Well, please turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 4 and verse 23. You could turn the monitor down just a little bit up here. Acts chapter 4 and verse 23. And it's exciting. It is so exciting to be back in the building. It is, we have not had a congregation in the building since March. And so to be able to be here this morning is just wonderful. And the carpet looks beautiful and the paint looks beautiful. And if you go downstairs, you'll see there's progress that's being made down there as well. And so we are excited about that. And so there's just a lot to be excited about. And tonight we'll be meeting at six o'clock. As Pastor John mentioned, we'll be discussing our book of the month. It's only a few pages, chapter one of the introduction. It shouldn't take you that long to read. So if you haven't read it yet, you could get the book this morning. We have it, I think the cheapest you can get it anywhere. You could read it this afternoon and take part in the discussion tonight. So we won't, you know, take the whole service to talk about it. but we'll take, you know, 10-15 minutes or so, because I think even though we're not going to agree with everything that Dreher says or every perspective that he takes, he raises some really important issues that is important for us to be talking about, to be thinking about, to be wrestling about, wrestling with, and so I am excited to discuss that with you. So our text is Acts chapter 4, beginning in verse 23. We'll read the text and get started. In being let go, they went to their own company and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them. When they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord and said, Lord, thou art God, which has made heaven and earth and the sea and all that in them is, who by the mouth of thy servant David has said, Why did the heathen rage? and the people imagine vain things. The kings of the earth stood up and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ, for of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together. For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done, And now, Lord, behold their threatenings, and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word, by stretching forth thine hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus. Let's go before the Lord in prayer. Father, I come before you, and I thank you for your goodness. And I thank you for the opportunity to preach your word. And I pray that it would be your word that would be preached. I pray that if there is anyone here this morning who does not know you, that today would be the day that they would come and lay their heavy burden down and take the rest that you offer to them. I pray if there's any of us that have been distracted from following Jesus by the events of this year, that today would be a day where we would recalibrate our focus and rejoice in the goodness of our Savior. I pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. I've never been, well, I've never been much into sports, and those of you who know me well know that's probably a bit of an understatement. But you don't have to be a diehard fan to recognize that the present prospects of American football are not looking very promising. Even apart from the massive obstacles posed by continuing COVID restrictions, the capitulation of so many teams and players to the ever more strident demands of political pressure groups has divided fans and players alike, diverting ever more attention from the playing of the game itself to the circumstances under which it's being played. Some of you have related to me your struggles with this development. Hard as it is becoming to imagine, though, there once was a day, not that long ago, in fact, when football was known for something other than political posturing and rapid coronavirus testing. While football has always had its downsides, its players were at least once renowned for a single-minded focus on the game, regardless of the difficulty of the circumstances under which they were called to play it. given both the rough and tumble nature of the game and the season that it's played in, football has never been a game for the faint of heart, never been a pastime suited for those who place priority on smooth sailing in balmy and breezy weather. There's a reason, after all, why it was football coaches who coined the phrase, when the going gets tough, the tough gets going, because if you play football seriously, the going is often going to get tough. And as a famous example of this, a particularly famous example, in the 1967 championship game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers, known ever after as the Ice Bowl, and if you are a football fan, you'll probably know about this already, players continued to focus on the game, with both teams fighting to deliver a dramatic climax at literally almost the last minute, even as they battled temperatures that dipped down to 15 degrees below zero with a windchill that by the end of the game was hitting 70 below zero, resulting in frostbite on the part of the players who were still battling each other for the possession of a piece of pigskin. Some dedication and some focus right there. And though most of us have not been called to chase a pigskin around a field in sub-zero temperatures, for which most of us are glad, all of us need to remember that Christianity is not a fair weather endeavor either. As we journey together to the celestial city, we will encounter storms of all kinds, dangers and difficulties that can all too easily absorb our attention. causing us to become so focused on the difficulties that we are facing that we stop focusing on our Savior and the mission that he has given us. And in our text this morning, we find the early church in Jerusalem faced with just such a storm. By paying careful attention to their response, we can learn how to stand through the storms that we face in our own day. both as individuals and as a congregation. Things have been going very well for the Church of Jerusalem for some time now. As Jesus promised, the Spirit had been poured out on them in a powerful way at the Day of Pentecost. Peter's sermon on that day had been a tremendous success, leading to thousands of conversions, and the church was unified. There were people coming in, and the people who were already there were still staying, and they were all getting along. Wasn't that remarkable? It was a time of tremendous growth and tremendous unity, full of joy, and they kept on growing and kept on growing. Shortly after this, as if things hadn't already been as wonderful as they could be, by the power of the resurrected Christ, a man who was lame from his mother's womb had been gloriously healed. Through the Spirit's work in Peter's life and taking advantage of the crowd's understandable astonishment at this miracle, Peter had once again preached a tremendously powerful sermon and thousands more had been saved. And they were still unified. and they were still filled with joy. Things were going wonderful. And yet, this smooth sailing didn't last for very long. Before they could even begin to savor the tremendous success that they were seeing, a storm of opposition blew up, a storm that sought to silence their bold proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ, to divert their attention away from their Savior and on to simply surviving their increasingly difficult circumstances. That was the threat that they faced. And for the sake of context, we'll pick up our story in Acts chapter 4 and verse 1, as Peter and the other apostles were preaching that second sermon to the people in the Jerusalem temple. Acts 4, 1. As they spake unto the people, the priest and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them and put them in hold the next day, for it was now even time. So the next morning, so they were thrown into prison, and given the way that prisons worked in those days, they probably didn't have any food, and they probably didn't have any beds, and they may not have even had any water. They were thrown into prison, they were locked up, and they were left there to rot all night long. The next morning, they were dragged out and they were placed before the Sanhedrin in the face of the threats of the very men whose plots had just led to the crucifixion of Jesus. So they had had a few wonderful weeks, or it didn't work out the exact phonology, but they had things working out well for some time. But immediately before that, Jesus had been crucified by these men. Their threats were serious. So being dragged before the Sanhedrin, being publicly shamed in this way before the rulers of their people, people who knew how to make good on their threats, this was no light or trivial matter. And yet Peter and the other apostles continued to boldly proclaim the message of the gospel, Verse 10, Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was sought at nought, set at nought of you builders, which has become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. Rather than repenting at Peter's proclamation of the gospel, the religious leaders chose instead, they didn't beat them, they didn't put them back in prison for now, because the circumstances made it difficult for them to take the revenge that they wanted to take, but they severely threatened them, and we need to take that seriously, because these were men who knew how to make good on their threats, and they commanded them, don't you dare speak a word in the name of Jesus. Rather than improving their circumstances, following Jesus had led the apostles into a storm of difficulty and suffering. A storm that would only intensify over the days, the months, and the years that followed. And in our text this morning, we see how these first Christians responded to this storm, setting a pattern of faithfulness for all who would follow in their footsteps. Our text begins in verse 23. As soon as they were released, the apostles, rather than withdrawing by themselves to commiserate among themselves how badly they had been treated, they had been treated badly or plotting to make the Sanhedrin pay for their abuse of authority rather than responding by being overwhelmed by the difficulties they faced or outraged at the injustices that they had suffered. They immediately gathered together with their fellow believers for mutual encouragement. We focused on last week, the Christian life is irreducibly communal. None of us has the strength to stand through the storm on our own. There will be points along our journey in which all of our hands will hang down and all of our knees will become weak. We need one another to lift up our hands when they hang down and to strengthen our knees when they become weak and to constantly encourage one another to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. As they prayed together in one accord, they outlined the foundations upon which their community was built. So they were coming together in community, and now we're going to see the foundations on which their community was built. And if you think it follows the outline of the past few weeks a little too closely, it was because the outline of the past few weeks was based on and anticipating this passage. So the correlation was intentional. Verse 24, and when they heard that, they lift up their voice to God with one accord and said, Lord, thou art God, which has made heaven and earth and the sea and all that in them is. They began, as we began this series of messages, by reminding themselves of the confidence they had in who their God was and is. The Lord God that they worshiped in their day, the very same Lord God that we worship in our day, is the true and the living God. He is the maker of the heaven and the earth, and the idols of the nations cannot see or hear or speak or indeed do anything at all. And no matter how fiercely their worshipers may rage, the idols in whom they have placed their trust are empty nothings who have no power to thwart the unstoppable will of the Almighty God that we worship. And having first reminded themselves of the ground of their confidence in the God that they worship, they moved on to encourage themselves with the truths of God's word, to delight in the truth. of God's word, verse 25, who by the mouth of thy servant David hath said, why did the heathen rage and the people imagine vain things? The kings of the earth stood up and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ. For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done. Verses 25 and 26 contain a direct quotation from the second psalm. Long before they faced this particular storm, the apostles had taken time to delight in the word of God, to make the living words of scripture both the soil in which their roots were planted and the supply by which their fruit was Rome. When they came to pray about the situation, they didn't run to the psalm scrolls to try to find an appropriate text, because they'd already hidden God's Word in their heart. They were already thinking in scriptural terms, and it was only natural, because of the way they had already delighted in the Word of God, to when they were faced with a challenge, to see that challenge, to read that challenge in light of the Word of God. They were already saturated And now, as they were faced with a storm of opposition, these long years of saturation in the scriptures began to bear fruit. For in his psalm, David spoke of opposition from both the heathen nations, from the Gentiles, and from the people, or the peoples, a term that is normally used to refer to Israel, the chosen people of God. So it's two different words. And in interpreting their circumstances through the light of God's Word, the apostles recognized that they were facing exactly the sort of opposition that David had described. So there's a parallel. You have kings and rulers, and you have the nations and the peoples, and the apostles recognized, in God's word, their circumstances. For both Herod, who claimed to be a Jewish king, and Pontius Pilate, the Roman ruler, had joined together in agreement to have Jesus put to death. Both the heathen Gentiles and the people of Israel had gathered themselves together in an attempt to stop the plans of God. The situation that David had spoken of in Psalm 2 had come to fruition in their day. And yet, no matter how fiercely the nations rage, or the peoples imagine vanity, They are utterly powerless to thwart the plans and the purposes of the true and the living God. Because as the second song goes on to make clear, the Lord is so far from being threatened by the raging nations that he can laugh at their futile attempts at rebellion. No matter how unstoppable they may seem to us, the day is coming when these rebels will be broken with a rod of iron dashed in pieces like the vessels of a potter. Though they may cause great suffering to the followers of Christ, even that very suffering will be used by the God who works all things according to the counsel of his own will to produce good in the lives of all those who love God, all those who are the called according to his purpose. Having reminded them of the ground of their confidence and encouraged themselves with the truths of God's word, the apostles weren't able to pray, not for the storm that they faced to go away, but rather for the boldness to faithfully stand through that storm. Not for the storm to go away, but for the boldness to stand through the storm. Verse 29, And now, Lord, behold their threatenings, and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word, by stretching forth thine hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus. As one commentator put it so well, the response of the apostles to persecution is prayer, not for relief or deliverance from persecution, but for boldness and power to continue to proclaim the word even in the midst of such adversity. That's a really good quote, so I'm going to read it one more time. The response of the apostles to persecution is prayer, not for relief or deliverance from persecution, but for boldness and power to continue to proclaim the word even in the midst of such adversity. Rather than praying for the storm to go away, the apostles instead prayed for the boldness to faithfully stand through that storm. The way that some in American Christianity presented Jesus is the missing piece of the puzzle of your life. the secret ingredient that will enable you to find your best life now, enable you to claim the prosperous and successful life that is rightfully yours. And there are more and less extreme ways of presenting this. So just because you don't read Joel Osteen, just because you don't subscribe to the prosperity gospel of, say, Creflo Dollar, that I hope most of us would recognize, hey, we don't want to go down that road. All of us can imbibe a prosperity gospel light where we don't want to be rich. We just want to be comfortable. We don't want to be, you know, astonishingly, we don't want Jesus to give us, you know, millions of dollars. We just want him to make our life a little bit easier. And that's a temptation that none of us are immune to. This idea is so common in American Christianity that it has a little place in all of our hearts. And if we don't actively resist it, that place will grow. Because this is not what the New Testament teaches, and it is not what Jesus has offered to us. Far from promising to give us our best life now, Jesus calls on us to daily take up our cross, daily take up our instrument of execution. The cross is not a decoration that we hang on the wall. The cross was one of the most brutal forms of capital punishment ever devised. It's not a sentimental trinket. To take up our cross daily and follow Him in the narrow way that He has marked out for us. He has promised us opposition from the world. He has promised us that our own families will, in many cases, turn against us. He has promised us hardship and suffering of all kinds. He has promised us, in short, that we will be called to stand through many a storm. And yet the storms that we face, those storms are not the whole story. Because Christianity is built not on doom and gloom, everything is going to be doomy and gloomy, so get ready for things to be doomier and gloomier, because this is, you know, this is the good news. No, Christianity is based on a joyous message of good news. The truth is, you have to know how bad the bad news is to know how good the good news is. If you don't know that you have cancer, The news of a cure for cancer will not be all that exciting to you. But if you know that you have no earthly hope, then any course of treatment that will result in success, however arduous, is a source of tremendous joy. For though Jesus made very clear that we'll face suffering and difficulties, he made it even more clear that we'll never be called to do so alone. Jesus is the one to whom all power on heaven and on earth has been given. Jesus has promised that He, through His Spirit, will always be with us. We may be called to stand through storms, but we have not been called to stand through them alone. And He has furthermore promised to bring everyone who belongs to Him safely through the storm to the safe harbor that He has gone on to prepare for us. And as the author and the finisher of our faith, he has already run every stride of the course that he has set before us. Not only did he leave us an example so that we could follow in his footsteps, but he has also sent us his spirit to safely guide us all the way to the glorious city he has already made us citizens of. The sufferings of this present age are not worthy to be compared with the glory which is going to be revealed in and through us on the day of his coming. During the earthly ministry of Jesus, the Apostle Peter experienced a vivid illustration of what is required if we are to stand through the storms that arise as we follow Jesus. After the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus had sent his disciples off in a boat while he remained to send away the multitudes and to spend time in prayer. And as they were attempting to obey, a storm blew up, hindering their progress and tossing the little boat that they were in back and forth on the waves and causing them to despair even for their lives. And as they struggled to make headway against this storm, Jesus came to them walking on the water. And we pick up the story in Matthew 14, 26. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled saying, it is a spirit. and cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer, it is I. Be not afraid. And Jesus answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, when he looked at how bad the storm was, he was afraid. and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand and caught him and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? When Peter looked at the storm, he began to sink, but when he looked to the Savior, he was given the strength to stand despite the storm. Though Peter would miserably fail in the courtyard of the high priest, he would not forever forget the lesson that Jesus had taught him that night on the Sea of Galilee. When he and the other apostles were faced with a storm of opposition from the religious leaders, they knew to focus their attention not on the storm through which they were called to walk, but on the Savior toward whom they were called to head. We were to sum up the message of our passage this morning in one sentence. We might put it like this. The apostles could continue to boldly stand because they focused their eyes on the Savior they proclaimed rather than on the storm that they faced. The apostles could continue to boldly stand because they focused their eyes on the Savior they proclaimed rather than the storm that they faced. What was true for them in their day is still true for us in our own day. We can continue to boldly stand if we will focus our eyes on the Savior we proclaim rather than the storm that we face. Having worked through our text over the next few minutes, we'll look more closely at how we are enabled to stand, how glorious the Savior we proclaim truly is, what it might look like to be tempted to focus on the storm instead of the Savior. Though Christians are certainly called to endure hardness as the good soldiers of Jesus Christ, the call to stand is far more than an exhortation to simply tough it out, to dig deep into our inner resources and find within ourselves the strength to face down our foes. Christianity is more than football transposed. into a spiritual key. For while football players must battle both the elements, or at least they used to have to battle the elements and the opposing team, we are called to stand against the prince of the power of the air, the roaring lion who has the principalities and powers of this world at his beck and call, the deceiving serpent with whom our own flesh is constantly conspiring to destroy us. No matter how tough you think you are, this isn't a battle. that can be won by toughness alone. Spirit may indeed be willing, but the flesh will always be too weak for us to have any hope whatsoever of standing in our own power. We stand, therefore, not by exalting in our own strength, but by humbling ourselves, learning daily to become ever more dependent on the grace of God. We find in the book of James, but he giveth more grace. Wherefore, he sayeth, God resisted the proud, but give it grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. We stand through the storm, not by leaning into our own resources of inner strength, digging down deep and finding the wherewithal to keep going in the face of difficulty, but rather by learning. to become ever more dependent upon the very same Savior that we are seeking to boldly proclaim. Christianity, we need to remember, is not a spectator sport. While there is room for every follower of Jesus on the team, there is no place for anyone to sit in the stands. There are no bleachers for the Christian life, or box seats, or any seats at all, because all of us are called to be out on the playing field. And all of us, whether we like it or not, are out on the playing field of life. The salvation that Jesus offers is no golden ticket that enables you to escape the judgment of God while leaving the rest of your life more or less intact, untouched. On the contrary, conversion enlists us all in the army of the Lord, and it brings us to the front lines of the spiritual battlefield, and it commissions us to go to war for our commander. You belong to Jesus. You are, whether you realize it or not, an ambassador of the King of Kings. Having been entrusted with the gospel, you've been given the ministry of reconciliation, called to participate in the making of disciples among all nations, called to proclaim the good news of the gospel among all peoples. As our missionary, Jason Russell, reminded us a few weeks ago, we do not well if we do not tell. have an obligation to share the good news of the gospel and to live lives that are consistent with the good news of the gospel. We'll talk about that next week, Lord willing. We cannot, we must not keep the good news of the gospel to ourselves. No matter how fierce the opposition we face or how difficult our circumstances may become, we must find ways to continue to boldly proclaim the old, old story of Jesus and his love. Not only is this the commission that we've been given by Jesus, it is also the pattern that we find exemplified in the lives of the apostles. Rather than backing down and waiting for more favorable circumstances, Peter continued to boldly proclaim the gospel to the very men that were persecuting them. As we read earlier, when questioned about the hope that lay within him, Peter was ready to give an answer. Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which has become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none of the name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. The very same message that Peter proclaimed in his day is the message that we must continue to proclaim in our own. Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the way, the truth, and the life, the only hope that anyone anywhere has of escaping the coming wrath of God against the sin and rebellion of us all. All of us are born sinners, and all of us have chosen sin for ourselves. We like to pretend that we're nice people who occasionally mess up. But the sad reality is that all of us are wicked rebels who deserve to suffer the eternal wrath of God for the sins that we have committed against his majesty. We, by our self-centeredness and pride, have thoroughly corrupted the good creation God gave to our first parents. Our sin is what is wrong with the world. And if God were to judge every one of us without mercy, if God were to cast all of us into the lake of fire forever, He would be perfectly just in doing so. He would be good to punish us all with eternal damnation. And yet, though God has every right to condemn all of mankind, He has nevertheless mercifully chosen to save many, to save all those who will repent of their sins and turn to Christ alone for salvation. While we were still his enemies, he sent down his son to die in our place. As he hung on the cross, Jesus took our sins upon himself. He bore our griefs and he carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions and he was bruised for our iniquities. He took the cup of the wrath of God, the cup that should have been poured out for us to drink, and he drained it down to the dregs for us and for our redemption. By pouring out his life's blood on our behalf, he made full and complete atonement for all whom the Father had given him. Yet Jesus didn't just experience the death that we deserve. For when He, the sinless Son of God, fully divine and fully human, took our punishment on Himself, He pulled the sting from death, and He robbed the grave of its victory. And three days after His body was placed in a borrowed tomb, the Father raised Him out from among the dead ones, forever victorious over sin and death and the grave. He is the victorious Lord, to whom all power in heaven and in earth has been given. And after showing himself alive to his disciples, he ascended up to heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father. And on the day of Pentecost, just as he had promised, he poured out his spirit into the hearts of his disciples, a spirit he is still pouring out into the hearts of his disciples today, giving them and us the power to proclaim the good news to every tribe and every nation and every language in every corner of the world. Though Satan and his minions may rage, though they may fight with all their fury against the spread of the gospel, they will not succeed. Because we have already been given a vision of the end of the story. There is a day coming, perhaps very soon. When the glorious bride of Christ in New Jerusalem will descend from God out of heaven, the living stones of that city will form a great multitude which no man will be able to number, a multitude taken from all nations and all kindreds and all peoples and all tongues, all of whom will worship the Lord with one accord in peace and unity for all of eternity. This is the message that we have been called to boldly proclaim. This is the Savior on whom we have been called to fix our eyes. This is the truth in which we have been called to root ourselves in. This is what we have been called to stand on, to stand in, and to stand for. This is the mission. that the storm seeks to distract us from. As the servants of the Lord, we are responsible, both individually and collectively, to proclaim the good news of the gospel. As Paul made clear to the Corinthians, we aren't responsible for the final harvest. Yet though it is God and God alone who gives the increase, all of us are responsible to faithfully sow the seed of the gospel in the furrows in which the Lord of the harvest has placed each one of us. We go forth bearing precious seed. We go forth in the confidence that storms will arise. Storms that will seek to distract us from our mission. To turn our attention from the mission we have been sent on to the storm that we have been sent through. When the going begins to get rough, when things begin to become more difficult than we had perhaps anticipated, all of us can face the temptation to allow our attention to be diverted from the Savior to the storm. And rather than like the apostles praying for the boldness to continue to proclaim the good news of our Savior, we can instead begin to allow our attention to be absorbed by the storm itself. On the one hand, we could be so overwhelmed by this storm that we turn inward, spending so much time thinking and talking about our difficult circumstances that there is no energy left over to actually carry out the mission. We could be overwhelmed and therefore become absorbed by the difficulty of our circumstances, commiserating ourselves, worrying about how difficult things have become for us. On the other hand, we could be so outraged by the storm of opposition we're facing that we begin to focus on dealing with the storm rather than carrying out our mission, stopping those who we think are oppressing us rather than proclaiming the gospel to them. What we need to remember is that in the end, it doesn't really matter whether we're overwhelmed by the storm or we're outraged by the storm. If our focus is on the storm, our focus is not on our Savior. And if our focus is not on our Savior, then the storm has already defeated us. We need to remember the example of Peter on the Sea of Galilee. The instant he took his eyes off of Jesus, the instant he looked and turned and focused on the wind and the waves, he began to sink into those waves. If we allow ourselves to be distracted by the storm, if we allow our attention to be absorbed by the difficulties we are facing, we will not be able to continue to stand. Because we stand not in our own strength, but in the strength of our Savior. And it is only as we continue to look to Him that we have any hope of standing. Rather than praying for God to stop the storm, we must follow the examples of the first apostles in asking him to keep the storm from stopping us. Rather than focusing on the difficulty of the circumstances that we face, we must instead continue to focus on the perfection of the Savior that we proclaim. Now, this is not a call to be blissfully ignorant of what's going on in the world around us. This is not a call to stick our heads in the sand and hope for the best. And yet there's a very great difference between being aware of the storm and focusing on the storm. In the second NFL championship game played in 1934 between the Chicago Bears and the New York Giants, frozen rain had covered the field in ice. making it almost impossible for the old-style cleats of either team to gain the needed traction to play well. And so they were slipping and sliding all over the field, they couldn't get any traction, and it was a struggle to play. So at halftime, the Giants, who'd been losing rather badly, somewhat surprisingly decided to borrow the basketball sneakers of a local college team. And with the vastly better traction these sneakers gave them on the ice-covered turf, at least as compared to the old-fashioned cleats they had, which weren't giving them traction. Their creativity was rewarded with a strong win over the heavily favored Bears. Their very awareness of their difficult circumstances enabled them to take out-of-the-box steps to enable them to focus, not on the circumstances, but on the game they were trying to play. the difference between awareness of our circumstances and focus on those circumstances, as that being aware of our circumstances enables us to focus more firmly on what we're called to do, and being focused on our circumstances distracts us from carrying out our mission. And in a very similar way, there's no virtue in insisting on doing things the way we've always done them, simply because that is what we've always done. Jesus himself instructed us to be both wise as serpents and harmless as doves. And over and over again, we find the apostles following this advice, maintaining full awareness of their circumstances, even as they firmly placed their full focus on their Savior. And yet while we are called to exercise all the wisdom and the creativity that we can muster in the pursuit of our mission, what we must never do is to allow the alleviation of our circumstances to become a greater priority to us than the pursuit of our mission. If the apostles had chosen to focus on the difficulties of their situation, if they had, overwhelmed by the storm, allowed their attention to be absorbed by bemoaning their fate. If they had, outraged by the storm, focused on making the Sanhedrin pay for their judicial overreach, they would have been forced to take their focus off their Savior and the mission that He had given them. And it was only because they refused to be diverted from the mission that we are here today to talk about their faithfulness. If they had failed this test, we wouldn't be here. And the immense debt that we owe to their faithfulness in their day can only be repaid by faithfulness in our own day. As the followers of Jesus Christ, we are not called primarily to defend our rights and our liberties and our comforts and our conveniences, but instead to single-mindedly seek to proclaim the gospel by both word and deed, regardless of how much it may cost us personally. While we, like the Apostle Paul did so often, should seek to creatively use every resource at our disposal to further the proclamation of the gospel, including our rights and liberties, we must never allow our attention to become so absorbed by these things that we allow our focus on the Savior to waver or our mission for our Savior to be diverted. When we are faced with storms of difficulty in our nation, in our church, our homes and in our own hearts, we must constantly strive to lift our eyes from the difficulty of our present circumstances to the sufficiency of our glorious Savior. We are here today because the Apostles chose to focus on the Savior they proclaimed rather than the storm that they faced. Rather than praying for their situation to improve, they prayed for the boldness to continue to carry out their mission, even as the storm continued to rage all around them. And God answered their prayer. And if we pray the same, he will answer our prayer. The Savior they proclaimed is the Savior. that we are called to proclaim. The spirit that was poured out on them has also been given to us. And if we, like them, will take heed to the great cloud of witnesses that have gone on before us, if we will lay aside every weight in the sin that so easily besets us, if we will look unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, we too will be given the strength to run with patience the race that has been set before us. Though we must take our circumstances into account, though we must be aware of the realities that surround us, we must always remember that faithfulness to the mission we have been sent on matters more than avoidance of the storm we have been sent through. Faithfulness to the mission that we have been sent on matters more than avoidance of the storm that we have been sent through. Though we may encounter much opposition as we seek to be faithful to Jesus, we can continue to boldly stand if we will focus our eyes on the Savior we proclaim rather than the storm that we face. When the going gets tough on the spiritual battlefield, those who place their confidence in their own toughness will be nowhere to be found. Those who, on the other hand, root themselves evermore deeply in the soil of the word of God, fix their eyes evermore firmly in humble dependence on the author and the finisher of their faith, will be enabled not simply to survive the storm, but indeed to grow through it, bringing forth the fruit of the spirit, even as the storm continues to rage against them. Regardless of how easy or difficult our circumstances may be, we must continually choose, as did the first apostles, to focus on the Savior we proclaim, rather than the storm that we face. If we will do this, we will be enabled not simply to survive the storm, but to stand through it in confidence, delighting in the word of the Lord, communing with one another about the things of our God, boldly proclaiming the good news he has entrusted us with, consistently glorifying God in everything that we do and say, daily enjoying the peace and the joy he has given us. as we wait together in hope for the day when our faithful labor for the sake of his name will receive its full reward. Let's go before the Lord in prayer. Father, I come before you this morning. I thank you for your word in the way that it's convicted my own heart as I prepared this message. And I pray, Father, that the spirit that convicted me would convict each and every one of those that are assembled here this morning. If there's anyone here who does not know you, I pray that today would be the day of their salvation. If there's anyone here who's been focused on this storm, who's been overwhelmed or outraged by the storm and has taken their eyes off of you, that today would be a day to recalibrate their focus. Help us all to be faithful to you. In Christ's name I pray. Amen.