the little deal on the corner and everybody goes _______ in the door and they sit in there, God, sing songs, happy, happy ______ out the door. Nothing else ever happens. This is the church, this is the steeple, woo there are all the people. See. They're all there. And as long as they're in there it's all very nice. You send them out in the world and flat nothing!
We went somewhere the other day for lunch and somebody said, "I'd like to have a coke." Well I'm sorry the carbonation machine doesn't work and the coke is flat." And I kept thinking, "Oh that is just about how I often feel about the church." What happened to the fizz? I mean there's no effect. So much of our Christianity is in the walls, isn't it? And where's the influence?
This is what the early church had was influence. Everywhere they went the world shook because their step was so heavy and it shook for God. You remember they said of them, "These who turned the world upside down have come to our city also." See! Influence. They became the issue. Boy when Christianity gets to be the issue that's exciting.
I couldn't help think about that Thursday night when I spoke to the SC football team. Apparently it did some good. I wouldn't be surprised if UCLA invited me next year. But anyway I spoke to them and they showed me this little brochure that they had. I don't know if some of you were at the game yesterday you might have gotten one. But some of the Campus Crusade had worked out with them and on the outside it said, "USC and UCLA athletes speak out. Inside it had four testimonies from Trojans and four from Bruins with their picture and the testimonies said each saying that Jesus Christ is the most important thing in my life. They gave our 40 or 50,000 of them. That's great because Christianity became an issue. You see everybody had one of those in his hand. And I like it when Christianity becomes the issue.
It was interesting in the Times on Friday, I think it was, they had a big article and they quoted the whole text from that little pamphlet and it explained on the back how you could know Christ and write for more information. That's the kind of boldness we're talking about. One of the starting guards of USC told me, he said, "I'm excited about the game, but I'm more excited about what God might do through these little pamphlets." That's having your priorities in the right place. And he also said, "Pray for me because I feel God calling me into the ministry and I'm also getting some pro football offers." I said, "I'll pray for you." It's a question of priorities. But here was Christianity becoming the issue. This is what's good. This is what has to happen.
They also told me they had gotten one of their card stunts, which you couldn't see on television 'cause it was on the other side of the field. One of the SC card stunts said something like hope and peace and then had a picture of Christ. Somebody on the inside is exerting some influence and as a result things are happening. It's exciting. In fact it was interesting that they asked the J. D. Morgan, who is the athletic director at UCLA and he was happy to let them do it. See last year there was a revival at Stanford and they went to the Rose Bowl. But nevertheless this is influence, and this is the kind of dynamic that makes Christianity the issue. And the guys were saying, "Give us enough of these that when we go to the hotel tomorrow night before the game we can pass one out to all the players on the bus." We need people to get so committed that we make Christianity the issue. And it was in the early church.
And they had influence two ways: the individual personal testimony. Right? That's the first way to witness. The second one is collective unity, right? So their influence was not only person-to-person sharing Christ, but it was the total loving unity that they exhibited. My old football, not too old, but my ex football coach is now an assistant coach at USC and he came in Thursday night and introduced me to the team. He was the one who introduced me as I spoke, and he was very generous in his introduction, very kind, and he made some very shocking statements. He stood there in front of these guys and he said, "I want you to listen to John, 'cause I know him and what he tells you is the absolute truth." He says, "I personally have never received Christ as my Savior," and he kind of dropped his head and said, "I really don't know why," but he said, "It's true." You could have heard a pin drop. These guys looked at him, boy what a confession to make, you see. And then we were able to spend some time talking about Christ and how there could be unity and a witness that came not only on an individual basis, but on a unified basis. And the coach said this: he said, "You know I feel that more than any other thing, the greatest thing that has happened to this team has been the testimony collectively of these Christian fellows." You see there's not only the communicating on the one-to-one basis, but the effective unity. And we've talked so much about it.
So, they had an influence. The early church had both, person-to-person communication and a loving unity and they affected their world. Now that's influence and that's what it's all about. And I believe I think we all want this. I'm not trying to push something off on you that you're against, right? I believe we want to have an influence. I believe we want to hit the world with an impact. And I think as we've studied the fifth Chapter of Acts, we have seen some progressive keys to really effective influence.
Now we've been through four of them. Let me review them. We saw five progressive keys to effective evangelism. Number one was purity and we were studying verses 12-14, that little section there. We saw that, without going over it, but we saw that the church to be effective to begin with has to be pure, therefore, every individual believer must deal with sin in his life. He must deal with issues, moral issues, the issue of right and wrong, the issue of priority in his life, he must confess sin and repent of sin, and there must be purity in his life and then he must look out for other believers. And if he sees another believer in sin he must be willing in love to rebuke that believer and having rebuked him restore him in love.
The church must discipline those sinning members in its midst. And where the church is pure the church continues to be pure because you don't get the tares added to the pure church. They're not willing to run the risk of exposure.
The second thing we saw about the church that is dynamic evangelistically that really makes an influence on the world is that it has power, no only purity but power. A pure church is powerful because there's nothing to obstruct the power flow, you see. The church is a channel through which God wants to pour His power, but if it's clogged up with impure things then the power never gets through, so the pure church is a powerful church and we saw that early church things were popping so fast that people couldn't believe what was going on. They were shocked and they were in wonder and amazement, and the church can be the same today.
And then we saw a third thing about that church and the third thing in the steps to effective evangelism was persecution. They got some flak from the system. And I've told you before, and I'll repeat it again, if you buck the system and you confront the system with the claims of Jesus Christ, the system will react negatively. Satan runs the world. You keep banging into the world with the claims of Christ and you're going to get some resistance. Persecution is expected. It's kind of sad that most of us we go along with our little Christian life and we run into resistance, emmm and we just ohhhh, we think that it's time to quit. Resistance is just an opportunity to blast through. See that's all it is. Be stronger for it. The god of this world, Satan, can't stand to have people ripped off of his cause and added to the church, and so if it starts happening you're going to get some resistance. Praise the Lord.
The Sadducees here resisted, the high priest resisted, the church just accepted that for more preaching. They accepted persecution defiantly and boldly charged right on through and they couldn't shut them up. They kept arresting them, throw them in jail, and they kept on preaching. They beat 'em up, let 'em go, they kept on preaching.
And that leads us to the fourth characteristic of their effective evangelism, which is persistence, verses 29 to 32. Peter got in the Sanhedrin and they said, "We're after you because you keep preaching the resurrection and you keep indicting us. You know what Peter did? Preached the resurrection and indicted them. Persistence. He knew what God had called him to do. You see pressure only brings out the best Saul.
Buddy Young used to play football in the NFL. He's a little guy, 5 foot five. And his little motto was this: it's not the size of the man in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the man. And he always used to say when the going gets tough, the tough get going. He was right. Resistance is only an opportunity. That's all. It's an opportunity for persistence. Proverbs 28:1 says, "The righteous are as bold as a lion." You know a couple of weeks ago I was with my brother-in-law John and my sister Jeanette. We were down at San Diego. I had been speaking for three Saturday nights, Youth for Christ, and I took Matt and went with them. We went to Wild Animal Park and we got on this little tram thing and rode all around. It's a terrific thing and we saw all these animals and we came to this lion's thing and the man who was leading the little tour said, "Lions have no natural enemies. They are the king of the beasts. Nobody attacks them. No animals attack lions. They are bold and they are fierce and they have no natural enemies. Nobody can conqueror them." And I thought to myself, boy that is a definition of a Christian right out of Proverbs 28. The righteous is as bold as a lion. What do we have to fear?
Resistance, watch this. Resistance and persecution is only the path to victory, see. It's not the end of the road. It's the path to victory. So you accept it and you blast right through and you keep going. You don't worry about it. The battle is only the opportunity. In Philippians 1 the apostle Paul, verse 12, said, "I would that you should understand, brethren, that the things, which happened unto me have fallen out rather to the furtherance of the gospel." I keep banging into persecution and you know what happened? People keep getting saved.
Verse 13, "So that my bonds in Christ," I'm a slave and I'm a prisoner, "but my bonds are manifest all over the palace." And then when he wrote to the Philippians later on he says, "The people who have been saved in Caesar's household say hello." And many of the brethren in the Lord becoming confident by my bonds are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Other people even took courage from Paul's situation and took off and preached Christ boldly. Paul even went so far as to say, "For me to live is Christ and die is gain," in the same Chapter.
In I Thessalonians 2:2 he takes another look at this and he says, "But even after we had suffered before and were shamefully treated, as you know, at Philippi, we were bold." He just kept right on going. Nothing ever shut him up. That's boldness. I like that.
So they persisted and they persisted and every time they got captured they persisted again and they called it what it was. Why? Because they knew what their job was. Look at verse 32, and we're still reviewing and we come right up to where we stopped last time. Verse 32: "We are His witnesses." We know what our calling is. We are in the world to communicate. And little resistance isn't the issue. That is we know what we are to do. We keep keep keep keep doing it.