Acts: Turn the World Upside Down – Shaken and Unshakeable…Intellectualmaterialsaretheproperty)of)Traders)Point)ChristianChurch.)All)rights)reserved.)) Transcript September 5/6,

Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.

Transcript September 5/6, 2015

Acts: Turn the World Upside Down – Shaken and Unshakeable Aaron Brockett | Acts 4:14-22; 29-31

Alright, you guys doing good? Good. It’s good to see you. Happy Labor Day weekend to you. If this happens to be your first time to be with us, I want to welcome you here. I hope that it doesn’t take you too long to figure out that we are just a regular group of people trying to figure things out. And we bumped into this guy named Jesus and He’s given us hope and He’s showing us a better way to live. I hope that this begins to feel like home for you. It’s hard to believe, but we’re in week number four of this series in the Book of Acts. So, if you would, go ahead and grab a Bible or maybe some sort of electronic device that has a Bible on it and find Acts, chapter 4 we’re going to look at the last half of that chapter together. As you are turning there and getting ready, there are just two quick things that I want you to be aware of. The first thing is that last Sunday morning at 9 o’clock up in the Block there were several hundred people who gathered together to talk and to pray about the northside location that we are going to be launching on January the 3rd. Greg Anderson, our campus pastor of that location led that time. And they prayed together. I thought this was a really cool idea. They passed out these street signs. They’ve identified 300 streets around Creekside that they just want to be lifting up in prayer—the residents who live on those streets. And they gave these out to everybody who was there. I couldn’t be there last week because I was in here. So, they saved one for me and I really like it. This is the street that I’m praying for—Viking Commander Way. There’s something about that that is awesome. So, I’ve got that in my office—praying over that street. I just want to continue to keep this in front of you to, as a church, be praying about the launching of that northside location, to continue to be generous toward that as we pray for God to lead us to a permanent location because Creekside is just a temporary one. We’ll be there set up, tear down for a year. We’re looking for a more permanent one. And regardless of whether you go there physically, to that location, or stay here at this location—at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter because we are one church in multiple locations. Maybe you weren’t here back in April and May when we walked through this together and cast a vision for it—but we want to be a church that multiplies. That’s what we’re reading about in the Book of Acts. The church has always been international, the church has always multiplied and we’ll be a church that multiplies and sends by starting other, autonomous church plants and we will be a church that adds locations around the city. I just want to continue to keep that in front of you to be praying for that. We’re just really excited about what God is going to do. The last thing that I want to remind you of is that October the 9th and 10th we’re having our men’s conference here. Registration for that is now open. So you can get on the website, click on events, and get signed up. Guys, it’s $25 and we’ll give you a t-‐shirt and we’ll feed you. So invite your friends and

Acts: Turn the World Upside Down – Shaken and Unshakeable September 5/6, 2015

Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 2

neighbors and family to come with you for that because I’m already anticipating some of the cool things that God is going to do. There will be four main sessions. Our teaching guys will be leading through those and then we have some events planned for out in the parking lot: civil war paint ball, and bonfires, and I’m still advocating for car tipping but I don’t know—insurance, whatever. So let’s go ahead and pray and then we’re going to jump in. Lord God, we come to You today and I don’t know what kind of a week we’ve had or what we’ve brought in here with us but I pray that… Maybe we’re just not in it right now. Maybe our head is in another place, maybe our heart is not ready to receive what You might say. Maybe we’re not even expecting that, we’re just enduring this time so that that way we can go on and do something else. God, I pray that right now, in this moment, that we would feel the weight of Your presence and that You would speak to our hearts and, even more than that, that our minds and hearts would be ready to receive from You what we so desperately need. Even if we’re not expecting it we know that You have the power to do that. So we ask this in Jesus’ Name. Amen. This summer our family was out on the west coast. We were visiting some friends of ours who live in San Francisco and they told us that we really need to check out this beach that was about 30 minutes north of the city called Stinson Beach. Maybe you’ve heard of it. And they said, “Man, you have to check this thing out, it’s great.” We’re all about the beach so we loaded the kids up in the Suburban and we headed out of the city, over the Golden Gate Bridge and took the two-‐lane, winding roads through the redwoods. My daughter got car sick and she vomited all over the truck. That was awesome. And we came up over this hill to this view of this gorgeous beach. We thought we’d died and gone to heaven. There was hardly anybody there. We had almost the whole thing to ourselves that morning. So we unpacked everything and we’re lying out on the beach. It was a gorgeous day. And then, I couldn’t help but notice several of these signs posted along the beach. They basically said: In the event of an earthquake get to high ground because a tsunami may be coming [with a picture of a stick figure trying to outrun a tidal wave]. I don’t know about you… We don’t have these in Indiana. I never go to a public pool and see these signs. It was a little unnerving. And I don’t think the stick figure stands a chance. He doesn’t even have any gear on him, there’s nothing hindering him, and I think he’s going to get wiped out by the wave. So I’m looking at these signs. My wife and kids are having a great time and I’m sitting there on a beach towel and my analytical mind is going into overdrive. I’m thinking, “Okay, if the ground starts to shake under our feet, what’s my next move? How quickly can I get my family to safe ground? And which kid am I going to grab first?” Right? Which will I leave behind—now, you’ve been there. Don’t judge. It takes like 30 minutes just for us to get loaded up to go anywhere. And that doesn’t count the time that it takes to turn around and go back because somebody inevitably forgot something. Basically, I got to the end of it and I’m like, “Well, if the ground starts shaking we’re toast. I’m just going to enjoy myself in these final moments that I have.” Figuratively speaking, we live in a world that—we know this—at anytime the ground could start shaking under our feet, sending an emotional or a spiritual tsunami directly into our path. Just the threat of



shaky ground is enough to keep most of us on edge because we live under the illusion of control. So many of our waking hours are spent trying to create an illusion of control. We think that we are in control of our health because we try to eat right, we try to get to the gym a few times a week, and we try to get a solid eight hours of sleep and yet the tsunami of cancer or a car accident could, at any moment, rip away the veil of control that we think that we have. We think that we’re in control of our relationships. We try to be a good person. We try to be a good husband. We try to be a good wife, a good parent, a good child. We’ve all felt the pain of betrayal where somebody comes in and says, “You know what? I just don’t love you anymore.” We think we have control of our finances because we work hard, we’ve been through Dave Ramsey three different times, and we try to save as much money as we can. And we didn’t buy the ginsu knives on the home shopping network. Still the tsunami of unemployment or unexpected medical bills can hit us at any time. The reality is, we don’t like to talk about it or think about it that much, but the ground could start shaking underneath our feet at any moment leaving us feeling unstable and vulnerable to whatever may come our way. Over the past few weeks we’ve been studying the Book of Acts together, which—if you’re new today, if you’re new to this—is a record of how the early church got started and then how it systematically swept through the Roman Empire like wildfire. We’ve seen that what started off as a very shaky group of 120 unproven followers of Jesus, by the time we get to chapter 4 has now grown to 15,000, maybe even as high as 20,000 men, women, and children who shake up the Roman Empire by the power of the Holy Spirit. In fact, in chapter 17 this is what is said about the early church, society looked at them and said, “These men have turned the world upside down.” And they did this, first of all, by realizing that Jesus did not just come to make good people better. Jesus didn’t just come to teach some nice lessons on morality so that we would live better, more respectful lives. Jesus came to save sinners. He came on a rescue mission. He came to bring us back from our failures—we talked about that last week—to forgive us, to redeem us, to restore us. Then He didn’t just say, “Hey, just sit up in the bleachers and cheer for Me.” He said, “Get down on the field and be an active participant in what I’m doing in the world,” which basically means, you receive grace and the truth of God and then you live it out by sharing your story and influencing others around you. See, the irony found in the Book of Acts is that the Roman Empire is this picture of strength and stability that looked like it would never be shaken. But yet, you and I both know that eventually it was shaken to the ground. And in contrast, the church looks weak and vulnerable and still is, in large part, very weak and vulnerable. I had a mentor one time; I’ll never forget this, who said, “Every church is a house of cards.” It doesn’t take much for the whole thing to come collapsing down. And we said this two weeks ago, that happens when people begin to lean into their own power rather than the power of the Holy Spirit.



So, the church started off looking very weak and vulnerable, they were uneducated, common men. But it was unshakeable even as the world around them was shaky. As we come to the middle of chapter 4, in verse 14, we’re going to see… This is the very first time in our study so far that the church gets tested. Everything up to this point has really been pretty amazing for them. We’ve seen how the church got started with power in the city of Jerusalem. We’ve seen Peter’s first two sermons resulting in the conversion of 8,000 men. We’ve seen the first miracle. We’ve seen the first worship service. And now, in this passage, we’re going to see the very first time that some hostility and some opposition comes against this group of believers and how they respond to it. One of the things that was said about the early Christians, not by themselves but these were the observations of society toward them, they said that Christians lived better and died better than everyone else. In other words, even as the world around them was shaking they somehow managed to ground themselves on what is unshakeable. If you were here last week, we saw that Peter alluded to this. Peter said that Jesus is the cornerstone of our lives, the capstone, the foundational piece. So the question I want to ask is: How were they able to do that? What was their secret? How were these socially marginalized, educationally ignorant men and women able to shake up one of the most sophisticated and powerful empires known to man. Last week we read about how Peter and John go into the temple and they see this lame man, who had been crippled from birth, and Peter healed him. That drew a crowd. That usually would. And instead of trying to draw more fame for himself for his own name, Peter launches into his second sermon resulting in another 5,000 men coming to know Jesus. Can I just say this? I think that 8,000 men giving their lives to Jesus in two sermons is the biggest miracle so far in the Book of Acts. Men are typically tougher nuts to crack, I don’t know if you realize that or not. But they usually are. We’ve seen tongues of fire come down, and people speaking in tongues, and we’ve seen a lame man healed, but I think the biggest miracle is 8,000 guys with their hardened hearts gave their lives to Christ and all it took was two sermons. I think that there’s a little, mini-‐lesson for us. When God changes the hearts of men, that’s when the church gets turned upside down. That’s why we’re doing a men’s conference in October. That’s why some of you guys are like, “I’m not going.” I’m saying, “Yes you are. You’re going.” God is coming after you. He’s gunning for you. So the hearts of these men get changed and that’s when the church begins to take off like wildfire. But this also stokes up the flames of resistance against them because the authority figures come against them. And in verse 7 they basically say to Peter and John, “By what power,” if you haven’t noticed up to this point power is a regular theme in this book, “By what power, or what name did you do this?” Now, they’re not even happy for the lame guy. At the very least they could have looked at him and said, “Congratulations, sir. You can walk again. You can walk, you’ve never walked.” But they’re so heartless that they’re not even thinking about that. They just say, “By what power or authority did you do this?” Here’s what I want you to see as we read this text together. When Peter and John healed that lame man, the world of these authority figures began to shake because they could sense their own authority escaping through their grasp. So they began to get insecure because what was their cornerstone? Their cornerstone was their own power. Their cornerstone was their authority and now it’s being threatened. That’s why they were opposed to it.



Look what it says. We’ll pick it up in verse 14, “But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition. But when they had commanded them,” and them is referring to Peter and John, “to leave the council, they conferred with one another, saying, ‘What shall we do with these men? For that a notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. But in order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name.’ So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.” What we have here is the first real wave of hostility and resistance against the church and it’s going to continue to get stronger and stronger throughout the book. And yet, the church is just going to spread and multiply faster and faster. I once heard somebody describe it this way. Trying to stamp out the church is like walking through a backyard full of dandelions that have gone to seed and walking through and kicking them and thinking that’s how you’ll get rid of them. They just continue to spread. These guys, as they confront Peter and John, in their little private meeting afterward, what they say doesn’t even make a whole lot of logical sense. They were basically saying, “Hey, we can’t deny the power here. We can’t deny the fact that this lame man was healed.” It’s not even that they said, “Hey, we think that you guys are frauds. We think that you guys went out and hired an actor to pretend like he was lame and then somehow you healed him in the Name of Jesus.” They don’t even do that. They could have done that. But they said, “Listen,” now you can use this word, “…we have evidence,” it’s evident that this guy was healed. Now here it is, “We just don’t like it so stop talking about it.” Just as we can learn how the church should operate and where the power of the church can be found by studying the history of the Book of Acts, we can also study the root of unbelief and how that works in the human heart as well. What’s really important to understand is that there were three different groups of people who were not happy with Peter and John. Outside of their not wanting the Name of Jesus to be communicated, they had nothing else in common. Yet, when it comes to this they all get together. You’ve got the Sadducees. The Sadducees were the liberals of the day. In other words, they believed in the Bible only in so much as, “If we can get good, moral lessons out of it, we’re good with that.” So they believed that morality was necessary for civic order but, beyond that, they did not believe in the supernatural. They did not believe in the miracles. They did not believe that Jesus was the Son of God. They didn’t believe in an afterlife. They thought that that was all nonsense. They were moral rationalists. Then you have the teachers of the Law. The teachers of the Law were the Pharisees. They were the fundamentalists. They saw things in black and white. They were hyper-‐religious, the evangelical right of their day—very, very active on Facebook were those Pharisees, alright? Then you had the captain of the Temple guard. The captain of the Temple guard—that’s the military. These were the politicians. Now, these three groups had nothing in common. They actually despised one another. They did not go on vacation together, they didn’t go to cocktail parties together, but when it came to the church they said, “Let’s put our differences aside and let’s come together to stamp out the Name of Jesus.



The question you’ve got to ask is, “Why?” Oftentimes, when it comes to matters of belief… Maybe this is where you would be, or maybe you know somebody like this. They’re struggling to believe and they say, “Well, I need more evidence.” Or, “I need more proof.” And certainly we can talk evidence and we can talk proof. But, I’ve said this before, if you had all of the evidence in the world that’s still not enough to change the human heart. These guys had evidence right in front of them. They said, “The proof is there.” It’s not a matter of enough brains, or proof, or evidence. It’s actually something much, much deeper within the human heart. Listen to me. These guys believed it. They just didn’t like it. Therefore they refused to accept it. Why? Well, Peter strikes at the root of this back in verse 11. If you remember from last week, he said this, “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.” So when we rebelled against God in Genesis 3, with the fall, essentially what happened is Adam and Even lived their lives on stable ground in their relationship with the Lord. When the fall entered in then their world began shaking and we’ve been desperately looking for solid ground ever since. And the human heart can deceive itself into thinking that we can find anything else other than God to build our lives upon. So we look to our relationships, or our reputation, or our careers, or our sexuality, or our identity—we look to these things to find solid ground in the midst of a world that is shaking. Another word for that is idolatry. That’s essentially what it is. From the time that we enter into middle school we are trying to figure out who we are and where we fit in this world. This is why, for some of us, if somebody even looks at you the wrong way it destroys the rest of your day because maybe your cornerstone is your reputation. If things don’t go well at work then everything else in life just seems to fall apart because work, which is most definitely important, should never be a cornerstone because, eventually, that cornerstone is going to come apart. Some of you married your cornerstone and you got 24 hours into your marriage and realized, “Oops.” Right? Your spouse can’t possibly be the cornerstone of your life. It’s unfair to set that kind of weight on another person. Of course he or she is going to crack. The human heart doesn’t like the idea or the notion that we can’t be our own cornerstone. Here’s why the gospel is offensive. It’s not offensive intellectually, it’s offensive to us emotionally because the gospel in the human heart takes aim at whatever our cornerstone is and shakes it and that’s uncomfortable. We don’t like it. And this is, oftentimes, what is at the root of unbelief. And all I’m simply trying to do this morning is just ask you: Could that even be possible for you? If you’re here and you’re just kind of struggling with belief and you say, “Well, I just need a book to read.” Or, “I need more evidence.” Or, “I need more proof.” Or, “I have these questions.” There is a time and a place for all of that. And yet, at the end of the day, if you had all of your questions answered would you give your heart to the Lord? Be honest about that because for some of us it’s not a matter of evidence it’s a matter of I really don’t want to at the end of the day. Unbelief is not merely a lack of persuasion but it’s a deep dislike within my heart that my performance and good intentions are not enough so, “I don’t want to believe. I’m trying to find reasons not to. I don’t want to believe because I like being my own God. I don’t want to believe because I know that God will lead me to some places that I really don’t want to go if He truly is Lord of my life.”



I remember when I was in college my parents bought their very first computer. We didn’t have a computer in the house when I was growing up. Do you guys remember these? Packard Bell. They bought this Packard Bell computer—that’s a blast from the past, right? This was right after Al Gore invented the internet. We got the Packard Bell set it up in the dining room. And I just thought, “This is amazing.” I thought we were living in the time of the Jetsons. Anybody under 30, you may not resonate with this but we had what’s called dial-‐up. So, you would hit a little button and there would be a dial-‐tone, and then this screeching noise and you would go into the kitchen and make yourself a sandwich. Then, hopefully by the time you got back you’d be online for a couple of minutes before you got kicked off again. I remember being online—there was no such thing as social media back then but there was this thing called chat rooms. So I remember being in this faith forum chat room thing and I ended up having this conversation with this guy. I didn’t know who he was. I remember that he said that he used to be a believer but now he was no long a believer. So, I just asked him why. He pulled some random Bible verse out of the Old Testament, totally ripped out of context, totally ignoring the genre in which it was written. It had something to do with cows. It was cattle. And he brought it out and he said, “Yeah, this is the reason why I don’t believe anymore.” I don’t mean to belittle him or demean him. I’m sure that he was searching for answers, but I couldn’t help but think, “Okay, so you’re going to actually throw away salvation and you’re going to throw away who Jesus said that He is for a verse on cattle that is read out of context?” I think that if we are being really honest, what is deep underneath all of that is, “I don’t really want to believe so I’m looking for reasons, or smoke screens, not to believe.” I don’t mean to offend you but I kind of want to offend you. Could that even be true at all in your life? And at the very least be honest about it. Instead of just saying, “Well, I’m just going to keep throwing up these obstacles.” Some of you… This is true of some of you. You’re smarter than the average cookie and you know it. And you love to drive your spouse nuts over this. And you love to poke fun at your co-‐workers because you can run circles around them intellectually. Just be honest, man. At the end of the day you really don’t want to believe. That’s what is true here of these authority figures and Peter says in verse 19, they answered them. Well, I love their answer, “‘Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.’ And when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way to punish them, because of the people, for all were praising God for what had happened. For the man on whom this sign of healing was performed was more than forty years old.” I love Peter’s and John’s response to these guys because it was certainly somewhat defiant but it was not disrespectful. They were not inciting some cultural war against them. They basically were just pointing it back to Jesus as the cornerstone. And they basically just said this to the guys, “Hey, man. Listen. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. So, whatever you feel like you’ve got to do, go ahead and do it but we used to have our lives built upon shaky ground, and now our lives are built upon the solid foundation of Jesus as the cornerstone and we’re not going back. So, do what you’ve got to do.” It was this understanding that whatever you can build your life on, as a cornerstone, will eventually come apart. See, this is what empowered them to be so bold. What compelled them to be bold?



Boldness implies fear. Peter and John were afraid. The church was afraid. They had their backs against the wall. What were they afraid of? Well they were afraid of losing relationships. They were afraid of losing their livelihood, their wealth, their status, their freedom. Eventually they would lose their very lives. And it’s not like they were just reckless like, “We don’t care. Go ahead and kill us.” That’s like craziness. There’s a difference between craziness and boldness. They were bold. What implored them to be so bold? It’s basically this understanding, “Why am I afraid of losing my wealth, my status, and even my life? I’m going to lose those things anyway. But in Jesus I have a wealth, and I have a life that can never be shaken. It is unshakable in this very shaky world. So why would I give that up to a shaky world that is threatening it?” So whatever you’re building your life upon (and I’m going to ask you that question here in a minute) I just want you to play it out—will it last? As wonderful as your relationships are, those relationships are coming apart. And as wonderful as your marriage is, eventually—there will come a day when you go into eternity and you can’t lean upon your spouse as a cornerstone. He [or she] is a wonderful gift, a partner from the Lord, but he [or she] cannot be your cornerstone. It’s too much pressure. Your finances, your sexuality—all that stuff is coming apart. Your health… Man, I don’t care how well you take care of your body. I don’t care how many times you’re in the gym. I don’t care how much kale you eat, everything is still coming apart, alright? And eventually it’s going to give out on us. Peter and John say, “Why are we more afraid of those things that you can take from us that we’re eventually going to lose anyway. We’re building our lives upon the cornerstone which is Jesus Christ.” So there was this poise about them: Not a recklessness, not a craziness. Whenever we read about boldness in the Bible we just think, “Well, that’s just religious fanaticism.” This is not religious fanaticism. This is a security in where their foundation is. This guy named John Wesley once said it this way. He said, “Give me a hundred men who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I will shake the world.” He goes on, “I care not a straw,” I couldn’t help but laugh. I have no idea what that means. This is obviously a very different era. Apparently straw was a very strong word. Alright, Wesley, calm down, “I care not a straw,” right? That’s just my mind, “…whether they be clergymen or laymen;” Break that out this next week, “I care not a straw.” That’d be awesome. Tell me how that goes. Focus, “… and such alone will overthrow the kingdom of Satan and build up the Kingdom of God on earth.” Wesley is basically saying, “Hey, here’s the secret to the power of the church, men and women who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God.” And God empowered them to shake up the world around them. We live in a very insecure world. Here’s how the church responds. Peter and John take it back to them in verse 23. It says, “When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it,” notice, they didn’t panic. They didn’t run to social media and complain about it and repost things. What did they do? “…they lifted their voices together to God…”



When the church hears what happened, when they hear about this wave of hostility coming against them, their response was to pray, which doesn’t necessarily seem unusual to us. But what I want you to see is… Notice what is conspicuously absent from their prayer. They go on and they pray and in verse 29, I want to pick it up there. It says, “…and now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to Your servants to continue to speak Your Word with all boldness, while You stretch out Your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of Your holy servant Jesus.” In other words, “As we have resistance coming against us, God continue to do what only you can do.” Verse 31, “And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken,” that’s interesting, “…and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the Word of God with boldness.” So as they pray, if you go back and you read this in your Bibles in Acts 4, they are quoting Psalm 2. And Psalm 2 is a song about God as a refuge. So, when their world begins to shake, their response, as a church, was to pray by lifting up their voices to the Lord and singing a song about God as a refuge. What is missing from their prayer is a request for deliverance. They are not saying, “God rescue us out of these circumstances. God, stop the ground from shaking.” I don’t know about you but when my life starts to shake and when things start to get unstable, when things come against me my immediate impulse is to go to God in prayer but it’s to pray that God would stop the shaking, “God, please come through and deliver me from this.” And hear me. I’m not saying that it’s wrong to pray that. And I’m not saying that God never wants to stop the shaking. I am saying that God actually wants something a little bit more. See, most of the time—and this is just for me and maybe you can relate to this—when I pray, I have a tendency to treat God as a repairman and not a father. There’s a difference. How do you treat your repairman? I’m not the handiest guy around the house. So when something breaks and my wife can’t fix it, I usually call the repairman. And what does the repairman say? He says, “I’ll give you a window,” right? “This is when I’ll be there, so just be ready. I’ll give you a window between 8 o’clock and 11 at night.” So you’re like, “Okay, I’m waiting for you to get here.” So finally the repairman comes and I’m not thinking about my relationship with the repairman. I don’t embrace him. I don’t ask him about how the kids are doing. Basically it’s just a little bit of small talk that I’ve kind of got to bear and then I say, “Here’s the problem. Fix it,” and, “how soon can you do that and get out so that we can go on with our lives.” And I’m sorry for all of the repairmen that are here. You never want to come to my house and repair things after this, right? But when it comes to my relationship with my father or my close friends, if I were to treat them that way there wouldn’t be much of a relationship. I don’t want my kids treating me like a repairman. I want them to treat me like a father. As a father, oftentimes in my discernment and wisdom, I know that sometimes I will try to remove them from shaky ground. Sometimes I’ll say, “No, you need to stay in it.” And it’s painful for them, and they cry out, but I know that they need to face it for their own maturity and for our relationship because I want them to lean into me. There is a day that is rapidly approaching when I won’t necessarily be in their same house and they’re going to need to be responsible adults. And if I rescue from all of the shaky ground then they would be immature adults.



It’s the recognition in our prayer lives that the presence of God with you in the midst of shaky ground is far better than living a storm-‐avoiding, self-‐sufficient life. And we learn this from the early church. They did not pray, “God, stop the shaking.” They said, “God, give us shock absorbers to endure this as we lean into Your power because You are doing something in this world that is much, much bigger than just isolating us from pain. You desire to redeem the whole world.” And when the world looks at how the church responds to pain and suffering, there is something about that that is louder than any sermon and it’s louder than any lesson. There is something about that that is believable. It’s authentic. So let me ask you one question. I’m going to make one statement and then we’re going to be done. Here’s the question: Who or what, right now in your life, is your “cornerstone”? Be honest about it. I’m not looking for church answers. I’m not looking for what you think. I want you to be straight-‐up honest. Right now who or what is coming against you and threatening your joy, your happiness, and your fulfillment. What is it that you fear the most? If you can say, “If God took that, or if I had that taken from me then it would wreck me.” That’s a cornerstone. That’s what you run to for security. And whatever you’ve decided is your cornerstone becomes, ultimately, your confidence. Here’s where the gospel shakes people. It doesn’t just offend us intellectually. The gospel calls out our cornerstones and says that they are inadequate to shoulder the weight of this world. It seems as if this is like, “God, how could You threaten my cornerstone.” It’s actually an act of His grace because when the earthquake hits there is nothing that can endure that other than Jesus Christ as a cornerstone. So, God will go after your cornerstone in an effort to make you more secure when some of life’s biggest storms hit. That’s what conversion means. Conversion is not a weak-‐minded, “Okay, God. I guess I believe in You. I guess that I will follow You so that you can be my repairman when life gets crazy.” Conversion is uprooting my house from the prior foundations or cornerstones and planting it on Jesus, which means that you have to get rid of the old cornerstone. There’s this farmer from Connecticut named Nathan Cole. In 1741 he hears this guy named George Whitefield preach and he wrote this down upon his conversion. He said, “When I heard Whitefield preach it gave me a heart wound;” that’s another word for conviction—a heaviness, “and I saw by God’s grace my old foundation was broken up, and I saw that my righteousness would not save me.” He keys in on something that I think is so important. When you give your life to Christ you’ve got to take out a jackhammer and you’ve got to break up the old foundation. All the time I talk to people or I’ll have people in my office and they’ll say things like this. I’ve had this said to me dozens of times, “I’ve tried Christianity and it didn’t work. I tried to follow God and it didn’t work.” And I just want to say as lovingly as I can, “No, you didn’t. You just set up a tent and told Jesus to reside on that old foundation and then when the storm hit you blamed Jesus for it.” You’ve got to break up the old and you’ve got to set the new—fixing your cornerstone upon Jesus. Here’s the statement: God will very lovingly shake you up so you might never shake again. That’s the irony of it. God will allow your world to be shaken by the things that are temporary so that your eternal life will be unshakeable. And it is an act of His grace.



The author of Hebrews puts it this way. He says, “At that time His voice shook the earth, but now He has promised, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.’ This phrase, ‘Yet once more,’ indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made,” we’re talking about things on earth: careers, relationships, reputation, “in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken…” So here’s what I want you to see as we close this up and land the plane. Every time in Scripture when God’s presence came down an earthquake came with Him. In Exodus 19 God came down on Mount Sinai so that the whole mountain trembled violently. In Judges 5 Deborah sings this song. She said, “When you went out with our army, O Lord, when you marched out with us, the earth shook.” And here in the Book of Acts, we just read this, as the world of these Christ followers was being shaken, and they lifted up their voice to God it says that God’s presence came down on the house where they were and He shook it as they prayed. See, when God shows up, earthquakes usually come with Him. I like how this guy named John Chrysostom puts this as he is talking about this passage. He says, “The more the place was shaken, the less the believers were shaken.” In other words, the more God shakes you by His Holy Spirit the less the world can shake you. This is where the gospel leads into this. In Matthew 27 Jesus is hanging on a cross, He’s dying for our sins, and as Jesus breathed His last breath there was an earthquake. It was the presence of God’s justice falling upon the earth. And the weightiness of God is too much for the world to handle. So, the earth shook and what happened? The curtain in the Temple ripped from top to bottom that represented the separation between God and man and basically God said, “That’s done. There is no more separation between Me and you. I’ve made a way.” The rock split apart and that earthquake was caused by God’s justice falling upon the shoulders of Jesus. I’ve always wondered why Jesus, when He was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane said, “Lord, if there is any other way, take this cup from Me.” For the longest time I thought it was just because Jesus didn’t want to get punched in the face, and spit upon, and mocked, and whipped, and nails through wrists and His feet. I’m sure that He probably wasn’t looking forward to that but I really don’t think that’s why He prayed that prayer. I think the reason He prayed, “Lord, if there is any other way…” is because He knew that the weight of God’s justice on His shoulders would crush Him. It would shake Him to His core. See, Jesus was shaken in a way that nobody else ever has been and thankfully nobody ever will if they are in Christ because He absorbed the wrath of God’s justice Himself. Listen, that’s why Peter says in this passage that Jesus is the Way. Maybe you’ve heard Jesus is the Way and that’s offensive to you because what you hear is that we’re saying that our religion is more superior to everyone else’s or that we’ve figured something out that everyone else can’t figure out. That’s not what we are meaning when we say, “Jesus is the Way.” When we say, “Jesus is the Way,” we say, “He’s the only One who shouldered the weight of the justice of God so that we would never have to.” In the very next chapter in Matthew there’s another earthquake. When Jesus was resurrected from the dead and the stone rolled away, there was an earthquake upon the earth again and it was really a “death quake” because it rattled death to its core. And this time it wasn’t the justice of God coming to the earth, it was the righteousness of God coming to the earth through Jesus so that you and I might not ever be shaken again.



Listen, in this life there is pain, and there is heartache, and there is discomfort, and there are things that are going to totally shake us to our core. And we say, “God, where are You in this?” And God is like, “Listen. I am allowing you—maybe, perhaps—to go through this time so that you might lean into Me as your solid foundation.” And it’s this understanding that everything we are running to to find security in the midst of a shaky world is all coming apart and it’s eventually crumbling. And God in His grace has said, “Build upon the cornerstone that is Jesus Christ.” Will you take some hits? By all means you will. Will you be hurt in this world? Of course you will. But here’s a solid foundation that you can stand on into eternity. That’s what will give you boldness. That’s what will give you security. And it will be the most significant witness that this culture will ever hear. People’s ears are largely deafened to what I’m even doing right now. People’s ears are deafened to points of theology and doctrine that are in the Scriptures. But when they see somebody who is poised and confident when their world is falling down all around because they are standing upon the cornerstone of Jesus Christ—they still may not fully agree or understand it all but they cannot deny the power that is in it. God has said, “This is what I’ll be doing…” This is what He’s always done within the church, a group of people trying to figure things out, stumbling through life and Jesus becomes our cornerstone, and now we get in the game, and we give His grace and His truth to others. So, be honest. Who or what is your cornerstone? And if it’s not Jesus it won’t carry you through. And God, in His grace, will very lovingly pick that up so that you might never shake again. Let’s pray. Father, we come to You right now and as we prepare to take communion, and as we prepare to witness some baptisms today and to celebrate them, God, I pray that we would take the message that is found in the Book of Acts, which is sobering for all of us… It’s been sobering for me all week long as I have been preparing this, for me to ask of myself, “Who or what is my cornerstone?” God, oftentimes, my cornerstone is maybe even this church and how I feel that things are going. And even this—this will eventually come to an end and Your big “C” church will last eternal. So God, I want to fix my foundation upon You. I want my feet to be solidly fixed upon You. I love what it says in Daniel when Daniel and his friends are being threatened by the king. They said, “Listen, our God will deliver us but even if He doesn’t we will still bow down to Him.” God, give us that kind of faith to trust after You because we live in a really shaky world and people are looking for a solid foundation. And You’ve given it to us in Jesus. So God, may we have the confidence to follow that. And if anybody needs to make that decision, if anybody needs to give their life to Christ, in these next few moments… Now is the time to do it. So Lord, meet us in this place. Be work upon us. And we ask this in Jesus Name. Amen.

Documents

Acts: Turn the World Upside Down – Shaken and Unshakeable…Intellectualmaterialsaretheproperty)of)Traders)Point)ChristianChurch.)All)rights)reserved.)) Transcript September 5/6,