RWJ/Pottersville UMC - 04/07/13 Sermon - “Persecuted" The Early Church Series, Part 1 of 6

Sunday - 04/07/13 RWJ/Pottersville UMC

Sermon: “Persecuted” The Early Church Series, Part 1 of 6                                                                                      

Scripture Lesson: Acts 5:27-32

                                             

Gospel Lesson: John 20:19-31

          Good morning brothers and sisters! Welcome in the name of the risen Lord to this the second Sunday in this Easter Season. Last Sunday we celebrated the glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. We celebrated Jesus overcoming the grave and the very snares of this world.

          While last Sunday was the glorious and powerful resurrection of the Lord, this Sunday we find ourselves in the very first days of the Christian movement, after the resurrection. While Jesus will make himself known to many like the Apostle Thomas, or the Apostles on that famous “Walk to Emmaus” in the Book of Acts, he will no longer be present in his fullness, all day, every day. He will however, reveal himself here or there in the flesh for the next 40-days, and then he will ascend to heaven. Jesus will then no longer appear in the flesh after this ascension, until he comes back in final victory in his second coming, as the Book of Revelation lays out.

          Jesus had told the apostles to await the Holy Spirit. That they will not understand the fullness of God, until they encountered the Holy Spirit. They will receive this very soon, and then it will occur more fully on the coming day of Pentecost.

          So once again, to recap, Jesus Christ has risen from the dead at this point, and the majority of the apostles fled when the crucifixion happened. Other than the women who followed Jesus and other than Jesus’ “beloved apostle,” who could have been John, none of the apostles were at the foot of cross during the crucifixion. In the gospel story from last Sunday, Mary found the empty tomb, and then she went and told Simon-Peter and the others. Simon-Peter and the other apostles were in hiding, out of fear of persecution.

You know we all have our “low ebb” times in our faiths, and I can imagine that from Good Friday to the empty tomb on Sunday morning that it was an incredibly broken and a lost time for the apostles. For Christ was brutally murdered. “What do we do now,” they must have thought on the night of that Good Friday and the next day on Saturday. “Should we preach the Good News?” “Should we not, they may have thought.”

          The tomb was empty though, and because of this Simon-Peter and the others realized that they must tell people of this Jesus of Nazareth. That they must share the “Good News” of Jesus Christ with the entire world, as Christ commanded them to do so. There is only one major problem with this though. The world then and much of the world even today, doesn’t love Jesus Christ. In fact, some of the world today persecutes Jesus Christ and his followers. The early church brothers and sisters, from the time of Peter and the Apostles in fact, were no different. The early church was persecuted. Church tradition holds that all of the apostles, except for maybe one were martyred for the Christian faith. That they were each executed for proclaiming the name Jesus Christ. My question though, is if they really thought that Jesus Christ was a fake, would they be so willing to die for him? Would you?

          Due to this, I decided on this Sunday to begin a 6-week sermon series on the early Christian Church. Who they were, how they functioned, and how they grew. The early Christian Church in fact, grew like wild fire, and it did so amidst heavy persecution. In fact, from the statistics I have read sometimes the early Christian Church doubled in size in a mere 10-year period of time. Yet the early church was heavily persecuted, and countless Christians were slaughtered just for proclaiming the name Jesus Christ.

          In the Book of the Acts of the Apostles scripture from this morning, it said, “When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, saying, “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.” This name that the apostles were teaching in was of course the name Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

After being told all of these things by the council and the high priest though, Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by handing him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sin. Then the apostles went on to say, “And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him”.

          You know, I don’t know if anyone has had a chance to watch it, but I have really enjoyed the History Channel’s mini-series called, “The Bible”. This mini-series as many of you might know ended last Sunday on Easter, and it has been the most watched television show of 2013, thus far. In the last episode from “The Bible”, this scripture from this morning from the Book of Acts was played out, as the high priest questioned Peter and the other Apostles, persecuting them for professing the name Jesus Christ.

          As another example of how Jesus Christ periodically appeared during his 40-days after the resurrection, we have an example in this morning’s reading from the gospel of John. In the gospel reading it said, “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you”. After this he showed the apostles his hands and his side from his crucifixion, and the again, Jesus said, “Peace be with you”. Jesus then said, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you”. “When he said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained”.

          This scripture of course, tells the story of Thomas saying, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nail and my hand in his side, I will not believe”. Thomas was not present during this appearance of Christ, where he breathed the Holy Spirit on the Apostles. Jesus then appeared a week later to the apostles, and told Thomas to put his finger in his hands, and his hand in his side. Jesus than said, “Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas then said, “My Lord my God!” Jesus responded to Thomas by saying, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe”.

The early Christian Church though was heavily “Persecuted”. To better illustrate this, let me give you some statistics about this persecution. From some brief research I have done, here is what I have found, “The total number of Christians martyred in the early church is unknown. Although some early writers speak of "great multitudes," modern scholars tend to believe the actual number is not so great as is sometimes imagined.” There was a lot who were killed though. Further, “Out of the 54 emperors who ruled between 30 and 311 AD, only about a dozen went out of their way to persecute Christians”. These were of course the Roman Emperors.

Here is what this source also said, “It has been calculated that between the first persecution under Nero in 64 AD to the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, Christians experienced 129 years of persecution and 120 years of toleration and peace. The Roman persecutions were generally sporadic, localized, and dependent on the political climate and disposition of each emperor. It has been estimated that more Christians have been martyred in the last 50 years than in the church's first 300 years.”

Of course the world at this time was not nearly as populated, but many Christians, particularly in the Roman Empire died brutal death for professing faith in Jesus Christ. One early Christian Apologist named Justin Martyr said, "Though beheaded, and crucified, and thrown to wild beasts, and chains, and fire, and all other kinds of torture, we do not give up our confession; but, the more such things happen, the more do others in larger numbers become faithful." This source went on to say “In the face of persecution, many Christians chose to die before they would deny their Lord. Those who did so came to be called “martyrs,” which means "witnesses." Martyrs, just like the early Christian leader Justin Martyr, who was “Martyred” for the faith.

So we know that a lot of early Christians were persecuted and killed for their faith in Christ. The question then is, “How does this relate to us today?” Let me read some rather chilling statistics about the more recent years of the history of Christian persecution. Here is what I found, “163,000 Christians die every year for their faith. Half of all the Christians who have ever died for their faith did so” in the 1900’s alone, “some 35 million” people. “15,000,000 of these were Orthodox or Catholic Christians who died under the Soviet regime between 1917 and 1980, primarily in prison camps.” According to another source, “In the 20th century, Christians have been persecuted by various groups, and by atheistic states such as the USSR and North Korea. The Christian missionary organisation Open Doors (UK) estimates 100 million Christians face persecution, particularly in Muslim-dominated countries such as Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. They also face persecution in atheistic states like North Korea in which there is no religious freedom. A recent study, cited by the Vatican, reported that 75 out of every 100 people killed due to religious hatred were Christian.”

So we have been persecuted brothers and sisters, from day one. I want close this morning’s message, with a true story about the persecuted church. This is a true story from 2011. It is called, “Shouwang Church Members Arrested Weekly in China”. Here is what the article says, “One of the largest unregistered Protestant churches in Beijing was subjected to weekly arrests when it began worshipping outdoors on April 10, after authorities pressured landlords to keep them out of their purchased and rented properties. Leaders of the 1,000-member church said the landlord of their venue had been under mounting pressure from authorities to terminate the lease, and the government also prevented the church from using the premises it had purchased in late 2009. Shouwang had paid 27 million yuan, or about US$4 million, for the second floor of the Daheng Science and Technology Tower in northwest Beijing’s Zhongguancun area. Authorities interfered, and the property developer refused to hand the key over to the church.

The members of the church’s governing committee, two pastors and three elders, and other major co-workers have been under house arrest for the whole or much of the time since April 9. Hundreds of other people, including many Shouwang parishioners and some members of other churches in Beijing and other cities, were detained for between a few hours to two days. The church was unwilling to be subject to the controls and restrictions of the official Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), as it disagrees with TSPM beliefs and controls. Many unregistered evangelical Protestant groups refuse to register with TSPM due to theological differences, fear of adverse consequences if they reveal names and addresses of church leaders or members or fear that it will control sermon content.

Shouwang signed a rental contract with a new landlord on Dec. 17, but the landlord terminated the contract due to pressure from “the local police station, the housing management office and leaders of various government agencies,” church leaders announced to members on Dec. 23. Church leaders had arranged to have an indoor meeting on Sunday (Jan. 1) in a room leased from the Beijing Parkview Wuzhou Hotel on Dec. 17, but due to police interference and the cancellation of the lease, they continued meeting outdoors for services – with the arrests also continuing.

          “Persecuted,” brothers and sisters. The Early Christian Church was persecuted for proclaiming the love and the salvation found in Jesus Christ. Today, the church is still persecuted for doing the same. Perhaps in this country, we too often take for granted that we can worship God and proclaim Jesus Christ freely, and not be killed for it. For we as Christians do not seek harm, suffering, or pain upon anybody. Instead we simply want people to be changed by the life changing power found in Jesus Christ. We as people of Christian faith should seek to coexist peacefully with all people, and with all religions, and amidst all of this seek to spread the love of Jesus Christ to all people. Yet for this, we have always been persecuted, and I doubt that will end anytime soon. In the name of Jesus Christ I bring this message to you, amen!